Lesson 29: The Sword of the Spirit, part 3

Ephesians 6:17
…and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,

Just as every other piece of armor God gives us, the Sword of the Spirit must also be taken up and put on by OURSELVES. It cannot be put on us by anyone else. We must personally practice and learn how to use this sword in battle!

Many people think that reading the Bible, memorizing it, and listening to sound-doctrine preachers is not important – because the Spirit of God will tell us what we need to know. John 16 tells us that the Spirit will help us REMEMBER what we have learned. Can the Spirit of God tell us Truth? Of course He can. But He also knows that the evil one will take words we have HEARD and twist them in our heads into something that was not said – just as he did with Eve in the Garden of Eden. Contracts for property are never memorized! The chance of mis-remembering is too great. That is why God gave us His written Word, His contract with us in writing, so there would be no doubt about what He has said.


One of the interesting things about this word here – “word” of God – is that it is individual rather than the whole. In other words, every word in the Bible, every phrase, is important. For example, in John 14:6 Jesus says He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Most of us focus on the “way, truth, life” words when we read this, but the word “the” before each of them is VERY important. This little word, “the,” makes the other three words VERY important. It makes them exclusive. Because of “the” we can read these words this way – “the only Way, the only Truth, and the only Life.” Yes, it makes a world of difference. It says the Way cannot be of our choosing, it is ONLY His Way! The same is true of Truth and Life. Then the important issue is that, if we cannot read the original language, we must have a Bible in which we can trust the translation work to be accurate. The English Standard Version that is used in our studies is such a Bible.

In Matthew 4 we find Jesus modeling this “sword” of God’s word in His battle with the evil one. Even when Satan began quoting the Bible too (verse 6), Jesus knew the Bible well enough to know that Satan had used God’s word wrongly! Even when we know the Bible, the evil one will still attack us with lies about what those words really mean! This is why we need to know the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) so we know how it all works together for a single purpose – God’s salvation for humankind. When we understand the Bible correctly, His way, there is never a contradiction or anything that changes or denies something said somewhere else. This is much easier to understand when we see that the Bible is all about Jesus and His coming to bring us His offer of salvation. The only thing we find there about us doing or having things our own way is examples of the destruction this brings.

We will talk more about this in our next lesson.