Written by S.M. Baugh |
Sunday, October 24, 2021
Putting on the armor of God that Christ Himself bore is tantamount to putting “on Christ,” which we have already done when we were baptized “into Him” (Rom. 6:3 ; Gal. 3:27). This is tantamount to telling us to look to Christ in faith for all things. Our faith in Christ informs everything about our daily lives so that we can stand firm in steadily sanctified holy array.

Paul’s exhortation to take up the armor of God in Ephesians 6:10–18 is a favorite passage for many Christians. It is stirring and vivid. It reads like an inspiring call to battle. It inflames the Christian’s heart with language that radiates strength and courage for the warfare we face “in the evil day” (v. 13). Its position at the end of Ephesians makes this passage a reprise of Paul’s earlier teachings in the epistle and a final exhortation before he passes on to a very brief ending to the letter. The exhortation is quite simple: “Stand firm” and “pray.” But this beloved passage has a few striking features that come out with a closer reading, which we will briefly survey here.
The first striking feature of Ephesians 6:10–18 is an unusual term Paul uses for armed warfare. In verse 12, Paul refers to this warfare as “our struggle” (NASB, NIV), rendered as “we wrestle not” or “we do not wrestle” in the KJV and ESV, respectively. In Greek, the word is a noun that refers to a wrestling match. Such matches were commonly conducted in ancient Ephesus and elsewhere as well as in local, regional, and international games such as the Olympics. As is the case today, wrestling matches in the ancient world were not carried out in full military armor or with “flaming darts” (v. 16) and swords (v. 17).
The intriguing question is why Paul refers to our “struggle” as a wrestling match rather than as “warfare” or “combat,” or as a “battle” or “fight,” which are more fitting for a contest in armor. There are several reasons for this.
These attacks take place particularly through malignant teachings to throw Christ’s people off their feet and to take them captive as slaves.
The most important reason Paul says we are in a wrestling match is his repeated exhortation to “stand” or to “stand firm” (vv. 11, 13–14) and to “hold your ground” (v. 13; ESV “withstand”). This is not exactly a complete set of orders for a soldier in battle ranks, who would be expected to advance against an enemy rather than passively waiting to be surrounded, attacked from all sides, and routed. “Prepare buckler and shield, and advance for battle!” (Jer. 46:3, emphasis added). But the Christian’s warfare is more like a wrestling match even if we are clothed with the “armor of God” (Eph. 6:11).
It is true that in the ancient world, battles between heavily armed and armored soldiers often devolved into intense hand-to-hand combat, and the soldier who lost his feet would inevitably perish. He had to “stand fast” and “hold his ground.” Perhaps this explains Paul’s emphasis on our standing, which he accents through repetition in verses 13 and 14: “. . . to stand firm. Stand therefore.” As a result, it shows that Paul is not giving us a calm bit of advice during a pleasant retreat. No, the Apostle is urgently warning and exhorting us on the battlefield in the face of a grim onslaught “in the evil day” (v. 13). Steady . . . steady . . . Stand fast! Hold your ground! Stand! “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand” (v. 11); “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor. 16:13–14).
Paul does not give a complete listing of contemporary combat gear. The main elements of armor in the passage are defensive: breastplate, shield, and helmet (with the exception being the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”). Perhaps this fits more appropriately with Paul’s point about the church’s standing firm like armored wrestlers.
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The pain of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, people whom Jesus dearly loved, was real and intense. They had to wait in the dark, wondering why Jesus hadn’t shown up. He cared about their pain, weeping with them as he saw their grief, all the while certain that their grief would turn to joy. Our grief will also turn to joy — on earth, as we see and are satisfied in God, and ultimately in heaven, when we see him face to face. The most loving thing that God can do is to increase our faith in him, to show us his glory, to help us find our satisfaction in him.

Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (John 11:21, 32)
To me, this passage from John 11 is one of the most poignant in all the Gospels. It reflects the heartbreak of sisters who had been sure Jesus would save their brother — women who loved Jesus and sacrificed for him, a family that needed his help and called to him in their distress. Yet Jesus did not respond to his friends’ urgent request. He sent no answer, but simply showed up after their brother was dead.
On the surface, this story is shocking. It doesn’t fit with our definition of love. To us, love rescues and runs. Love doesn’t wait. Love does everything possible to keep the beloved from pain. Yet in understanding how Jesus loved this family, I have seen the depth of his love for me in my own suffering.
Lazarus’s Last Breath
Days before the words above were spoken, Mary and Martha had sent a message to Jesus that their brother, Lazarus, was ill (John 11:3). They likely expected that Jesus would leave immediately to see his dear friend, or perhaps even heal him right there with a word. They knew he was the coming Christ, the Son of God, and that God would give him whatever he asked (John 11:22, 27). They had witnessed Jesus heal countless strangers, responding without delay to their requests for help. Surely he would show up for his friends.
Yet Jesus didn’t respond to their urgent need, choosing to stay where he was for two whole days (John 11:6). He told the disciples that Lazarus’s illness was for the glory of God, that he himself would be glorified through it, and that others would believe because of it (John 11:4, 14–15). At the same time, Jesus knew his intentional delay would bewilder his friends.
I imagine the sisters waiting by the window where Lazarus lay dying, straining to see if Jesus was coming. I picture them reassuring each other that Jesus would surely arrive in time to heal Lazarus. I wonder what each was thinking as Lazarus took his last breath. Were they disappointed and disillusioned with Jesus, even questioning their relationship with him? Did they wonder if Jesus even cared? Did they doubt whether Jesus was the Savior they hoped him to be?
Whatever inner turmoil they were feeling, the sisters had to go on. They needed to bury Lazarus and prepare their home, which would be flooded with people who would come to console them. Some may have asked why Jesus didn’t save Lazarus, perhaps mirroring the question asked later by bystanders: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” (John 11:37).
Jesus with the Sisters
In the middle of their grieving, Jesus arrived. The sisters independently met him and uttered the same plaintive words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21, 32). Though they had lost hope of ever seeing their brother again, neither ran from Jesus in their despair, or stayed aloof to protect themselves, or pretended his inaction hadn’t hurt them. Instead, they went to Jesus, directly telling him how they felt.
Jesus responded differently to each sister, knowing what each needed. Martha needed truth; she needed to understand and reaffirm her belief in Jesus as God’s Son. Jesus told her that he was the resurrection and the life, and that whoever believed in him would never die (John 11:25–26).
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Written by D. Blair Smith |
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Solus Christus was needed in the sixteenth century and is needed in the twenty-first century in order to press upon us the fact that our relationship with God can be mediated by none other than Christ alone.

Whatever age we live in, whether the age of the Reformers or the present age, we are tempted to pollute the beauty of Christ through our idols. John Calvin said it’s in our very nature: “Man’s nature…is a perpetual factory of idols…Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity.”
The doctrine of solus Christus was highlighted during the Reformation as the Reformers identified the problem of a church that was casting shade on Christ; of a church that was arrogating to itself prerogatives that belong to Christ alone. This problem impressed upon the Reformers the need to purge anything that would throw shade upon the absolute brilliance of Christ’s supremacy in our salvation. The Reformers clearly identified this problem and brought a biblical and theological solution that provides application for our own day.
The Problem of a Strong Church
In the early sixteenth century, the church was at the center of people’s lives in Western Europe. Over the previous centuries, the Roman Catholic Church had devolved from the “Company of the Saved” to the “Salvation Company.”
What is meant by “Salvation Company”? Luther recognized that in his day people had become enslaved to the sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church, and instead of looking to Christ for their standing before God they looked to the Church. It was thought that because of Christ, Mary, and the saints there was a storehouse of grace in the Catholic Church. Priests were its sole dispensers and the faithful had to come to them.
In 1520, Luther wrote The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, where he attacked the sacramental system of the church. That system, Luther said, represented a captivity that had become its own Babylon, holding captive the people of God from cradle to grave: In the church one was baptized as an infant, confirmed as a youth, married as a mature person, and received extreme unction on one’s deathbed. Each of these sacraments, along with ordination, were seen as conveying grace when administered by a priest. The grace conferred was supplemented throughout one’s life by two further sacraments: regular confession of sin to a priest and the reception of the Eucharist through a priestly Mass.
From cradle to the grave, the Christian was dependent upon the Catholic Church, tethered to the sacraments in order to receive the grace by which one can be saved.
Luther looked to Scripture and saw only two sacraments. The effect of his teaching was to shift focus from the Catholic Church and its clergy to Christ alone—salvation not from a company with priests turning on the taps of grace, as it were, but salvation in a singular person: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Stripped of this ornate sacramentology, one might ask where one went for grace? If the Catholic Church had it very wrong, what were believers to do? Where would Reformers such as Luther point them?
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