The Armor That Isn't

The Armor That Isn’t—July 24, 2018

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.  Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.  As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.  With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench 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.” (Ephesians 6:13-17)

You use certain defenses for certain kinds of threats, right?

Police officers going into hostage situations will wear Kevlar body vests, because the most likely threat in those moments are individual bullets from a bank robber’s gun.  On the other hand, a Kevlar vest isn’t very helpful in surviving an air raid, with jets dropping bombs or missiles raining down from the sky.  An army might use armor plating on their tanks, or anti-missile-missiles, or underground bunkers for those kinds of scenarios.  And if you are talking about the threat of cyber-terrorism or computer hackers, no amount of bulletproof vests or armor plated vehicles will save you from a nasty bit of malware or virus on your computer network or website.  There you need firewalls and anti-virus software and the life—things that aren’t physical or touchable at all, but which are nevertheless essential. It's a question of what kind of power you need in the situation. Pretty straightforward so far, right?

Well, how about for the people of God?  What kinds of threats really matter to us?  Should we be investing more in Kevlar, or in armor-plating? Anti-virus software, or underground bunkers?

How about none of the above?  Our defense is the armor that isn’t armor.

In today’s famous passage about the “whole armor of God,” Paul gives us the things we ought to be concerned with:  truth, righteousness (or justice—the word is the same in Greek), the announcement of peace, faith, salvation, and the Spirit of God speaking through the Word.  Note: not a one of those is a literal physical weapon, not a sword, not a gun, not a tank.

Of course, that should make perfect sense, given that Paul just got done telling us in the previous verses that our real adversaries are not other people—not “enemies of blood and flesh,” but against the powers of evil and the systems of sin.  If other people aren’t the real enemy, then the usual weapons of the day—swords, shields, and the like—won’t do the trick.  It’s like trying to fight off a computer virus with a gun—it just doesn’t work.  No, rather, because our real adversary is spiritual in nature, normal ammunition won’t work.  “Ideas are bulletproof,” as the title character in V for Vendetta says. Our defense is different, because our kind of power is different--it is Jesus' power, after all.

So Paul takes the standard image of an armed soldier, and he turns it on its head.  Instead of saying, “We Christians had better defend ourselves from the pagans, so round up all the blades and spears you can and stockpile them for a great big knock-down, drag-out fight with them on the battlefield,” Paul gives a spiritual set of defenses.  It might help to hear him this way—it’s more like Paul is saying, “Instead of a breastplate, we will take justice to protect our hearts.  Instead of a shield made of metal or wood, we will take faith to defend us.  And rather than defeating our enemies by killing them, we will simply take the Spirit’s presence to be our defender.”

When Paul talks about a “shield of faith,” for example, he’s not picturing an actual shield that is merely stamped with the word “faith,” regardless of what the makers of religious merchandise suggest by selling plastic “armor of God” playsets to the children of churchgoers.  It’s not that we get physical weapons and just get to wrap them in spiritual meanings—it’s that we as the followers of Jesus forgo all the conventional weapons because we face an unconventional foe.  Paul is just reminding us that you can’t defeat a computer hacker with an armored tank, and you can’t fend off a spiritual foe with a sword or suit of armor.  We don’t get breastplates—we get justice.  We don’t get combat boots—we get the good news of peace.  And those, amazingly, are enough.  They are exactly the right tools for facing down the real powers of evil, because those powers are not found in an opposing army or invasion force.  They are there in the evil lurking in and around our own hearts.

There’s an observation of Walter Brueggemann’s that seems right for this moment.  Brueggemann writes: “People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress - in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness - dressed for the work that is to be done.”

That’s it.  We will be known, not for our uniforms or armaments, but because we wield justice, faith, peace, and truth.  Those might seem like odd defenses to a world obsessed with hardware, but they are exactly what we need. That is how the power of Jesus works.

Lord God, equip us with what we need to disarm the powers of evil today, and to let go of the tools we don’t need for that mission.