What Is the Armor of God in Ephesians 6? — Spurgeon’s Sermon
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What Is the Armor of God in Ephesians 6? — Spurgeon’s Sermon
What is it that you are meant to do, in the morning, before the day actually starts? You have been told to put on the armor of God. You have heard the sermons. You have read the verses. And the part of you that has tried — for years, in tired weeks and in good ones — to actually put on the seven pieces of Ephesians 6 has noticed, by lunchtime, that the armor has slipped off somewhere between the kettle and the school run, and you cannot quite tell when it left. The slippage is not your failure. The slippage is the symptom of a misreading, and the older preachers — Charles Spurgeon among the loudest of them, when he was actually preaching gently — knew the misreading, and corrected it from a London pulpit a hundred and fifty years ago.
This essay reads three slow passages from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening and Gleanings among the Sheaves — the books in which the great Victorian preacher, when he was off the platform and writing for the chair by the window, named what the armor of God in Ephesians 6 actually is, and what putting it on each morning actually means. The Everspring Devotionals on Anxiety is the contextual companion for the kind of week this article describes — the slow daily morning practice that does not slip off by lunchtime. For now, read slowly. The question what is the armor of God in Ephesians 6 opens, in Spurgeon’s reading, into a much warmer room than the modern checklist version ever lets you sit down in.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was nineteen when he took the pulpit at New Park Street Chapel in London, and twenty-two when his congregation outgrew every building they could find and built him the Metropolitan Tabernacle for six thousand seats. He preached forty years. He suffered, throughout his ministry, from severe depression — what he called the dark dungeon of melancholia — and from a kidney disease that often left him unable to stand. He read the older Puritan divines daily — Owen, Bunyan, Flavel, Sibbes — and his teaching on the armor of God in Ephesians 6 sits directly inside that older tradition. The man knew the dungeon. He knew the morning where you cannot find your strength. He knew what the armor was actually for, because he had been in the dark place where the armor was the only thing keeping him on the platform.
The modern reading of Ephesians 6 — put on the whole armor of God — has tended to flatten the passage into a checklist. Today I put on the belt of truth. Today I put on the breastplate of righteousness. Spurgeon, with the older tradition, would not have called this wrong but would have called it insufficient. The armor of God in Ephesians 6, for Spurgeon, is not a sequence of seven separate items mentally assembled at six in the morning. The armor of God is the daily fresh communion with Christ Himself — and the seven pieces are the angles from which that single morning communion clothes the believer for the day. The putting-on is not an inventory. The putting-on is a meeting.
The first passage: the cool twilight, the breath of celestial love
“Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth! O that he would walk with me; I am ready to give up my whole heart and mind to him, and every other thought is hushed. I am only asking what he delights to give. I am sure that he will condescend to have fellowship with me, for he has given me his Holy Spirit to abide with me forever. Sweet is the cool twilight, when every star seems like the eye of heaven, and the cool wind is as the breath of celestial love.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly, and notice the posture Spurgeon is in.
He is not assembling armor. He is not running through a mental checklist of seven pieces. He is sitting — in the cool twilight, by an open window, with the stars beginning to show, and the night wind moving over his face — and saying, very simply: Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. I am ready to give up my whole heart and mind to him. The whole posture of the passage is listening. The whole content is fellowship. The whole result is the putting-on of the armor of God in Ephesians 6, though Spurgeon never names a single piece by name. The pieces are not the point. The fellowship is the point. The pieces are what the fellowship clothes the believer in, after the listening.
Notice the line I am only asking what he delights to give. Spurgeon is doing the older Puritan move on Ephesians 6. The armor of God is not something you assemble out of your own discipline. The armor of God is something He delights to give you, every morning, in the small daily fellowship of Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. The believer’s job is not the assembly. The believer’s job is the asking — and the asking, when done with the whole heart, is met by a giving that delights in the meeting. The cool twilight, in the passage, is the actual time of the morning communion — twilight, dawn, the still hour before the world is loud — and the breath of celestial love is the air the armor is woven out of.
This is the first quiet correction to the checklist reading. The armor of God in Ephesians 6 is not a thing the believer manufactures. The armor of God is a gift — His delighted gift — that is received daily in the small still time of Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. The pieces in Ephesians 6 are the apostle’s way of naming the seven angles from which that gift protects the soul through the day. The belt of truth is His truth-toward-you, received in the listening. The breastplate of righteousness is His righteousness-given-to-you, received in the asking. The shoes of the gospel of peace are His peace already made, received in the breath of celestial love. The shield of faith is His faithfulness held up by you, received in the fellowship. The helmet of salvation is His salvation as the home of your mind, received in the Speak, Lord. The sword of the Spirit is His Word as the voice He has just spoken, received in the thy servant heareth. Every piece of armor is a facet of His gift in the morning communion. The pieces are not the point. The communion is.
For the modern Christian woman whose mornings have been the daily failed assembly of an armor she could not quite hold together — Spurgeon’s first passage is the gentlest possible re-orientation. Stop assembling. Start sitting. The armor will be given. Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth is the whole morning practice. The cool twilight is the time. The breath of celestial love is the warmth. The fellowship is the armor. The day will hold.
If your week has been the week of daily failed armor, how to pray when you’re under spiritual attack sits close to this paragraph, and prayer for protection tonight: 10 scriptures to pray before bed is the bedtime version of the same listening practice.
The somatic that goes with the morning communion
Pause here. Spurgeon was a deeply embodied preacher, and the body has been carrying the modern soul’s failed armor for years.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet on the floor. Notice the face — there is likely a small held tension at the brow, the kind that gathers when the mind is mentally assembling seven things at six in the morning. The brow has been doing the work the soul was meant to do. The body has been pulling its weight in the wrong place.
Take one slow inhale. On the exhale, let the brow soften. Let the small held tension between the eyebrows release. Take one more inhale. On the exhale, let one phrase settle in the softening place: Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. The phrase is not for the mind to assemble. The phrase is for the brow to release into. Stay with the slow exhale for forty seconds.
Then continue reading. The armor of God in Ephesians 6, in Spurgeon’s reading, lands first in the brow the modern day has been tightening. The morning communion is not a mental project. The morning communion is a softening of the body into the listening posture in which the armor is given. The body knows how to soften. It has forgotten because nothing has asked it to remember in a long time.
The second passage: the source, the channel, the abiding
“Thou, O Father, art the source of all grace, all love and mercy towards us. Thou, O Son, art the channel of Thy Father’s mercy, and without Thee Thy Father’s love could never flow to us. And Thou, O Spirit, art He who enables us to receive that divine virtue which flows from the fountain-head, the Father, through Christ the channel, and which, by Thy means, enters into our heart, and there abides, and brings forth its glorious fruit.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Gleanings among the Sheaves
This is the central passage on the armor of God in Ephesians 6, and it should be read three times — once for the doctrine, once for the order, once for the inhabiting.
Spurgeon is naming, in one short paragraph, the entire mechanism by which the armor of God is actually given to the believer each morning. The Father is the source of all grace. The Son is the channel through which the Father’s love flows. The Spirit is the means by which that flowing love enters the believer’s heart and abides there. The whole Trinity is involved in the daily morning communion. The whole Trinity is the armor. The whole Trinity is what protects the believer through the day, in seven facets the apostle names in Ephesians 6.
This is why, for Spurgeon, the armor of God in Ephesians 6 is not a checklist of items the believer brings to the morning. The armor of God is the divine virtue which flows from the fountain-head, the Father, through Christ the channel, and which, by the Spirit, enters into our heart and abides. The believer’s morning practice is receiving the flow — not producing it. The fountain-head is the Father. The channel is the Son. The means is the Spirit. The receptacle is the believing heart. The morning is the time of the flow. The armor is the flow itself, now abiding in the believer for the day.
Notice the verb abides in the last clause. Enters into our heart, and there abides. The armor of God is not something put on at six in the morning and then re-applied throughout the day every time it slips. The armor of God is the abiding — the flow that, once received in the morning fellowship, stays inside the believer for the rest of the day. The day will press against the armor. The adversary will throw fiery darts at the armor. The flesh will try to dislodge the armor. The armor will hold — not because the believer keeps re-applying it, but because the abiding flow is His abiding, not yours, and the Spirit who enables you to receive it in the morning is the Spirit who keeps it abiding through the afternoon.
For the modern Christian woman whose week has been the experience of the armor slipping off at lunchtime, Spurgeon’s second passage is the second quiet correction. The armor is not slipping. The armor is abiding. The slippage you have been feeling is not the loss of the armor but the loss of your awareness of the armor — and the remedy is not the re-application but the re-remembering, in a small mid-day pause, that the divine virtue which flows from the fountain-head is abiding still. The flow does not stop in the afternoon. The Spirit does not withdraw the abiding. The armor is on, and is on, and will be on at five in the evening when the children’s tea is being made, because the abiding is His and is permanent.
(This is the practice the 100 Days of Faith Over Fear: The Slow Practice That Actually Holds walks at the daily level, and a women’s prayer journal for the year ahead — pray like you mean it is the page-based companion for the slow remembering of the abiding.)
A short word on the platform version
The reason the modern platform version of Ephesians 6 leaves the believer feeling under-equipped is that the platform version has, mostly, taught the verbs but not the source. Put on. Take up. Stand. Withstand. The verbs are real and the apostle uses them. But the platform has often skipped the fountain-head from which the armor flows and has handed the believer the verbs without the substance — and the believer, faithfully obedient, has been performing the verbs on an empty armor for years. Putting on something that has not yet been given. Taking up something that has not yet been received. The performance has been exhausting because the substance has been missing.
Spurgeon’s older reading restores the substance. The armor is the flow from the Father through Christ by the Spirit, abiding in the believer’s heart. The verbs in Ephesians 6 are the believer’s response to that flow — the standing-firm of a soul that has already received the abiding, the withstanding of a soul that is already clothed in the divine virtue. The verbs without the substance are exhausting. The verbs with the substance are a kind of rest. You have been doing the verbs. The Everspring Devotionals on Anxiety is built on the substance — each evening, a short page, a slow verse, the daily small return to the fountain-head, the channel, the abiding flow. The verbs hold themselves up when the substance is in place.
The third passage: the heart in right tune
“‘Come, then, my Lord, and give me Thy love with Thy grace.’ Take good heed, Christian, that thine own heart is in right tune, that when the fingers of mercy touch the strings, they may resound with full notes of communion.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Till He Come
This is the passage that resolves the question, and it should be read twice — once for the image, once for the practice.
Spurgeon is using the image of a harp. The Christian’s heart is the instrument. The Lord’s mercy is the fingers that touch the strings. The communion is the music that resounds when the fingers and the strings meet. The whole practice of the morning — the whole armor of God in Ephesians 6 — is the tuning of the strings, so that when the mercy comes (and it comes every morning, faithfully) the heart can resound with full notes of communion. A heart out of tune will not make music when touched. A heart in right tune will resound. The daily tuning is the daily practice. The morning armor is the daily tuning.
Notice the verb take good heed. Spurgeon is, gently, putting the responsibility for the tuning on the believer. The mercy is His to give. The tuning is yours to attend to. You cannot make the fingers come — He decides that. You can keep the strings in tune so that when the fingers come, the resounding happens. The keeping-in-tune is the daily morning communion. The keeping-in-tune is the Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth of the cool twilight. The keeping-in-tune is the deliberate placing of the heart in proximity to the fountain-head, so the flow can come, so the abiding can deepen, so the day can hold under the weight of the world’s pressing.
For the modern Christian woman who has been wondering whether her quiet morning chair time is doing anything — whether the small ten minutes by the kettle, with the Bible open and a verse half-read, is spiritual warfare enough — Spurgeon’s third passage is the gentle final confirmation. Yes. It is the tuning. It is the keeping of the strings. It is the placing of the heart in proximity to the fountain-head. And when the fingers of mercy touch the strings, in the middle of the afternoon, at the school gate, in the silent car on the way home from the appointment — the heart will resound with full notes of communion, because the morning tuning is the practice the resounding rests on. The armor is on. The flow is abiding. The heart is in right tune. The fingers of mercy are coming. The day will be filled with the music the tuning prepared for.
That is what the armor of God in Ephesians 6 has meant in the older tradition all along. Not seven pieces assembled at six in the morning. The daily tuning of the heart, by the small still fellowship of Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth, so the fountain-head can flow and the abiding can deepen and the day can resound with the music the apostle named.
(The sibling articles in this contemplative-fathers cluster sit at What Is Spiritual Warfare? — Bunyan on the Christian’s Real Fight and What Is the Armor of God? — Owen on Ephesians 6, if the slow read wants to keep going.)
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Devotionals on Anxiety. Each evening, a short passage and room for the honest sentence — the daily small tuning the older saints called the actual content of the armor, for the soul learning to receive the abiding flow rather than assemble the armor by force.
The Everspring Devotionals on Anxiety carries Spurgeon’s slow vocabulary — the cool twilight, the fountain-head, the abiding flow, the heart in right tune — into a daily companion built for the woman whose morning armor has been a daily assembly and is ready, at last, to become the daily tuning the apostle was always pointing to.
