Put On

“Put on—” Without any hesitation at all, most of us could finish this sentence with, “The whole armor of God,” and most of us could name all parts of the armor.  But we don’t hear as much about the other verses of Scripture that command us to “put on,” and studying these puts the Christian’s armor in a very intriguing context.  

Predating the Apostle Paul’s electrifying charge to the Ephesian Christians to put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18), Romans 13 commands orderly citizens of earth to put on the “armor of light,” that they might walk honestly amid all God-ordained governments on earth (Romans 13:12).  Paul makes clear in this passage that the Christian’s battle is not against his government but against his own temptations to engage in the cultural sins around him—sins common to Roman festivities, such as rioting, drunkenness, and sexual immorality.  He follows this list of sins (Romans 13:13) with the command to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

This is indeed the central command of the Christian faith.  By linking his command to “put on the armor of light” with his command to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:12,14), Paul alludes to the first clothing humanity ever wore:  the glory of God.  This wasn’t something Adam and Eve “put on” but was the Presence of God in which they lived and moved and had their being (Acts 17:28) as God’s crowning creation, which David shows in Psalm 8.  How tragically they lost this glory by partaking of the forbidden fruit, an act with immediate consequence of realizing that they were naked.  God Himself clothed Adam and Eve’s loss of glory with the animal skins of redemption through the blood of Christ.  Thus, did our very first ancestors indeed “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

As the only creation of God who wears clothing, fallen humanity down through the ages has turned this most fundamental need—originating in a covering for shame—into a parade of fashion and pride. Well does Peter remind women that their true beauty derives not from an obsession with their outer appearance but from the submission of a meek and quiet spirit (I Peter 3:4).  With good reason, we might indeed question whether we are dressed right at all without this spirit of humility that adorned our Lord Jesus Christ.   

But truly, the Bride of Christ is not without her beauty—a beauty inherent in her strength of character.  To “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” is to “put on mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, forbearance, forgiveness, and, above all, love, which is the bond of perfectness” (Colossians 3:12-14).  Not only do these godly adornments never go out of style, each must be a staple in the Christian’s wardrobe—and when we indeed “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” He gives us all of these adornments of character to create our only true beauty.

As surely as every Christian should bear fruit of the same nature as these godly adornments, so is this possible only as the believer abides in Christ.  Certainly, we could say that to “put on Christ” is to abide in Christ.  Although John 15 is the central New Testament passage to this effect, Psalm 91 converges the believer’s dwelling in the Secret Place of the Most-High with abiding under the Shadow of the Almighty.  This Shadow—the Shadow of the Cross—is the believer’s only protection from every foe without and within.  Not only is God’s truth our shield and buckler, His protection enables us to tread upon the lion, the adder, the young lion, and even the dragon (Psalm 91:4,13). 

Unless we abide in this Shadow of the Almighty as our permanent dwelling place (Psalm 90:1), we cannot “put on Christ.”  And it is this very obedience to put on Christ that both provokes and protects us from spiritual warfare.  As we “put on the new man in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24), we will engender the hostility of a depraved world.  But as this “new man” is “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:10), he will no longer fall to the wiles of the serpent who seduced Eve to taste of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Having done all to stand, he will stand.

It is in this context—the context of putting on Christ—that the Christian puts on the whole armor of God.  It is because of Christ that he is in this war in the first place, and it is only in Christ that he will win.  Well should we think of the godly soldier’s armor as a uniform from which he dare not deviate.  If only one piece of his armor is missing, he is vulnerable to the many faces of his foe.  The adder of Psalm 91:13 becomes the wiles he must stand against, and the lion and the dragon, the powers he wrestles against.  Whether by stealth or by storm, our foe would defeat us with weapons as insidious as they are malicious, and we must stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil to our dying day.

For far too long has the Christian world “put on” tolerance in the name of putting on the tender mercies of Colossians 3:12-14.  But this cloak of tolerance is not the garment of Christ’s Bride but the synthetic wool of wolves.  The true soldier in Christ’s army has no soft spot in his armor, no truce up his sleeve.  Beautiful within and strong without, the Christian soldier does not pick fights; he withstands them.  He stands against the wiles of the devil, he withstands in the evil day, and, “having done all to stand,” he stands “therefore” (Ephesians 11, 13,14).  The true Christian warrior also wrestles “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).  As David wrestling a lion or standing against Goliath, we do not wear the earthly armor of Saul, but we come against our foe in the Name of the Lord of Hosts (I Samuel 17:45) for “the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give [Goliath] into our hands” (I Samuel 17:47). 

  When we put on the whole armor of God, we put on Christ Himself, the Name of the Lord of Hosts, and in Him we stand against all possible odds.  But we will fall to the wiles of the devil if we fail to put on our first piece of armor, the belt of truth.  Christ is Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and His truth is our first line of defense against Satan’s wiles.  Truth must indeed hold all our armor together.  This truth does not merely mean that we ourselves speak the truth but that we know the Truth.  We see through the wiles of the devil, and we are not sucked into his abyss of deception, no matter how glitteringly attractive it may appear.  We protect our hearts with the breastplate of righteousness—and, here, the Progressive antinomian has no defense at all.  Rather than defend his Lord, he would defend his sin with a cavalier abandon known to the devil himself.

The shoes of peace— “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace”—what a contradiction this seems to warfare, but we must remember that it was Lucifer who invented war in heaven, and the Prince of Peace will defeat him with the good news of redemption.  Apollyon the Destroyer knows nothing of true peace, but the beautiful feet of the soldier of Christ bring His good news to the ends of the globe.  The preparation for this gospel is the truth itself amid the righteousness of the life that brings this good news.  Religious “fashion” trends notwithstanding, personal righteousness does indeed speed the feet of the gospel.  Personal holiness never goes out of style. 

Above all, taking the shield of faith—let us notice that this is not a weapon but a shield and our chief piece of armor.  The Word Faith Movement would use faith as a weapon, speaking into existence what it pleases, but that interpretation fails the true meaning of the text.  The Roman shield, called a scutum, covered the entire body.  The wiles of the devil become the fiery darts of the wicked, but the shield of faith is a match for them all.  We can never allow anything to get past this shield of faith, but how often do the flaming darts of the devil enter into our souls and fester for untold periods of time. 

And what about the helmet of salvation?  We must protect our minds with the salvation of the Lord, Whose Name will indeed be written on our foreheads in the Last Battle (Revelation 22:4).  What head injuries have we sustained simply because we do not understand the full salvation promised us in Christ?  We presume to be saved from hell but so seldom are truly saved from sin---which begins in the mind with the wiles of the devil.  But salvation reclaims the mind, and a truly saved soldier of Christ will wear his helmet of salvation at all times, that he may bring every thought into captivity to Christ.  Without our helmet of salvation, a head wound can be fatal and often is.  How tragically have we witnessed one-time professing Christians abandoning everything they believe to embrace atheism and secular humanism.

And the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God—this, our only weapon—must be wielded with skill as we rightly divide the Word of Truth.  This sword our Lord wielded to defeat Satan in the wilderness.  This is the stone in David’s sling, aimed to hit the enemy right between the eyes.  But, how can we use a weapon we do not have?  How tragic that so many people never crack their Bibles even at church where the Scriptures are often projected on the screen.  The covers of our Bibles should be falling off by now if we have served the Lord for any length of time.  We must let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly; we must hide His Word in our hearts, that we might not sin against Him (Colossians 3:16; Psalm 119:11).  We can pretend to fight all the battles we please, but if we do not win the battle against sin, we have lost the war. 

“Put on the whole armor of God”—sometimes we actually relish a good fight.  But this war is not physical or even merely spiritual.  It is supernatural, and we will not win unless we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, who told Moses at the Red Sea to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord” (Exodus 14:13).  And, “having done all, to stand.”  Stand, therefore!  When we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we carry our cross as the only armor for our back. We follow Him as His Truth is marching on without retreat!