Sandals of Peace (Ephesians 6:15)
All right, so we are at number four: the sandals of peace, or the shoes of peace. We're getting to know our equipment, the armour of God that is given to us. And just to kind of get our minds back into it, we're in Ephesians 6:10-20, and we're studying this amazing passage where God gives us an armour. This is not our armour; this is God's armour, and it's for a spiritual battle against this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And we've been reminding ourselves that these are not things that we come up with; these are things that come from the gospel, that come from the good news. These are things that we have through a relationship with Christ. This is what gives us the strength and the tools and the equipment to live the Christian life, literally to survive. And so it's a pretty serious matter. And Paul uses the analogy of Roman soldiers' equipment—all these things that they wore for battle—and it just turns out to be an incredibly powerful analogy that God inspired in His Word for us.
I'm not going to re-read the whole few verses, but I would encourage you to just kind of pause and read Ephesians 6:10 all the way down to 15 out loud. But for now, I'm just going to focus on: "Stand therefore and having as shoes for your feet"—this is verse 15 now—"having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace."
And so God gives us, in His armour, shoes for our feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. Now, I learned recently that Alexander the Great, the ancient Roman commander, apparently won a lot of his battles because of the mobility—the fastness with which he got his soldiers to move across vast territory. And they needed shoes that made them ready to be able to move so quickly to overtake their enemies and to even take them by surprise and to conquer so much territory. And so the image here that we're getting is not of just any ordinary shoes, but God gives us extraordinary soldier shoes, like what good Roman soldiers had back in the day. Picture cleats—these just tough shoes with cleats, maybe with spikes and hobnails on them. Good Roman shoes for battle gave you traction; they gave you grip. They gave you a way to stand with assurance and confidence. They were tough; they protected you. If something fell on your shoes, you wouldn't just break your shoes; they were tough, they were kind of like safety shoes that people wear in factories and on construction sites. And of course, like I said, they managed to make them light at the same time so that soldiers could move fairly quickly.
And what is all of this then, spiritually speaking? Well, Paul is basically telling us that it's a frame of heart. It's a frame of heart. Peace is deep down knowing that you're okay with God. You're okay with God. I think the biggest and most important verse here is where Paul tells us that because of what Jesus did for us by His perfect life, His blood shed on the cross, His resurrection, something has happened. Something has happened when we believe this message and God works in our hearts and that message is united by faith. This is what Paul says in Romans 5:1: "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
And this is what the shoes are meant to represent. Paul says these shoes represent the readiness given you by the gospel of peace. The gospel of peace! Peace is what we have with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Peace is the shoes that get us ready, that make us nimble, that make us able to go into life. So I want to just take a minute or two here and think about that peace, if that's okay with you as we close.
Paul says peace is what we get through our relationship with Jesus Christ. You know, at some level we can be at peace with God mentally—up in our heads. We know that because of what Jesus did for us, we are at peace with him. The lines of communication are open. God has reconnected the lines. The legal barrier is gone. Because of what Christ did, our guilt and our sin and our shame and our past and our even present brokenness—that all doesn't matter. The connection is re-established. We receive forgiveness of our sins. We receive the love of God. We have hope in who God is for us. We have hope in the future. The battle has been won, in a sense.
But that's not enough. We need to ask ourselves: am I actually, though, at peace with God? It's one thing to know that the telephone line, the connection, has been re-established between you and the other party, between you and God. It's another thing to say: "I am on speaking terms with God. I'm not mad at Him anymore. I don't want to be mad at Him. I'm not upset, I'm not disturbed with Him. I'm going to trust Him." And this is the readiness of the gospel of peace. It's the readiness that said: "I'm going to open my heart to the God who loves me."
There's this line in the stories of Narnia, which are these just beautiful children's stories written by a guy named Lewis. And the girl discovers all of a sudden that this figure in Narnia is not just a human, it's a lion—that Aslan in Narnia, who rules Narnia, whom she hasn't yet met, is actually a lion, the great lion. And she says, "Oh, I thought he was a man." And she asks, "Is he quite safe? I would feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe," she said. "But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
And this is, I think, what we need to remember. We have peace with a God who isn't safe, but He's good. He's the King. He's sovereign. We can actually trust Him. We can actually have peace with Him. And that peace equips us to go into life and to face the hard things of life, to even deal with the past. It gives us the readiness to move on and to love and to serve and to pour out our hearts to others. We can actually go where He wants us to because we have peace with Him. We have a heart that isn't doubtful anymore, isn't sluggish, but is just eager to go with God, eager to talk to Him.
And so let me ask you, and even ask myself this morning: am I at peace with God? Is there unfinished business? Is there something that I need to repent of? We get that peace from going to Jesus and just talking to Him. From going to our Heavenly Father and saying: "Lord, You never said that You're safe. You are God and I am not. Of course You're not safe. But You have shown me that You are good. And I'm going to trust You today. I'm going to trust You with the future. And as I trust You, I know that You're going to give me the shoes of peace, and the peace of God, which surpasses understanding, will guard my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus."
