Shield of faith

Fourthly, the shield of faith. The fourth piece of armour is the shield of faith. Paul says, The shield enables the believer to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Now, Roman shields in Paul’s days were four feet long, two feet wide; enough to cover most of your body. They had fireproofed and metal coverings, which was important to minimize the effect of the flaming arrows. And with this shield the soldier could stop fiery darts and flaming arrows, and extinguish them. So, now you have got the breastplate of righteousness on, which, if arrows do make it past the shield of faith, it would still quench the flaming arrows. But it is the shield of faith held out here, that you can use to defend yourself against most of Satan’s flaming arrows as they come at you. As Thomas Brooks shows in his book, there are hundreds of ways, hundreds of devices of Satan. So, Satan is coming at you in so many ways, thousands of ways, including blasphemous thoughts about God or sinful suggestions, or corrupt desires. He is shooting in all kinds of ways at you, and what you need to do is take faith, the shield of faith, to withstand his assaults.

Now how does faith do that? Well, in several ways. Let me just mention two of them. Faith helps us first of all recognize Satanic devices. If you are living by faith, you are living out of Christ, then you are very much aware of he who is against Christ. Especially Satan. William Gurnall, the Puritan said, Faith looks behind the curtain of sense, and sees sin for what it is, before it is dressed up and made up for the stage. You see, faith sees the ugliness and the hellishness of sin without its camouflage. And then secondly, faith puts Christ between Satan and us. Christ’s blood, if I may say it so, is the fireproof covering in our shield of faith. Christ’s blood and righteousness intervene between Satan and us, guarding us against Satan’s attacks. That is why our biggest problem when we fight against Satan, is that we forget to lift up the shield of faith. If you are a believer, this is your strength. Hold that shield out. Do not let it down. Do not keep it in your closet. You have got to take it out. You have got to use it. When you hide behind that shield, you are actually hiding behind Christ. That is the way to live. That is the way to have a vibrant life. That is the way to defeat Satan. Let Christ be at the foreground in your life. Not yourself. So, that when Satan has to deal with you, you tell him he has to deal with Christ first. Because you stand in the righteousness of Christ.¹

Joel Beeke