In studying this piece of scripture again, something stuck out to me that has been there, but I haven’t focused on. In particular, the portion speaking of putting on your feet “the readiness given by the gospel of peace” is what got my attention. It occurred to me this comes from a daily preaching of the Gospel to yourself. It’s rather obvious but it’s one of those things that you can kind of read over.
On a daily basis, along with all of the other pieces of our spiritual armor, remember and consider our glorious Savior, that He became one of us, lived a perfect life in submission to the Father, suffered and died a brutal death, bore the wrath of God in Himself, and rose from the grave, in order that we might live. This has to be apart of our daily walk with Christ and cannot be forgotten. This is the hope of all life and the centrifuge upon which all other aspects of Christianity hinge.
In this passage, Paul first speaks of putting on the belt of truth, being that with truth girded around your waist, all the other pieces of armor will rest on this. If you do not have proper, truthful knowledge of God, everything else will go wrong. Next Paul states to put on the breastplate of righteousness. What does this mean? Christ, having purchased our pardon on the cross by His blood, having rightfully earned the righteousness He obtained, now imputes that righteousness to us who believe. It has become our very own, nothing that we earned, but something freely given to us in Christ. The Father sees us as He sees Christ. How amazing is that?!
So we must go to Christ, submit to Him, obey Him, give Him glory, tell Him how wonderful He is, and the peace of God will reign in your heart. Of course, as I said previously, putting on your feet the Gospel of peace is daily reminding yourself of the Gospel, remembering His sacrifice on your behalf, and remembering that He’s alive and reigns from above and taking this news to those around us.
Next Paul says to take up the shield of faith. One thing that people seem to misunderstand here is that we must work ourselves up, role up our sleeves and “get ‘er done,” so to speak. I would submit to you that this is the opposite of what we should do. Faith is a gift given by God, not something produced of our own willing or forcing. It is God who gives us the eyes to see and the ears to hear. Therefore, we obtain this shield of faith by going to God, humbling ourselves before His presence, and through Christ as our intercessor, asking the Father to give us an ever-increasing level of faith that we might live in such a way to give glory to God in every area of our lives.
Finally, put on the helmet of salvation which will protect your mind from worldly, sinful thinking by digging into, knowing, and studying scripture; and take up the the sword of the Spirit that you might use the scripture to combat those that would do us harm spiritually.
All of these are not something that you do every once in a while, but every day we get up we are under spiritual attack, and we should gird ourselves with Jesus Christ constantly, His righteousness, the faith given us by Him, and prepare our hearts and minds with the Word of God. To do anything less than this on a daily basis is to go into war completely naked, without any kind of weapon. Man you’re liable to get torn up … picture doing that at the D-Day Normandy invasion.
An excellent Bible study on this passage: Use God’s Full Armor
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