What Is the Armor of God? The Six Pieces of Ephesians 6

The armor of God is the picture Paul gives of how believers stand against evil, and every piece of it comes from God. There are six pieces: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. Prayer holds them all together.

“Put on the whole armour of God,” Paul writes, “that ye may be able to stand.” He says it again two verses later, “having done all, to stand,” and then once more, “Stand therefore” (Ephesians 6:11–14). The whole armor is for holding ground. Paul has already told the Ephesians that God raised Christ and set him “Far above all principality, and power, and might” (Ephesians 1:21), so we stand where Christ has put us. And he wrote all this, the letter itself tells us, in chains (6:20).

It comes near the end of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, after he has spoken to husbands and wives, children and parents, servants and masters. The whole passage reads, in the King James Version:

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.

Ephesians 6:10–18

Here is each piece at a glance, with the earlier passage where the same picture appears:

Piece	Ephesians 6	Earlier in Scripture
Belt	“girt about with truth” (6:14)	Isaiah 11:5
Breastplate	“of righteousness” (6:14)	Isaiah 59:17
Shoes	“the gospel of peace” (6:15)	Isaiah 52:7
Shield	“of faith” (6:16)	Wisdom 5:20 (Catholic and Orthodox Bibles)
Helmet	“of salvation” (6:17)	Isaiah 59:17
Sword	“of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (6:17)	Isaiah 49:2
Prayer (not a piece; it holds them together)	“Praying always” (6:18)	—

Paul’s word for “whole armour” is panoplia, a soldier’s “full armor,” the panoply. The Greek historian Polybius, who was born about 208 BC and described the Roman army two centuries before Paul, uses the same word. The young soldiers called hastati, he writes, “are ordered to wear a complete panoply,” and he lists its parts: shield, sword, spears, helmet, greaves and a breastplate. Roman equipment changed over those two centuries, but Paul knew soldiers like them up close. When he reached Rome as a prisoner, Luke tells us, “Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him” (Acts 28:16), and in Ephesians he calls himself “an ambassador in bonds” (Ephesians 6:20), using a Greek word for a chain.

Paul tells us plainly that it is not other people: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). The word for “wrestle” is pale, a wrestling bout: hand to hand, not arrows from a distance. The struggle is near, and it is real, but the neighbour who wrongs us, the colleague who mocks our faith and the stranger online are not the enemy. They are people Christ died for.

The enemy Paul names fights by “wiles” (6:11). John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), preaching on this verse, noticed the word: “He says not, against the fightings, nor against the hostilities, but against the wiles.” The devil, he said, “never proposes to us sins in their proper colors,” but offers them dressed as something else. So how do we wrestle with darkness? Chrysostom’s answer is short enough to remember: “By becoming light.” Peter puts it another way: “Whom resist stedfast in the faith” (1 Peter 5:9).

The belt of truth

“Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth” (6:14). Chrysostom pictured a soldier pulling his belt tight so that his clothes would not tangle his legs, and he saw the order in Paul’s list: “First he girds up his soldier.” Truth comes first because everything else hangs from it. It is both the truth of the gospel and our own truthfulness: “Let us not lie one to another,” Chrysostom told his people. In Isaiah the promised king from Jesse’s line wears a belt too: “righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins” (Isaiah 11:5).

The breastplate of righteousness

In his day, Polybius says, the ordinary soldier’s breastplate was a plate of brass “which they place in front of the heart and call the heart-protector.” Paul fills that place with righteousness. In Isaiah it is God himself who wears it: “he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head” (Isaiah 59:17). Christians read Paul’s breastplate in two ways that belong together. It is the righteousness God gives us, “the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9), and it is the new life that grows from that gift, “the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).

The shoes of the gospel of peace

“And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace” (6:15). The word “preparation” is hetoimasia, readiness. Thayer’s Greek lexicon renders the phrase “with the promptitude and alacrity which the gospel produces.” Roman soldiers’ shoes were studded with nails. Josephus tells of a centurion named Julian at the siege of Jerusalem who “had shoes all full of thick and sharp nails, as had every one of the other soldiers,” and who still slipped and fell as he ran across the pavement of the temple.

The footing Paul gives us holds better than nails, because “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1), and that peace makes us ready to carry it. Isaiah had already sung of such feet: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace” (Isaiah 52:7).

The shield of faith

“Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” (6:16). Paul’s word is thyreos, “a large shield (as door-shaped).” Polybius gives the Roman shield of his day as four feet long and two and a half wide, made of two planks glued together and covered “first with canvas and then with calf-skin.” It was big enough for a man to crouch behind it whole. The darts are bele, missiles, and Paul calls them fiery, meaning missiles set alight. Faith catches them on a shield bigger than we are.

The helmet of salvation

“And take the helmet of salvation” (6:17). Again the armor is God’s before it is ours: he wears “an helmet of salvation upon his head” (Isaiah 59:17). Writing to the Thessalonians, Paul fills in what the helmet means for us: “putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation” (1 Thessalonians 5:8). The helmet guards the head, and hope guards the mind on the day it is struck hardest.

The sword of the Spirit

The last piece is the only one that strikes: “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (6:17). Paul’s sword is the machaira, the short blade for close quarters, and his “word” here is rhema, a word spoken aloud. Jesus showed us how to use it when he was tempted in the wilderness and answered the devil three times with Scripture: “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). The Letter to the Hebrews says the word of God is “sharper than any twoedged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). We carry it best when we have read it often enough to speak it.

Paul ends with prayer because armor is not enough without the one who gives it, and so he writes, “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints” (6:18). No soldier stands alone in this line: we pray for each other, and Paul, in his chain, asks the Ephesians to pray for him. You will find a prayer that walks through each piece, from the belt to the sword, in the armor of God prayer.

He found it in the Scriptures of Israel. Isaiah gives God a breastplate and a helmet (59:17), the Messiah a belt (11:5), the messenger of peace his beautiful feet (52:7), and the Servant a mouth “like a sharp sword” (49:2). The Book of Wisdom, which the Catholic and Orthodox churches count in the Old Testament and Protestants count among the Apocrypha, pictures God arming himself in the same way: “He will put on justice as a breastplate, and will take true judgment instead of a helmet. He will take equity for an invincible shield” (Wisdom 5:19–20).

Paul had used the image before, when he told the Romans, “let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light” (Romans 13:12), and two verses later he says what that armor is: “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14). The armor of God is the armor God wears, and to put it on is to put on Christ.

We put it on every day, starting with the heart. Chrysostom warned his listeners that standing is not finished when a temptation has been beaten: “For even after the victory, we must stand.” We put on truth when we refuse a convenient lie, righteousness when we choose what is right and trust Christ’s mercy where we fail, peace when we are ready to speak of him, faith when the darts come, hope when we are tired, and the word of God when we learn it by heart. There is more on that daily struggle in what spiritual warfare is and how to overcome.

At the very end Paul makes a request of his own. In other letters he hopes to be released through his friends’ prayers (Philippians 1:19; Philemon 22), but here, in his chain, he asks them to pray for his words: “that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak” (Ephesians 6:19–20).

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