Reading Ephesians Six and the Armor of God

  

Yesterday afternoon a friend was talking with me about Ephesians 6:10ff and the armor of God. During our conversation he directed my attention to the section immediately before it, particularly 6:4, “Fathers, do not provide your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline of the Lord.”

 

My friend led me into an “Aha moment,” for I saw that unless our relationships are godly and healthy, beginning with marriage in Ephesians 5:22, that we are kidding ourselves if we think we can engage in the spiritual warfare of 6:10ff. When our relationships with others are out of the will of God we are vulnerable – and any armor we put on is likely to be ill-fitting and penetrable – we simply cannot gloss over disobedience in our relationships with impunity.

 

As we continued to talk, I was reminded of how we typically have an image of the armor of God passage that may be inaccurate, since we tend to visualize one person standing in isolation and being clothed with armor. Would the first century reader or hearer have had this image, or would the image have been that of a group of soldiers standing or moving in close formation? Consider that Greco - Roman warfare consisted of troops moving and fighting in formation as a unit, as one man.

 

This is not only a way of ancient warfare, such as the Greek phalanx and the maneuvers of the Roman legions, it has been the key to much warfare through the centuries, including the British square which broke Napoleon’s cavalry at Waterloo and the intricate maneuvers of units in the American Civil War, which required hours upon hours of drill prior to battle.

 

Beyond what the eye can see in terms of military formations, there is what the eye cannot see, and that is the camaraderie which exists in many military units. As students of military history know, soldiers often fight and die for their units, for the men they live with day in and day out, for those they have trained with and experienced hardship with, for those they have come to know… rather than for their country or other ideals.

 

A few years ago, the American army had a recruiting program titled “An Army of One.” The message seemed to be that if you enlisted in the army that you would be made into a super-solider and become an army in and of yourself. I suppose this was modeled after a comic book or movie super “hero.” Having served in the U.S. Army, and being a student of military history, I considered this an ill - advised recruiting idea.

 

Why? Because unit adhesion is pretty much everything in a healthy military unit, morale and camaraderie are essential; therefore training soldiers to have “an Army of one” mentality isn’t the smartest idea.

 

The image of a lone soldier is not likely to have been the first century image of Ephesians 6:10ff (any more than a football player visualizes himself as alone on the field facing an opposing team all by himself), but the fact that it is often our image betrays how we view ourselves and others in the Body of Christ and our local congregations.

 

What are the consequences of our misreading Ephesians 6:10ff? What are the results of our faulty image of a lone soldier standing by himself?

 

John 15:12 – 14; 1 John 3:16