Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Ephesians 6:11 by Dov Avnon

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Ephesians 6:11 – “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” The idea here has to do with the fact that we are to stand. We are to stand in the position that we have in Christ. We are to stand in body truth. We are to stand in the truth of the word rightly divided – in what is operative today.

Here is the issue. Ephesians 6:12-14 – “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of his world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore 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. Stand therefore.”

The issue is standing in your warfare with the Adversary. The issue is not taking a bazooka and blowing his head off or taking some M-88s and mowing him down. The issue is just standing in the truth that God has for the body of Christ – the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery. You are to take your stand there and hold the ground that God has given you.

You are standing and you are withstanding. And when the satanic attack comes, you do not give any ground to him. You hold all the ground that God has given you, all the blessings that God has given you in Christ, all the completeness that he has given you. You hold on to that, and you do not let any of it slip. And you are not moving away from it, but you are strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. You are not made strong by the Lord, rather you are strong in the Lord. You are standing in him and the complete position that he has given you in Christ.

You are taking those things, and you are putting those doctrines on as armour. There is a spiritual armour of doctrine that you encase your life in, and your soul in, so that you can withstand and so that you can stand in the position God has given you.

Now, in verse 12, he says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. I think I already said to you that “wrestling”, in this verse, is a very special term. It is a unique term that is used by Paul to describe the combat that we have with the Adversary. Our combat with the Adversary is described as a personal, hand-to-hand combat that is a struggle. We, personally, are grappling and struggling. It says, “wrestle”.

This is not fun and games. This is “wrestling”, and in the context here, it is hand-to-hand combat to the death. It is not just an athletic game, or a promotional thing to raise millions of dollars. It is a struggle, a hand-to-hand combat between two soldiers who are in hand-to-hand combat intent upon destroying one another. It is a serious issue.

And that is the reason he uses the term here. These are soldiers wrestling together. It is a serious matter, and somebody is going to be destroyed. The Adversary wants it to be you.

Not only is it a serious matter, but it is a personal struggle. And that is the reason he says it. This is not a corporate struggle that can be done way off at a distance. This is struggle that you, as an individual believer, are engaged in day in and day out in your life. And there is a satanic policy of evil directed at you individually, and you need to understand it.

And it doesn't have anything to do with seeing demons behind the lamp stand and that kind of thing. It has to do with some doctrine in the word of God. And Satan wants to trick you with his wiles, and his schemes, to move away from focusing on the doctrine and the truth. He wants to cause you to move away from the spiritual realities that are operative today. He wants you to focus on the physical, the circumstantial, and all the rest, and not focus on that thing that God is doing today.

Today, God is forming the church, the body of Christ. He is forming a spiritual body of believers where he takes Jew and Gentile and places them into one spiritual body on an absolute total equal basis. Everybody is blessed just alike, completely and fully in Christ, by faith in the gospel.

And that gospel is that Jesus Christ died for our sins, was buried and was raised again the third day according to the scriptures, and that he ascended up unto the right hand of God the Father in heaven. And there we are seated with him in the heavenly places.

By faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, you and I are made a part of this spiritual body that God is forming because we rightly divided the word. We do not go back to the legalism of the former dispensation and try to think that is what God is doing. And we are not distracted by the societal and governmental perfection of a future age, of trying to bring in that kind of a social order. But, rather we understand what God is doing today. We understand that it is a forming of a new creation, a new creature – the one new man of whom we are a part.

And Satan wants to take our focus away from that – the wiles, the tricks.

The essence of a trick is to take something that is real and make it appear like it isn’t real, and to take something that isn’t real and make it appear like it is real.

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