'Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to
stand.'--Eph. vi. 13.
The military metaphor of which this verse is the beginning was obviously
deeply imprinted on Paul's mind. It is found in a comparatively
incomplete form in his earliest epistle, the first to the Thessalonians,
in which the children of the day are exhorted to put on the breastplate
of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. It reappears,
in a slightly varied form, in the Epistle to the Romans, where those
whose salvation is nearer than when they believed, are exhorted, because
the day is at hand, to cast off, as it were, their night-gear, and to
put on the 'armour of light'; and here, in this Epistle of the
Captivity, it is most fully developed. The Roman legionary, to whom Paul
was chained, here sits all unconsciously for his portrait, every detail
of which is pressed by Paul into the service of his vivid imagination;
the virtues and graces of the Christian character, which are 'the armour
of light,' are suggested to the Apostle by the weapon which the soldier
by his side wore. The vulgarest and most murderous implements assume a
new character when looked upon with the eyes of a poet and a Christian.
Our present text constitutes the general introduction to the great
picture which follows, of 'the panoply of God.'