The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.

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Paul writes to the Ephesians: “In every situation take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16) 

We explore this passage more fully in chapter 15 of What Every Christian Should Know about Satan. However, a few observations here may prove helpful. 

First, the evil one wields a quiver full of “flaming arrows.” In New Testament times, soldiers often covered the tips of their arrows in coarse fibers dipped in pitch and then set on fire. These flaming arrows were shot at different trajectories toward enemy lines, presenting the double threat of piercing iron and scattering flames. 

In a similar way, Satan hurls a seemingly endless volley of temptations at us: thoughts of pride, selfishness, fear, doubt, disappointment, greed, anger, vengeance, lust, and judgmentalism. They strike at different times and in different ways, but they all are deadly in their intent. 

What’s more, the evil one fires these temptations from a distance. They seem harmless at first – even alluring, like the sparks of a welder’s torch, or the glowing debris of a volcanic eruption – until they descend on us, too close and too late. “Satan attacks by indirection – through good things from which no evil is expected,” writes Marvin Vincent. “There is a hint of its propagating power: one sin draws another in its track: the flame of the fire-tipped dart spreads.”

When good things like beauty, comfort, and morality enter our line of sight, we often embrace them in self-centered and satanically inspired ways. Then, beauty catches fire and becomes lust; comfort bursts into greed; and morality morphs into self-righteousness. The evil one’s fiery darts are an awe-inspiring sight to behold, but they are deadly if not quenched. 

Second, believers are urged to take up the shield of faith, which successfully douses the fire and absorbs the piercing arrowheads of satanic assaults. The shield described here is the Roman scutum, a heavy, oblong piece of armor four feet high and two and a half feet wide, often curved on the inner side and designed to connect with other shields for maximum protection of the whole infantry. Soldiers fashioned the shields from two layers of wood glued together and covered, first, with linen, and then with hide, which could be soaked in water to extinguish fiery darts. Finally, soldiers bound the shields with iron above and below. Francis Foulkes writes: 

The apostle knew that only faith’s reliance on God could quench and deflect such weapons whenever they were hurled at the Christian. It is of interest also to recall that the Romans had a system of locking these large shields together for their corporate defense against their enemies and for attack.

Faith does away with dependence on self and holds fast to the Lord, our shield and protector. As King David writes, “My shield is God Most High, who saves the upright in heart” (Ps. 7:10 NIV). Further, the Lord is “my shield and the horn of my salvation” (Ps. 18:2). And the writer of Proverbs notes, God is “a shield to those who take refuge in him” (Prov. 30:5). When we rely fully on the Lord as our shield, we rob Satan’s fiery darts of their necessary oxygen.

Third, Paul addresses this message to Christians, whom the evil one besieges. Followers of Jesus are encouraged to put on the full armor of God so that we may stand against the devil’s schemes (Eph. 6:11). Satan’s tactics are many and varied, and we must always wear the full armor God supplies. 

No doubt, Satan assaults unbelievers as well. But they already are in his grasp and under his power, and they willingly follow the evil one’s lead. Therefore, it is less necessary for the evil one to continuously bombard them with temptations; their flesh is naturally inclined to evil. Christians, however, have been delivered from sin’s bondage. So, Satan engages in warfare because, as citizens of Christ’s kingdom, we are the evil one’s true enemies.

William Gurnall, a seventeenth-century Puritan minister, wrote a three-volume treatise on the armor of God, titling his 1,472-page exposition The Christian in Complete Armour.  Here is a snippet: “In heaven we shall appear not in armour but in robes of glory; but here they [the pieces of armor Paul specifies in Eph. 6:11-17] are to be worn night and day; we must walk, work and sleep in them, or else we are not true soldiers of Christ.” In this armor we are to stand and watch, for “the saint’s sleeping time is Satan’s tempting time; every fly dares venture to creep on a sleeping lion.”

In this passage, Paul refers to Satan as “the evil one” (or “wicked one”) to draw attention to the nature from which his malicious actions flow. Matthew Henry notes:

Our enemy the devil is here called the wicked one. He is wicked himself, and he endeavours to make us wicked. His temptations are called darts, because of their swift and undiscerned flight, and the deep wounds that they give to the soul; fiery darts, by way of allusion to the poisonous darts which were wont to inflame the parts which were wounded with them, and therefore were so called, as the serpents with poisonous stings are called fiery serpents. Violent temptations, by which the soul is set on fire of hell, are the darts which Satan shoots at us. Faith is the shield with which we must quench these fiery darts, wherein we should receive them, and so render them ineffectual, that they may not hit us, or at least that they may not hurt us.

Guarded from the evil one (2 Thess. 3:3)