1 Thessalonians 5:8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.
There is a lot to unpack in today’s verse, so hopefully we don’t get bogged down with details. But hang in there with me. We will get through it all!
The first question I had upon reading this verse was, “What is meant by belonging to the day?” A look at previous verses helps clarify that response. Paul was discussing behaviors that are typically associated with the night – sleep and drunkenness, which typically leave a person unaware of what is going on and careless. But we belong to the day, not the night. We should be sober and aware of what is taking place, not like the negative behaviors of the night (1 Thessalonians 5:5-7).
The next portion of our verse speaks of our breastplate of faith and love. This indicates we should be living our lives like soldiers, prepared for battle. A breastplate is a piece of armor that protects the chest. This protects our hearts. Faith is an inward thing while love is outward. Thus, our breastplate of faith protects our heart through our faith in God to meet our needs and be our protection. And likewise, the breastplate of love radiates outward to others. We love God and love others.
We end the verse with the helmet. – the hope of salvation. This one left me confused so I had to do some digging through study notes in my Bible and commentaries to discover what this could mean. A helmet is designed to offer protection for your head. Within your head we have the mind. It is easy to be influenced by the world since we process everything in the mind. The enemy can easily sway our thinking through little things like what we see on television or what we hear on the radio (2 Corinthians 11:3). But when we equip ourselves with the hope of salvation helmet, we can block the attacks of the enemy on our minds. We protect our minds from his sly little daggers of untruths and sin.
Putting on these protective pieces of armor are choices we make. We choose to have faith and believe in the promises of God. We choose to love others as we are directed by Jesus Himself (Matthew 22:39). And we choose what we feed our minds and what we believe. Each of these choices are strengthened by having a firm foundation of faith and hope which comes from regularly being in the Word and through fellowship with like minded individuals.
It is my hope that you can easily put on these pieces of armor each day and stand strong against enemy attacks.
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