I spent a good bit of my undergraduate career studying medieval and classical literature, which is a fancy way of saying that I love dead languages and have more than a passing fascination with the arms and armor of the Roman and medieval periods. One of the first times I read this passage, I attempted to sketch out all the armor of God as it would have been worn by a Roman legionnaire. There was simply something in these words and ideas that sang out to a young boy’s heart.
Pieces of this passage, though, were given to me later as an assignment for my introductory Greek class. When I first began to examine the words in their native tongue, I noticed something truly beautiful in the ways in which the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of these words. The word used for shield here is thureon, which was one of two common usages for shields during this time period. The thureon was a large, rather cumbersome piece of wood that measured about two feet wide and four feet tall and weighed a bit more than twenty pounds. It was the shield Roman legionnaires used to form a shield-wall, a wall that made the legions almost invulnerable when faced with the unorganized attacks of most of Rome’s foes.
The “shield of faith” is one that works best when used in conjunction with those shields being carried by others. Together these shields form the wall of faith, a wall that can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. We need to join together, as a community, in this way: holding our faith together, encouraging one another to grow, and desiring the good of all who seek out the name of Jesus.