Put on the Armor, Part 2 (Eph 6:13–17) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

When I preached through Ephesians twenty-five years ago, I remember thinking that the passage on spiritual warfare served as a stark warning to Christians because of the way that we often mindlessly stumble through life. For that reason, I entitled one of the sermons “The Red Riding Hood Mentality.” I don’t think that mindset has changed. If anything, it may be even worse or perhaps I’m seeing it more clearly. What do I mean by a Red Riding Hood Mentality?

You know the story well. Little Red Riding Hood made her way to grandma’s house to take the poor, sick grandmother a basket of food. But the wolf learns of her aim and quickly dispatches grandma, while he dons her nightgown, sleeping cap, and crawls under the covers. Then Little Red goes through the mechanics of what lurked before her. ‘Grandma, what a deep voice you have.’ ‘Grandma, what big eyes you have.’ ‘Grandma, what big ears you have.’ By that point, even little kids listening to the story begin to wonder how sharp Little Red Riding Hood might be! Why, she sees a furry, long-nosed imitation of her grandma and has to go through a series of questions to come to the stark realization that the grandma in the bed was not grandma after all.

That’s “The Red Riding Hood Mentality.” It’s not until she discovers the business end of the wolf, its sharp teeth, that she screams and gets saved at the last moment by a hunter. Close call! As I was praying and meditating on this passage, the Lord reminded me of so many times that I had that same mentality and was near the point of being swallowed up by the adversary’s craftiness, but He who began a good work in me rescued me. Yet that didn’t excuse my neglect of spiritual vigilance.

Paul calls for us to lay aside the Red Riding Hood mentality. Instead, we’re to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.” So we’re to live in Christ and His strength. We’re to constantly look to Him. But we’re to take action: “Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” Without that armor, we won’t stand firm or resist in the evil day of the enemy’s assaults. We must learn to daily live in a warfare posture or else the enemy will subdue us. But what does that look like? Let’s think about the parts of the armor of God.

1. Why the Armor of God is the gospel

In the previous study, I made the point that the call to put on the armor of God is a call to regular discipline in our spiritual lives. It’s about the application of the gospel to the whole of life. As we’ll see, the armor that Paul describes details the provisions of Christ for the church. As with the believers identified in Revelation 12, like them, we overcome our adversary, “the accuser of the brethren,” “because of the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 12:10–11a). As I pointed out, “So in the armor of God, we’re learning to live in and apply the actions of Jesus on our behalf to deliver us from the kingdom of darkness” [see “Put on the Armor,” part 1]. It’s in the regular practice of living in Christ’s provisions that we resist the adversary’s assaults and stand firmly when under spiritual attack.

Think with me for a moment on how Paul’s argument has developed. For much of Ephesians, after laying a groundwork in the sovereign work of God in salvation through the gospel (chapters 1–3), the apostle has taught us how to maintain good relationships in the body of Christ that lead toward maturity and unity (4:1–16). He has shown us how to deal with particular sins, not intending to cover every possible sin, but to identify some most common to us and how we’re to face them as new people in Christ (4:25–5:13). The framework that he gives us is that we are to lay aside the old self with all its corruptions, and be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and “put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the [...]