Your Spiritual Weapons: Introduction

Interspersed throughout Christianity, is the theme of “spiritual warfare” — ethereal battles in the unseen realm that have real, current, and eternal consequences.

Jesus taught about these things, and the scriptures reveal that we are not left helpless in these celestial conflicts.

While there are some well-known scriptures regarding spiritual weapons, they don’t get mentioned or explored very often. Isn’t it strange that something so important to spiritual victory gets so little attention? Well, no longer.

Today we will be looking at our spiritual weapons in Christ, and see the amazing arsenal that Jesus has given us.

The Reason for the Weapons

As we begin a study such as this, you may have the question, why do we need spiritual weapons? Conversing with believers over the years, I’ve noticed that they generally fall into two camps:

1. Those who believe that there is a massive spiritual battle against real spiritual enemies, and
2. Those who believe that everything (absolutely everything) is God’s will, and nothing we do ultimately matters

Now, I have addressed these two ideas in previous studies before, and the scripture is very clear that we have spiritual foes which we are called to stand firm against in Christ. Furthermore, it’s obvious that not everything that happens is the will of God, because we know from 2^nd Peter 3:9, that God wishes that none should perish and all should come to repentance, and that clearly doesn’t happen.

The reason God’s will doesn’t always happen, is because people really do have a free choice, and there are spiritual opponents trying to stop us from making right choices— ultimately the choice of salvation.

Ephesians 6:11 says to put on the full armor of God, that we can stand against the trickery of the devil. So this verse informs us that there is trickery happening by the devil and aimed at us. The verse also tells us that we are not left vulnerable or powerless against such deception. We have spiritual weapons given to us by God, for the expressed purpose of standing against the enemy’s trickery.

Verse 12 continues on to tell us:

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Something to take note of here is that the Greek root word for “wrestle” in this verse means “to vibrate, or cause to tremble”. The enemy will try to cause us to vibrate and tremble – in other words, to not be at peace and rest in Christ.

Putting on God’s Armor

Verse 13 says:

“Why take to you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”

Again we see reference to the whole armor of God, and the scripture reinforcing that our role is to stand in the armor. The detail of the whole armor is important, because God has made provisions for every part of our being, and we don’t want to leave any area exposed to attack.

We stand in God’s armor precisely because it is His armor. This is the spiritual protection that Jesus stayed in when He walked on the earth, and when we stand in it, we have the very same protection. 

In our next study, we will begin unpacking each piece of the armor, what it does, and how we make use of it. I truly hope you will join me for these upcoming studies.

For today, be encouraged that you are not helpless, and you have been given great protection and authority, even unity with Jesus Christ.

Be blessed.