The PPE of God

The scriptures referred to are Ephesians 6:10-20 and John 6:56-69.

I have had to wear the full complement of what we now call Personal Protective Equipment or PPE only a few times in my 40 years as a nurse. And it didn't look like the space suit they now use as PPE. We didn't have a hood and visor, just a cap and mask. The paper gown tied in back and we had nothing special on our legs, just disposable foot coverings. And this was mostly when we were in surgery or the delivery room. So the idea was to protect the patient. I did have a patient with TB and then the PPE was to protect me. And patient was in a negative pressure room, so that when we went through the door, no room air escaped. Either way, the idea is to protect people from germs, threats you can't see but which are very real and very dangerous.

Which brings us to our unusual passage from Ephesians. Now the Old Testament uses military imagery often. God is called the “Lord of hosts,” which the NET translates as “the Lord who commands armies.” But this is under the Old Covenant with the kingdom of Israel, a tiny country always situated between much larger empires. The kingdom of God which Jesus inaugurates with his New Covenant is not an earthly one with a border that needs an army. And Jesus told us to turn the other cheek and to love our enemies, so there is a lot less use of military metaphors in the New Testament.

It does occur a handful of times, though. Paul calls certain Christian coworkers “fellow soldiers” in Philippians 2:25 and in Philemon 1:2. In 2 Timothy 2:3-6, he uses 3 metaphors for Christians, a soldier, an athlete and a farmer, to emphasize dedication, discipline and hard work. In 1 Corinthians 9:7, he uses a soldier, a vinedresser and a shepherd as examples of people who get paid for their work. Only in our passage today, from Ephesians, does Paul draw an extended analogy between aspects of Christian life and the basic equipment of a soldier. But considering how often the imagery is used in hymns and on Sunday School posters and even on accessories Christians wear, you would think that the New Testament was filled with martial imagery. Not so.

Using the imagery of armor probably occurred to Paul because he was a prisoner at the time he wrote this letter (Ephesians 3:1; 4:1), most likely in Rome with imperial soldiers guarding him. Yet his picture of a soldier's gear is incomplete. He doesn't mention the lance or dagger every Roman soldier had, just the sword. In fact, with that one exception, he doesn't really look much at weaponry but concentrates on what a soldier wore to protect himself. Which is why, if Paul were around today, I wonder if he wouldn't be tempted to talk instead about the PPE of God.

And indeed his concern is not killing or taking new ground but holding one's ground and standing firm. If the enemy knocks you off your feet, and you are on your back or on your face, you are vulnerable. This is about still being on your feet when the attack is over. It's about protection, not aggression.

So Paul starts with the belt of truth. Now a belt's not a very exciting part of the armor, is it? But it holds everything else together. And that's why he uses it as a metaphor for the truth. Truth is essential to keeping everything else in place. When people, including some prominent Christians, get loose with the truth, they get caught with their pants down, metaphorically and sometimes literally. What truth are we talking about? The good news about God's love and grace in Jesus Christ. That's what holds everything together for us. We cannot defend it with lies. Christians are to be honest and committed to the truth.

Next Paul talks about the breastplate of righteousness. Let me say two things about this. First, the breastplate of a Roman soldier covered his entire upper torso including his back. So all of the vital organs in that area were protected, from frontal attacks as well as from backstabbing. 

Second, just like a soldier's equipment is not cobbled together by him but supplied to him, the righteousness Paul refers to here, like the righteousness he talks about at length in Romans, comes from God. None of us are righteous in ourselves. God justifies us when we trust him and so he puts us right with him. Being in the right relationship with him enables us, through his Spirit, to act in righteousness like God. But we must not mistake that for self-righteousness, nor, because it doesn't come from us, are we take it for an excuse not to behave morally. Like a soldier, your armor needs to become a part of you. So must God's righteousness. But ultimately what protects us is knowing that the right relationship we have with God comes from him.

Next Paul compares the soldier's footwear to a readiness to proclaim the gospel of peace. Good boots not only protect your feet from things dropped on them or thrown at them but they also give you a good grip on the terrain. Again if you are going to stand your ground, you need to have good traction. But why does Paul say we should be shod with a readiness to proclaim the gospel of peace? The gospel or good news is that in Jesus Christ we can have peace with God. (Romans 5:1) God is not our enemy. And if God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31) We don't have to worry about losing the support of God, nor do we fear friendly fire from him. The good news is that we are at peace with him.

And in Christ, God has broken down the wall of hostility between different peoples. (Ephesians 2:14) Everyone we encounter is either our sibling in Christ or a potential sibling in Christ. That why we are to love even our enemies. (Matthew 5:44) If you lose your head to hatred and rage, you will lose your footing and slip up. Because this isn't about fighting but peace.

Just why does Paul bring the word “peace” into a description of battle gear? Because despite the military imagery, this is not really about war. War is about forcing people to do the will of the aggressor. Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus is the king who brings about peace by shedding not the blood of his enemy but his own blood. Then he offers that peace to all. He doesn't force anyone into his kingdom. He wants to turn enemies into allies and friends. They are free to reject his offer and keep fighting with others and with themselves. If they wish, they can do that forever. Or they can accept the love and forgiveness of the Prince of Peace.

Remember: this is a spiritual battle. We are not talking sticks and stones breaking our bones but harmful words and thoughts and feelings that are seeking chinks in our armor, so as to mess with our minds and our spirits and get us to doubt God or his love for us or the grace he extends to us. Doubt breeds uncertainty, uncertainty breeds fear and fear causes soldiers to retreat. We can be certain of the truth of the gospel and of God's righteousness and of the peace he offers us. And like a battle cry, we should always be ready to proclaim the gospel of the peace we have with God in Christ.

Paul next says we must take the shield of faith. And faith always has an object; it is always faith in something or someone. Paul is talking about faith in God. We are not to trust in ourselves but in God and in his trustworthiness. The amount of trust in a relationship ultimately depends on our history with that person. And we need only remember what Jesus has done for us to know we can trust him. That trust will shield us from the fiery arrows of doubt and despair and adversity and affliction and temptations.

Nor need we do this alone. Romans soldiers had a smart tactic called the tortoise. When being fired upon by arrows, the men in the front line of a unit dropped to one knee, took their rectangular shields, more than 3 feet long and more than 2 feet wide, and put them in front of them, tight against one another, forming a wall. And the men in the lines behind them would hold their shields overhead, tight against one another, forming a roof. The arrows would bounce off. Thus working together, they protected one another. And using our mutual faith, we can shield each other when a concentrated spiritual assault threatens to pick us off.

Paul then says we must take the helmet of salvation. He probably got this from Isaiah 59:17, which may be the seed that this passage grew from. But what does it mean in this context? We need to have our head in the game to be effective. We mustn't let things like doubts about our salvation mess with our heads, as we said before. Our salvation comes from God and depends on God. It is not anything we can earn or achieve. It is his gracious gift to us. (Ephesians 2:8-9) Remember that and you will keep your head straight whenever you are struggling spiritually.

Finally Paul gets to our only weapon: the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. But for a sword to be effective the soldier needs to know how to wield it properly. No one issues soldiers weapons and then just lets them figure out how to use them. They instruct them. And the soldiers practice daily. They get to know them well.

You also want to have a firm grip on your weapon so it isn't wrested from your hand and used against you. That happens a lot with Christians when they are fumbling around, trying to use scripture to justify their personal points of view. They don't have a good grip on what the Bible really says or what it is all about. Like a bad swordsman, they can do a lot of damage, some of it unintentionally, and some even to themselves.

Just as a sword has a point so does the Bible. And the point of the whole saga of scripture is God's love for us and what he has done through his Son to rescue us from the evil we have unleashed upon our world and on ourselves. God created us to love, Jesus came to show us that love and the Spirit comes to put that love in us and put it to work through us. So we are relying not on our word on the Word of God, but on the Word of God used in the right Spirit, the Spirit of truth (John 16:13), the Spirit of the God who is love. (1 John 4:8)

And we are not to use the word of God as a weapon against other human beings, created in the image of God. Paul says “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but...against the spiritual forces of evil...” We are all too eager to go on crusades against other people because they are visible and we can trust in our own strength to fight them. But our struggle is spiritual. It is internal.

Right now we are fighting a virus, a foe invisible to the naked eye. And the fact that it has to be fought in a different way than you would a visible opponent is just not getting through to some people. You can't punch it or shoot it. You have to protect your body and keep it from getting in if possible. And the chinks in our armor, our PPE, is, as we've seen, a disregard for the truth and a lack of faith in the people who are dedicating their lives and in some cases literally dying to rescue us from the practices that are damaging and killing us. But instead of a sword they have a syringe that helps our immune systems see and surgically strike at the virus. However, just as a sword increases your protection against injury or death but never achieves 100% protection, so also the vaccine reduces your risk of getting seriously ill but not all the way to 0. Nothing physical does that.

So it's not a perfect analogy and I don't think the PPE of God will replace the image of the armor of God. But the point is that we are not engaged in a conventional fight. Our enemy is not conventional. Neither viruses nor spiritual forces are flesh and blood.

In one case we are dealing with a non-cellular submicroscopic infectious agent that can only replicate in our cells. Some scientists even argue that viruses are not really alive but are very much like the viruses that infect computer software and cause it to glitch and slow down and even crash. A physical virus is like a malicious code that infects our body's software and perverts it to spread the virus. And even if you don't crash or die, a post-viral infection, like long Covid, can slow you down, inflicting a crippling fatigue and brain fog and pain very much like ME/CFS.

In the other case we are also dealing with things we can't see, that are spiritually harmful and that infect us with crippling thoughts and ideas and feelings that can sap us of our spiritual vitality. They can even drive us to despair, the opposite of hope. We need to protect ourselves from these insidious invaders that seek to exploit our weaknesses and chip away at our peace with God. Just as viruses hijack our own bodies, including the immune system at times, to replicate and spread to others, so malicious spiritual ideas can pervert the functioning of churches and organizations. Thus people get too caught up in the “Onward Christian Soldier” metaphors and think the enemy is other people and that destroying the enemy is our mission, rather than saving people. 

And just as viruses cause our cells to attack each other, such as happens in a cytokine storm, so harmful spiritual ideas and destructive emotions, like hate and paranoia, can cause Christians to attack other Christians. You see this when Christians fight over nonessential issues that they have let displace the essential ones, like who Jesus is, what he has done for us and how we should respond to him with faith, hope and love. Many churches die not from external threats but spiritual autoimmune diseases, members of the body of Christ attacking other members.

So Paul is taking this military metaphor and subverting it. He says we are up against things we cannot hope to defeat by force or on our own. Only God can triumph over the spiritually destructive forces out there. Our job, therefore, is to stand firm and protect ourselves with truth, by being in the right relationship with God, by proclaiming the good news of peace with God, by trusting in him, by thinking clearly about the source of our salvation, and by expertly wielding the word of God, guided by the Spirit of God.

One last thing. They say an army travels on its stomach. In our passage from John, Jesus is finishing up his metaphor of being the living bread of heaven. He is saying to his audience that he is as vital to their spiritual lives as bread and wine were to their physical lives. They just didn't get it. I hope we do. It is vital to have the written word of God in your head but you also need the living Word of God, Jesus, in your heart. If you have one but not the other, it's like only getting one dose of the vaccine. And like the annual flu shot you need regular doses of both God's written word and of Jesus if you are going to stay healthy and fend off the evil and foolishness that are circulating in this world.

And just as we healthcare professionals are always encouraging people to get their shots and wear their masks, despite opposition, we Christians are to stand firm and encourage others to get Jesus in them and put on the PPE of God.

Although the armor of God does sound cooler, doesn't it?