Ephesians 6:11
Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
Our last entry in Ephesians was about being strong in the Lord. Today’s passage is an elaboration on how to do that, by putting on the armor of God for the purpose of standing firm. We’ll get into the armor later. I want to focus on standing firm. It’s not advancing and taking prisoners. There is a place for that, but a different topic. We are to stand strong in the faith.
There is much shaming and cancelling in our world. Some have a public platform and they do battle on social media. That’s not my world. Mine is my home, the workplace and coworkers, friends, and students as well as my neighborhood and those I intersect with as I go throughout my day.
The first place we are to stand firm is in our minds, thoughts, and feelings. 2 Corinthians 10:5 says, “We tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God; and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” This is our first battlefield. Obedience starts in the mind. We must agree and submit to His will there.
Jesus introduced the concept of the importance of obedience in the heart. It says in I John 3:15, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that eternal life does not reside in a murderer.” The intent is almost equal to the action. So, we are to forgive in our hearts and minds.
This is important also in the positive. To love is better than to “not hate”. We are to love others as ourselves. That begins in the heart. God works that in us. Naturally we will not be able to do it. We wouldn’t want to. It comes from Him. We run into plenty of situations in which we allow others to go ahead of us. We are putting our agenda on hold for a minute, to bless another. This is the beginning of a wonderful way.
We struggle with putting others first, because we fear we won’t have enough time for our agenda. This is where faith comes in. We must trust that He will help us get it done. He performs miracles. He wants our focus to be on blessing others at the sacrifice of our ideas.
Being willing to do this is an important achievement in winning the battle for the mind. If we are to stand firm in God, we must be committed to His will and His ways. Yes, God’s morality is a battle to be fought, but so is His will and His desire being implanted in us. Loving others is a huge part of His will. We are to be about our Father’s business (Luke 2:49).
Another area of standing firm is in His ways. God does have His morality that we are to abide by. Don’t lie, cheat, steal, keep sex in marriage and so on. If we aren’t committed to this, He will work that in us. Some come to Christ being unaware of His ways. He slowly overturns rocks and opens doors. We fall in line with Him. Then we stand firm in those ways. We don’t have to mandate that others obey Him. We are responsible for ourselves.