The Full Armor of God

Can I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians 6:13?

“Therefore,” writes Paul, “put on the full armor of God, so that when the [evil] day … comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled [round] your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”

Last time, in the evening, we just introduced this whole matter of spiritual warfare. And while we don’t plan to take a prolonged period of time in treating it, we want at least to do a measure of service to the subject, which is a matter of great importance.

I don’t know how long it is since many of you have read from Pilgrim’s Progress, but if you have in any recent period of time done so, you will recall that one of the most striking and graphic parts of it is when Christian is encountered by Apollyon, and he is engaged in this significant and dreadful battle. Bunyan said that the yelling and the “hideous roaring” that Apollyon “made all the time of the fight” was enough to scare the best of men. And of course, here in Bunyan’s dream, you have this picture of what it means to wrestle against the Evil One. Let me give you just a little flavor of it:

Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince; I hate his person, his laws, and people; I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.

[Christian replies,] Apollyon, beware what you do; for I am in the King’s highway, the way of holiness; therefore take heed to yourself.

… Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I[’m] void of fear in this matter: prepare [your]self to die; for I swear by my infernal den, that [you shall] go no further; here will I spill [your] soul. And with that he threw a flaming dart at his breast; but Christian had a shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that.

Then did Christian draw, for he saw it was time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing darts as thick as hail, by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, [in] his hand, and [in his] foot.

And it says that Apollyon, seeing the opportunity, begins to press upon him and drives him down.

And with that he had almost pressed [Christian] to death, so that Christian began to despair of his life; but as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good man, Christian nimbly [reached] out his hand for his sword, and caught it, saying, “Rejoice not against me, O [my] enemy; when I fall I shall arise’; and with that [he] gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that ha[s] received his mortal wound. [And] Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, “Nay, in all these things we[’re] more than conquerors through him that loved us.” And with that Apollyon spread forth his dragon’s wings, and sped him away, [so] that Christian … saw him no more.

It’s a great fight, you know. If you like fights, it’s one of the good fights out of some the early centuries. And it is a tremendous reminder—Bunyan understood it from the perspective of a very solid and biblical theology—that the same grace which reconciles us to God antagonizes us to the Evil One and that the actual fact of Christian warfare, rather than calling into account our Christian profession and experience, actually confirms and affirms it for us.

The fact of spiritual warfare, rather than calling into account our Christian profession and experience, actually confirms and affirms it for us.

Sinclair Ferguson, addressing this subject, says, “We’re often not aware how or why we face times of temptation, stress, conflict, and evil pressure. There is little doubt that some of our irrational thoughts, fears, and doubts should be traced back to the ambush in which Satan hides.”[1] And so, it is therefore imperative that if we are going to be those who are enlisted in the army of Christ and stand side to side and shoulder to shoulder in the privileges of battle, that we would not be naive to the battle which is before us. And we spent a little time on that before.

In my files under this heading, I have culled from somewhere in the past a journalist’s record of these scenes which this individual observed onboard troop ships that were going from the coast of England to France at the time of the First World War. And the journalist wrote back his article, saying in part,

If from a group here or there came a song or noisy demonstration, it was from the young soldiers going out to the front for the first time. The others remained impassive, silent; experience had taught them that mere knowledge of their duties and a fleeting ardor would not suffice to bear the long and bitter ordeal of battle. They required a spirit that had been proved in the crucible of discipline.

So then, what I’d like to do in the time that affords us before we crown the worship of the day around the Lord’s Table is simply at least to begin to look at these pieces of the armor which are described for us here. If you should feel that my treatment of the subject is somewhat scanty, then I want you to know I concur with that. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has a wonderful book in which he takes 375 pages to expound verses 10–13. And he writes a second book of 365 pages to supplement the parts that he’d left out in verses 10–13. So you’ve got somewhere in the region of 750 pages of homework, which is your assigned text. And that will, I can assure you, fill in any and all of the gaps that I leave.

Now, you will notice that Paul’s concern is that we would be wearing “the full armor of God”—that to be a member of the army is not to be a casual dresser, not to be haphazard in the pieces that we take in going out, as it were, for the day. We must wear it all—the whole panoply of it, which is where we get from the Greek word. The full armor of God is the word panoplia, from which you get, in the hymn “Soldiers of Christ Arise,” “[And] take, to arm you for the fight, the panoply of God.”[2] For those of you who are wondering, “What in the world is ‘the panoply of God’?” it comes there from that adjective in front of “armor.” It means the whole shooting match, and we’re supposed to be wearing it all.

We need to remember as well that Paul is writing to a church and that there is a very realistic and necessary corporate dimension to what he’s saying here. While it is true that as individuals, we need to be armed, we need to see ourselves not living in isolation but living in the family and fellowship of one another—so that if you think in terms, for example, of taking up the shield of faith, we think of it not just in individual terms, but rather that as we took it up as a great company of people, there was just a solid phalanx of protection all around the family of God. We need the armor in order to be able to deal with the constant skirmishes of combat. And we ought not to assume that we can have one of these battles, win it, and then go to heaven, as it were, flying “to the skies on flowery beds of ease,”[3] but rather, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, the Christian is involved in “a continual and irreconcilable war.”[4] So if as you continue through your Christian life you’re saying to yourself, “I wonder when I’m going to get over this; I wonder when it’ll be a thing of the past,” I want you to know that will be in heaven, and until then, the armor is here for our constant consideration.

Now then, let’s go to it and just look at it in part as time allows.

The Belt of Truth

First of all, he says, “[I want you to make sure that you] stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled [round] your waist.” This is the first and primary and foundational element of Christian armor. It is, if you like, almost underwear, in a sense that it is a foundational garment. It would be a belt that would be wrapped around and tightened up in the way that a man might tighten an exercise belt or the way in which you talk about “buckling up” for the task. And the picture here is represented in all of that. All of the other pieces, or significant other pieces, at least—namely, the breastplate and the sword—would be attaching to that belt. And so, if we were to leave off the belt, then we would not be able to tighten, as it were, the breastplate and hold it in place around us. And it would flap and would be a dangerous proposition, especially in close combat, ’cause you need that thing buckled in so that there are no places under which the dagger thrust can come. It needs to be tightened down. And so says Paul, “Stand your ground. Stand firm with belt of truth buckled round your waist.”

Now, how are we to understand this idea of truth? Is it truth in an objective sense—i.e., Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”?[5] Is it a knowledge of the truth which would guard and keep us? Or is it truthfulness in the subjective sense—i.e., in light of what we were considering this morning: that we would not be liars, but we would be truth tellers? In reading the commentaries, it’s interesting; it falls out about fifty-fifty. Some people make a great fuss about the fact that it is truth in an objective sense, and others that it is truth in a subjective sense.

Following the example of William Gurnall, who wrote a fat book on the subject as well, I’m going to take the path of least resistance and say that it is both;[6] that for us to buckle the belt of truth around us in order that we might be able to stand is to recognize the importance of truth in an objective sense—the truth represented in the great declaration of Martin Luther: “Here I stand. I can do no other.” In other words, he was taking his stand on an issue of truth. And that was not truth in terms of his own subjective truth telling, but it was truth in terms of “once delivered [to] the saints.”[7] That, of course, is in keeping with Paul’s great concern. In Ephesians 1, he mentions truth in this way. In verse 13, he says, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth”—namely, “the gospel of your salvation.” He has the same concern for Timothy as a young man when in 2 Timothy 2:13–14 he urges him—verse 14—“Keep reminding them of these things, and warn them before God against quarreling about words. And make sure that you are,” in verse 15, “the kind of workman who correctly handles the Word of Truth.”[8]

Now, loved ones, this may seem just so straightforward that we could pass over it quickly—and indeed, I’m tempted to do. As I was thinking about it in preparation for tonight, even as I was driving here this morning, I alternated between two of my radio programs, as I usually do. And one of them I tune in to in the morning is of a church service somewhere in the city here. Mercifully, this morning, I couldn’t remember which church it was that I was listening to; otherwise, I might be tempted to tell you the name of it tonight. Because what I have to say is not flattering.

The individual, in the closing moments of his sermon, began—this is the pastor—to wax eloquent on the work of a theologian by the name John Hick, an Englishman who is presently at the University of Birmingham. Professor Hick has made a name for himself because of his brilliance and because of his determination to deny and to disintegrate and to dismantle the essential cardinal elements of biblical theology and truth. And this pastor, at the end of his sermon, said to his congregation, “And so you see, my dear friends”—words to this effect—“there is no reason for us to propound the priority or the superiority of our Presbyterianism.” I said, “That’s good. I like that. It’s good.” Because denominations are not the issue, right? I don’t care if you’re Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, whatever it is, right? That’s not the issue. Good. But then he went on to say, “or the exclusivity and superiority of Christianity. Because God, at this point in history, is making himself known”—and I’m not quoting him now, but he said savingly and fully in all the religions and ideas of the world. What he said to his congregation was, “It doesn’t matter what you believe. It doesn’t matter. The issue of truth in the late ’90s is totally relativistic. It is on a sliding scale.”

And loved ones, it’s going to get much worse than right now. I really believe this. I don’t want to be a prophet of doom, but I do believe that God has to fashion and form in us deep convictions about these things for the sake of a coming generation. So we want to labor hard here as pastors and elders, as Sunday school teachers, from the tiniest all the way through, to ensure that the army is buckling on the authority and the priority of the belt of truth in this most objective way.

But it also has a subjective element to it, does it not? Insofar as Paul also, still in Ephesians, in 5:9, mentioned this whole idea of truth telling: “For you were once darkness, but now you[’re] light in the Lord. Live as children of [the] light.” And then he gives a little exposé of what that means: he says, “For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, [and] righteousness and truth.”[9] Therefore, for the Christian to buckle on the belt of truth is not simply to be convinced of the truth of the Scriptures as revealed to us but also is to be committed to truth telling at the core of our being. And we said a little of this, this morning. “Do not tell lies to one another,” says Paul in Colossians 3. “Make it an absolute commitment of your life.”[10]

I was thinking about it in relationship as I spoke to children this morning, and just a call to children to say, “You know, the Lord Jesus being my Helper, whatever I become in life, God helping me, I will not become a liar. I’m going to tell the truth no matter what it means. I’m going to tell the truth even when I get a hiding. I’m going to tell the truth even when I get a detention. I’m going to tell the truth even when I get an F. I am going to be known as a boy or a girl of absolute integrity.” And a gentleman came to me afterwards, and he said, “You know, that truth-telling stuff—you’re absolutely right.” And then he started to articulate it in relationship to society and business and the destruction of Apple Corporation and all kinds of things that I’m not smart enough to think of. And he was tracing it all to the absence of truth telling amongst a group of men who never learned to tell the truth when they were kids, didn’t tell the truth when they were teenagers, didn’t tell the truth in middle management, and still don’t tell the truth when they’re in charge of large chunks of shareholders’ money. Buckle it up. Wrap it tight.

Do you think God is concerned about the truth? Turn for a moment to Acts. Acts chapter 5: “Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, … sold a piece of property.” Fine.

With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you[’ve] lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You[’ve] not lied to men but to God.”

See, in other words, what Ananias had done was he sold it for x, he brought y, and he made y appear like it was x. It was okay for him to sell it for whatever he wanted, and it was okay for him to bring whatever he chose, but it was not okay for him to create a spirit of deception in front of the church about what he was doing. And

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard …. [And] then the young men came forward, [and] wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

[And] about three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. [And] Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias [received] for the land?”

Not “Is this the amount you brought?” “Is this the price you [received] for the land?”

“Yes,” she said, “that[’s] the price.”

Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

[And] at that moment she fell down … and [she] died. [And] the young men came in and, finding her dead…

Looked at one another and said, “Welp, here we go again!”

… carried her out and buried her beside her husband. [And] great fear [came on] the whole church [on account of this].[11]

And what was the issue? Truth! Truth!

The army can never get any further than the weakest link in the chain. And right at the very heart of it all, in taking the armor to ourselves, is this matter of truth, both objectively as revealed in Scripture and embodied in Christ and subjectively as it is worked out in our lives.

The Breastplate of Righteousness

Now, the second aspect is the breastplate of righteousness. We’re not only to have this truth belt buckled round our waist, but we’re to wear the breastplate of righteousness.

And again, quite frankly, this can be taken in both an objective and a subjective sense. For example, in 1 Corinthians and in chapter 1, Paul speaks of righteousness in this very objective way. First Corinthians 1:30: “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” The same thing in Colossians 3:3: “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” In other words, it is by virtue of our union with Christ that we’ve been given a standing before God. And it is the breastplate of righteousness which covers my heart and declares me justified before him—and that in an objective sense.

Now, when I have been placed in a righteous position before God on account of what Jesus has done, I am then to live out that righteousness. Subjectively, righteous living is to be part of all of my days and all of my decisions. An earlier commentator, G. G. Findlay, said, “The completeness of pardon for past offence and the integrity of character that belong to the justified life, are woven together [in] an impenetrable mail”[12]—that is m-a-i-l, i.e., you know, the armor mail, the chinky stuff. What do you call it? The… Chain mail! That’s it. Is that it? Yeah. And he said, “It’s woven together in chain mail.”

The person who has a false profession of faith and lives an unrighteous life is vulnerable to every attack and is susceptible to every temptation.

And you see, that’s absolutely true. The person who has a false profession of faith and declares themself truly in Christ and lives an unrighteous life is vulnerable to every attack and is susceptible to every temptation. It is when I realize that I have been given the breastplate of righteousness to protect me from all the attacks of the Evil One and that the wonder of the fact that God has done that for me in Jesus—it enables me and quickens me to live a life that is pleasing to him. That’s why, you see, when you come on a man who is living in absolute denial of a Christian testimony, then it calls in question whether the profession of faith is a real profession of faith. The man is either deceived and deceiving or he is in the worst of backslidden states.

The Shoes of Peace

You understand this. Let’s move on, just hit the shoes—the shoes of peace: “with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.” Shoes.

I was in Niketown this week, just for a wee while, and was struck again by the amazing array of shoes. They have found a way to make shoes for everything, you know. There are shoes for going here, shoes for going there, shoes for getting from your house to your bike, and then shoes when you get on your bike, shoes when you get off your bike to run over to meet someone, and then shoes when you’re driving your car. I mean, they’ve got it down good. And what they’re saying is “Shoes are really important.”

And actually, shoes are important. Josephus, the Jewish historian, says that part of the success of the military prowess of Caesar’s armies had to do with the footwear that he issued to his troops, because he gave them such good footwear that they were able to march for longer distances than their enemies. And their enemies, who were wearing inferior shoes, assumed that the armies of Caesar would only be able to go so far in a certain time, and therefore, they were okay, because “they won’t be able to show up for a while, because we never can,” and then they showed up! And the reason they showed up was because of the thickly studded boots they wore, with sharp nails, which made it possible for them, said Josephus, to cover long distances in such short periods that the enemies were caught off guard.

With our feet shod with the shoes of “the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.” You know, what a wonderful thing is that we’re told that the feet of the messengers are lovely: “How [lovely] on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.”[13] In Ephesians 2:17, this wonderful picture: “He came”—Jesus—“and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” Johannes Blauw, writing on this, says, “Missionary work is like a pair of sandals that have been given to the Church in order that it shall set out on the road and keep … going to make known the mystery of the gospel.”[14]

Have you had your shoes on this week? You got on your gospel shoes? I don’t say this to induce guilt. I say it to myself, to ask the question. In all of our encounters and all of our opportunities, have we taken the opportunity to speak a word for the gospel, to speak a word for Christ? We had the shoes on? It’s not an option, for as I said at the beginning, the armor is “the full armor”; it’s to be worn in its totality. So we can’t say, “Well, you know, someone else has the shoes, and I’ve got the breastplate, and another fellow, he has the helmet. And we’ll cover it between us.” No, it’s each of us taking all of the armor so that we may stand side by side for the cause of the gospel.

The Shield of Faith

Now, how about a shield? “The shield of faith” in verse 16: “In addition to all [of] this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”

What a wonderful picture this is. The historians tell us that there were two kinds of shields. There was one that was almost like a kind of large bread plate—like a Frisbee—that you held, and it was circular, and you kept it close to you, and you used it for immediate combat. And then there was another shield that was issued to the armies, and it was a big shield. It was like walking around with a door. It was 1.2 meters by three quarters of a meter. Historians tell us that it was two layers of wood glued together and covered first with linen and then with hide—with leather—and it was bound with iron above and below. And the people would take these big shields, and they would hold them up to protect them from the flaming darts of the evil one. If you’ve seen any movies, you may have seen these flaming darts coming over, dipped in pitch and set alight, and they would sink into the shield and be extinguished.

Tonight, it is the most naive of us who believe somehow or another that we can wander around and that we’re immune to these flaming darts. The Evil One fires them with frequency, with rapidity, and with great skill. Some of us may have taken to the chest, as it were, a flaming dart of false guilt. We know that at this Table we have the emblems of the fact that Jesus has dealt once and for all for all of our sin, and yet the Evil One comes as our accuser again and again, and he fires his pitched and illumined arrows, and it hurts. Take the shield of faith. Some of us are becoming buried by doubt. “From whence this fear and unbelief?”[15]—this sense of “I don’t know,” or “I’m not sure,” or whatever it might be. Take the shield of faith. The arrow of disobedience, of rebellion, of lust or fear or malice. Remember that ultimately, God himself, says Solomon, “is a shield to those who take refuge in him.”[16]

The Helmet of Salvation

And then, finally, you will notice that we’re to “take the helmet of salvation.” “Take the helmet of salvation.” That is actually the last part of the armor, because the sword is a weapon. It’s not strictly part of the armor. So we’ll finish with the helmet—protection for the head and therefore for the mind.

These helmets were made of bronze or of iron usually. Imagine wearing an iron helmet! Most of us don’t even have the neck muscles to hold it up. The helmet would probably kill us before we got into the battle. And so they would place inside the helmets linings of felt or of a spongy substance to try and make the weight bearable. And the historians again say that nothing short of an ax or a hammer could pierce a heavy helmet. And in some cases, there was a hinged visor that was added for the protection of the face.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in addressing this, suggests that the key to understanding the helmet of salvation is found in a verse that we considered a wee while ago, in 1 Thessalonians 5:8, where you’re told there—and we noted it in our study together; we stayed on it for a moment or two, and I won’t take long this evening—but we noted there that we are told, “But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.”

Let me just quote a wee bit of Lloyd-Jones, and that takes us through it swiftly: “So,” says Lloyd-Jones, “‘putting on the helmet of salvation’ means that when you[’re] attacked, besieged, tried, tempted, and the devil [comes to you and] says, ‘There[’s] nothing in it, you might as well get out of it, Christianity makes false promises, it does[n’t] fulfil them—give [it] up! [Chuck it! Leave!]’, you answer,” says Lloyd Jones, “‘No, I have not been led astray by this teaching. I have always known that there are steps and stages in salvation. I know that I am saved [from sin’s penalty], I know that I am being saved [from sin’s power], and I know that … I shall be completely saved [from sin’s presence].’”[17] And then, he says, remind yourself of the hymn writer’s words:

To him that overcometh
A crown of life shall be;
He with the King of Glory
Shall reign eternally.[18]

It’s not surprising to me that simultaneously with the advance of syncretism in the realms of vacuous Christian theology—that simultaneous with the advance of syncretism—there is also the diminution of the whole idea of Christian warfare: the removal from hymnbooks of the warfare songs, of the ideas of battle, of the notion of standing, and fighting, and holding your ground, and staying strong, and being true. Because all of those things, you see, are tied to the notion of absolute truth. But if there is no absolute truth upon which we take our stand and therefore which we must defend, then, of course, it is really silly to keep those hymns in our books, and it is wrong for us to embrace that and endorse it. And loved ones, the whole world cries against such a view. The only thing that people are dogmatic about is that you’re not allowed to be dogmatic about anything.

And God, in his grace and in his mercy, has put us together in this place and for this time—in the realm of science, in the privileges of the halls of medicine, in the realms of production, and manufacturing, and carpentry, and scholasticism, and commerce. And he’s just taken a funny bunch of folk to do it, with me being one of the funniest of all. Look around! Do you think you’d turn the world upside down with a group like this? Well, Paul had a funny group in Corinth,[19] and we’ve got a funny group in Cleveland. But we have a wonderful Savior. We have a glorious Captain. We have a victorious General at the head of the march. And it is no soft option to be a Christian in this day. A Christian teen in a secular high school: it’ll take all of your moral fiber and all of your guts. In the world of business, same again: just to tell the truth in a sales team of liars may lose you your job, but it’d be worth it for the cause of the gospel. So let’s make sure that we’ve got the stuff: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation.

Let us pray together:

Our God and our Father, we thank you that you’ve not only called us into the warfare, but you’ve given us all that we need for the battle. And we thank you for the truth and the righteousness and the peace and the salvation that is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray that you would make us diligent in these things in these days.

As we think of our friends and, in some cases, members of our families and loved ones who either deny these things or have been buffeted by the Evil One and have been taking darts, as it were—the flaming darts—and have been unable to hold up the shield, Lord, let us get around our friends and our brothers and our sisters whose arms are failing and hold up their shield for a while, for we know that were it not for others who’d done the same for us, we would have been far more bloodied in the battle and more prone to defeat than ever we’ve been.

So bind our hearts together, we pray. And as we open our mouths to receive the bread and the cup and to be reminded of the wonder of the provision of Jesus, may we overflow with thankfulness, with worship, and with a zealous desire to take our place in the ranks of your army and to obey our Commanding Officer. For it is in his name, the name of Jesus, that we pray. Amen.

[1] Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1989), 151. Paraphrased.

[2] Charles Wesley, “Soldiers of Christ, Arise” (1749).

[3] Isaac Watts, “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?” (1721).

[4] The Westminster Confession of Faith 13.2.

[5] John 14:6 (KJV).

[6] William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (1662; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1964), 1:291.

[7] Jude 1:3 (KJV).

[8] 2 Timothy 2:14–15 (paraphrased).

[9] Ephesians 5:8–9 (NIV 1984).

[10] Colossians 3:9 (paraphrased).

[11] Acts 5:1–11 (NIV 1984).

[12] G. G. Findlay, The Epistle to the Ephesians, The Expositor’s Bible (New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1892), 415.

[13] Isaiah 52:7 (NIV 1984).

[14] Johannes Blauw, The Missionary Nature of the Church: A Survey of the Biblical Theology of Mission (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 125.

[15] Augustus Montague Toplady, “From Whence This Fear and Unbelief?” (1772).

[16] Proverbs 30:5 (NIV 1984).

[17] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Soldier: An Exposition of Ephesians 6:10 to 20 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 320.

[18] George Duffield, “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” (1858), quoted in Lloyd-Jones, 322.

[19] See 1 Corinthians 1:26.