I’m now blogging about chapter twenty-one of my book. The passage of Ephesians 6.10-18 has been preached to death by preachers. In fact, one of the Puritans wrote an entire book just on these verses. An entire publishing industry and speaking circuit have been built around these verses. Spiritual warfare is good business, but is it good exegesis?
For this installment, I make one observation to aid my reader in interpretation. The full armor is in singular while the command to put on is plural. In other words, the verse in Southern-speak would translate to something like this, “Y’all put on that singular armor of God.” Well how do all these people put ONE armor on?
The key to understanding this passage is in the numerical aspect of the singular armor. Once we learn to answer that interpretive question, our whole idea about spiritual warfare changes. What passes for teaching of spiritual warfare today from these verses is superstition. It is time for the church to wrestle with the text rather than spending all its money and time on quick fixes dreamed up by bad interpreters.
As I always say, the texts are not at fault. The interpreter is!
