Helmet of Salvation
Whether you’re in college, high school, work a 8-5, have kids of your own or aren’t sure what the future holds for you, I think we all know, to varying degrees, that life is hard. And for the believer, we know very well that just because we love Jesus our lives won’t be void of hardship. For those who believe in the gospel and the completed work of Christ, we get to navigate through life with a sure hope of salvation that makes the tough things bearable.
Salvation is preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, evil, destruction and more specifically for the Christian, deliverance from sin and it’s eternal consequences and life with Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven after our deaths. For some, it’s hard to believe that to be saved we need only to confess Jesus as Lord in our lives and believe in our hearts that He lived a sinless life, died on the cross at Calvary, and rose again three days later defeating death on our behalf. If we believe that we have to earn our salvation, our armor is weakened, and we live a life plagued by lies, instead of the abundance that God offers us through Him. If we have Jesus, we have life; eternal life is a free gift of God, something we could never earn on our own yet God offers us anyways despite our undeserving.
Ephesians 6:17 says “take the helmet of salvation”, putting Christ Himself on our head, indicating that the knowledge and secure hope of eternity with Jesus protects our brain and has ultimate authority over us from the top of our body to the bottom. In the years of the writing of this epistle, women would wear traditional head coverings, kings would wear crowns, and priests wore a miẓnefet or a migba'at. Today we sport the hat of our favorite teams, hard hats to work, and cowboy hats in the fields. What we adorn our head with both then and now sends a message. As we put on the helmet of salvation each day, we are sending notice to ourselves, the enemy, and the world that Jesus has the final say in our life, and He says “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Being that the helmet is a defensive piece of armor, we can go through the spiritual war we are all in, take hits left and right, and make it out alive with a secure hope in our final destination being Heaven. The mere fact that we will spend eternity in the perfection of Heaven with our Father reduces the pain inflicted by each punch life takes at us. We can take the battles of life before us head on, knowing that our future is secure, we are saved and nothing can change that so long as we believe in our hearts that Jesus is Lord. By the covering of the blood of Jesus alone do we have eternal salvation; that is where our hope must come from. Does the blood of Jesus cover your head? Do you live in vague optimism or eternal hope?
God, remind us of the gospel often. Take away the lies we believe about ourselves and our salvation. Fill us with a security rooted in the work you finished on the cross on our behalf. Help us through the struggles of life, whatever they may be, drawing us nearer to you amidst it all. We can’t save ourselves, God would you save us and the people we have yet to reach.
Amen
