Hello Readers!  Welcome to Renaissance Woman and another installment in my bible study on the Whole Armor of God.  I am still looking at the Helmet of Salvation and, in this week’s post, am pondering the significance of Salvation being a helmet.

I wonder about the Apostle Paul’s letters.  Were they correspondence he dashed off in answer to questions?  Were his words ones he agonized over?  Did he have any idea his every jot and tittle would be scrutinized thousands of years later as we all take his advice to the Philippians and “work out our own salvation?” Did he have specific reasons for listing off the Whole Armor of God as he did?  Was “the helmet of salvation” intentional?  I suppose it doesn’t matter one way or the other: what matters is what the Holy Spirit shows each one of us as we study the Bible for ourselves.  I find salvation being a helmet significant.

The Greek word translated as “salvation” is, in its various conjugations; soter, soteria, soterion.  The root is sozo and the meaning conveyed is to save, deliverer, heal, preserve, make whole, rescue, safety, and defense.  The Greek word soma meaning “the body as sound, whole” is also related to sozo and so thinking of our salvation in terms of Jesus Christ our Deliverer rescuing and healing and preserving and making whole our physical bodies is accurate.  However, Paul describes salvation as a helmet which means we are delivered, healed, preserved, rescued, and made whole in our minds.

As I was meditating on the Helmet of Salvation, I began to see various quotes and hear Believers speaking on the importance of our thoughts.  The stress wasn’t just on the importance of what we think but how what we think flows out of us and into our world through our words and actions.  Several of the Bible Teachers I’ve followed for years have made the point we are actively creating the world around us as we speak out the thoughts in our minds. Luke 6:45 records Jesus saying, “A good man out of the good treasure of this heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil.  For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” The importance of our thoughts cannot be underestimated for whatever we are thinking is brought forth.

The emphasis of Paul’s Spiritual Warfare passages is on thoughts.  “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” he writes in 2 Corinthians (10:4-5) and then in his passage on the Whole Armor of God: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). 

No, wait a minute, I can hear some of you saying.  These passages are speaking of the Devil and his minions.  Spiritual forces, certainly, I agree; but the truth that I find has been passed over is where these spiritual forces are and just what they are affecting.  I have already posted studies on the 2 Corinthians 10 passage so am going to focus on Ephesians 6.

Before I can do so, however, I must quote two passages from Romans.  The first is found in 8:6-7 where Paul writes, “for to be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.  Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God nor indeed can be.”  The second is Romans 12:2 where Paul writes, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

I don’t know of any Believer who would not agree that we are changed when we first receive the Revelation of Jesus Christ as Son of God and Man, Lord and Savior, Risen and Ascended One who lives forever.  There is no way to stay the same when we see Jesus as He is.  But the how of “being transformed through the renewing of your mind” is where I am seeing Believers living far below all that is ours in Christ Jesus.  The how is summed up in read your Bible every day, pray at least (insert set amount of time) per day, and go to Church.  The focus is on training our minds on thinking a different way.  And, I agree it can work, but who can deny walking this path is one of success and failure depending on the power of the temptations of any given day?  I see the writers of the New Testament promising so much more. 

In the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he expresses the same though as he did in Romans 12:2 but, this time, writes: “and be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph. 4:23). In chapter 2 of this same letter, Paul writes; “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.”

Before the Holy Spirit opened our eyes so that we might see Jesus and turn from darkness to light, we walked according to the course of this world.  Our minds were affected by a spirit not of God.  We couldn’t help it.  We were born into this world and, from our earliest days, the ways of this world formed the thoughts of our minds and thus how we would be in the world.  But now, we know there is a new Spirit at work in us.  This Spirit is the Spirit of the Living God and is the source of a new mind and new way of thinking.  We do not have to train our minds to think different thoughts: we let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus (See Philippians 2:5). 

Paul doesn’t just make this point in his letter to the Ephesians.  Our new life in the Holy Spirit is described throughout Romans 8: “who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit…for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death…for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit…But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.  And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you…for if you live according to the flesh you will die but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

The secret is Spirit.  How crucial it is we don’t quench the Spirit for it is now the Spirit of the Living God who is the source of our thoughts! No longer is it the Prince of the Power of the Air, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.  Because we are in Christ we are seated with Him in heavenly places.  How can that be since as I write this I am seated in my office chair in the office space inside my house?  We are seated with Him in the Spirit.  In this realm of Spirit, we encounter a spiritual enemy whose sphere of influence is our minds.  But, this enemy is a defeated one because Christ, who is our life, has destroyed the works of the devil.

I don’t think the Bible in any way suggest “the mind of Christ” is something that overpowers ours.  We don’t cease to be as Christ lives in us and we are conformed to His image.  What I see the Bible describing is a covenant bond akin to marriage.  Picture a married couple living and loving for years.  They can finish each other’s sentences and there are times words aren’t even necessary for communication.  They have grown together into one.  Our covenant with Jesus is the same.  His mind doesn’t wipe ours out: we grow in union through the covenant bonds of love until we are so One we think the same thoughts.  I’ll have to continue this thought next week (if God allows!) so will close with this:

 Jesus Christ, who IS our Salvation, has not only delivered us from sin and death but delivered us into His life.  We are joined to Him, are of one Spirit with Him, and everything that is His is ours: His life, His victory, His mind. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul gives thanks to the Father who “has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light” and “has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Colossians 1 12-13).  Has delivered.  Now.  It’s all ours because He has lavished His Spirit on us and poured His Spirit into us.

There is a beautiful promise of God recorded in Ezekiel.  As you read it, take some time to let it sink in that the promise is fulfilled in Christ Jesus and is our state of being now and forever:

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”

Amen.  It is so!

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1990