31st October 2024

If you are a captured soldier, in a closely guarded prison, unless you are able to escape, you are, to all intents and purposes, out of the fight. But if you are a Christian soldier, regardless of whether you are fighting it out on the field of battle, or confined to a high security jail, there is no escape from the barrage of fiery darts and the sweltering heat of the war. For the Christian, the battle never ceases.

In true spiritual warfare, people who oppose us are not the enemy. Our fight is not against ‘flesh and blood’, so our rules of engagement are radically different from that of the conventional soldier. It was from the confines of a prison cell that the apostle Paul made some of his most effective advances to win more ground for the progress of the gospel. 

The epistle to the church at Ephesus was one of several ‘prison letters’ written while the apostle was in a Roman dungeon, guarded by professional soldiers. But for Paul, such periods of imprisonment, far from removing him from the theatre of fighting, actually served to advance his engagement in ‘the good fight of the faith’ (1 Timothy 6:12 NIV).

Paul’s prison guards were not his enemies. For the apostle, they were part of the soul-hungry, hope-searching human landscape that is the battleground of the gospel. Although Paul was literally chained to the Roman soldiers who guarded him, they were also chained to him, and through his personal witness, soldiers naturally would have discussed Paul and his teachings with their comrades, families and friends, resulting in the gospel reaching into the very household of Caesar himself (Philippians 1:13).

During his imprisonment the apostle became intimately familiar with the items that made up the body armour of the typical Roman soldier and saw in them an analogy of how the Christian soldier must also be suitably equipped for battle – the spiritual battle for which we need to be clothed with ‘the full armour of God’ (Ephesians 6:13-17). However, simply putting on this spiritual clothing is not enough, as one famous hymn advises: ‘put on the gospel armour, each piece put on with prayer.^{’ 1} 

So, as we consider the importance of each item in our spiritual armoury, using the apostle’s illustrations as the graphic aid to faith which he intended, let’s also be careful to not neglect the one item in our spiritual armoury for which there appears to be no military equivalent: prayer. Without prayer, each item in our combat uniform, though God-given and Spirit-empowered, will be lacking in its effectiveness. Therefore, as Paul instructs us: ‘…pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people’ (Ephesians 6:18).

¹ Stand up, stand up, for Jesus, George Duffield (1858)

Local congregation:
Grace Communion Peterborough
Farcet Village Hall                                                    
Main Street
Farcet
Peterborough
PE7 3AN

Meeting time:
Sunday 10.30 am

Local congregational contact:
Richard Dempsey

Email:  richard.dempsey@word-of-life
Local church website: www.cambridgeshirechurch.org

Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church