Lesson for March 12, 2023
The Victorious Christian Way of Life
Lesson 11
The Whole Armor of God
Ephesians 6:10-12
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
These verses are Paul’s final encouragement and admonition to the believers in Ephesus to execute the Christian Way of Life. Paul used an analogy that he was very familiar with, having been in prison under house arrest and guarded by the Roman Praetorian Guard. He was familiar with the armor they wore and used it as an analogy for the spiritual armor of believers.
Putting on the full armor of God is an act of the free will by believers. Some believers with obey the command and some will not. It is important to note that we are commanded to put on all of the armor God provides for us. Failure to comply with the command from God to put on the full array of armor He has provided will result in an incomplete result. Our goal as believers should be to reach spiritual maturity and beyond. Anything short of that is incomplete execution of the Christian Way of Life.
It is imperative for advancing believers to put on every piece of armor that God has provided because this is our defense against the deceitful schemes of Satan. We are in a spiritual battle with the more powerful forces of Satan. However, we are here as part of the resolution of the Angelic Conflict, and that means spiritual warfare. Satan’s desire is to keep us distracted and confused. He does this through his world system which attempts to impose human viewpoint thinking on every believer in Christ.
We need to understand Satan’s strategies and tactics. He is the ruler of this world, and he has total power to influence the world system which he controls. (Luke 4:5-7; John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; II Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2) Only the grace of God has the power to offset Satan’s tremendous power. As the ruler of this world, the devil has policies and strategies regarding the nations of the world. His policies are anti-Christian and anti-establishment, and he has been very successful in establishing these policies in many nations, including the United States of America.
So, we must understand that Satan has policies, strategies, and tactics by which he puts his policies into operation. (Revelation 12:9; 20:3,8) Satan has a strategy regarding unbelievers to blind the minds to the truth of the Gospel. The devil’s strategy regarding unbelievers is found in Luke 8:12; II Corinthians 4:3,4; II Thessalonians 2:7-10; Colossians 2:8; Revelation 17. Religion is the devil’s ace trump in the deceit of unbelievers and believers alike.
Satan has strategies regarding believers. He accuses believers of wrongdoing in Heaven. (II Corinthians 2:11; Job 1:6-11; Zechariah 3:1,2; Revelation 12:9-10;
I John 2:1-2) He is the sponsor of reversionism. (I Corinthians 10:19-21; 11:3,13-15) He frustrates the will of God in three areas: the mental will of God (what God wants us to think – Ephesians 4:14); the geographical will of God (where God wants us to be – I Thessalonians 2:18); the operational will of God (what God wants us to do – James 4:7-8)
Satan does everything he can to distort our application of Bible doctrine through worry and anxiety by causing disasters, and the temptation to commit mental attitude sins. (I Peter 5:7-9) He destroys a believer’s focus by getting their eyes on people. (Hebrews 12:1-2)
He gets believers to become involved in social activism, normally with a religious organization attempting to improve Satan’s world system. Religion was created by Satan to counterfeit the plan of God. Christianity is not a religion; it is a relationship with God through personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But religion, by way of contrast, is man seeking to gain the approbation of God by his own efforts, his own plans, his own merits, or his own systems. Religion is the principal representative of the evil genius of Satan. The same evil genius set up an organization of fallen angels called demons.
In Ephesians 6:12, Paul listed Satan’s army as the rulers, the powers, and the world forces of this darkness.
Rulers are the top officers, the highest and most powerful fallen angels under the command of Satan, and they are the equivalent of the archangels in the elect angel organization.
Powers are the commissioned officers in the angelic army. Satan understands the importance of discipline, of authority. His army is highly effective and one reason for it is that they are much better disciplined than most Christians. These officers command the millions and millions of demons in the army of Satan.
World forces means world rulers. It refers to a special corps of demons who might be classified as Satan’s ambassadors. He has these in all of the ruling places of the world. These are special ambassador demons whose job is to influence the world rulers so that Satan can control history. He has never succeeded in doing so, but he never stops trying either. (Daniel 10:13-20, one is called the prince of Persia; one is called the prince of Grecia in Daniel 10:20) The policy and the function of Satan is a policy of spiritual darkness or evil.
The spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places describes the entire demon army of Satan. Satan’s army consists of millions of demons who are very active, often in very subtle ways so that no one even recognizes the evil influence of Satan behind them.
Ephesians 6:13-17
“Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil 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 around 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. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”
Since our spiritual battles are against Satan and his army of demons, we need special supernatural equipment to win the victory. The analogy of the Roman soldier’s equipment describes our supernatural equipment. Stand your ground means to resist. The day of evil refers to the time when we are being attacked. Sooner or later, we will come under attack by Satan’s evil forces. When that time comes, we must be ready to use the full armor of God. And you can’t use what you don’t know is available to you.
Demons are invisible and much more powerful than human beings. We must possess the inner resources of accurate Bible doctrine to resist the attacks of these evil forces. We can stand our ground when attacked only by using the “full armor of God.”
The belt of truth buckled around your waist means to have accurate Bible doctrine stored in your soul. The best defense against Satan is the Word of God, which shuts down his attempts to influence us in a negative way, in an attempt to destroy our spiritual lives.
The breastplate of righteousness refers to practical righteousness – righteous living based on the Word of God. Practical righteousness means we are staying in fellowship with God a maximum amount of time and consistently applying the truth of the Word of God to our individual lives.
Your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peaceis a reference to the responsibility of believers to share their faith with others as Royal Ambassadors for Jesus Christ. Sharing our faith is communicating the Gospel to unbelievers on a personal basis by providing good news about Jesus Christ. What a person needs to know is what Jesus Christ did for them on the Cross and how they can have eternal life by believing in Him as Savior. The Holy Spirit makes the Gospel clear to an unbeliever when we present it clearly. \
Taking up the shield of faith means using the Faith-Rest Technique in the various circumstances of life. When demon armies start throwing their “fiery darts” (people testing, system testing, disaster testing, thought testing) at us, we must immediately apply the Bible doctrine in our souls to be able to withstand all of the attacks of Satan’s army successfully.
Using the Faith Rest Technique means that we have made a decision as to what our future action is going to be when being attacked spiritually. This means that we have predetermined in our minds what course of action we will take before the attack begins. By faith we apply the accurate Bible doctrine in our souls logically, while relying on the promises of God. (Hebrews 4:1-2)
The helmet of salvation is the piece of equipment that a person puts on the moment they believe in Christ for salvation. Salvation keeps Satan from dealing a fatal blow to us. It doesn’t matter what Satan and his demon army does to us, they cannot destroy our salvation.
The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God and is the only offensive weapon we have to combat Satan and his army. When we are confronted by someone attempting to distract us (knowingly or unknowingly) from living our spiritual life, we have defensive armor, and we have an offensive weapon, Bible doctrine, that we can use to counter this confrontation. This is exactly what Jesus did when Satan was tempting Him to go against the will of God in Matthew 4.
Before going to war, it is necessary to assess the enemy. Our assessment should be that God is the One Who fights this spiritual warfare for us. We are unable in our own power and strength to directly wage war with Satan and his demon army. Being equipped with God’s armor is the only possible way of gaining victory in this battle. God’s battle plan is perfect and found only in His Word. We just need to learn the plan and how to execute it!