Murray - The Christian Armour Eph 6:10-18

Murray Christian Armour Eph 6:10-18

Murray’s work, The Christian Armour, was written as Europe was in turmoil and war. He sees parallels between the world of his day (politically and the war perspective) and this passage of Scripture. Murray’s main focus in on the spiritual warfare. Note that this is an inspirational/motivational work that has a few verses each chapter, and the author launches into exhortations from them. This is not high expositional work then.

Murray Christian Armour, was written as Europe was in turmoil and war. He sees parallels between the world of his day (politically and the war perspective) and this passage of Scripture. Murray’s main focus in on the spiritual warfare. Note that this is an inspirational/motivational work that has a few verses each chapter, and the author launches into exhortations from them. This is not high expositional work then. Murray Christian Armour

The Christian Armour: Being Studies in Ephesians 6:10-18

BY J. O. F. MURRAY, D. D. MASTER OF SELWYN COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE LONDON: as HAYMARKET, s. w.
1917
LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS
John Owen Farquhar Murray

The Rev. John Owen Farquhar Murray (6 May 1858 – 29 November 1944) was an Anglican clergyman, and Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge from 1909 to 1928. wikipedia.org

Table of Contents of Murray Christian Armour

I. THE FOE. 9
II. GOD OUR CHAMPION 14
III. OUR WRESTLING 18
IV. THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT 24
V. THE GIRDLE 0F TRUTH 30
VI. THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 36
VII. THE PREPARATION OF THE GOSPEL OF PEACE 42
VIII. THE SHIELD OF FAITH 47
IX. TAKE THE HELMET 0F SALVATION 53
X. THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT WHICH IS THE WORD OF GOD 59
XI. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 65
XII. PRAYER 72

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    Sample Chapter IV. THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT from Murray Christian Armour

    IV. THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT
    taken from Murray Christian Armour

    “ The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. “—Romans 8:12.

    WE have seen that we are called to take our part in a world-wide war. Whatever form the fight may take, whether with machine-guns, bombs, and hand-grenades in the trenches, or with patient, watchful, resolute self-discipline in the citadel of our inner life, the fight is spiritual, that is personal. It is the man behind the gun that counts in the trenches. It is the man in us, “the inner man,” that counts in the battle with temptation. The Armour, therefore, that we need for the battle of life must in like manner be spiritual. In one word, it is character.

    THE EFFECT OF CHARACTER

    We have not far to look for an illustration of this fact. Watch what happens when a body of young men, like the freshmen at a University, have to face life for themselves for the first time, or when, as in war time, men of all ages find themselves confronted by new situations. Old habits are suddenly broken off, old companions left behind. Everyone has to face new work with a new set of associates and new temptations.

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    At first everyone is at sea. But soon the mass begins to sort itself. Differences of brain power show themselves. Some are quicker than others in picking up a new job, or a new subject of study. They master it, and see how to apply its principles for them selves. Others feel lost and dazed, and always want someone to tell them what to do.

    Again, some stand out as leaders. Their companions wait to know what line they will take, before doing anything themselves. Others stand outside the stream, and go their own way regardless of what the rest of the world is saying or doing. These differences are not in the brain, but in will power. And strength of brain and strength of will do not always go together. A man may be clever, yet always take his tone from the company in which he finds himself. He may describe himself justly as a man whom it is no use trying to drive, and really be an ass.

    There is yet another direction in which, sooner or later, differences appear. Some keep straight all the time. Their faces are set in the right direction. They come out of the trial better men than they went in; perhaps with a poorer opinion of themselves; certainly, if they have made mistakes and learnt to correct them, with wider sympathies and greater power to help others. Others in various degrees go wrong. They are unmistakably worse at the end of the trial than they were at the beginning.

    Here again the line of cleavage cuts clean across the lines we have already noticed. There are clever men and strong men on both sides of it, as well as men naturally dull and insignificant. The deter mining factor in this, the ultimately decisive direction, is not strength of brain or strength of will, it is moral strength. The armour of light that a man

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    needs if he is to overcome in the battle of life is Character.

    CONSCIENCE THE SECRET OF CHARACTER

    What, then, is the secret of character? On one side it is quite simple. Our last Study has put it into our hands. No man can win through this fight whose face is not set in the right direction. It is not enough to wish no harm to anyone. It is rare to find a man deliberately choosing evil. No man can keep straight, unless he forms and resolutely maintains the habit of asking himself before he comes to any decision, not Is this the easiest or most popular thing to do, or the thing that will bring me most pleasure or profit? but Is this my duty? The world is possessed by a will to pleasure or a will to power. We can only escape being enslaved to it by resolutely devoting ourselves to the will to right.

    This, notice, is what St. Paul teaches in our text. He is calling the Christians of his own day “ to give up making provision for the flesh, ” to give up, that is, living for their own pleasure, and to live instead in the realized presence of God, Who, as he and they believed, would in their generation make a public manifestation of His salvation. To do that was ” to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light,” or, as he expresses the same thought in the closing words of the passage, “ to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” And his words have a present application. If men were living then in a time when God was going by most startling judgments to waken them out of sleep and force them to reap the fruit of their forgetfulness of Him, we who have had eighteen centuries of practice in reading the signs of His appearing, should need no elaborate

    THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT 27

    argumwt to convince us that “ our salvation is nearer to us to-day than when we first believed. ”

    OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE

    If so, there are three points to which we shall do well to give heed. First this: The way to arm yourself for the fight is to obey your conscience. To follow the guidance of the light that lighteth every man is in itself an equipment for battle.

    I have not hitherto, you may have noticed, made any division between those who call themselves Christians and those who do not, partly because it is still a fair presumption that most Englishmen have been baptized and would class themselves as Christians; but not altogether. The fundamental distinction is where I put it, between those who accept the law of duty, and those who are in fact out to please themselves. And this line of cleavage cuts across the distinction between those who do and those who do not profess to be Christians. Many say ” Lord, Lord ” with great fervour who will yet be found outside the kingdom, because they have been doing their own will, and not the will of their Father in heaven. Many, on the other hand, who do not yet know the Lord, have the root of the matter in them.

    For they follow the light that lighteth every man, and that light, whether a man knows it or not, is Christ.

    We, who profess and call ourselves Christians, will do well to lay this fact to heart. To face it resolutely is the first sign that we are awaking from our slumber, and are at least not afraid to come to the light, that it may show us what evil we must put away before we can don our armour.

    8 THE CHRISTIAN ARMOUR

    YOU CAN, IF YOU WILL

    My second point is this: No one can excuse himself from undertaking this task by saying that he is too stupid or too weak. The line of cleavage between those who set their faces to do right and those who do not, runs, as we have seen, right across the distinctions between the bright and the dull, the commanding and the insignificant. A clever man may be a rogue. A strong man may set himself to do evil “ with both hands earnestly,” while a man who knows himself to be a fool and a weakling may set himself to do right. He is what God made him, and God will help him to make the best of himself. It is surprising what quiet strength and wisdom such a man develops in God’s Hands. God often chooses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise, and the weak and contemptible to abase the strong.

    CHRIST CAN MAKE A MAN OF YOU

    My last point is this: As the light is Christ, so is the Armour. The will to good, with which we identify ourselves when we choose the good, is a real will. The power not ourselves making for righteousness, both in this world without and in our hearts within, has been manifested in Jesus Christ. He is only waiting for our consenting will to possess us wholly. In the light of that thought we grasp what is meant by the fact that in our baptism we put on Christ, and that in Holy Communion we feed on the Body with which He was clothed, that He might do His Father’s will. Faith in Christ has in it the secret of character. If you are a Christian, you can hope to be a man.

    THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT 29

    It was said of Frederic Denison Maurice, “ He always impressed me as a man who was naturally weak in his will; but an iron will seemed to work through him.”

    0 living will that shalt endure
    When all that seems shall suffer shock;
    Rise in the spiritual rock,
    Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure.

    Murray Christian Armour