Being Prepared for Battle - The Belt of Truth

This is the first of six posts.

I finished reading Ephesians this morning. I read through the last half of chapter 6 which has a very familiar passage in it. And it's really easy for me to read through the "full armor of god" section without putting much thought into it because I have heard it so many times before. But this time I decided to slow down and think about each piece of the armor and what it's purpose was. Paul must have had some intention with what he equated each piece of the armor with and so I wanted to spend a some time thinking about it.

My disclaimer is that these will just be my thoughts of what came across to me as I thought about each piece. There are probably several meanings you could pull out from the passage and I don't claim to have the best or only interpretation of it.

The passage I am looking at is Ephesians 6:13-17.

The Belt of Truth

"Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth" (v14)

My first thought on this was that if you don't have your belt fastened your pants/bottoms will fall off; which isn't a good thing. Then I read a few commentaries about "girding your loins" and how the belt kept things in place so that you weren't tripping over yourself and how the belt had leather pieces hang in order to protect the lower half of your body. I also read about how the belt would hold the sword while not in use. So my main thought about this was that the belt sort of holds everything together. With out having a fastened belt the whole ensemble practically falls apart. And I thought about how it's the same with Truth. If we don't have Truth fastened and nailed down then there is no hope of fighting a battle. We need to know what reality is and we need to have a firm grasp of it. If there is a wavering of what is true and what is not true, then we won't be able to fight against the spiritual forces, since we don't even really know what going on. We're too busy trying to pick up the pieces of our armor (or life) and keep them together. But with Truth fastened around me holding me together, then I will be equipped to fight a spiritual battle.