11 August 2024- Sunday Sermon
The Shield of Faith - “By this or on it”
Above, or over all—As a sort of universal covering to every other part of the armour itself, continually exercise a strong and lively faith. This you may use as a shield, which will quench all the fiery darts, the furious temptations, violent and sudden injections of the devil.
The Shield of Faith. This is to be “over all.” Faith in God, faith in His promises, faith in His Word, simple child-like faith is to cover the head and the body like a great shield. It is the exercise of an unwavering confidence in God. The fiery darts will thus be quenched. These “fiery darts” are indeed terrible weapons. The fire speaks of the wrath of God, of judgment, at least, from Him, and it is with this that the enemy would assail us. He is, we must remember, the accuser. His aim, as already said, is to bring distance in some sense between our souls and God. How great a necessity, therefore, to maintain this happy confidence in Him, which, while it does not excuse failure in the least, yet, in utter weakness, finds all its confidence in Him who has undertaken for us. “All the fiery darts of the wicked one” can thus be “quenched” by the “shield of faith.”*
The shield of faith answers to the Great Shield, as it was called in Paul’s day. This was a double-ply, oblong wooden shield worn by the heavily armed warrior. It covered the entirety of his body, being two and a half by four feet, and curved on the inside. This shield was used for a twofold purpose. First, it protected the soldier from the most dangerous of all ancient weapons, the fiery dart. This was a dart to the end of which tow and pitch were applied and then ignited and hurled at the enemy. The Great Shield was designed to stop the dart and extinguish the flame. So Paul seems to say that the shield of faith is the Christian’s greatest protection against the devil’s most severe and danger-out assaults. Vincent calls it saving faith! But the Great Shield was also used as a stretcher to bear the wounded and the dead from the battlefield. An account has it that the young soldier was given a ceremonial charge by his mother when he first went to battle. The mother delivered the Great Shield to her soldier son with the simple charge, “Son, by this or on it!” So the Christian soldier is to fight and conquer by the shield of faith or die on it. Insurance companies write comprehensive protection policies designed to cover any accident eventuality. The shield of faith is the Christian’s comprehensive protection from all the fiery darts of the enemy: “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4b).
There is the shield. The word Paul uses is not that for the comparatively small round shield; it is the word used for the great oblong shield which the heavily armed warrior wore. One of the most dangerous weapons in ancient warfare was the fiery dart. It was a dart tipped with fibres of rope dipped in pitch. The pitch-soaked rope was set alight and the dart was thrown. The great oblong shield was made of two sections of wood, glued together. When the shield was presented to the dart, the dart sank into the wood and the flame was put out. Faith can deal with the darts of temptation. For Paul, faith is always complete trust in Christ. When we walk closely with Christ, we are safe from temptation.
16. With all [this equipment]. The reading en pāsin, lit. “in all,” is replaced by epi pāsin in a great number of MSS.78 Both variants probably have the same sense: “in addition to all,” rather than “above all,” or “at all times.” There is no indication that the shield is more necessary, or necessary for a more extended period, than the other pieces of equipment.
take up faith as the shield. Lit. “having taken up the shield of faith.” In fn. 38 references were given to show that “take up” is a technical military term. The translation of Greek participles (such as, lit. “having strapped,” vs. 15, and “having taken up,” vs. 16) by imperatives was discussed in fn. 23 to 3:14–21. The Greek term thyreos is derived from thyra (“door”) and describes the large, door-shaped or vaulted “shield,” in contrast to the small, round, convex shield, aspis (also pelta). Originally the small shield consisted of wickerwork covered with hide, and the large shield was made of wood and leather. Later the frame and the boss(es), and in some cases the whole shield, were fabricated of metal, bronze, iron, or even gold.82 People of high rank used the services of a shield bearer. The Roman legionary’s scutum, to which Paul alludes, had an iron frame and sometimes a metal boss at the center of the front. This shield served well even against incendiary missiles when its several layers of leather were soaked in water before the battle. Under Emperor Constantine, the heavy scutum was abandoned in favor of the lighter oval clipeus or round parma.
It is clear that a shield of any form served for protection and could therefore be considered a merely defensive weapon. Yet men advancing behind their huge shields, even the thyreoi, were as threatening in the ancient world as soldiers riding in an armored car are today; and closely formed units, advancing shield by shield and with a compact cover of shields above their heads, were as much instruments of attack as modern tanks. While in Greek literature outside the Bible (also in Ignatius Polyc. VI 2) “shield” is not used in a figurative sense, and while it occurs nowhere else in the NT, the canonical Psalms describe God as a “shield” with surprising frequency, and other OT books use the same image. According to Zech 12:8, the effect of God’s shielding is that “the feeblest” is like David, and the “house of David” like God. Other results are described, e.g. in Ps 18. It is most likely that OT imagery was in Paul’s mind when he compared faith with a “shield”; just as e.g. in Ps 7:10, 13 the divine “shield” and the “fiery shafts” of the godless are mentioned in the same context, so Paul describes the “shield of faith” as a protection against the “fiery missiles” of the evil one. While in 1 Thess 5:8 “faith and love” are the essence of the “cuirass,” in Eph 6:16 the large “shield” consists of “faith”; in turn, Wisd Sol 5:19 identifies the small shield with “invincible holiness.”
What is meant by faith in Eph 6:16? In the Psalm texts mentioned in fn. 87, not only God, that is, Yahweh himself, but also his “favor” and “salvation” are called a “shield”; sometimes the terms “strength,” “help,” “sun,” and “king” are parallels of “shield.”89 The Messiah may be called “shield” in Ps 84:9. These OT utterances make it unlikely that only man’s faith is meant in a text as drenched in OT thought pattern as is Eph 6. Certainly human faith is not excluded, for “He [God] is a shield to those taking refuge in Him” (Prov 30:5, etc.): the exhortation to have faith and to “fear not” may have one of its Sitze im Leben in the Holy War. But above the absence of fear among the people, and higher than their own trust and faith, stands the faithfulness of God himself, and the faithful service of the one who is anointed by God. The “good fight of the faith” could not be fought by any man (cf. 1 Tim 6:12) if man had to rely on his own faith: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). The “faith” to which “victory over the world” is given is as much “born from God” (1 John 5:4) as the brotherly love among men is founded upon and preceded by the love of God for men (1 John 4:10, 19). The same “shield” which Yahweh is asked to take up in Ps 35:2 is to be seized by all the saints, according to Eph 6:16.
to quench the fire-missiles of the evil one. In fn. 84 it was stated that in the ancient world wet leather was used to extinguish burning missiles. Eph 6:16 speaks only of “missiles,” not of burning oil poured down from a city wall. Among the “fiery missiles” most frequently used were arrows or spears tipped with tow and dipped in pitch. Arrow-throwing machines had the effect of mitrailleuses; much heavier loads of burning materials were launched from catapults. When Paul calls the shield an effective defense, he is probably thinking only of the lighter ammunition—though the location of the inimical hosts “in the heavens” (vs. 12) does not totally exclude the idea of artillery shooting its lightning-like rounds at the saints from afar, with deafening noise. In Eph 6 only the enemies of God and of the saints make use of fire. This is consistent with the fact that here Yahweh’s particular offensive weapons in the Holy War are not included among the weapons given to the saints. But it differs from those OT and apocalyptic utterances that speak of God’s appearance in fire and of the use of fiery missiles or torrents by God and his angels. In Eph 6 the saints themselves do not spew fire at the principalities and powers. Instead of flame-throwers and napalm-canisters by which the opponents and their strongholds might be burned, they are given shields which “enable them to quench” (only) the fire thrown at them. The fiery attacks endured now are unlike the fire of the last judgment of God to which all men and all the creation will be exposed (2 Thess 1:8; 2 Peter 3:12, etc.). The character and effect of the devil’s missiles are distinctly penultimate. But just as in many apocalyptic and NT texts, the saints are warned: fire can belong to hell and can be a manifestation of the realm of the devil.96 Especially in the Thanksgiving Psalms of Qumran, reference is made to “arrows of the Pit,” “flames of the spear like [lit. in] fire that consumes trees,” the “torrents of Belial” that devour forests and the very foundations of the mountains.97 The term “firemissiles of the evil one” confirms the impression that parallel imagery is used in the NT and Qumran, but does not demonstrate the literary dependence of Paul’s letter upon the Thanksgiving Psalms. In fn. 95 evidence was given of that OT and apocalyptic tradition from which both Qumran and Ephesians probably derived their specific formulations.100 In particular, one application of the weapons-imagery is common to Qumran and Ephesians: Unlike Isa 57:5 and 1 Cor 7:9, the metaphor “fiery,” is not applied to the way in which evil desire, lust, and temptation “burn” in man. Rather, external threats to the saints are meant as caused by persecution or assimilation imposed upon them by religious, cultural, political forces in their environment. Just as the outstanding men of faith, i.e. “Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David, Samuel and the Prophets … through faith … quenched raging fire” (Heb 11:32–34), so all the saints “will be able” to resist the seemingly superior weaponry of the evil spirits that possess cosmic (not only psychic or carnal) power. The same protection against fire which in Dan 3:22–28 is attributed on the one hand to a man whose “appearance is like a son of the gods,” and on the other to the “trust” of “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in God,” is in Eph 6 provided by the “shield of faith.”