The sword is the only offensive weapon in the list. The spear which
played so great a part in ancient warfare is not named. It may well be
noted that only a couple of verses before our text we read of the Gospel
of peace, and that here with remarkable freedom of use of his metaphors,
Paul makes the word of God, which as we have seen is substantially
equivalent to the preached Gospel, the one weapon with which Christian
men are to cut and thrust. Jesus said 'I come not to send peace, but a
sword,' but Paul makes the apparent contradiction still more acute when
he makes the very Gospel itself the sword. We may recall as a parallel,
and possibly a copy of our text, the great words of the Epistle to the
Hebrews which speak of the word of God as 'living and active and sharper
than any two-edged sword.' And we cannot forget the magnificent
symbolism of the Book of Revelation which saw in the midst of the
candlestick one like unto a Son of Man, and 'out of His mouth proceeded
a sharp, two-edged sword.' That image is the poetic embodiment of our
Lord's own words which we have just quoted, and implies the penetrating
power of the word which Christ's gentle lips have uttered. Gracious and
healing as it is, a Gospel of peace, it has an edge and a point which
cut down through all sophistications of human error, and lay bare the
'thoughts and intents of the heart.' The revelation made by Christ has
other purposes which are not less important than its ministering of
consolation and hope. It is intended to help us in our fight with evil,
and the solemn old utterance, 'with the breath of His mouth He will slay
the wicked,' is true in reference to the effect of the word of Christ on
moral evil. Such slaying is but the other side of the life-giving power
which the word exercises on a heart subject to its influence. For the
Christian soldier's conflict with evil as threatening the health of his
own Christian life, or as tyrannising over the lives of others, the
sword of the Spirit is the best weapon.
We are not to take the rough-and-ready method, which is so common among
good people, of identifying this spirit-given sword with the Bible. If
for no other reason, yet because it is the Spirit which supplies it to
the grasp of the Christian soldier, our possession of it is therefore a
result of the action of that Spirit on the individual Christian spirit;
and what He gives, and we are to wield, is 'the _engrafted_ word which
is able to save our souls.' That word, lodged in our hearts, brings to
us a revelation of duty and a chart of life, because it brings a loving
recognition of the character of our Father, and a glad obedience to His
will. If that word dwell in us richly, in all wisdom, and if we do not
dull the edge of the sword by our own unworthy handling of it, we shall
find it pierce to the 'dividing asunder of joints and marrow,' and the
evil within us will either be cast out from us, or will shrivel itself
up, and bury itself deep in dark corners.
Love to Christ will be so strong, and the things that are not seen will
so overwhelmingly outweigh the things that are seen, that the solemn
majesty of the eternal will make the temporal look to our awed eyes the
contemptible unreality which it really is. They who humbly receive and
faithfully use that engrafted word, have in it a sure touchstone against
which their own sins and errors are shivered. It is for the Christian
consciousness the true Ithuriel's spear, at the touch of which 'upstarts
in his own shape the fiend' who has been pouring his whispered poison
into an unsuspicious ear. The standard weights and measures are kept in
government custody, and traders have to send their yard measures and
scales thither if they wish them tested; but the engrafted word,
faithfully used and submitted to, is always at hand, and ready to
pronounce its decrees, and to cut to the quick the evil by which the
understanding is darkened and conscience sophisticated.