... and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. (Ephesians 6:15)
In today's text we consider the third of six pieces of weaponry that the believer in Christ has at his disposal for fighting the good fight. In v.15 Paul writes, "And with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace."
There are two divisions to the pieces of this armor, indicated by the tenses of the verbs used. The first three pieces are weapons which were given us when we first believed. A literal translation of these verses is "having girded your waist with truth;" "having put on the breastplate of righteousness;" "having fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace."
These all refer to something already done for us at the point of our salvation, the moment we were born again. And, we must be reminded of this or else we will be daunted by the attacks of the enemy.
The second division includes those things which are to be put on or taken up at the moment of the battle: "taking up the shield of faith;" "put on the helmet of salvation," "and the sword of the Spirit."
There are, first, the things we have already put on once and need never put on again. But we must be sure they are there and remind ourselves of what they mean. Second, there are weapons which we take up again and again whenever we are under attack.
In today's text, Paul introduces us to being "fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace." This means Christ our peace, He is our source of calm, He is our sense of well-being. Jesus is our peace because He guarantees our salvation through His perfect life, death and resurrection.
Shoes are essential to fighting. Imagine a barefoot soldier clad in armor from head to foot. Quickly the rough ground would tear his feet and bruise them. Soon, despite the fact that he had all the equipment he needed, he would be out of the fight. His feet would render him unfit to fight. It is peace in the heart that makes us able to fight.
There two types of peace in the scripture, the peace with God and the peace of God. This is an internal weapon which makes ready the believer looking to share the gospel with others. This peace is a precious gift that gets us to heaven and brings heaven to us now. Peace with God is justification teaching and peace of God is sanctification teaching. Peace applies to us coming to know God for ourselves (Justification) and helping others to come to know Him for themselves (Sanctification).
Notice the importance of the order of our weapons. The first piece tells us that Christ is the truth, the ultimate secret of reality. In addition, we stand on his merits and authority. We have the breastplate of His righteousness, not ours. We approach this daily battle on the basis of what He has done, is doing and will do. As a result, our hearts are at peace and we are engaged in the battle!
Sure footedness provides for the fighting believer, who is out to share the Gospel, the stability needed to endure. Most people when teaching on this passage place emphasis on the sharing of the Gospel, but the emphasis must be on the one who is receiving the Gospel of peace, as well. We live in a world filled with anxiety and everyone is looking for relief. The relief is realized through the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. Despite the turmoil, we can have the confidence that God is in control. This peace enables us to see God at work even in the midst of the anxiety causing turmoil.
This is a peace that passes human understanding (Philippians 4:7). This peace forges the culture of God in the believer so that he can beat past the distractions that would prevent him from sharing the Gospel with those trapped in darkness. This is what enabled those five young men to go to the Auca Indians in 1956. The deaths of Peter Fleming, 27; Jim Elliot, 28; Ed McCully, 28; Roger Youderian, 31, and Nate Saint, 32, made headlines for weeks, and resulted in their killers coming to a Christian faith that ended generations of tribal revenge killings. That story is told in the movie "The End of the Spear."
Until January 8, 1956, few people had heard of the Auca Indians of Ecuador. They were just another backwater primitive tribe scratching out a mean existence in jungle clearings. But on that day on a sandbar in a river near two Auca villages, two alien cultures, one dedicated to spreading the gospel of Christ, the other dedicated to war and murder, clashed. And the Aucas' murder of five American missionaries catapulted the tribe into world-wide news.
Life photographer Cornell Capa accompanied the team which buried the missionaries on the sandbar where they had been killed. He reported, “Among the effects of the missionaries ... were three diaries in which the men had recorded, step by step, the progress of their mission”. In these diaries, notebooks and letters, the missionaries reveal their motives for jeopardizing their lives among the Aucas. Time magazine called the Aucas “the worst people on earth”. This is where the peace of and with God leads the yielded believer.
We live in a world which is not our home. This explain what Chesterton referred to as "our divine discontent." The sooner we realize that nothing in this world will ever satisfy us, the quicker we will get to the business of observing God bringing people out of darkness into light. My question to you is: Are you yielded today?
