The "New" Armor of God

The Making of God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People

Postscript

          Years ago one scholar proposed that Ephesians was written by a follower of Paul to be the head of the collection of his letters as “a great rhapsody on the worth of the Christian salvation.”[1]  That particular theory has not stood up well to examination.  However, its recognition of the grandness of Ephesians and its appropriateness to serve as an overview of Paul’s missional theology of the God who sent his Son into a rebellious and distorted world to reclaim, restore, and deliver it to its intended goal is now being reclaimed.  As such, Ephesians has a claim on being a master template through which we read the rest of Paul’s letters which deal with various aspects and circumstances in the life of this missional people.  I have tried to interpret Ephesians as a missional overview of what God is doing in our world and what we as his missional people are to do in this book. 

Those whom the Son gathers to serve as his missional people I have called God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement.  We participate in and implement Christ’s victory across the globe in the power of the Spirit serving as a sign (pointing to the “mystery: of God’s great and gracious plan to gather all things up in Christ), a sacrament (a community in which others can experience the new creational life of God), and a steward (a group whose life and resources are given to furthering this great plan of God). 

We are a people born of divine warfare.  Our birth as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement is a result of Christ’s victory in God’s divine warfare against sin, evil, and rebellious spiritual powers.  Our life as God’s people continues God’s warfare as through us he continues to reclaim and restore his creation to its created design.   

Here’s how Timothy Gombis summarizes our life as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement:

“According to Ephesians, the church performs the cosmically significant role of divine warfare through mundane embodiments of God’s life on earth.  Cosmic conflict does not involve defiant chest thumping the face of the defeated powers.  On the contrary, we are called to purposeful, humble, cruciform faithfulness as we perform Jesus for the good of the world . . . the church embodies the divine warrior by undergoing constant community transformation through renewed imaginations and practices.  When the church participates in this transformative process, it harnesses and radiates God’s resurrection power, which has a transformative effect on outsiders.  This is how the people of God transform their surrounding cultures. This is in direct contrast to the church’s long tradition of aggressive coercion and harsh denunciation.  Such strategies are surrenders in divine warfare, since they are capitulations to worldly community dynamics. The church must also be a community of wisdom and discernment.  And finally, the church must be a culture of justice.  When the people of God cultivate these patterns of life, the church performs the role of divine warrior in the world.”[2]

It’s worth reemphasizing here at the end what I did at the beginning about the language of warfare Paul uses.  Neufeld Yoder offers wise words to take with us from this study of Ephesians.

“The interpretation of Ephesians offered in this commentary sees militarism, indeed enmity itself (cf.2:16), as one of the powers to be resisted and overcome. Warfare language then becomes fitting and highly ironic.  The persistence of organized, culturally nurtured enmity, oppression, and alienation is so strong in our world that it becomes necessary to conceive of the struggle against these as battles against these powers.  This battle requires all of the divine empowerment and armor that God places at the church’s disposal.  Our critical and essential task is to maintain the irony in such warfare, however, and too remain deeply conscious that this is always a battle for blood and flesh and never against blood and flesh.  The history of the church tells us that this is just as difficult as it is urgent.[3]

We are in a battle.  A battle that is real, though not prosecuted with military weaponry against physical enemies.  Integral to our identity as God’s people in Christ is this awareness that God has “drafted” us into active service in his subversive counter-revolutionary movement.  He has equipped us for such service and expects us to engage this struggle with all the dedication and determination of a member of the armed forces.  We wade into battle bearing weapons fit for the “violence of love”[4] with which we nonviolently resist, bear witness to, and suffer under the “death throes” of the powers that are defeated but not yet banished, as well as stand in solidarity with all other human beings who suffer their depredations. To fail to grasp this as our basic identity and vocation is to fail in a most profound way to grasp what God is doing in and with our world and to experience the full humanity for which he created us. 

But were we really created by God is to this (non-violent) “fighting force”?  Well, no and yes.  No, in that such was not the way of life Adam and Eve experienced in the Garden of Eden prior to their fall into sin (Gen.1 and 2).  They lived in harmony with God, themselves, each other, and the creation.  Human rebellion dismantled all this, however, across the board.  Thus God’s call to his people from Abraham and Sarah onwards is a call to live again this life in harmony with him, ourselves, each other, and the creation, but now in a world where such a life is blocked and resisted at every turn.  In short, it is now a battle to live God’s way as God people.  So yes, we now struggle to live God’s way by the grace and power of Jesus Christ as part of God’s plan to subvert and set right all that sin has displaced and broken – as part of a counter-revolutionary force acting to set the world on track again to fulfill its created purposes. It’s the same life lived in two radically different contexts (so to speak).

However, we struggle on in full assurance of hope, not as those who fear the outcome of the battle.  Karl Barth puts it memorably.

“The war is at an end – even though here and there troops are still shooting, because they have not heard anything yet about the capitulation. The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated. The clock has run down, even though the pendulum still swings a few times this way and that. It is in this interim space that we are living: the old is past, behold it has all become new. The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them anymore. If you have heard the Easter message, you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead the humourless existence of a man who has no hope. One thing still holds, and only this one things is really serious, that Jesus is the Victor. A seriousness that would look back past this, like Lot’s wife, is not Christian seriousness. It may be burning behind – and truly it is burning – but we have to look, not at it, but at the other fact, that we are invited and summoned to take seriously the victory of God’s glory in this man Jesus and to be joyful in Him. Then we may live in thankfulness and not in fear.”[5] 

This “Christian seriousness” of which Barth speaks comes from soaking in the “mystery” of God’s great and gracious plan centered on and worked out by Jesus Christ and, in particular the “memory” of “the victory of God’s glory in this man Jesus.”  Here, and nowhere else, we find impetus and motive to sustain our subversive counter-revolutionary activity without falling into the grim, humorless, impatient despair that causes us to lash out ahead of and apart from God seeking his ends by any means necessary.

It’s appropriate at this point to look beyond Paul and ask how his vision in Ephesians comports with that of the rest of the New Testament.  In an appendix in his recent book, The Politics of Yahweh:  John Howard Yoder, the Old Testament, and the People of God, John Nugent helpfully draws together a profile of what he calls “Distinguishing Marks of a Kingdom-Reflecting Church.”[6]  He documents twenty-five such marks and it is easy to see how most if not all of them are identical or congruent with Paul’s vision of God’s people here in Ephesians.

1.    Places God’s Kingdom above all else (Matt.6:33; 13:44-46; Mark 9:47-48; Luke 12:30-31; 18:28-30)

 2.    Shows equality on multiple levels:  gender, race, age, heritage, social/economic status, and religious status (1 Cor 12:12-13; 2 Cor 5:16-17; Gal 3:26-29; Eph 2:11-22; Col 3:9-11)

 3.    Unifies through diversity (John 17:20-24; 1 Cor.1:10; 12:12-27; Eph 4:1-6, 14-16)

4.    Lives by love:  fellow believers (John 13:34-35; 1 Pet 1;22; 2:17; 4:8), enemies (Matt 5:43-48), and outcasts (Matt 25:31-46)

5.    Accepts persecution and suffering (Acts 14:22; Rom 5:3-5; Jas 1:2-4; 1 Pet 3:13-14; 4:12-16)

6.    Forgives and reconciles at all levels (Matt 6:14-15; 18:15-35; John 20:20-23; 2 Cor 5:18-19)

7.    Confounds those not in tune with God’s Spirit (Mark 4:11-20; 1 Cor 1:18-25; 2:6-16)

8.    Follows the Spirit’s leading (John 16:13-15; Rom 8:13-14; 1 Cor.2:10-16; Gal 5:25)

9.    Embodies cross-shaped wisdom (Mark 8:34-35; 1 Cor 1:17-2:16; Jas 3:13-18)

10. Exhibits sincere, diligent, fruit-bearing faith (Matt 5:20; 13:18-23; 21:33-44; Luke 9:62)

11. Values children and childlikeness (Matt 18:1-5; 19:13-14; Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17)

12. Assimilates the poor more easily than the wealthy (Matt19:23-24; Luke 6:20-21; Jas 2:5)

13. Welcomes the undeserving and unexpected (Matt 20:1-16; 21:28-32; 22:2-14)

14. Flees from and repents of immorality (1 Cor 5:1-5; 6:18-20; 2 Cor 6:14-18; Gal 5:16-21; Eph 5:5; 1 Pet 2:9-12; 4:1-3)

15. Grows in ways understood only by God (Mark 4:26-29; Luke 17:20-21; Col 2:18-19)

16. Cultivates Christ-like spirituality (Rom 8:9-17; Gal 5:22-26)

17. Expresses concern for marginalized of society (Matt 25:31-46; Luke 4:18-21; Jas 1:27)

18. Assumes a humble servant posture (Matt 5:3; 18:1-4; 20:20-28; Mark 9:33-35; John 13:1-17)

19. Attracts frauds as well as genuine converts (Matt 13:24-30; 47-50; 1 Cor 11:19)

20. Esteems small, unimpressive beginnings (Matt 13:31-32; 1 Cor 1:26-31)

21. Infiltrates the world (Luke 13:21)

22. Seeks peace even when it hurts (Matt 5:38-48; Rom 12:17-21; 1 Cor 6:7; 1 Pet 2:18-25; 3:9-17; Rev 2:9-10; 7:9-17)

23. Makes Christ-like disciples (John 13:12-17; Rom 8:28-30; 1 Cor 11:1; 2 Cor 3:18; 1 Pet 2:21-25; 1 John 4:17)

24. Hopes in bodily resurrection (1 Cor 15;12-23); eternal life (Gal 6:7-10); restoration of earth (Rom 8:18-25; Rev 21); judgment on powers and personalities counter to God’s kingdom (1 Cor 15:24-28; Col 2:15)

25. Accesses God’s power through prayer (Matt 21:18-22; Luke 11:9-13; Jas 5:13-20)

Paul’s great vision of God’s “eternal purpose” and the church’s place in it in Ephesians is arising to a new prominence just at a time when the church in North America lacks any profound sense of either.  We badly need a way to recover the dynamic power of the gospel that re-shapes our grasp of who, what, and why we are God’s church. 

We view ourselves as an institution that maintains itself; we need to grab hold of the reality that are a missional people sent into the world for God’s sake. This is who we are. We think the church is a facility in and through which God’s work happens;  we are in truth a movement.  This is what we are.  We think we exist to provide ministries and services to God’s people; we are in truth, however, a martial people recruited, equipped, and deployed in and through the world to engage the struggle with the principalities and powers that have not yet accepted their defeat and continue to trouble God’s world and its creatures.  That is why we are.

It is Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that opens all this up to us at just the right time.  The church can again lay ahold of its identity as God’s missional people, that subversive counter-revolutionary movement dynamized by a white-hot faith, a commitment to God’s cause, contagious relationships, an ability to mobilize rapidly, and generate adaptive responses to the new challenges in front of us, and effectively and faithfully engage the powers of evil in the armor of God and the victory of Jesus Christ. May it please God that this be so for us!  Amen.

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[1] E. J. Goodspeed, Introduction to the New Testament, 226 at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/goodspeed/ch14.html

[2] Gombis,,,156.

[3] Neufeld Yoder, Ephesians, 313.

[4] Romero, The Violence of Love.

[5] Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p. 123.

[6]John C. Nugent, The Politics of Yahweh:  John Howard Yoder, the Old Testament, and the People of God, Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2011) 221-222.

Ch.17: Conclusion: 6:21-24

          Paul names Tychicus as his authorized and trusted ambassador (v.21).  He will bring these churches not only this letter but also news of what Paul, and those with him (“we” in v.22) are doing.  This implies that Paul and his cohort are doing God’s work even though, or perhaps because, he is imprisoned.  Tychicus’ news will reinforce Paul’s earlier reflections that his current situation in no way hinders his apostolic work or the progress of God’s kingdom. 

          This news of Paul’s activity will “encourage” the Ephesians’ hearts (v.22).  Specifically, it will incline them to take seriously all of what Paul has said and take up their calling to be God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement.

          In v.23 and 24 Paul sums up his letter in a benedictory sentence.  Paul blesses

“the whole community” (focus of the letter),

with “peace,” a key term in Ephesians for God’s ultimate end as well as the way to that end, the new creation and that by and for which his subversive counter-revolutionary movement strives,

along with “faith and love” (the great gifts that draw and keep God and his people in relationship),

all of which come from “God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Grace,” the name for God’s power which has won the decisive victories, God’s “skins on the wall,”

to those irrevocably and unconditionally committed to Jesus Christ with a “love” evoked by God’s grace.

           

And that, friends, is about as good a two sentence summary of Ephesians as we are likely to get.  And it is a wonderful way to end this magnificent letter!    

Ch.16: “Stand”: Mode of Existence of God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (1): 6:10-20

          Finally we reach “the” point of the whole letter!  We saw earlier that Paul designed Ephesians to move just to this point.  The “Mystery” of God’s gracious plan, the “Memory” of God’s victories, the “Model” of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary, and “Membership” in that movement all flow into our calling and capacity to “stand” against the principalities and powers that oppose God’s will and way in the world.  Here is where we engage this struggle to implement Christ’s victory in the world by pointing to (sign), being (foretaste), and bringing into being (steward) right relationships in every aspect of life,

Though our tendency is to read Paul’s description of armor-bearing as referring to an individual equipping themselves for service to God, Yoder Neufeld is correct to observe:  “It is much more in keeping with the gist of Ephesians to see this summons to battle directed to the church as a whole, to the body of Christ acting as a unified divine force.”[1]  

          

 This concluding, brief, climactic section of the letter is governed by the third of our posture images:  stand (vv.11,13 [2x], 14).  To “stand firm” in the struggle against “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” is the mode of existence for God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people in the world.  That’s why Paul has Ephesians build toward this point.  He has funneled everything in the letter to ground and buttress this call to arms!

6:10-13

          Early in the fourth chapter Paul exhorted his churches to grow to maturity, the “full stature of Christ” (4:13).  Now, here in ch.6, he assumes that maturity when he commands his churches “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (imperative).  Yoder Neufeld puts it even stronger, “Seize power! Fill yourselves with God’s power.”[2]  Paul can make this bold move only because of his confidence that the maturity to seize such power is itself a God-given gift.  Yet it I still a bold step indeed!  Only when God’s people are ready and able to live into this maturity are we ready to play our God-designed role in God’s purposes – to engage the struggle with the enemy.

          We are to “put on the whole armor of God” (v.11).  To “put on” is the same language as the baptismal command in 4:24.  It seems fair, then, to see this call to become battle-ready as the ultimate outcome of baptism.  Engaging the struggle in the “whole armor of God” is our baptismal vocation.  This is what we are here for!

          This armor is God’s own armor.  In fact, he draws several items of the armor from the description of God’s armor in Isa.59:17.  Unlike the ill-fitting armor Saul forced David to don to face Goliath (1 Sam.17), though, this divine armor is just what the church needs to face and fend off “the wiles of the devil” (v.11).

          Whether we believe in a literal, personal devil or not is less important than whether we believe that there is some form of organized, intentional, strategic (“wiles,” v.11) resistance to God at work in the cosmos.  That this kind of resistance to God exists is the crucial matter; how we conceptualize it is another matter, one that we can debate. 

          Paul makes it clear in the next verse how crucial the existence of such anti-God resistance is to his view of the world, indeed, to the worldview of the Bible as a whole.  It is this coterie of forces/beings that are the real culprits against whom God, Christ and his people are at war, not the human beings they deceive and agitate to resist and oppose God.  They are as much captives and victims of these powers as are those they victimize.  That’s what makes this divine counter-revolution unique – there are no human “bad guys”!  Some do bad things, very bad, horrible things, and they must be stopped.  But they themselves are deceived and spurred to do what they do by their own brokenness and the powers that brokenness opens them up to.  They need forgiveness for the brokenness, freedom from their illusions, and healing of their openness to such deceit.  That is why prayer is our first and primary response to such people.    

          “Therefore, take up the whole armor of God” (v.13):  Paul draws his exhortation to a conclusion.  We need the “armor of God,” indeed, the “whole armor of God” to carry out our commission.  Paul will detail our outfitting in the next section (vv.14-20).

          That commission Paul rehearses as a general or commander might just prior to leading his forces into battle:  “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.”

          In 5:16 Paul urged his churches to make wise use of their time because “the days are evil.”  Here he uses the singular “evil day.”[3]  What does this mean?  After v.10 sounds the theme statement of this section, vv.11 and 13 make parallel statements “sandwiching” and highlighting v.12 where Paul identifies our true enemies.  Look at vv.11 and 13

“Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” (v.11)

 “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on the evil day (v.13)

The “whole armor of God” is paralleled in each verse, so it stands to reason that Paul intended his closing phrases to be parallel, though not identical.  If we take the “wiles of the devil” and “on the evil day” as parallel ideas, the thought emerges that “the evil day” is any day we are subjected to attacks fashioned by devilish “wiles.”  And that, of course, is every day, every day, at least, that we seek to live obedient to our calling!

Paul concludes this section with a triumphant cry:  “and having done everything, to stand firm” (v.13).  Here is Paul’s vision of a mature community of faith, not giving in, giving up, or giving out in the daily struggle to serve as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people.  Having availed ourselves of all that Paul has shared in the sections leading up to this one, we have lived by and used such gracious and powerful gifts faithfully and fully, and at the end we “stand” in triumph.

6:14-20

          Paul’s picture of the “whole armor of God” is a favorite passage for preachers and teachers – and for good reason!  He draws on a well-known figure, the Roman soldier, and re-describes this figure as God’s idea of a faithful community of faith.  Yes, community of faith.  Most often this description is applied individualistically, as if each believer is so outfitted and must work in concert to succeed.  But Paul’s emphasis from the beginning to end of this letter has been on the church as a corporate community, receiving and sharing God’s gifts as one.  It would be strange indeed if Paul changed his imagery now and envisioned the church as a gathering of similarly armored individuals.  No, I think we must stick with the corporate imagery he has used throughout.  Paul envisions here a church equipped with all this armor, different people in the church wielding different items of the armor, none complete without the others, none able to “stand” without the others.  This picture of the church equipped for battle bearing the various pieces of God’s own armor is but the organic image of the body of Christ animated by all the ligaments working harmoniously together translated into Paul’s final and guiding image of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people!

         Here we are then at the point Paul has been pointing us to all along.  This is the summit of the letter.  Here’s the armor necessary to successfully wage war against the “principalities and powers”:  “truth” (belt, v.14), “righteousness/justice” (breastplate, v.14), “peace” (shoes, v.15), “faithfulness” (shield, v.16), “salvation/liberation” (helmet, v.17), “God’s Word” (sword, 
v.17), “prayer” (vv.18-20).  As noted earlier, most of the imagery Paul borrows from Isa.59 where God the Warrior intervenes with judgment against the rampant injustice of his people.  Paul wants us to know that God has given us his very own armor for the struggle.  In other words, God is fighting his battle through and in us!

 

Breastplate of Righteousness/Justice         Eph.4:24

Shoes of Peace                                      Eph.2:14,15,17; 4:3

Belt of Truth                                        Eph.1:13; 4:15,21,25

Sword of Spirit/Word of God Eph.1:13; 5:26

Shield of Faith                              Eph.2:8; 3:12,17; 4:13

Helmet of Salvation         Eph.1:13

Paul[4] begins with the “belt of truth” (v.14).  Paul uses truth in Ephesians in connection with God’s great overall plan (1:13), as the foundation of our growth toward maturity (4:15,25), and the milieu we indwell in Jesus (4:21).  The church is also to declare God’s wisdom to the powers through its truthful life and proclamation (3:10-11).  Thus, truth is critical to both the identity and internal functioning of God’s people, as well as its interaction with the world.  And this world is filled with “every wind of doctrine . . . people’s trickery. . . (and) craftiness in deceitful scheming” (4:14).  So the church’s interaction with the world is likely to be contested and the truth may at times take on a polemical edge.  God’s truth stakes out a place for us to stand as we engage this struggle.

 In Isa.59:17 YHWH dons the breastplate of righteousness among other pieces of armor to intervene among his people on behalf of the justice so appallingly missing there.  Paul borrows this imagery to apply to God’s people, his subversive counter-revolutionary movement.  It carries with it that sense of powerful active intervention on behalf of the right ordering of creation that it had in Isaiah.  We must remember that “justice” is an equally good translation of the original as is “righteousness.”  And it is this activist sense that is most appropriate to the armor God gifts his people with.  To bear the “breastplate of righteousness/justice” is to participate in God’s ongoing work to set the world to rights.

Paul adds his own touch to the picture with his depiction of the warrior’s footwear (v.15).  What drives God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people is God’s own passion to spread his peace into every area and aspect of his creation.  This suggests that the peace Paul envisions is the sure and certain hope that the peace won at the cross by Jesus is already the final reality toward which creation is moving.  To be ever ready to move out to share this news and practice it in ever new areas and ways in this certainty is a powerful energizer!

The footwear of the Roman army of his time had soles studded with sharp nails for balance and traction hobnails, like modern cleats (not well represented in the image above).[5]  They also protected the soldiers from snake bites and scorpion stings as they marched.  If Paul has this footwear in mind as he penned this part of Ephesians some further biblical resonances sound forth.  In Gen.3:15 God announces that the seed of the woman (Eve) and that of the snake will be in perpetual conflict throughout the ages.  The snake will wound her seed on the heel, but he will crush the snake’s head under his foot.  This points to Christ who though wounded to death but brought by God to new life so destroyed the evil serpent.  Paul carries this further when in Romans 16:20 he pronounces this benediction upon them:  “The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”   The footwear of peace Paul describes here in Eph.6 is just what God’s people need to do this!

Paul adds another new feature with the “shield of faith” (v.16).  Again Paul probably has the large rectangular shield of the Roman army of his day in mind (again not well represented in the picture). Nearly as tall as the soldier himself, the wooden shield was covered in leather and doused in water to better extinguish the flaming arrows their enemies used against them.  This is precisely the imagery Paul uses here:  “to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (v.16).

Here we meet again the issue of how to understand “faith.”  Does Paul mean our faith or trust in God through Christ?  Perhaps.  But more in keeping with the notion that these pieces of armor are donations of God’s own armor, it seems more likely that Paul intends the Greek word pistis in the sense of “faithfulness.”  God has given us his own faithfulness to fulfill his purposes to ward off the attacks of the enemy. 

This also tells us something about Paul’s view of the “wiles” of the devil (v.11).  These demonic attacks will seek to destabilize us as the snake did in the garden:  “Did God really say?”  Casting doubt on the truth and reliability of what God has promised to do, especially when there is little explicit evidence that this is happening, is a staple in the devil’s arsenal of “flaming arrows.”  The question at issue for us becomes “How do we “keep on keeping on” when doubt is cast on God’s faithfulness?

The shield of faithfulness, God’s action toward us and the world in Christ, is Paul’s answer.  Focusing on that complete and victorious work gives us the confident boldness to “keep on keeping on” even when things don’t seem to be going our way.  We continue to share in God’s faithfulness carrying on the struggle against the powers on behalf of the world because we know Christ has won the victory.

With the “helmet of salvation” we are back with Isa.59.  Here the imagery is of YHWH donning his headgear readying himself to go forth saving and liberating his people.  He gifts us with his own helmet of salvation to symbolize our being drafted into his service to go forth carrying out God’s own saving and liberating work.  YHWH the warrior makes us warriors too for the sake of the world!

The “sword of the Spirit,” “the Word of God,” is the weapon given for our battle.  This sword (machaira) is often identified with the dagger-like, short-sword of the Roman soldier.  But Paul is drawing his imagery largely from the Old Testament picture of YHWH as a divine warrior.  In the texts that speak to the image in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, machaira designates YHWH’s sword of judgment, a large sword of warfare (e.g. Isa.27:1).[6]

The Spirit wields this sword for judgment, or perhaps better, discernment, in the sense of Heb.4:12,13:

"Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged , piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.”

This word of God, this sword of the Spirit, equips God’s people for their subversive counter-revolutionary work.  Their work rests under God’s classic affirmation of his word in Isa.55:11 speaks: 

“so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
   it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
   and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”   

Now we are fully equipped with God’s own armor to be the people who carry on God’s work in the world fired by God’s own passion and power to bring about a world marked by right relationships on all levels.  Our provisions are abundant.  They have been tested and found more than sufficient.  One question remains: how do we participate in or “utilize” this armor we have been given?

Prayer is Paul’s answer.  It is “through” (dia) constant “prayer and supplication” in the power of the Spirit that we indwell and utilize the gifts of divine armor we have been given.  Prayer is, we might say, the environment in which our warfare is conducted.  A prime function of such prayer is wrapping our fellow subversive counter-revolutionaries (“all the saints”) in the protective and empowering love of God.

Paul then requests prayer for himself as a way for his readers to jump into this prayerful practice of their equipping.  ^“Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak” (vv.19-20).  He invites them to accept his present bondage as an ambassadorship on behalf of God, a point he labored to make earlier in the letter (ch.3 especially), and to pray that he may carry out his charge, declaring the “mystery of the gospel,” with a bold clarity.

We now can see what all goes into the making of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people.  We “sit,” allowing ourselves to soak in the love and goodness God has lavished on his in accord with the mystery of his gracious plan to gather up everything in the cosmos in Christ (1:10), the memory of the great victories God has won for us (ch.2), and the model we have in Paul for living out this (ch.3).

And we “walk” in membership in the community of faith (4:1-6:9).  There we learn and practice the skills necessary for living out our calling in the world.  In this community we demonstrate to a watching world the life God designed for humanity and announce God’s wisdom to the powers and principalities.

Finally, we “stand” face-to-face (as it were) with these powers and struggle against them in God’s power to set right what these powers have skewed.  The mode of our existence in the world is therefore “agonistic,” that is, engaged in a struggle (6:10-20).

Paul has skillfully woven all this together in a coherent and compelling vision of the reality to which God calls his people.  As his people live out this vision, the rest of the world discovers that they too are included!  God is going to bring everything together under Christ at the end.  Everyone has a place and a role in this “eternal purpose” (3:11) of God’s. 

We’ll take a further look at all of this in the “Postscript.”

We Practice “Standing” as God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People

6:10-20

Paul’s call to prayer as the environment or milieu in which we are to take up and use the “whole armor of God” is what strikes me most in this section.  Prayer is, I suspect, the most under-practiced aspect of Christian faith in our time and place.  That’s because Christianity is so deeply and profoundly relational with God and we’ve become so adept at holding God at arm’s lengths with our focus on programs and projects.  Paul, however, will not let us of the hook so easily.  By positing prayer as the reality to undergirds, surrounds, and even makes possible our life as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people, he grounds everything in our relationship to God.  Lack of prayer, then, is more than an oversight in our practice of spiritual disciplines, it is a failure in our relation to God.  And a failure to be God’s people and to be and do what God wants us to be and do for him and for the world he dearly loves.

The question looms, then: Why pray?  Ben Myers offers ten reasons, following the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.[7]  His reflections take us deep into the relational dynamics of our life with God.

1.    Our Father who art in heaven

Because without prayer there is only – myself. Between the heaven of prayer and the hell of the self there is no middle way. The more I try to find myself, the more I am lost. To call on God as Father is to discover myself as someone God calls child.

2. hallowed be thy name

Not because prayer will give me what I want, but because it will knead and pummel my wants, stretching them my whole life long, until at the last hour of my life I have learned to want one thing only, the only thing worth having. And so my whole life becomes a secret sigh, an inarticulate utterance of the hidden Name of God. And so even my death will be my prayer, the sigh by which I give myself up into the presence of the holy Name.

3. thy kingdom come

Because my prayer encompasses not my own life only but the entire world of which I am a part. What defines this world is scarcity, injustice, and oppression – in other words, hunger. To pray is to find in my own hunger an echo of the hunger of the world, in my own small cry an echo of the cry for justice that rises like smoke from the scorched earth.

4. thy will be done

Because prayer is the end of willing, the beginning of wisdom. The life of prayer is a slow dying into the will of God, a slow awakening into the freedom to live.

5. on earth as it is in heaven

Not because prayer is a technique of self-improvement or an instrument of spiritual experience, but because it is beyond all human competency, beyond all language and learning and control. Prayer is the speech of heaven. To pray is to live beyond the narrow walls of the self and beyond whatever I can merely control. As sunflowers open to the morning, so the praying life opens towards heaven, standing up straight into the bright burning presence of the Name.

6. give us this day our daily bread

Because every day, morning and night, I hunger. The stuff of my life is hunger, need, and lack. Technology and affluence blind me to this truth, but one day – a single morning – without food is enough to show me the truth of what I am. I live by lack: God lives by fullness. I am only hunger: God is only food.

7. and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors

Because hurt and disappointment and resentment are always knocking at the door of my life. As soon as I drive one away another arrives, eager to come in and set up its home in the little house of my heart. I will die of resentment; I am destroyed by what I am owed. But I learn to forgive when God writes off my debts and makes me free. Now I can live, now I can clear the debts of enemies and friends, and speak the magic word of forgiveness that drives resentments back into the dark.

8. and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

Because this world is only trial. Yet it is God's world, and all the evils that crowd in upon my life can never hide my voice from the listening God.

9. for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever

Because God is glorious. All my life I was asleep within myself, but when I bowed my head to pray I opened my eyes to the glory of God. Glory should be seen. Just as it is right for a mountain to be seen or a piece of music to be heard or the body of a lover to be loved, so it is right to give God thanks and praise, for God is glorious.

10. Amen

Because the life of God is prayer itself. It is deep calling to deep, the endless giving and receiving of unbounded self-divesting self-communicating joy. My prayer is an eavesdropping on the Prayer that is God. God's speech is grace and truth, God's life is love, God's silence is the annunciation of the Name. The word of my life is a modest, small, yet glad and true, Amen.

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[1] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 292.

[2] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 292.

[3] The NRSV has “that evil day” but there is no “that” in the Greek text.

[4] Yoder Neufeld has done the best and most creative work on the armor.  I will draw on his work in his exemplary 98commentary throughout this section.

[5]Robert Gundry, Commentary on Ephesians (Kindle Locations 1251-1252). Baker Book Group. Kindle Edition.

[6] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 303.

[7] http://www.faith-theology.com/2012/01/why-pray.html.