Hello Readers and welcome-or welcome back-to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I continue my study in Ephesians 6:10-18.  This passage is where the Apostle Paul describes the Whole Armor of God. In last week’s post, I looked at verse 10 which states, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.”  This week, I want to look at how “be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might” relates to Paul’s admonition that we “stand”.

I have read this passage many times but I have to say I never paid close attention to how many times the Apostle Paul says the word “stand.”  Verse 11 says, “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”  Verse 13 says, “Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand.”  The first word of verse 14 is “stand”. 

Malcolm Smith has pointed out that the soldiers guarding the Apostle Paul during the writing of the Epistle to the Ephesians were just that: guards.  They were not equipped to go out onto the battlefield and fight but, should the battle come to them, they were ready to mount a defense.  The soldiers stood in the strength and might of the authority of Rome.  How much more strength and might belongs to us because we are in Christ Jesus!

This is a truth I have not heard proclaimed by very many of my fellow believers.  They acknowledge that their Salvation is entirely a work of Jesus Christ but then everything else pertaining to the Christian life is somehow achieved based on behavior and merit.  The Apostle Paul asks the Galatians; “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3).  I would ask this same question to those conducting warfare.  Our warfare is Spiritual not carnal.  Our weapons are Spiritual and so is our enemy.  It ought to be obvious ours is not a warfare we wage in our own strength.  We do not need to go out and seek our enemy.  We stand and our strength is in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power of His might.  We stand in His victory which is made our victory because we are in Him and He is in us.  Our flesh life is exchanged for His.  As the Apostle Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). (NOTE: the word “in” I have italicized is really “of” in the Greek.  It is not that we put our trust in the strength of our faith in Jesus, rather we live by His faith because He lives in us.  An important distinction.)

Christ’s victory is total and complete.  There is nothing that is not subject to Him (See 1 Corinthians 15:27).  This truth is something it appears believers have forgotten especially when it comes to sin.  My fellow believers do not recognize sin is put away by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and not for us only but for the entire world (1 John2:2) but are out engaging in “spiritual warfare” and miserably failing.  The result of conducting a battle in the strength of the flesh is much like the Hydra from Greek myth: if one head is cut off two more grow in its place.  Christ’s ultimate victory over sin and death is not spoken of as if it is the reality of believer’s day-to-day lives.  The Apostle Paul wrote an amazing passage on Jesus Christ’s victory over sin and death in his letter to the Romans.  I am quoting from The Message as I like the emphatic language:

“All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers.  But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace.  When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down.  All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it.  Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life-a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.

“So what do we do?  Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving?  I should hope not!  If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there?  Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good?  That is what happened in baptism.  When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace-a new life in a new land.  That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means.  When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus.  Each of us is raised into the light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.  Could it be any clearer?  Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life-no longer captive to sin’s demands!  What we believe is this: if we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection.  We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the end.  Never again will death have the last word.  When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us.  From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word.  You are dead to sin and alive to God.  That’s what Jesus did” (MSG, Romans 5:20-6:11).

I often hear 1 John 1:8-10 quoted as proof that even we believers are doomed to sin.  These verses ought not to be quoted without starting in verse 7:  “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.  If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” 

Read the passage of Romans again.  We each one of us lived in a realm of darkness where we knew sin.  Our eyes had not yet been opened to the reality of our lives in Jesus Christ and so, we cannot say we have not sinned.  But now, we have been raised into a light-filled world in Jesus Christ.  We are new creations in Him.  Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 1 John 5:20 says, “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ.  This is the true God and eternal life.”  1 John 5 also says, “We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself; and the wicked one does not touch him” (verse 18).

 The word “keeps” in 1 John 5:18 is a word of warfare.  It is tereo (G5083) in the Greek and means, “a watch, to guard (from loss or injury by keeping the eye upon, to withhold, hold fast, preserve.” Paul writes to Timothy, “O Timothy!  Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge-by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith” (1 Timothy 6:20-21).  We are not to be idle or passive in our Christian lives but, like Paul’s Roman Soldiers; we guard the revelation of who Jesus is in us, we watch for those who would steal it from us, and we stand. 

My precious fellow believers, let us stop wasting our energy engaging in battles that cannot be fought in our own strength.  The battle is the Lord’s! So is the building the Kingdom of God here on earth.  Let us remember the word of the Lord which came to Zerubbabel through the prophet Zechariah: “not by might nor by power but by My Spirit.”  This word echoes that written by Solomon hundreds of years before: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

His victory is ours by sheer gift. The greatness of the power that is ours in Christ Jesus is the same mighty power the Father worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His right hand in heavenly places.  The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death.  We are not come to Mount Sinai, the physical mountain where Moses received the law which was incapable of making anyone perfect: we are come to Mount Zion and the city of the Living God, one not built with hands. (See Ephesians 1:15-23, Romans 8:2, Hebrews 10:1-4, 11:10, 12:18-24). 

“Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession” (Hebrews 4:14).  Our warfare is not conducted in the same way the world conducts theirs.  Ours is not to gain victory but is rather conducted from the safety and security of His victory.  We stand in the truth of who Jesus Christ is in us and our strength is not that of the flesh which fails but is in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power of His might.  May that truth saturate your being in the coming days and may it be the foundation on which you stand.

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

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright ©1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson.  Used by permission of NavPress.  All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

References

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