Thus, through the words of the Lord I gained peace in my soul, and my heart bursts out its "Praised be God!"
BEHIND THE SHIELD
(Eph. 6, 16)
PAUL is imprisoned at Rome and is writing to "the saints which are at Ephesus." He beholds Christian life as one immense struggle—not against flesh and blood, that is, against the depraved elements in the life of mankind and the evil tendencies in man; no, back of flesh and blood are principalities and powers, a host of spirits trained in the wiles and the cunning of the devil, and exercising a tremendous power in the world, through evil persons.
Against these gigantic powers we must needs fight, and we must vanquish them. But we cannot do so by our own power. We must be "girt about with truth," must be clothed in "the whole armour of God." This is not an armour that can be forged from the steel within ourselves—although we say that with all due deference to bravery, shrewdness and wisdom; but in the great struggle against the powers of darkness we must be girt with something stronger. Fortified with our own, we sustain wounds, but win no victory. The armour of God gives victory, but protects against wounds if we know how to use it rightly.
But when Paul describes the whole armour of God, he strongly emphasizes a particular part of it, for he says: "Above all, taking the shield[A] of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked." Thus it is a question of making proper use of the shield rather than of the sword. The church of the Lord has hitherto laid stress on the use of the sword, and therefore the result of the fight has often been a number of wounded souls, for the sword wounds, while the shield protects.
It is said of our heathen forefathers that they knew how to fight as well as how to rest behind the shield. They knew how to grasp all the hostile arrows in their shield while they fought; when they had fought themselves weary or spent all their arrows, while the foe still had plenty of deadly arrows to hurl against them, they knew the art of taking a rest behind their shield in the midst of the shower of arrows. Covered by the shield they gathered strength for the purpose of resuming the fight with axes and spears while the enemy uselessly wasted his supply of arrows.
I wish sincerely that we possessed somewhat more of this ability of our forefathers to use the shield, to fight and to rest behind the shield of faith, spiritually speaking. That would make it possible for us to give battle the thunder of which would resound in the remotest corners of the earth, as in days of yore the song and the hammer strokes of our forefathers were heard in distant countries. Then we would not use our fighting ability to plunder foreign shores, but to lead the fight against the spiritual powers of evil—to be in the front ranks during the fight that shall be fought from the sea to the ends of the earth, in which thousands must bleed because they have not learned how to use the shield of faith.