Ephesians 6.17

As Paul finishes this section on the whole armour of God we read of two things:

“And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God).”

(Ephesians 6.17, NET)

The final two pieces of the armour are the helmet of salvation and the word of the Spirit.

Throwing back to Isaiah 59.17 we read of the helmet of salvation. As a soldier would have been extremely foolish to go into battle without their helmet, so too is the Christian who tries to defeat the world, the flesh, and the devil without the base-level truth of salvation. We are only in the battle in the first place due to our salvation, and so to forget this is tantamount to waving the white flag of surrender. I read recently that

“The helmet of salvation protects us against discouragement, against the desire to give up, giving us hope not only in knowing that we are saved, but that we will be saved. It is the assurance that God will triumph.”

The final piece of the armour is the sword of the Spirit (which is the Word of God). If you have been reading through Ephesians with us since June, or if you have spent any time with us in any book of the Bible, I would hope that you get the sense that the Word of God is rightly held up here as powerful, inspired, inerrant, and infallible.

To defeat the spiritual we need spiritual tools and weapons (vv.10-12). The Word of God is, quite simply, the sharpest and most decisive weapon we have in this fight.

It tells us, categorically and unequivocally, the winning side and urges us to be on it (cf. Revelation 19 and 20).

It has a proven track record of defeating the schemes of the devil (Luke 4.1-13).

It is, simply, the only worthy weapon we have in this fight.

Images – Imperium Romanum