Why do we need armor?

 Football teams, soccer clubs, doctors, nurses, businesses, armed forces members, police officers, and even 70s rock bands have a common denominator, and that is they all suit up for work. Each of these individuals and many more wear uniforms that serve to unify, promote continuity, and, most importantly, identify them as a member of their profession.

When the game is at its peak and you’re in the last quarter of play, with only a minute left on the clock, and the whole field ahead of you, the only way to win is to identify your teammates and throw the ball to them. They’re not hard to spot. They’ll be the ones wearing the same color jerseys as you. If the quarterback can throw enough forward passes to the guys in the same colored uniforms, they have a good chance of winning. However, throw it to any one of 11 guys wearing opposite colors and you lose. What we wear will identify us with that group or team. It’s the same with serving Christ and being called one of his followers. Our armor is part of our uniform as a Christian. We can either wear it in power or throw an interception; the choice is solely up to us as the wearer.

So someone may ask why we even need an armor to begin with. Another may think serving the Lord comes with a “get out of jail free” card and the Christian never has any struggles or battles to fight. A couple of ways to answer that is to remember the enemy, in his war for your soul, doesn’t give up as easily as we would like, and another reason is simply if God had intended to exempt us from battle, he would not have given us an armor in Ephesians chapter 6.

Taking a closer look at the armor that Paul mentions, in Ephesians, we notice that he leads out with the “belt of truth.” Paul compares the Roman belt in the natural to spiritual truth in the supernatural. The belt is what holds all other pieces of the armor together. Without spiritual truth as our compass, we will find that when we engage in the battles of life our protection may fall apart. Paul moves on to mention the breastplate of righteousness. The actual Roman armor for the day was built in such a way that it created freedom of movement. Individual plates were lined with individual rounded outer plates to deflect blows away from the vital organs. The Greek term for this is called the thorax, which literally means heart protector. The shoes of peace are mentioned next and were designed as sandals, yet they were fortified with metal plates on top and front with studded metal souls on the bottom for traction. Maybe Paul mentions the shoes as being peace because, without a firm foundation of peace from God, we will lose traction in battle.

The peace that Paul mentions is not necessarily in the confidence as a soldier but in knowing whose armor it is we’re wearing to begin with. Maybe too many of our struggles today are elevated because we fail to dig our foundation deep into Christ, thus we slip and fall on the very slopes we were built to stand on. Righteousness, truth, and peace are all tied together just like the Roman armor of Paul’s day. The Roman soldier was a very familiar fixture for the citizens of Judea. The armor they wore demanded authority and respect. To the civilian, the Roman war machine was the most powerful manmade force in the world, and the armor was a big reason for that persona. We should view the armor of God with far greater respect and authority than that of a simple human and his attire. God has given us the tools to win the daily spiritual battle for our souls. If we were only meant to defend and survive those battles but never intended to win them, then God would not have given us the sword as a part of the armor.

We’re giving the enemy too much power and control and giving God too little respect and authority in our lives. No enemy created or imagined has any power against the full armor of God. Let’s get traction for the next battle. Dig in our heels and declare enough is enough. Build our foundation in Christ and understand the power we possess as a soldier for Christ.

We would love to speak with you this Sunday about the armor. We are Christpoint Church. We’re located on the square in Sparta. Join us at either 9 a.m. or 11 a.m. this Sunday. We’re real people, living real lives, serving a real God. Welcome home.