Originally Posted by hisalone
I have been thinking on the armour of God Eph. 6:14-17, and in preparing a lesson plan, I have come to the conclusion that the armor is speaking of our putting on Christ.
1. On what biblical warrant can you point to that justifies your conclusion?

2. There is only one passage in all of Scripture which even mentions "put on Christ"; Gal 3:27. And this text is referring to one's identification with Christ via baptism.

Originally Posted by hisalone
I looked at various commentaries, but none approach it from this angle. It just seems that logically this is what it is speaking of since prior to this in Eph. 6:10 it speaks of standing strong in the Lord. Working through the armor with this idea makes much more sense than the various commentaries I looked at. The Hendrickson commentary even made it into soemthing we do, being truthful etc, which to me is the same as making our own armor. Does anyone have any additional thoughts on this?
1. The fact that no other commentator, especially Hendriksen, has considered your conclusion should cause you to reconsider, don't you think? scratchchin

2. As is typical of the Pauline Epistles, the first section is generally doctrinal, i.e., establishing the propositional truth of God. The latter section generally deals with the application of those doctrinal truths. Thus in Ephesians, the great truth of God's sovereignty in salvation and man's necessity of it is estabished first. Then in the latter part of the epistle, the application, i.e., sanctification of the believer is the focus, aka: synergistic growing in the grace received.

3. Sanctification, being synergistic requires believers to strive after holiness through various means. In this particular passage those means are defensive in nature due to a spiritual war being waged against them and are enumerated as the "Armor of God". In short, the believer is to exercise those means; the holding fast of the truth received, using it as a sword, relying on God for the strength to fight the battle through constant prayer, etc. These are things which the believer must DO to be able to fight the ferocious battle that is being waged against him by the world, the flesh and the Devil (v. 12).

William Gurnall's [i]The Christian in Complete Armor[/i] is most instructive. grin

In His grace,

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simul iustus et peccator

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