The following is an adapted version of my teaching at Patmos Reality Discipleship July 2026 through the letter to the Ephesians.
Introduction
As we look at this section of Ephesians, it is helpful again to have the whole picture in mind. This overview post of Ephesians by the Bible Project puts each part in perspective. The whole first half of Ephesians is about the Gospel story. The second half is about our story. We are in this last section now.
In the last teaching through Ephesians, I mentioned how equipment really matters. What you wear, what you choose to put on really matters. If you are going to work at a construction site, you would wear something very different than if you were to be working as a lawyer, right?
If the construction workers shows up on the job in this suit, it would not go well. If the lawyer showed up in the courtroom in work boots and coveralls, that would not go well either. What we wear matters. And some people take a lot of time in the morning or at night to think about what they’re wearing. Who we are and what we think we’re doing is going to affect what we wear. It often reveals, what we think of ourselves.
This section is about things that Paul tells us to wear, not necessarily physically or literally wear them, but like he’s been talking about this analogy of putting on and putting off. To wear it so that it becomes true of us, so that it’s in and through us. So as we’re reading this passenge of scripture, looking at “The Reality of our Preparations”, I want you to think about it through these four things: truth and righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation and Word.
Go ahead and take a moment to read Ephesians 6:14-17.
The Reality of our Preparation
We just saw in the previous section that we have a real enemy, and this is a real battle. God has won the battle, and he’s given us His weapons to fight with. We don’t fight alone, though, we fight together. You know, you’re really in battle, when you are driven to prayer to seek the Lord in these things. The context of our warfare for Paul, as we’ve just talked about in chapter 4 and in chapter 5, is very ordinary life. Paul envisions that there’s warfare happening in the family. The way that you raise your kids, the way you respond to your parents, the way that you treat your spouse, the way that you interact at work, those are places where warfare is happening. He talked about how fathers can make their children angry, and if someone’s angry, that can let the devil and that can let the enemy in. So he’s talking about this warfare as very ordinary life. It happens in household, work, etc.
“This battle isn’t fought by swinging swords—it’s fought through humility and submission, through truth and love, through faith and endurance. That’s how we resist.”
That is the way that we stand and withstand. And in this battle, “We’re not putting on new strategies—we’re putting on the character of Christ.”
One point that I thought was really interesting as I was preparing for this teaching is that it’s very easy to read about the armor of God and think about me individually. I put on a helmet, I put on this stuff, and think this is a set of instructions to individual believers, but that is not the way the text reads. Rather, the command to take up the armor of God is an invitation to the whole community. We are meant to do this together. It’s a communal practice, because like we said, every time the word “you” is used in Ephesians, it’s plural. So we could read Paul as saying, “You guys do this together. You guys all put this on. Let this be true of all of you together.” This section is not primarily about what I do by myself, but what we do together.
According to the New Testament the Church is one body. So we need to have armor on as a body. Jesus has created one unified humanity, where we come together with Jesus as our head, and we become one humanity. We’re one body, so we need to have armor on as a body, because we are engaged in a battle to the death of this group that Paul calls the supernatural forces.
Reality of Truth & Righteousness v. 14
Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
In verse 14 Paul begins listing out each part of the armor of God. He starts by saying, “girding your loins with truth”. That’s when you put on a belt. The phrase “girding your loins” was to tuck in your robe, to gather it up and put it in your belt. In the Roman army, the belt held together the entire uniform, the entirety of it all. And Jesus consistently called the devil a liar. That was one of his favorite things to call him. He said that he’s a liar and he’s been a liar from the beginning. And so half-truths have been one of the devil’s primary strategies since the beginning. Think bac to the garden with Eve? When the serpent wanted to tempt Eve, he didn’t say a full lie. He asked her a question, and he said a partial truth. Did God really say, “If you touch the fruit, you will die?” God had not said that. God had said, “If you eat of it, you will die.” So the snake twisted a little bit, and he presented a half-truth. And he got her to doubt. He used lies and manipulation to do that. The enemy’s main weapon is lies, and he will pick lies that are as close to the truth as possible. Why? A lie that’s obviously a lie, is not going to go anywhere. No one is going to believe an obvious lie. But maybe if I tell someone who already feels like they’re kind of a short person, “Oh, you are tiny”. They might say, “Oh, I think I am tiny. I’m really insecure about that”.
The closer to the truth, the more powerful the lie is. So it makes sense that the first piece of equipment given is a belt of truth. Think about Jesus and his temptation, when the enemy tempted him in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry, it was partial truths. It was, “If you throw yourself down, God will catch you”. Yes, that was technically a true statement in Scripture, but it wasn’t an invitation to put God to the test. It wasn’t a promise to be flaunted over God. He used things that were kind of true, but out of context and not fully true. And Jesus would always go, “Here’s the full truth there. I know the truth”. So this is the belt, the belt that holds everything together, the truth of God keeps everything else together in our lives. The belt keeps your pants on. It holds things in place, and so truth is what keeps us, secure so that things don’t start falling apart. If we know the truth, then things are in order and we have clarity. We know the truth. But if things are unclear and it’s very hazy and smoky and we don’t know what’s true, then things start to fall apart. You don’t know where you’re supposed to be, or what you’re supposed to be doing, or who you even are, if you don’t know the truth.
After introducing this belt of truth, then he talks about the breastplate of righteousness. The breastplate of righteousness. A breastplate is an element of armor in the Roman military, which is Paul’s context. A lot of this imagery, he’s taken what God said about His armor, that we looked at it in Isaiah, and Paul has thought about it through his immediate context. He’s in a Roman jail cell, he gets to see Roman guards all the time, and the armor that they’re wearing, and he’s thought about this stuff and how these truths about Jesus can be visually explained. So he talked about this breastplate. The breastplate guarded everything. Roman armor went from shoulders to mid-waist, covering all the vital organs, including your heart. It was very important. You get stabbed in the stomach and you’re done. As a remon legionnaire, you don’t have three lives, like in a video game. So the idea is to be protected. There’s a passage in Proverbs 4:23, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of its spring the issues of life”. The breastplate protected the heart, and Proverbs says that the heart is really important to protect because it’s where everything comes out of. Your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions. It’s part of the core of who you are, everything that you decide to do, your affections.
Righteousness language is actually rare in Ephesians. In the other two uses, it is used to describe living righteously, meaning to live with integrity and rightness. We have to stop allowing our feelings to determine the things we do. Our feelings can control us and we cannot afford to let that happen. If our feelings dictate how we go about our day then we are in for a roller coaster..
Righteousness in the New Testament is not just justification but it is also activity.
Biblically, There is no such thing as human righteousness. Scripture says, “There is no one good not even one”. So what kind of righteousness are we supposed to wear and have? There are two kinds that theologians talk about. First is imputed righteousness which is what Jesus did applied to us. Second is imparted righteousness, which is what Jesus is doing in and through us. These are incredibly important truths.
As I thought about a way of illustrating this, I was reminded of a job that I find very fascinating.
There is a whole job around recognizing counterfeit money. People train to recognize fake money. And for a long time I have found it very interesting that they say that the best way to train for this to be able to recognize is not what you would think. It is not by studying all of the fakes out there and knowing what they look like. The best way to prepare is by looking at, studying, and knowing the real deal. What does the real money look like? You are better able to recognize an imposter if you know the real deal first.
This is true for us as Christians too. We are better able to recognize lies when we know the truth
We can recognize lies about God like, “God is a harsh God. God just wants you to mess up already”.
We can recognize lies about ourselves like, “You are not good enough. You are not worthy. No one loves you.”
We can recognize lies about our calling, “Maybe you shouldn’t be here. Maybe you didn’t hear God right.”
The best way to recognize those lies is by knowing the truth. We need to both knowing the truth and remember it. Humans are very forgetful. We need ways of remembering the truth. We need to renew our minds in truth daily. But we should also have ways of remembering, whether that is journaling, writing out our prayers, having memory tokens or stones, or pictures that help us look back and remember these things.
We have to know the truth. The truth can sometimes be difficult to face. It can sometimes feel intimidating but God is a God of truth (Isaiah 65:16) and His word is truth (John 17:17). We need to be in God’s word.
As we lift our eyes from ourselves to Jesus, we see that Jesus called himself the truth (John 14:6) and that he was called the righteous (1 John 2:1, 1 Peter 3:18 )
Once again, we are putting this on from Jesus. We are taking on his attributes and characteristics through imitation and being with him. We see it in him, and then we take it on ourselves.
Reality of Gospel Peace v. 15
and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
Paul says to shod your feet. He calls us to go preach the gospel of peace because the gospel brings peace. The gospel brings peace between us and God, between us and other kinds of people. We are putting on the shoes of this peace that God has brought to us and between different people. Paul literally had to put on shoes to go to places to do this very thing.
This imagery is heavily rooted in Isaiah 52:7 which says,
How beautiful upon the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who proclaims peace,
Who brings glad tidings of good things,
Who proclaims salvation,
Who says to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”
It is important to clarify that we do not go out and fight the devil by looking for him under every rock. Instead we fight by declaring the news. As we do, we have to know that what we are declaring is worth dying for. In the Roman military these shoes would be kind of like cleats. They would have little spikes in the bottom to help them stand their ground.
It makes me think of an American football player with cleats on, prepared and ready to hold the defensive line. He is prepared to withstand the way Paul talks about in this chapter. The gospel grounds you so that you will not move. It is your foundation that holds you.
Which begs the question, do you know the gospel story? Not just a simple version that we tell kids but the version that Jesus, Paul, and the apostles are talking about. If you are looking for a summary it is the whole first three chapters of Ephesians.
The gospel exalts Jesus. Most simply the gospel flows from creation, to the Fall, to Redemption, and New Creation. Jesus is the new human. He is the one who defeated death, evil, and sin, which means we can stand firm in that reality, ready for whatever comes our way.
Reality of Faith v. 16
above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
Paul has already told us some really important things. like the belt of truth, the shoes of the gospel, the breastplate of righteousness. This one, he sets above them all as he says, “above all, taking the shield of faith”. He tells us why, because it “with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts”. So there is a very specific emphasis and purpose attached to this idea. It makes sense as its role was very important in the Roman army. The Roman shield was often dipped in water to help it extinguish literal flaming darts from the enemy. Some armies would have arrows with some cloth at the front, dipped in oil and then lit on fire. Then they would fire those on their enemy. So a Roman shield would often be dipped in water so that when those hit, they would get put out.
What would happen with these shields is that one group would hold shields in front of them, as they advanced. They would advance in a very large group, and the first group interlocking their shields in front. The next group would bring their shields up and over, and lock them in, and they called this formation, “the turtle”. It was this protective shield all around them and everyone locked their shields in place, and they held their shields. What’s interesting is that it required a lot of closeness. The shields weren’t super big, but when you put enough of them together, they covered them. It required closeness between people as they depended upon each other. And Paul uses that imagery about this shield of faith.
At this point it might be helpful to talk about what faith is. Hebrews 11:6 says, “But without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he’s a reward of those who diligently seek”. Faith is necessary to draw near to God. Faith is a requirement to draw near to God. You have to believe that he exists and he will reward those who call on him. This word, “faith”, in the Bible it means “confidence”. It can be translated as loyalty, allegiance, and trust. One of my favorite ways to translate it is “trust”. I think that removes some of the ambiguous religious connotations and helps us get at what it is trying to say. We trust in things to hold us up. We trust in a chair to keep us off the ground and in a similar way we are supposed to trust in God. Hebrews 11:1 describes what faith is a couple of verses earlier saying, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. That’s what faith is. So we think about this analogy of the Roman shield, and we think about a lot of the New Testament. Faith, for most of u,s is an individual thing. ”I have faith in God. I have a relationship with God.” But again, Ephesians is very communal. It’s talking about a group of people. Paul is addressing all of “you” together.
Faith in scripture is often a group thing. We do this together. We actually need corporate faith, because sometimes I need your faith, and sometimes you need mine.
Tim Keller, one of my favorite pastors, he used to say this, “It is not the strength of your faith, but the object of your faith that actually saves you. [It’s not how strong your faith is, but what your faith is in that saves you] Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch”. If I have a really strong faith that this little twig is gonna hold me up, it’s not. But if I have just enough strength to barely hold on to a really strong bench, that branch is going to hold me up. The strength of faith is not as important as the object of our faith. The object of our faith is meant to be Jesus. Jesus is the strong one. We don’t need to have the strongest faith.
In fact, sometimes we don’t have to have much faith at all. Mark 2, is a really important story, that I think about a lot. Mark chapter 2:1-5 tells the story of the paralytic.
And again, he entered Capernaum after some days, and it was heard that he was in the house. Immediately, many gathered together so that there was no longer room to receive him, not even near the door. And he preached the words to them, then they came to him, bringing a paralytic, who was carried by four men. And when they could not come near him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was, so when they had broken through the down the bed on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith…
Notice, it is not the man’s faith, he saw his friend’s faith, that his man, his paralytics to friends, had brought him to Jesus. Their faith had literally carried him to Jesus. This man had just been laying still, and he his friends had said, “We believe, we trust that Jesus is able to save you. We’re going to act on that. We’re going to take you to him”. And Jesus saw their faith in action, and he healed this man. Their faith affected this man, their friend. And I think about that a lot, because our faith and our confidence can carry someone else, maybe literally, but more often metaphorically. It can help them extinguish the doubts. If someone comes to me with doubts, asking, “Does God really care?”, my faith in him and my experience of who he is as I share it, can encourage and comfort and strengthen them. Faith is what allows us to look into the future and know what is coming. We say, I don’t know everything that’s going to happen, but I do know that Jesus is in charge of all of it and that he has got me safe and secure. So our faith can help each other.
Sometimes we can see doubts as a really bad thing. Sometimes when someone says, “I have doubts” or “I have questions” people feel intimidated and they do not have an answer so they end up making the person feel like it is wrong to have questions and that they should have it all figured out by now. I find that incredibly unfortunate. I think by in large that is less true today, but I still know people who think this way. Some people say that doubt is the opposite of faith. Maybe you have heard that or thought it. I absolutely disagree with that. I do not think that faith can exist without doubt. The opposite of faith is actually unbelief. Doubt is really important for faith, because faith says, “I don’t understand everything, so I’m going to have doubts. But what I do understand is that I can trust you. What I do understand is that I think you’re faithful enough to overcome my doubts”.
So what do we do with doubts? When others have doubts, when we have doubts, Jude 1:22, says, “And have mercy on those who doubt;” People with doubts often have real questions. So our posture towards them should not be, “Don’t have questions, you need to have faith. Where’s your faith?” And in so doing condemn them, to say that they need to have faith. Instead we are to have mercy on them and say, “I understand those doubts. Yes, those are real” and at the same time “What do you know? What do you understand about God that you can trust Him even in this?” In the gospel, we see people come to Jesus with small faith and with big doubts. In Mark 9:23-25, which is one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible it says this, And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried outand said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” In other words, “Lord, I have faith help my lack of faith. I do believe in you.” That faith can be the small, mustard-sized faith that Jesus talks about. There are going to be doubts and uncertainties in our faith. The goal is not to have a perfect faith, to have a faith that never wavers or doubts, but with those doubts to come to Jesus saying, “Lord, I believe in you. Would you help me with my unbelief? I can’t help myself with my unbelief. No one else can help me with this. They can understand me, they can have compassion on me, but I need you to take my little faith and let it be enough”.
When people came to Jesus is with these doubts, he did not condemn them or tell them their faith was not enough, he received their faith being, himself, the proper object of their faith. He modeled a life of faith with others. He came to meet us where we were to meet us in our little faith. When the disciples freak out on him in the boat two different times, he does say, “Oh, you of little faith”. The more I have studied those scenes and thought about them I have concluded that is much more gentle than harsh. Jesus is bringing their attention to it but not in a harsh rebuke but in a gentle question. The really cool thing about the disciple is that after Jesus died and rose again, and he sent the Holy Spirit, their faith went through the roof. Their faith grew. Those of little faith were recognized as having great faith because the Holy Spirit grew it in them and made them bold.
Reality of Salvation & the Spirit’s Word v. 17
And take the helmet of Salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:8, Paul says, but let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. Here, in Ephesians, he just calls it the helmet of Salvation, but there he calls it the helmet of the hope of Salvation. I think that’s really clarifying for what he means here in Ephesians.
We are saved in hope of ultimate salvation. We don’t worry about the battle that we find ourselves in, about the power of the devil, or about the power of the enemy. We know that we have been saved and that we will be saved. The helmet in the Roman army protected the head and the brain inside that head. If I don’t have a brain, I’m not thinking and I’m not moving and I’m not fighting. I have read that, ‘Every battle is one or lost in the mind”. What you believe affects how you go about the battle. I’ve heard theologians say that the most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God. Our mind is very important, and battles are won and lost in the mind. You could have the better army, but if you don’t think you can win, if you don’t have strategy to win, you won’t win. The battle is lost or won in the mind. And the devil loves to mess with our mind. He loves to play on our fears, to tell us lies, to play even on our confidence. He is a deceiver, and he will come from any direction that he can.
So Paul says, to guard our minds with a helmet of the hope of salvation. He wants us to know securely what Jesus has done and that that would protect our mind that whatever doubts, whatever things he says. He wants us to know that our mind is protected by secure hope. He has in mind a hope that is secure. That we would know the story and know what Jesus is coming to do.
Then he talks about the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God. The Spirit is not the sword. Growing up, this was always one of the more confusing ones. “The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God”. The sword is the Word of God which is the message of God’s victory in Jesus. The phrase, “Word of God” has come often to be associated just with the Bible, We’ve come to think of that as just the Bible, and that is a good impulse. That is right, but I think it’s sometimes helpful to take a step back because we want to know what Paul’s point was in talking about the word of God. When Paul wrote this, the Bible wasn’t even finished. The word of God is God’s communication to us, and especially the message of God’s victory in Jesus.
That’s the same word he uses in Ephesians 5:26 to talk about the announcement of the gospel; “The kingdom of God is at hand”. It’s a declaration of the victory in Jesus. The message of Jesus and his kingship is where our victory comes from. That’s where our hope is and our security. Even though Paul here describs the sword of the spirit as the Word of God, Paul never tells us to use it to attack. The main point throughout this passage is “standing firm”, not going out into battles. The battle is going to come to you, and you need to stand firm. This is a portrayal of a worldview where there are real spiritual powers that have it out for us and want to take us down, and we have to take it very seriously. They want to do us harm, and the way we resist them is by putting on the armor of God.
And so as we think about all the things that we’ve talked about so far, we want to think about the qualities more than the pieces themselves. Our focus should not be on the belt, the helmet, the shield, but rather on the truth, on the righteousness, on the hope of salvation. Those are the focus. The point is not to physically dress up in armor but we do want to be armed with these qualities. We want to have the reality of the things that Paul was talking about in this analogy. We stand firm against the forces of evil by truth, righteous living, the gospel that brings peace, faith in God, and his promises, the hope of salvation, and the message of Jesus’ victory.
This is Paul’s great rallying cry. He’s written a long letter. This here is chapter 6. What he is saying is that this is our new authority. Jesus himself used the word, the word of God, to fight the enemy. He quoted God’s word when he is tempted in the wilderness, because God’s word is the power. It’s the word that transforms us. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. God’s Word has power to transform you. It is the truth that can transform your mind and imagination. What both the sword and the helmet have in common is that they are both about what God has accomplished. God has already done the salvation and his word is the announcement of that message. We don’t have to wonder if we’re saved and we don’t have to worry about messing up or falling out of grace. We are secured in him. And we don’t have to wonder if God’s Word will work. Isaiah 55:11 says this about God’s word, So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. God’s word will accomplish what he sets out for to do. God’s word does not fail. We simply get to participate in what God’s word is accomplishing. When something’s finished that necessarily means that it is done. You don’t keep working on it. I was thinking about a puzzle. When you finish a puzzle, you do not keep looking for pieces or try to keep putting it together. Once it’s done, it’s done. It’s finished. Some people have this problem where they can’t let a thing be. They can’t let something be finished. I recognize in myself this impulse where it’s not good enough that it’s finished, that what Jesus has done is good enough, and I feel like I need to add to it. I need to add more to what he did. Sometimes this happens in silly examples. I have heard of handy people who fix things and maybe the the car is perfectly working, and they need to open up the hood and mess with stuff, and they end up breaking it because they’re not just satisfied with the working car. When you have a working car, you don’t mess with the engine; you drive it. You are supposed to let the thing that’s good and finished work.
I think that that is our invitation with the Word of God and with salvation to let them be. They are finished. They are good, and we just let them do their thing, like driving the car. We are not supposed to be uninvolved but we should recognize that they’re both very effectively going to do what they’re going to do, and we just get to participate.
Jesus has accomplished it. He has accomplished salvation, and he has spoken his Word. He did what we could not do. We aren’t capable of fixing these things. We’re not capable of accomplishing what God’s word needs to do, and we’re not capable of saving ourselves. He saw that we were dead and he rescued us. He has seated us with him, and our job is not to climb or try to get higher, but to rest in that reality, to do battle from the position that he’s already put us in. He’s brought us to the highest peak. So why would we keep trying to climb higher?
If you’re the top of a mountain, you don’t keep going higher because there’s nowhere to go. You would look really silly if kept trying to higher because you’re already in the top. That’s what happens in salvation. God has brought us to the top. He seated us with Christ above everything. And so there’s not much more for us to do. He’s given us his very own Words of life. Why would we not eat them up like the source of life that they are? These are our weapons. We looked at these weapons. This is what Christ has given to his body, as a whole, for the very real battle we face. He did not give us strategies. Paul, in this section, could have said, “OK, you have a very real enemy, you’re fighting against the devil and his minions. Make sure that every morning you do this, and make sure you say this, and make sure you talk about that” He could have given us plans and step-by-step instructions and conferences and incantations, all these different things. That’s not what he gives us. What he gives us is Jesus. Jesus’ own truth, Jesus’ own righteousness, Jesus’ peace, Jesus’ faithfulness, his salvation, and his word. That’s our armor. That’s what we wear. We don’t wear it alone; we wear it together as a body. What he’s given us are his own attributes, his own armor, for his people, his unified body to take and receive and live into.
Reflection
And so I want to end with a couple of questions for a reflection.
* As we think about the belt, what are the lies that you’ve believed recently? If the belt is the belt of truth, what lies have you believed?
* As we think about the breastplate, where is God calling you to live with more integrity?
* As we think about the shoes, who is God calling you to share peace with?
* As we think about the shield, where do you need to borrow someone else’s faith right now? Where’s your faith weak?
* As we think about the helmet, where have you forgotten your identity and a future in Christ?
* As you think about the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, what gospel truth do you need to speak out loud this week?
