“The Whole Armour Of God”

“The whole armour of God,” spoken of by Paul, may be defined as the protective, spiritual consciousness of the presence of God, manifested in goodness, health, holiness, harmony, beauty, and bounty; the understanding that inexhaustible Life is the center and circumference of all existence; that man and the universe are the reflection or intelligent idea of all that God is; that Truth governs all creation with absolute and harmonious power and might; that divine Love fills the world with glory and gladness, holding within its own unchanging loveliness everything that really exists. The armor of God may also be characterized as the conviction that evil of every name and nature did not have origin in the Principle of all being; therefore it never had intelligence, power, nor might. It never was. In brief, then, the whole armor of God is the protective consciousness of the allness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil.

Since this is the scientific fact and is provable, the question naturally arises: How may we attain even in a small degree the wonderful realization of the all-harmonious presence of God, to say nothing of the possibility of reaching the wholeness of such spiritual apprehension, when we are so entangled with the minutiae of human affairs, and so slowly and often so laboriously climbing the steep ascent whereby through understanding we rise out of materialism into the realm of spirituality,— earth-bound as we seem to be and fettered by the demands of the physical senses?

This great achievement would be well-nigh impossible for the pilgrim counting his stumbling efforts all the way, if he did not stop to consider that the admonition to put on the whole armor of God was given by one who had experienced human bitterness when he commended this armor to his fellow mortals; but as the result of noble resolve, patient endurance, and implicit reliance on the gracious promises of God’s protection, Paul was at last able to say: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Through the power of the Christ, Truth, he escaped out of the hands of wicked men and from the most subtle wiles of the evil one, trusting to divine Love and its ever operative law of blessedness and peace. Not at the beginning of his metaphysical career, but after a long period of earnest striving, Paul acquired an intimate knowledge of the protective law of Love, which enabled him to destroy the asserted laws of sin and disease as Christ Jesus destroyed them. Contagion and pestilence had no terrors for him.

One cannot measure the anguish of another’s heart, or count its throbs of despair, or note its wrestlings with temptation, unless his own experience has been of a similar nature; so we may not comprehend through what nameless sacrifices of self, or throes of mental agony, or periods of hope deferred, Paul finally gained the realization of the protection of the divine presence, which found exultant expression in his declaration: “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.” Nor without equal tests of faith and understanding shall we be able to feel the tender sympathy Paul felt for his fellows when he said, “Consider him that endured . . . lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” Though we may be following afar off Paul’s demonstration over selfhood in matter up to his spiritual identification with his Father-Mother God, we take comfort in knowing that on the upward journey and in the darkest hour he did not hesitate to rely upon the invulnerable armor of spiritual understanding, because he knew that being so protected nothing could dismay nor hinder him in his righteous course.

Purgation from the love of materiality and from the willfulness of a dominating nature must have been greatly needed and the need humbly acknowledged by Paul before he was penitent enough to write that remarkable letter to the Corinthians in which he confessed that except as he reflected and radiated the will of divine Love he was nothing. Patient and honest must have been his mental preparation for the realization of the presence of God which was to protect him from the poison of the viper and enable him to raise Eutychus from the dead as easily and as naturally as he healed the lame man at Lystra “who never had walked,” and it would be useless for us to attempt to put on the complete armor of God unless we do so whole-heartedly and with sincere desire. To do this there must be deep searching of the heart; close scrutiny of the nature and quality of its desires, motives, and aims; much sweeping and dusting of its neglected corners, and thorough cleansing of its grimy recesses; radical changing of its coldness and hardness; until thoroughly swept and garnished, it becomes a fitting shrine for the gracious spirit of Truth and Love.

Such righteous endeavors will be attended with success in the measure that we cast out of our thought the taint of greed, envy, deceit, self-love, self-importance, self-will, and self-justification. The realization of the presence of God will save us from the effects of pitiful ignorance of infinite Love; from the various phases and degrees of gossip, slander, vanity, selfish pleasure, remorse, and fear; from the self-inflicted pangs of malice and hate within or from their sharp attacks from without. Knowing the allness of God we shall realize that nothing that “worketh abomination, or maketh a lie” can live in the atmosphere of divine Mind. The distressing canker of reluctance to forgive or to bless our enemies, or the belief in the reality of any power that can wantonly injure or destroy, must surrender its autocratic and cruel domination to the benign supremacy of good, and it will unreservedly capitulate whenever there is a willingness to let that Mind govern “which was also in Christ Jesus.”

He who puts on the armor of God will pray in the presence of dire injustice, “Father, forgive them,” as Jesus prayed while on the cross; or he will repeat the benignant utterance of Mrs. Eddy, “I would enjoy taking by the hand all who love me not, and saying to them, I love you, and would not knowingly harm you'” (Miscellaneous Writings, p.11); but to the evil itself Christ Jesus said, “Ye are of your father the devil . . . there is no truth in him.” To the Christ-like thought, ignorance, malice, and hypocrisy have no semblance of reality or power.

Near-sighted pride, which blinded Paul to the divine rights of man, disappeared when he perceived man’s unity with his heavenly Father; and putting on the armor of selflessness, he bore without complaint subsequent persecutions, injustice, cruelty, and even poverty and loneliness. Ingratitude and disdain moved him only to pity those who showed such ignorance of the beneficent law of divine Love, and he reaped an immediate reward in the joy of returning good for evil; that is, he rejoiced in the knowledge of the nothingness of evil and the allness of good.

Through earnest striving one may have reached a state of sound morals, abstemiousness, peaceful relations with his fellow men, honesty of purpose, and marked ability in the performance of various useful activities, and yet his progress in the knowledge and love of God may seem slow and disheartening—so incomplete, in fact, that he is afraid to believe the gracious promise, “My presence shall go with thee.” He thus shrinks timidly from the loving command of the Christ to go to the bedside of the sufferer, quiet his fear and destroy his pain; or his own nurtured and undenied fear may benumb him into mental lethargy, and then, neglecting to put on the armor of “an unselfed love” (Science and Health, p.1), he faints under the burden of an unfulfilled desire to be Christlike and follow the example of the Master in laying down his life for the brethren. Weary and heartsick he stumbles headlong into the foolishness of self-condemnation, and his lips refuse to invite the travel-stained pilgrim to rest under the shadow of the Love “who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies.”

Then is the time to put on the whole armor of God and, protected therewith, speak with authority to error both within and without, commanding it to go into its native nothingness. No germs of fear can lurk beneath the armor of Spirit; no hidden wickedness or secret sin can escape detection in the searchlight of Truth’s radiant splendor; no shafts of evil can deface its pure outlines, or break through its invulnerable strength.

He who puts on this armor is the Christian Scientist who “has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death” (Science and Health, p.450)—a soldier who is valiantly striving to overcome the domination of the physical senses, and knows that he is newborn of Spirit. He does not wait for complete mastery over bodily conditions before entering upon his God-given tasks, but he presses resolutely on to a fuller comprehension of Life and Truth and Love. The hungry children of men come to him to be fed with the bread of Life and are satisfied; the sinful come to be regenerated and are lifted up from materialism to behold themselves in the image and likeness of the Father; the sick are made to rejoice in freedom from fear and pain; and the tears of those who mourn are wiped away.

Down the ages, above the din of universal warfare, comes the clarion call of the beloved disciple, “Now are we the sons of God.” They who hear and heed, bear the glad message to a burdened and oppressed world, bidding it rise in the spiritual consciousness of the harmonious presence of God and be free.