This weeks readings are Ephesians 6.10–20 and John 6.56–69.  

I don’t know if you’ve seen the film 300? It's where my mind went when reading the Ephesians passage. 300 is a movie adaptation of a graphic novel depicting the Battle of Thermopylae, telling the story of the 300 warriors of Sparta, who marched alone to face the amassed and mighty hordes of the evil Persian Empire. If you have seen the film, you might be wondering how St Paul’s depiction of armour led me to a film about 300 men dressed in loincloths—but it wasn’t the dress code that got me there; it was the mission.

For St Paul, the armour described is secondary to the purpose for which it is prescribed. That purpose is to “stand firm—‘Put on the whole armour of God, so that you might be able to stand against the wiles of the devil; so that you might be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand, therefore’.” And there’s the link; differently apparelled as they were, the 300 men of Sparta were also on a mission to stand firm, to defend the pass into Greece against wave upon wave of attackers, and stop Xerxes’ invasion: to stand firm in the face of overwhelming adversity—or die trying (which is, in fact, what they did!).

And that was when I realised I had my illustration wrong; when I put armour and standing firm together, I ended up in “heroic last stand” territory, but that’s way off the mark—St Paul is not calling us to heroic standing, neither as a last-ditch chance for victory, nor martyrdom to the greater cause—because the stand to which he calls us has absolutely no bearing on the outcome of the struggle he describes.

The battle for which we are being armoured was won a long time ago. The heroic, sacrificial death which claimed victory (and there was such a death) happened 2,000 years ago, 2,000 miles away, on a hill called Calvary. Make no mistake, we are not the ones who won this thing.

So why put on armour? Why stand at all? Why enter this fight? In short, because we have no choice; we might not be the ones who won this fight, but we are the ones for whom it was fought. We are not the winners; we are the prize. You, me, everyone you’ve ever seen, known, or heard about are the reason for it all. God loves you; God loves you so much He died for you—had you or I been the only person in the world, the battle would still have been decided on Calvary. That’s why we are in this fight—whether we like it or not. God has won, and the devil, to use Paul’s language, may have lost, but he’s not looking to go down alone... and everyone is on his hit list—the more people he can deny the glory and joy of knowing God, the better!

So, St Paul says, stand firm—the devil’s coming at you; stand firm, not so you can win, but so you can enjoy the victory party! And here’s how you do it: put on the armour of God—which is another way of saying step up, and be like God. You see, Isaiah 59 tells us of God that “He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head”—recognise those words? “The armour of God” doesn’t just mean the armour provided by God—it means God’s own personal armour. He loves us enough to lend us His clothes so that we may walk around in them until they fit, until we have grown into the stature and likeness of Christ. It is, after all, His Spirit that gives us life and works that transformation in us.

Imagine an army of such people: people at every moment enthused by the Spirit, feasting on the presence of Jesus, and thus empowered to live and grow into the image and likeness of God! That army might find that standing firm comes a lot easier because I have a suspicion that the devil might, by that point, have started running scared. So, what’s it going to be? Standing in the armour of the King, or do you also wish to go away?