Keep Your Head

“... and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God …”  ~Ephesians 6:17

Rudyard Kipling once remarked, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, then you shall be a man, my son.” In our text this morning, Paul says essentially the same thing but with a different conclusion. He wants us to be more than men; He wants us to be Christian men and women. To do that, we must keep our wits about us. To do that, we need gospel headwear— the helmet of salvation.

In battle the head represents the ultimate target. A blow here, if not downright fatal, will immediately stun, disorientate, and disable the soldier.  Satan attacks our heads by attacking our minds, and he does this principally through lies and hellish propaganda.

What kind of lies does he tell? He tells us God’s Word cannot be trusted (Genesis 3:1). He tells us we can sin with impunity; God’s judgment isn’t really going to happen (Genesis 3:4, Galatians 6:7). He tells us God’s ways are not best because God’s motives are not good (Genesis 3:5). He tells us we can’t trust God unless we test Him (Matthew 4:6). He tells us we have a right to things God has yet seen fit to give us (Matthew 4:3). He tells us following his suggestions is the quickest way to get what we really need and what we really want (Matthew 4:8-9). Before we sin, he tells us forgiveness is available, encouraging us not to bother resisting the temptation. After we sin, he changes his tune, telling us forgiveness is impossible and judgment is certain. 

With many similar suggestions, Satan hisses his way into our minds. We do well to study his devices. How often do we unknowingly parley with the devil, mistaking his suggestions for our own thoughts? The Puritan Thomas Brooks once advised, “Christ, the Scripture, your own hearts, and Satan’s devices are the four prime things that should be first and most studied and searched.”

The answer to all such attacks is to approach them as saved souls, with what elsewhere calls, “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:8–9).

I like to consider this under what Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once called the three tenses of salvation:

First, I have been saved. God has delivered me from the darkness. I am a child of light. All of Paul’s arguments in Romans 6, therefore, are in play. In sum, I can reckon myself dead to sin and alive to God in righteousness. I don’t have to obey the devil’s suggestions. Disobedience is not inevitable. I am now in a state of posse non peccare. In Christ and by the Spirit, I am able NOT to sin.

Second, I am being saved. The work of salvation is an ongoing work in my soul. I must, therefore, work out my salvation with fear and trembling, confident that God is at work in me both to will and to work for His good pleasure. I can only sin if I first forget this truth. I must not listen to Satan’s lies in the moment, no matter how plausible, no matter how sweet they sound. Again Brooks is helpful: “Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst: he promises honor and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure and pays with pain; he promises profit and pays with loss; he promises life and pays with death. But God pays as He promises, for all his payments are made in pure gold.”

Third, I will be saved. Soon and very soon, Christ shall appear in the heavens, in the glory of His Father, with His holy angels to finish the work He first began long, long ago in a place far, far away. By faith I must close the gap in my mind between this day and that day of days. I need to think thoughts like, If I knew Christ were returning tomorrow, would I take heed to Satan’s slithering suggestions? Of course not. Well, one day, my brother, my sister, Christ shall return and tomorrow will be today. In light of this, let us live now the way we shall wish we had lived then, when we see Him in glory.

God has saved us from sin. What sense is there for any of us to live any more in it or for it? When you meet the devil or his agents today, keep your head on straight. You are saved. Now, think like it, speak like it, and live like it.