The Panoply of God 
 

by Alan Turner

The Bible says there is an ongoing battle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. The powers making war on us are spiritual entities, not flesh and blood (Eph. 6:10-18). From this it is clear that there are unseen spiritual hosts of wickedness at work behind the confrontations we experience here on this physical plane. If we do not guard our hearts, Satan has the ability to fill them with evil thoughts (Acts 5:3). If we do not gird up the loins of our minds so as to out-think, out-live, and out-die the unredeemed around about us, Satan can blind our minds and lead us astray (2 Cor. 4:4; 11:3). If we are not careful, Satan, through some “snare,” will take us captive to do “his will” (2 Tim. 2:26). And what snare is this? The allurement of evil, of course. This does not mean Satan can force us to do his bidding against our wills, but that he can fool us or snare us through the “deceitfulness of sin” and “deceivableness of unrighteousness” (Heb. 3:13; 2 Thess. 2:10). Finally, the Bible tells us that Christians, even in the 21st century, must not be ignorant of Satan’s “devices” (2 Cor. 2:11).

Of course, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about Satan’s overwhelming us with his power. On the contrary, it’s one of victory over Satan and his angels /through the blood of Jesus Christ/. As faithful soldiers of the cross, we follow Christ, our captain (Heb. 2:10), onward and upward toward the final glorious victory that is ours in connection with all He has done, is doing, and will continue to do. To bring about this victory, our Captain has furnished us with a panoply of spiritual weapons that are “mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-5). This means that as the Christian soldier moves forward to final victory in Christ, he need never lose the smaller battles along the way. For if we put on the whole armor of God, we can stand against (“resist”) every assault of Satan and his cohorts so effectively that they will turn tail and run (Jas. 4:7).

 

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