It is of great importance to remember, that that of which the apostle here speaks has nothing to do with the ground of our acceptance with God, but is connected with that prayer of Jesus for His disciples, “I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me,” and so forth. We are still “in the world,” the flesh is unaltered, and the devil, though triumphed over by Jesus, not removed, but going about as a “roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour; “nay, what is worse, as the wily and seducing serpent. We, exposed to his devices and his wiles, have no strength in ourselves to stand against them. Jesus has prayed, “Keep them from the evil;” and the word to us is, “Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might; take unto you THE WHOLE Armor OF GOD.”
Satan aims his temptations at different parts in different saints. While the natural constitution of a person is of little matter as far as the Spirit of God is concerned, it is of. much as to Satan. The Spirit of God strengthens that which is weak, and brings down that which is high in a man; but Satan suits his temptations to the natural character, so far as close observation and the subtlety of the creature (for after all he is but a creature) can enable him to. It needs the “WHOLE Armor” to meet him, and that is ever ours.
“Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” “The fiery darts of the wicked one” are suggestions of unbelief whispered by Satan, and can alone be met and quenched by faith in the Son of God. (Gal. 2:2020I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20))
It is necessary for us to learn the good-for-nothingness of the flesh; but when, through our folly, we do so in failure, in the presence of Satan, he immediately says to us, “This is not walking in the Spirit;” “You are not a spiritual person, not a saint at all”; “You have sinned beyond remedy,” and the like. He would seek by every artifice (through our sins or otherwise) to persuade that God is not for us. If he succeed, our confidence is gone; in conflict we have no longer any energy, and as regards service, our hands hang down, and our knees become feeble. See the case of Jeremiah. He said, “O Lord, thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed .... I will not make mention of the Lord, nor speak any more in His name. For I heard the defaming of many, fear on every side. Report, say they, and we will report it.” The spring of service was gone. Not so afterward, then could he go on amidst all opposition, because consciously “strong in the Lord.” “The Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail; they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper!” and so forth.
It may be through our own folly (as we have just seen) that Satan is permitted to assail us, but again we are sometimes brought into trial for the sake of others. (2 Cor. 1:3-113Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; 4Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. 5For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. 6And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. 7And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation. 8For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: 9But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: 10Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us; 11Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf. (2 Corinthians 1:3‑11)) Paul speaks of having been “pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that he despaired even of life.” He might have reasoned, “God cannot be for me;” but was it so? No; he took the “SHIELD OF FAITH,” and said, “Suppose that Satan were even to kill, it would not prove that God was against me; for He can raise me from the dead. God had an object in it all.” “We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raised the dead,” and he was enabled to comfort others with the comfort wherewith he himself had been comforted of God. Paul was delivered from so great a death. God was for His dear Son, yet He suffered Him to be taken with wicked hands “to be crucified and slain.
Again, Satan was permitted to buffet Paul in a peculiar manner, through “the thorn in the flesh.” Whatever that “thorn” might be, it was evidently something, the effect of which was to make him despised of man; for in writing to the Galatians, he says, “My temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God.” Such a “temptation” was most disheartening to one sent of Christ “to minister, and bear His name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.” But then what was God’s object in it? That their “faith might not stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.” And what the effect of it on his own soul? He thereby learned that his Lord’s grace was sufficient for him; that his strength must be in God. “When I am weak, then am I strong.”
Thus, we see that the “SHIELD OF FAITH” turns all Satan’s weapons for instead of against us.
This “taking THE SHIELD OF FAITH” denotes constant affiance of heart to God, and is a fruit of the Spirit. An unconverted person cannot take the “SHIELD OF FAITH” against Satan; the shield which he uses is that of unbelief against the darts of God. Satan put it into the heart of Cain to limit the pardoning mercy of God, saying, “My sin is greater than it can be forgiven!” So, he himself goes out from the presence of God, the place of peace, and plunges as a hopeless, desperate one, into the vortex of the world. If we have not up our “SHIELD OF FAITH,” the smallest sin is able to cast us down as to our portion. But the Lord, we know, will not let the faith of any of His children fail utterly; this we learn in the case of Peter. Jesus had prayed for him that his faith might not fail. How has he prayed for us? (John 17)
Whatever abomination a saint may through unwatchfulness be suffered to fall into, let us beware of adding to it the wickedness of saying they have sinned “beyond remedy.” This would be asserting that the blood of Jesus Christ does not cleanse from all sin. There is no sin, however great, which is not met by that word all, that is not by that precious blood put entirely away from before God’s eyes. The way Satan tempted man at first was by occasioning distrust of the goodness of God respecting the forbidden fruit, and thus he still seeks to “devour” those that have believed, darting into our hearts the thought that God’s mercy was never for such a wretch as I, that God is not still for me. The word is, “Whom resist steadfast in the faith.” If Satan know so much of my evil, and I know myself to be “the chief of sinners,” what must God’s knowledge and thoughts about my wickedness be! Why so bad that nothing short of the cursed and ignominious death on the tree of His own blessed Son could adequately express or measure the sense of it. And yet knowing it all, He has not spared His Son, but given Him up for me, “the just for the unjust.”
The case of fallen man was truly a desperate one. The law, in itself “holy, just, and good,” only served to bring out more clearly his ruin. The question was, Could God deal with it, and how? “What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” Here then is the conclusion in which faith can peaceably rest forever-that God has condemned sin in the flesh in the cross of Christ. Jesus has had laid on Him our iniquities. Is that the truth! Nay, not that only, far more than that! My very nature has been judged, condemned, and executed by God in the person of Jesus, my representative on the cross, and I am now a “new creature!” “born of God!” brought into a new kingdom, the kingdom of God’s dear Son, where sin can never find a place! where the cursed can never come! “God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace are ye saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
There are two ways in which Satan works: the one, by seeking to make us have some fancied sense of uprightness in ourselves; the other, by leading us away from the path of uprightness, and, through that, terrifying us and disturbing our peace. What we need in each case is simple trust and confidence in Christ—the “SHIELD OF FAITH.” In the presence of God all thoughts of any righteousness of our own are laid low, and we feel that God is entirely, infinitely for us in all His love and righteousness. The “fiery darts “of Satan will then be spent, as it were, on God; will fall harmless and be “quenched.” When we know that the “Lord is our righteousness,” what do we want with any other?
But there may be many an idol in the heart of the saint which prevents, his thus practically gaining the victory over Satan. Where is his strength but in God? Still he knows, that were God to come in He would detect his double-mindedness, would show out the hidden chambers of imagery that are in his heart, and this he dreads. Thus Satan gains advantages. “If our eye be single, our whole body will be full of light.” All the fullness of unhindered blessing is in God, and He is for us. “Let us then hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of hope firm unto the end.” Let us take “the SHIELD OF FAITH, whereby we shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.”
“And take the HELMET OF SALVATION.” We get a similar exhortation to this in 1 Thessalonians 5:8: “Let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on ... for an helmet, the hope of salvation.” The two take in the whole standing and expectation of the believer; “the hope” denoting confidence of the glory in which the fullness of salvation will be exhibited, that spoken of here, the settled knowledge and intelligence of the character of God in Christ as “our Savior GOD.”
The apostle speaks to those who are saved, and know it; who have this “HELMET “and can put it on, to shelter and shield them from the strokes of Satan, who would ever lead us to be occupied with what we are, to be looking into our own hearts, and thus to become bowed down with despair.
The thought of the unconverted man is this: he looks at himself as responsible to God, and then tries to meet that responsibility in himself. It is quite true that we are responsible to God, that God shall judge the secrets of men’s hearts, and so forth; but our knowledge of God does not stop here, otherwise it would bring in utter ruin. God is revealed to us in the gospel as a “Savior GOD.” This title supposes us to need salvation, and salvation to be of God. “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,” and so forth. As looked at on the ground of responsibility, we are lost; but God has met responsibility by His grace. (Titus 2:11-1411For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, 12Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; 13Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; 14Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. (Titus 2:11‑14))
Looking at God as a JUDGE, we know that “the righteous Lord loveth righteousness; His countenance Both behold the upright.” The only way in which the unbeliever looks at God is as a JUDGE; and looking at Him thus, he must ever be afraid of Him. The natural conscience tells the man all is not right; but so far from this “bringing salvation,” it is just the proof of his being a sinner; for he got into this conscience of evil by disobedience in the garden. Adam, when he had eaten of the fruit, and had the “knowledge of good and evil,” went and hid himself away from God amidst the trees of the garden; and this is what the natural man would always seek to do—hide himself from God because conscious that all is not right.
Here was just where Job’s friends were: they saw that God loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and that Job was in affliction. What was the conclusion they drew from the whole matter?—that if Job had been a righteous person, God would have accepted him—they were altogether on the wrong ground. It is quite true, blessedly true, that God loves righteousness, and so forth, but then the fallacy is in the notion that a man can righteous with God. The effect of such a thought must ever produce either self-righteousness or despair and misery.
Where there is alarm of conscience after a person has been quickened, the distress and anxiety of soul may be very deep, but there will be a clinging and flying to God after all.
God does not deal with us, as regards the acceptance of our persons, in the character of a JUDGE at all. He may do so, looking at us as children, already accepted ones, as it is said, “If we call on the Father, who, without respect of person, judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear,” but not as to acceptance. So long as we have the thought of God as a JUDGE before us, our souls can never have rest; we shall be always feeling our unanswered responsibility. The very way that God deals with us is, as knowing and estimating fully our responsibility to Him, judging us as lost, and then assuming altogether a new character towards us—“the Savior of those who are lost!”
We have God especially thus brought before us as “our Savior GOD,” in the epistles to Timothy and Titus. In 2 Timothy 1:9,9Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, (2 Timothy 1:9) we read, “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,” and so forth. And Titus 3:4-5: “After that the kindness and love of GOD OUR Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which ere have done, but according to His mercy He saved us,” and so forth. There is no mingling up here of the question of responsibility, and then seeking to meet that responsibility by what is in us. “Salvation, is of the Lord”—all of grace.
Suppose I present to God the fruits which even His Spirit has wrought in me as the ground of acceptance; this would be coming to Him as a JUDGE, and not as a “SAVIOR.” Of course, one man judges of another by the fruits of the Spirit which he sees manifest in him, but the craft of Satan is shown by his taking the thing which is true in itself, and putting it in. the wrong place. The Spirit is, in truth, the witness to us of Christ. He glorifies Christ, not Himself, giving strength to our hearts by showing us Jesus “in the presence of God for us.” We are taken off the ground of standing in our own righteousness, and made to rest simply on that which Christ has. done, for acceptance with God, “accepted in the beloved.” Satan would lead the soul to look at the fruit of the Spirit in itself for the assurance of acceptance, instead of the offering of Christ. (Heb. 10:1414For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. (Hebrews 10:14)) It is the work of the Spirit of God to make us see the evil of our hearts, to detect our inconsistencies. Whenever He reveals to us the holiness of God, He thereby reveals to us our want of holiness, and consequently makes us know our shortcomings.
Where there is real conviction of sin, we can never have assurance from thus looking into ourselves; we shall be saying, “Oh, I do not see the fruit I ought to see I have not that joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,” and so forth, which are spoken of in God’s Word. If I could see more fruit in myself, then I might have this assurance! “All this is not looking at God as a “Savior,” but as a JUDGE. The feeling, that if we had more of that which could meet His judgment we should get peace, shows that we do not know God as a “SAVIOR GOD,” and that we have not peace because the practical work which God sees needful is not carried far enough in us. Much of the flesh has perhaps been undetected, which Satan might use to hinder the depth of our communion with God. We may frequently see a humble, distressed believer, who, the more he loves holiness, the more he feels his own want of holiness, and is thus kept in bondage: he has not as yet seen the fullness of Christ’s work; he knows not God as a “SAVIOR GOD.”
The soul is often ready to say, “I have turned away from God; I have done so and so; these are not the works of the Spirit” (nor are they). But there is not here the simple recognition of God as a “Savior.” The evil of the flesh has not been thoroughly searched out; and it may be through great trial, perhaps, that this comes to be done. If the “works of the flesh” have been produced in the least conceivable degree, and God is looked at as a JUDGE, conscience will accuse the person of having apostatized from God, though the very anxiety of his mind is a proof that he has not done so. He owns God to be righteous, and justifies Him in all His dealing’s; that which he needs is to apprehend Him as a “Savior.”
The flesh never looks at God as a “Savior.” The only way in which the natural man thinks that he can meet God is by making out a sufficient righteousness in which to stand before Him as a JUDGE; and if God is not satisfied with that, he will not bow to God.
Salvation is suited to us in our weakness. Suppose a person were to say, “I see the Christian’s high calling, but I cannot walk according to it; I am ungodly, and I have no strength to get out of my present state.” You can answer, “This was just the way God commended His love toward us; when we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly.” The more we feel that in ourselves we have no strength, in ourselves we are ungodly, the more shall we look in simplicity to God as a “Savior.”
If we were not sinners, or if God could allow of sin, we should have no need of a Savior; but as God could not allow of sin, and yet loved us as sinners, He must needs assume towards us the character of a Savior, “a just God and a Savior.”
Thus, in conflict with Satan we are called upon to “take for an HELMET THE HOPE OF SALVATION.” We are led on by the energy of God’s Spirit in confident hope—hope of entering into rest. Our “hearts are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know them?” We are not capable of reaching the bottom of our hearts; and Satan is so subtle that he will often suggest a thought of sin, and then put us under the guilt of it, even because we hated it; or again, with Job we may have complacency in our very guilelessness. When we look at God as a JUDGE, we cannot tell whether we have peace or not; but the moment we look at Him as a “Savior,” we can say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Our sins are the very things we need God for. Oh, wondrous grace! Instead of entering into judgment with us as sinners, He says, “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgression for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins!” He could not bear to have the sins of His people in His sight, and therefore what has He done? “Put them all away,” “cast them behind His back,” “drowned them in the depth of the sea.” A man can never hate sin till he is cleansed from it. The believer hates sin because God hates it, not because he has been ruined by it; it is hateful to God, and therefore to him. All this springs from one simple, blessed truth—our God is a “SAVIOR GOD.”
The soul can say, “If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things’? I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, and so forth, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!” The knowledge of this love is our “HELMET” in the day of battle. We are now in trouble and conflict. True, but “if we are reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” We know that though “we which are in this body do groan, being burdened,” the price of its redemption has been paid; Christ has power over the body as well as over the soul, and because Christ lives we shall live also. In this is the hope of the church. In John 3 we read, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The Son of Man was “lifted up” to meet the judgment of God. Again, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Here it is the love of God in the gift of His Son. In both cases does the Holy Spirit repeat the words “should not perish.”
Nay, more; when the Lord Jesus Christ comes again in glory, it will be for salvation to us, though for judgment to the world. (Heb. 9:27-2827And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: 28So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 9:27‑28)) God never varies the thing, the church is dealt with in this present life, and then, on this one and the same ground of salvation, “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” All believers have received the salvation of their souls, and are waiting for the salvation (or redemption) of their bodies. (1 Peter 1:99Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:9); Rom. 8:2323And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8:23))
“Take for an HELMET the HOPE OF SALVATION.” The Lord charges and presses on us the assurance that we are saved; simple faith cannot but believe it. The Holy Spirit reveals to us the holiness of God, and that in ourselves we are lost, and then He testifies of Christ as God’s salvation, and the moment we believe on Him we are saved. The two great points for us to see are, that Christ has finished the work for us, and that the church has this “hope” set before her, that “when He shall appear, we shall be like Him.” What a spring, dear friends, should this blessed “hope” be to us; we have nothing short of the glory of Jesus to look forward to, no hesitation in assuming it as ours.
Have you this confidence in God as a “Savior GOD” Has He not given, beloved, a sure ground whereon to rest Do you live in the power of it? It should not be, “I trust I will be saved by and by,” but living with God now, sitting now in heavenly places. “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world.” “He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself so to walk, even as He walked.” If I can claim this blessed privilege, if I have this righteousness which can sit on the throne, because one with Jesus, then I ought “to walk even as He walked.” Nothing can meet the subtlety of Satan, but the revelation of the glory of Jesus as ours. The saint knows that his inheritance is not here, but that God is his portion, and therefore he is dead to this world. Were any to present to us as the object of our “hope” that which is short of being in the glory with Christ, it would be too low a hope.
This “HELMET” empowers me to lift up my head confident in the grace wherein I stand, and rejoicing in hope of His return, who shall, at His coming, change our vile bodies into the likeness of His own glorious body! Thus, the spirit of fear and doubt is cast out, and we have the spirit of a sound mind to withstand the “wiles of the devil.” Our God is a “SAVIOR GOD.”
“And the SWORD OF THE SPIRIT, which is the WORD OF GOD.” The Lord uses this Word, which “is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.” in searching our hearts, discerning their thoughts and intents, convincing us of sin, and laying low our pride; but here we find he says to the saint, “Do you take this SWORD as part of the ‘Armor’ to be used by you in conflict with Satan.” This can only be done efficiently in the Spirit; if the flesh uses it, there may be rebuke taken where there ought to be comfort, or encouragement where reproof is needed. This “weapon of our warfare” is “mighty,” not through man’s intellectual use of it, but through an honest, humble dependence on God the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that abideth in us, who is “greater than he that is in the world” (Satan). But it is only as being on the opposite side to Satan that we can use it aright. It is not with, “Such a thing is expedient,” and so forth, that we have to meet Satan, but with, “God says so; “It is written.”
Would Satan present us something better than that which God has given (the way in which he tempted Adam), we are “sanctified unto obedience,” and have this assurance, “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Our Lord might have prayed the Father, and He would have given Him twelve legions of angels. He need not have suffered; but He came “to do the will of Him that sent Him.” By doing that will He has saved us. What is the place wherein we are set? That of Christ when in the world-obedience. The great thing to be sought after is practical conformity unto Christ. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
The place of sanctification is ours, and that “unto obedience.” It is in this way that the “Word of God” has its power over us.
If we are not walking in the Spirit, we shall not have the fitting scripture to meet any difficulty in which we may be placed, or those who may oppose themselves. Hence the value of diligence in communion. Whilst it is true that at any time (as far as concerns God’s ear being open to us) we may lift up our hearts, it is also true that if not spiritually-minded we shall not be inclined to do so in the time of need. There must be practical diligence in seeking God’s face in order to meet Satan in recollectedness of Spirit. “The diligent soul shall be made fat.”
If we would baffle the craft of Satan, the WORD must be taken as God uses it, and this we can only do by the Holy Spirit. Suppose I know many things of God, true to faith, I may apply a quantity of Scripture to that to which it does not at all refer, and when placed in the circumstances in which it does apply, in which God would profit me by it, I have it not. Thus we often see people meager and contracted in their views, because shut up in one truth.
If you are unable to see the meaning of a text, wait: do not be giving your sense to Scripture, but get God’s sense of it. God has a sense in every Scripture. The Word is the only weapon that we have to use offensively against Satan. Take it as GOD’S WORD, in holy acknowledgment of God as its author. We are told to “receive with meekness the engrafted WORD.” I would earnestly press on you thorough: dependence on the “WORD,” and, at the same time, that it cannot be used efficiently except as by the Spirit. It was by this that the Lord baffled all the subtleties of Satan, meeting him at every turn with “It is written.” When speaking, He ever showed the consequence He would have attached to the written word. “If ye believe not Moses’ writings, neither will ye believe My words.” We are told to “have these things always in remembrance,” that “they are written for our instruction.” If we know anything of the state of the church, we know what great power Satan has had in scattering and worrying the sheep of Christ, by drawing them away from the “WORD OF GOD,” and turning them, instead thereof, unto the “traditions of men.”
With the “SWORD OF THE SPIRIT,” then, may we cut through every specious entanglement whereby Satan would still detain our feet in “this present evil world”—his own kingdom. Pull down the strongholds of lust and self-will, “cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”