About This Product
Notes of a lecture on Ephesians 6:10-12, the armor of God for warfare with Satan's forces.
It might seem strange at first sight that in this epistle, where there is the fullest unfolding of the privileges of the children of God, conflict should be brought out, but we are often not aware of the character of the conflict from not knowing our privileges. Here it is found we are specially in conflict, and in a conflict that is neither known nor got into until we realize the privileges which this epistle specially unfolds.
In Galatians there is conflict, but it is a conflict between flesh and Spirit — the flesh lusting against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, but in Ephesians it is not flesh, but spiritual wickedness in high places. We have to overcome flesh, and there is a very close connection between these two conflicts. Still, they are distinct.
In Ephesians, it is a new creation; Christ has ascended up on high, “He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men” (Eph. 4:8). So completely has He taken us out of the power of Satan that He can make us the vessels of His service. He has taken us out of the world and then sent us into it, and if we thus stand associated with Christ (which is the privilege of every Christian, though all do not realize it), we must expect all the conflict associated with the place into which we are brought. In proportion as we realize that we are the vessels of heavenly service, we get this special character of conflict.
A man may know the truth of the incarnation and may speak more beautifully of the person of the Lord than even Christians but all the time be ignorant of redemption. I have the witness of Christ in me; I know Christ. They may try to persuade me that Christ is such and such, but I know Him; I have got Him; He is dwelling in my heart, so that I am not to be turned by such follies as ritualism and the like. The Lord keep us in a constant sense of dependence, in a sense of what He is, dependent on Him every moment that we may never get out of the presence of God, for when we are out of His presence there is danger.