Receive, Don’t Take the Helmet of Salvation

Date Published: 08/23/2009

On Sunday, August 23, my worship message is on Ephesians 6:10-20, which we tend to think of as the armor of God passage. As I prayed, studied and prepared, I became convinced that explaining each piece of armor was not the direction to take the message. For a variety of reasons (the other lectionary passages I Kings 8:22-30,41-43; John 6:56-69; reflections on the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis; reading Walter Bruggemann’s book “The Word Militant” during my summer travels) I was drawn to focus the Sunday message of Ephesians 6:12. “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

If you want to know what I said about that, you’ll have to download that message and listen to it, unless you were in worship at Central Christian Church on August 23. But one thing about the armor of God jumped out at me when I was doing my commentary and language study. Throwing it into the Sunday sermon didn’t really make sense, so I decided to post that one observation here.

Verse 17 says “Take the helmet of salvation.” Several commentators noted that the verbs for all of the previous pieces of armor described someone putting on their own clothes (or armor in this case). But the word translated “take” is the word for accepting or receiving something someone else gives you. The implication is that our action, volition, discipline is part of the virtues of truth, righteousness, readiness to proclaim the Gospel, and even faith. But salvation is given to us. We just receive the gift. The image some of the commentators conjured was of the soldier who, after putting on all of the armor, is not able to bend down to pick up the helmet and set it on the head. Someone else has to lift it into place. All that is needed is to receive it.

Interestingly, the sword of the Spirit is also grammatically included as something that must be handed to the soldier. If the soldier picks it up before putting on the armor, the armor won’t go on, but once the armor is on, someone must hand it to the soldier so the soldier can grasp and use it. We conventionally think of the sword as the word of God being a symbol of the Bible. While that’s probably included, the commentators (and Walter Bruggemann) suggest something deeper. This “word of God” is the utterance of God, the power of God speaking (Genesis 1:3 “God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.”) This is Jesus replying to his temptations, “It is written/said.” (Luke 4:1-13) It is the force of Jesus’ word “I am he” that knocks his arresters to the ground (John 18:5-6).

I don’t want to push this too far or make any dogmatic statements. I only want to explore in my own heart (and challenge you to do the same) what do my spiritual disciplines contribute (truth, righteousness, readiness to proclaim the Gospel, faith) and what do I receive as gifts (salvation, the Spirit, the word of God)?