Ephesians 6:19

“Finally” turns the letter toward its close. Paul’s first three chapters set out God’s plan of salvation, the riches believers have in Christ, and the church as his body. His next chapters show how to live it out, in unity in the church (Ephesians 4:1–3), between husbands and wives (Ephesians 5:22–33), and among children, parents, servants and masters (Ephesians 6:1–9). Now he shows the battle that lies behind all of it. The word for “finally”, loipón, means “for the rest” or “henceforth”, the word Paul uses as he turns to what remains to be said. “My brethren” is a family word, and it is spoken to the whole church, which stands together in this fight.

“Be strong” is endynamóō, a verb built from en, “in”, and a word for giving power. It is passive in form, so the command means “be strengthened” or “be made strong”. Paul calls us to receive strength, and he tells us where it is found: “in the Lord”. The little word en marks the Lord as the place and source of our strength, so this strength belongs to those who live in union with him. Kýrios, “Lord”, here is Jesus Christ in his full authority over all things.

Paul then sets two words for power side by side. Krátos, “power”, is might shown in action and in rule, and ischýs, “might”, is the strength someone has in himself. “The power of his might” is God’s own strength put to work for his people. Paul has already prayed that the Ephesians would know “the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe”, and the same two Greek words stand together there in “the working of his mighty power”, the power God used when he raised Christ from the dead (Ephesians 1:19–20).

The rest of Scripture speaks the same way. Christ is “the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and every spiritual blessing is ours “in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). Paul prays for believers to be “strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power” (Colossians 1:11). He writes, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13), and he heard the Lord tell him, “my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Jesus put it in a picture: “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). To be strong in the Lord is to abide in him, the one who has already triumphed over every hostile power.

“Put on” is endýō, the ordinary word for putting on clothes, used both literally and figuratively. It is a command, so we have a part to play: we dress ourselves in what God has provided. “The whole armour” is panoplía, from the words for “all” and “weapon”, the complete equipment of a heavily armed soldier, from which English takes the word “panoply”. Paul wrote this letter as a prisoner (Ephesians 3:1), most likely in Rome around A.D. 60–62, and Roman soldiers in full gear were a familiar sight both to him and to his readers. The armour is “of God”. He makes it and gives it, and every piece of it is needed, so that the whole believer is covered.

Paul uses the same picture elsewhere. “Let us put on the armour of light,” he writes (Romans 13:12), and “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds” (2 Corinthians 10:4), as part of a longer passage on the war of the mind against every thought raised up against God (2 Corinthians 10:3–5).

The purpose is “that ye may be able to stand”. To stand, hístēmi, is to hold one’s ground and keep one’s footing under pressure. The whole passage returns to it: “to stand” in verse 11, “withstand” and “to stand” in verse 13, and “Stand therefore” in verse 14. The armour equips us to hold our place in Christ under attack. Scripture calls us in the same way to “stand fast in the faith” (1 Corinthians 16:13) and to “stand fast in the Lord” (Philippians 4:1).

Verse 12 opens with “For” (hóti) and gives the reason we need God’s armour: the enemy is spiritual. “Flesh and blood” is a common way of saying human beings, so Paul is telling us that our real opponents stand behind the people and institutions we can see. That changes how we treat people. Those who oppose us are often under the influence of the powers Paul describes, and we can meet them with compassion and forgiveness while we resist the powers themselves.

The word for “wrestle”, pálē, is a wrestling match, a close, hand-to-hand struggle. The conflict is personal and sustained, and it takes all the strength the Lord gives.

Paul names the opponents four times over, each with “against” (pros), which presses home how direct the struggle is.

• “Principalities” are archai. The word archḗ means “beginning”, and in a separate sense it means a ruler or power, which is the sense here: spiritual rulers of high rank.
• “Powers” are exousiai, those who hold and use authority. With the principalities they describe an ordered government of evil.
• “The rulers of the darkness of this world” are literally the world-rulers of the darkness of this age. Kosmokrátōr joins the words for “world” and “to rule”, and it appears only here in the New Testament. These powers hold sway over the moral and spiritual darkness of the fallen world, its values and its ways of thinking.
• “Spiritual wickedness in high places” means the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, a phrase that names both their evil nature and the realm where they work.

These are real, intelligent beings, and Satan leads them. Paul has already called him “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2), and he reminds the Ephesians that they once walked according to him, “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1–2). Ephesus was a great city of trade, famous for the worship of Artemis (Diana) and for its magic, and when many there came to Christ they burned their books of magic in public (Acts 19:19). The Greeks and Romans already believed in a crowd of gods and lesser spirits who ruled parts of life, so Paul’s readers understood the idea of unseen powers. He tells them plainly who stands behind the darkness.

“Wherefore” draws the conclusion from verse 12. Since the enemy is this strong, we must “take unto you the whole armour of God”. The verb (analambánō) means to take up deliberately, and panoplía again stresses that every piece is needed. “Withstand” is anthístēmi, “to stand against, oppose”, the word for holding firm face to face with an enemy.

“The evil day” is a time when the forces of darkness press hardest: a season of temptation, persecution or trial. The first Christians knew such days, facing persecution, the loss of their neighbours’ goodwill and struggles within the church. The phrase also fits the present age as a whole, of which John says that “the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19). The armour is given for exactly these times.

“Having done all” (hápanta katergasámenoi) means having carried through everything the fight requires. Then comes the goal, “to stand” (stēnai). “Withstand” and “stand” share the same root, so the verse moves from resisting in the battle to remaining upright when it is over. God means his people to come through the evil day still on their feet, holding their ground in Christ and found faithful at the end.

Paul now goes through the armour piece by piece, and behind each picture lies the gear of a Roman soldier. The pieces also come from the prophets, as the next section shows, because this is first of all the armour that the LORD himself wears.

Before it was ours, this armour was worn by the LORD and promised to his Messiah. Isaiah says of the coming King, “righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins” (Isaiah 11:5), and of the LORD going out to save his people, “he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head” (Isaiah 59:17). So God gives us his own armour.

The New Testament shows that every piece is found in Christ. He is the truth (John 14:6) and our righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30). “He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). He is the author of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), and we live “by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Salvation is in his name alone (Acts 4:12), and he is the Word of God made flesh (John 1:1–14). To put on the whole armour of God is, in the end, to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14), to be clothed with him and to stand in his victory.

Prayer comes last, and it keeps every piece of the armour in use. “Praying”, proseúchomai, means to pray to God, to make requests of him and to worship him. “Supplication”, déēsis, comes from a word meaning to beg or to lack, and it is an earnest request that rises from need. Paul uses it twice in the verse, joining general prayer with specific, urgent asking.

Paul uses the Greek word for “all”, pâs, four times: “always” (at every time), “all prayer”, “all perseverance” and “all saints”. Prayer is to be continual, of every kind, persistent, and for the whole church.

“In the Spirit” uses pneûma, which means breath or wind and, by extension, a spirit. Here it is the Holy Spirit, who prompts, guides and strengthens our prayer and brings our requests into line with God’s will. “The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”, Paul writes, “according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26–27). In this letter the same Spirit has sealed us (Ephesians 1:13) and makes us one (Ephesians 4:3–4).

“Watching thereunto” is agrypnéō, to keep awake, to go without sleep, like a sentry who stays alert at his post. It is the word Jesus used when he said, “Watch ye therefore, and pray always” (Luke 21:36), and Paul gives the same charge elsewhere: “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving” (Colossians 4:2). “Perseverance”, proskartérēsis, is steady persistence. Answers to prayer often come slowly, and Jesus told the parable of the widow who kept coming to the unjust judge to teach “that men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1–8).

“And for me”: having called for prayer for all saints, Paul asks for it himself. Even an apostle depends on the prayers of the church. He asks “that utterance may be given unto me”. The word is lógos, word or speech, and Paul asks God to give him the right words for the message. “Open my mouth” is a way of saying to begin to speak, and “boldly” is parrhēsía, freedom of speech, confidence and outspokenness, the courage to speak plainly when speaking is dangerous. Paul wrote from chains, and preaching that challenged the religion and politics of the Roman world could cost a man dearly, as Acts shows again and again.

What he wants to make known is “the mystery of the gospel”. A mystḗrion is a secret once hidden and now made known by God. In Ephesians that secret is God’s plan to unite Jews and Gentiles in one body through Christ, “that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel” (Ephesians 3:6), with the dividing wall broken down (Ephesians 2:14–16). For centuries God’s covenant people had been Israel, and salvation through a crucified Messiah, open to Gentiles who did not keep the law of Moses, offended both Jews who held to that law and pagans with their many gods. At the heart of the mystery is Christ himself, “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).

Paul made the same request of other churches. He asked the Colossians to pray “that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds” (Colossians 4:3–4), and the Thessalonians to pray “that the word of the Lord may have free course” (2 Thessalonians 3:1). The first believers prayed for boldness when they were threatened (Acts 4:29–31), and “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

Many of our daily struggles have a spiritual side, and this passage teaches us to see it. When temptation, discouragement or an old accusation comes back, we can recognise the wiles of the devil, and we can meet a hard person with forgiveness, because our real wrestling is with the powers behind the darkness.

Putting on the armour is a daily habit of trust. We hold to God’s truth and live honestly. We rest in Christ’s righteousness and walk uprightly. We stand on the peace the gospel has made with God and stay ready to share it. We answer doubt and fear with faith in God’s promises, keep our minds in the hope of salvation, and learn the Scriptures well enough to use them as Jesus did. None of it is done in our own strength, because the strength is the Lord’s.

And we pray. Paul’s request teaches us to pray for those who preach and teach, for pastors, missionaries and every believer who speaks of Christ, that God will give them the right words and the courage to say them. Every believer is an ambassador for Christ in some place God has put him, so we can ask the same for ourselves. The goal of the whole passage is simple and full of hope: when the evil day has passed, God’s people will still be standing.