Our study this week is from Ephesians 6:11:

The first point here is that we must “put on the full armor of God,” not just part of it. If we leave any of it off, we can be sure that the devil will hit us right in that place.

There is not a single place in Scripture where it tells us we can take this armor off. We live in enemy territory and have been dropped behind enemy lines. As we are told in I John 5:19, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” When you are in the middle of a war you cannot just ask the enemy to stop shooting so you can rest for a while. This life is going to be a battle! Even so, battles are opportunities for victory. Instead of trying to avoid conflicts we must learn to recognize them as the opportunities that they are, and seize them.

This does not mean we can never know times of rest and peace, and there will be times in our life when we are not engaged in a specific battle. One of our greatest weapons against the power of the devil is the peace of God. However, this peace is not the cessation of any conflict in our life, but it is peace we experience even in the midst of the greatest battle. We can know the greatest peace in even the greatest battle, but there is no time we should ever let our guard down or take our armor off.

The second point is that this armor is the “armor of God,” not just protection that we have come up with ourselves. We can be sure this is protection that will certainly stand any attack of the enemy. It will fully protect us in this life, which is what we can expect if we have been obedient in this—protection from any weapon that is formed against us.

How would your life be different if you had a visit from Michael the archangel, and he gave you a special suit that would protect you from any harm that could ever come to you? We have been given just such a suit! It did not come from Michael the archangel, but from God! It is a suit that is provided to every Christian. You can put on this suit, and be fully protected from any harm that even the devil himself would try to do to you.

Point three is that this armor is given to us so we can “stand firm.” Because the following verses address the different pieces of this armor (see Ephesians 6:13-17), it seems that this armor only covers our front, not our back. This implies that if we run, there is no protection and the enemy will be able to get his shots in. Once we embrace the truth of the gospel we must set our faces like flint and determine to go forward in our pursuit of God and His truth, so we will never retreat before the enemies of the cross.

The fact that the armor does not cover our backs also implies that we will need other believers watching our back. You cannot watch someone else’s back if you are busy watching your own. If we try to watch our own backs we will always be looking in the wrong direction, so we must trust others to do this for us. The Lord has so composed His body so that we will need each other.

Our last point is that this armor is given to us so we can stand against the “schemes” of the devil, not just his weapons. The devil will rarely attack someone directly, but will slink around to find a way to sneak into a position from which he can shoot. The devil is not a fair fighter. He cares nothing at all about “rules of engagement.” In fact, we can count on him to break every rule if it will give him an edge. One of his most effective schemes is to get us to start breaking rules in order to counter him. We don’t need to do anything but put on the full armor of God—then we will be able to stand against any scheme the enemy has. This is what we will be covering for the next few weeks.