The Helmet of Salvation (Part 2 of 2)

One of the elements of spiritual armor that we read about in Ephesians chapter 6 is the helmet of salvation. In order to be protected from the attacks of the enemy, we need to be thinking rightly about the benefits that are ours in Christ as his followers. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg teaches us three key ways that Jesus works on our behalf. Well, our focus is on that little phrase in Ephesians 6 17, where Paul exhorts those to whom he writes to take up the helmet of salvation.

And in our previous study, we sought to understand very, very clearly that what it really means to put on the helmet of salvation is to trust unreservedly in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in all that he has accomplished on the cross. And in order to help us with that, we began to think of how Paul, in unpacking the whole panorama of salvation in Romans, lays out, first of all, the need for salvation insofar as the whole world is accountable before God. And then secondly, he goes on from verse 21 of chapter 3 in Romans to make clear the provision that God has made for man as a sinner.

And we looked at one of these three little pictures, and I said the remaining two were your own, but I want to come back to them just briefly in case you haven't already begun to do your homework. We're looking here at Romans chapter 3, where he talks about the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there's no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And here's the first from the law courts, and are justified by his grace as a gift.

We looked at that. And then the second picture is in the same verse, and this picture is taken from the slave market. That's the significance of the word redemption. And what Paul is referencing there is what Jesus actually says, that the one who sins is a slave to sin, and therefore it needs to be bought back or redeemed. And so what Christ has accomplished is not just that we are declared free to go. It's not that the sinner is just released, but rather that the sinner is released by the payment of a ransom. And Christ has paid the sinner's ransom, and as a result of that sets the sinner free from sin and from death and from judgment. And it's for that reason, for example, when Paul is writing to the Corinthians in chapter 6, he says to them, you know, you are not your own.

You were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body. The third picture is there immediately following that. You will notice verse 25, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. And this is a picture that is taken from the Old Testament sacrificial system. God's wrath is poured out against sin, and therefore God needs to be propitiated. God's justice must be satisfied.

The story of salvation is not that God has decided to overlook sin, for God could not be true to himself and overlook sin. Therefore, sin must be punished. And what Paul is pointing out is that the sacrifice of Jesus has satisfied the justice of God, and his wrath has been poured out upon his dearly beloved Son.

The wrath of God is not diffused by the passing of time. And if you think it through, in the end there are really only two ways for God's justice to be satisfied—either by the everlasting punishment of the sinner or in the death of Jesus, his beloved Son. And for the believer, God has brought forward into time the judgment that must be faced, executing his judgment on the Son of his love in order that we, while we are still sinners, may have access into his presence. Now, Paul tackles all of that and more and brings us then to chapter 5, which is where we essentially left off in the understanding of the benefits, if you like, of what it means to have been set right with God. And I suggested that there are three that we can pay attention to, and we will do so briefly.

I don't want to expand on them unduly. But first of all, and straightforwardly, the therefore that begins chapter 5 and verse 1 is on the strength of the argument that we have just given a very brief precis of. Therefore, he says, in light of the fact that God has done this in Christ and has used Abraham as the great illustration of justification. Therefore, he says, since then we have been justified by faith.

Here's the first benefit. We have peace with God. Now, you will notice that this matter of justification, as we said before, is about acquittal. It is the absence of condemnation. That's why by the time we get to chapter 8 with Paul, he will say, there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.

Why? Because they have been justified by grace and through faith. How does this come about? Well, as we have just seen, in and through the work of the Lord Jesus. When Paul writes to the Colossians in chapter 1, he gives it to us in just a phrase or two. He says, For in him—that is, in Jesus—all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him—that is, through Jesus—to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. This, I think, is important on a number of levels, and one that may not be immediately obvious to us is helping us to understand God's plan and purpose for his world.

People will sometimes come to us and chide us for the fact that the world doesn't seem to be getting any better at all. If you really had a God who cared about these things, surely they say he would have sorted it all out by now. Why didn't Jesus do this? What was it that Jesus told his disciples he came to do? What is it that Jesus promised his disciples?

Or, if you like, what did he not promise them? You can never read in the Gospels and find Jesus promising his followers absence from trouble. No, he says, in the world you will have tribulation. There is nowhere that Jesus promises. That is a result of his work. There will in the history of man be the absence and freedom from war. Nowhere does he say to us that as a result of his coming and his dying and his ascending that in the course of time the world is going to be a better place. He does not say any of that at all. In fact, he says to them, I have told you all of these things so that in me you might have peace.

In the world you will have this. Now, this is very important in understanding the nature of salvation and what God has done and what God is doing and what God plans to do. Part of the problem with people is that they get mixed up in the very process of God's redemptive purpose.

They want to import into now that which is promised only then. And so they find themselves making claims that are incapable of substantiation, either from the Bible or from human experience. But since we're putting on the helmet of salvation, since we're thinking properly about life from a biblical framework, since we're trying to understand the nature of salvation itself, we can be free from that. And we can realize that the only true peace that is really available in the entire world is the peace which comes in and through the Lord Jesus Christ himself. It is to the believer that is given the wonder of peace with God—freedom from the fear of judgment and of death and of recrimination and of the dredging up of that which has been satisfied in the death of Christ on the cross.

That's the first benefit that he mentions. The second is there in verse 2. And through him, Jesus—it's always through Jesus. Notice we have peace with God through Jesus. Through him, we have also obtained what? Access by faith into what? Into this grace in which we stand. So number one, peace with God.

Number two, we stand in grace. This wonderful picture here of access should be familiar to us. We have obtained access.

How do you get in? Only through faith in Jesus. Now, Paul has been mentioning this in our studies in Ephesians. I don't expect you would be able to pick it up immediately.

I couldn't. I had to go look for it. But I knew it was there, Ephesians 2, and Jesus came and preached, Peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him—that is, through Jesus—we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

It's the same word. Actually, you find it in verse 12 of chapter 3 as well. According to the eternal purpose realized in Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence—here we go again—through our faith in him.

That word in Greek, pedagogy, is a word that was used primarily of making an introduction or ushering somebody into the presence of someone. And when Paul will go on through Romans, he will make it wonderfully clear that there is nothing that will ever separate us from the love of God, that when we're ushered into his presence, we can rest in that and we can be glad of it. It's wonderful, isn't it?

I'm just looking for it now as I speak. There we have it. I'm sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation. He just heaps all the phrases up, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And the evil one comes to us and says, Yeah, but you might not make it to the end. And we say, Oh yes, I will.

Why? Because he who promised his faithful and because he who began a good work in me will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ, and because all my hope and all my confidence is grounded not in my worth or what I own but in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, then, you can notice the third of the three, that we have peace with God, that we stand in grace, and we rejoice in hope. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

And I'm not going to go on into three, but I can't resist just pointing out—you will notice that not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings. So for the person that says, You see, once you get peace with God, you stand in grace, you rejoice in hope, it's plain sailing from that point on. No, immediately after he says, We rejoice in hope, he says, And by the way, we rejoice in our sufferings.

Why? Because our sufferings produce endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And after all, as I mentioned, says Paul in writing to the Thessalonians, the helmet is the very hope of salvation. And that hope is a hope that doesn't make us ashamed. Because when the Bible uses hope in that way, and when we use it, for example, in the words of Committal, at a gravesite, we're not talking about uncertain hope. We're not talking about the hope we have of, well, I hope the weather holds, or I hope my exam results come through, or any of those things.

But no, J. B. Phillips paraphrases it as a happy certainty, that the Spirit of God creates within the child of God a happy certainty, a confident, joyful expectation which rests in the promises of God. In the promises of God. We're not just hopeful of things. The Christian has been set free so that when the evil one comes and threatens to undo us and challenges us in this way, we remind him, Hey, I'm wearing the helmet.

I'm wearing the helmet. I am trusting unreservedly in the work of Jesus. He has accomplished on behalf of the sinner—and I am a sinner, therefore he's accomplished it on behalf of me—all that is necessary for me to have access into God's presence, to stand in grace, to rejoice in hope, and to be justified by faith. And what then is the reason for your assurance, the evil one may ask? What then would you say in response to that? So the evil one comes to you and says, Well, that sounds pretty good, Beck. You got those three points down.

It's very good. But why do you actually believe that? Well, I tell him, because of the Bible, because of what it says in the Bible. I have an objective reason, and I have a subjective reason.

Well, give me your first one, he says. Well, let me give you the objective one, in Romans 5. Here's the logic that you will find as you wear your helmet. If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. So what he's saying is this—that we were justified on the basis of his death in the place of the sinner. If he has gone to that extent to put us right with God, do you not realize that we will then be glorified one day in his presence on the strength of his life? In his death our justification, in his life our glorification. And that grounded in the love of God, verse 8, but God shows his love for us.

In the while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Do you doubt the love of God? Are you convinced of the love of God? Those of you who fancy yourselves as theologians, are you prepared to tell people of God's unmistakable love for them? Are you prepared to share your faith in such an open and unequivocal way as to say to men and women, Let me tell you of the love of God for sinners? John Murray, you will remember, and this brings me to my final point, and that is that I said, once we considered the importance of the thinking in a Christian mind and of the importance of thinking properly about salvation itself so that we might understand that those whom he called he justified, and those he justified he also glorified, then I said we would want to think about making a very personal and passionate plea to men and women to be reconciled to God—to say to men and women, Will you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in order that you might be saved? The gift of salvation is a gift. It is not purchased, it's not earned, it's not worked for in any way. It is simply received.

And that is a stumbling block to people. Because people want to do something. They want to bring something. Invite somebody over to your home, and what's one of the first things they'll say to you? What do you want me to bring? I don't want you to do anything. I'd like you just to come.

And so people come to the issue of the gospel, and they respond in the same way. Well, what shall I bring to this? Well, what could you possibly bring to it? Nothing!

What do you want me to do? Here's the word. Look. Look. Here's the word. Believe.

Believe. Now, let me finish with Spurgeon. It's always good to finish with Spurgeon. Because Spurgeon's conversion is a wonderful illustration of this very principle.

If you know the details, forgive me if I reiterate them just for a moment. But remember, he's going off to church as a boy. It's a miserable morning.

It's snowing. He decides that he'll bail on the church that he's planning to go to when he turns into a small Methodist chapel that he was unaware of, only to discover that there were precious few people in the building, and the minister himself was not there, and some gentleman was there in his place. A gentleman of rather limited abilities, it might be said. It was a December morning.

It was 1849. And Spurgeon says that the great longing of his heart was only one thing. He wanted to know how he could be saved. He wanted to know how he could be saved. A simple man—Spurgeon referred to him as really stupid, quotes. Spurgeon had a way with words.

A great hero of mine, as you would think. And he stood in the pulpit, and he read the text, Look unto me, and be ye saved all the ends of the earth. The preacher began, quotes, This is a very simple text indeed. It says, Look. Now, lookin' don't take a great deal of pain.

It ain't liftin' your foot or your finger. It's just look. Well, a man needn't go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn't be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look.

Even a child can look. But the text says, Look unto me. Ah, many of you are lookin' to yourselves. But it's no use lookin' there. You'll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some of you say, We must wait for the Spirit's workin'.

You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, Look unto me. Spurgeon writes, After the good man managed to spin out about ten minutes or so on Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, Spurgeon says, he was at the end of his tether.

Then he looked at me under the gallery, just fixing his eyes on me as if he knew all my heart. He said, Young man, you look very miserable, and you will always be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death—if you don't obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved. Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, Young man, look to Jesus Christ! Look, look, look!

You have nothing to do but look and live! I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said.

I did not take much notice of it. I was so possessed with that one charming word, it seemed to me. Oh, I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. Then and there the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and the moment I saw the sun, and I felt I could have sprang from my seat that instant and sang with the most enthusiastic of those Methodist brethren of the precious blood of Christ and the simple faith which looks alone to him.

Oh, that somebody had told me this before! Trust Christ, and you shall be saved. And what's on Spurgeon's tombstone?

Ere since, by faith, I saw the stream. Thy flowing wounds supply. Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die. That, my friends, is what it means, at least in measure, to take up the helmet of salvation. A compelling story about the profound simplicity of looking to Jesus.

You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. We've been studying how we can protect our minds from the attacks of the evil one by putting on the helmet of salvation, thinking rightly about our salvation. We've also learned that God's full armor includes other critical elements like the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness. This is why we've been recommending a book called The Whole Armor of God. This book provides in-depth lessons about each piece of the battle gear that, as believers, we need to put on for spiritual protection. This is the last day we're making this book available, so if you have not yet done so, request your copy today. You can make your request when you give a one-time donation or when you sign up to become a monthly Truth Partner. In fact, our team has been praying this month that many of you will join the Truth Partner team. So if you have not yet enrolled, I want to encourage you to call our customer service team today at 888-588-7884 or enlist online at truthforlife.org slash truthpartner. If you'd prefer to make a one-time donation and request your copy of the book, The Whole Armor of God, you can write to us at Truth for Life, P.O.

Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for joining us. We hope you'll listen tomorrow as we'll learn about an ancient book that has power to overcome the archenemy of a Christian. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.