It has been two years since I last picked up William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour. I don’t know why I set it aside, but I’ve been intending to get back to it for some time now. Having finished Volume One of The Existence and Attributes of God (whew!), now seems like a good time. For those who aren’t familiar with this work, it is English Puritan William Gurnall’s exposition of Ephesians 6:10–20, first published in 1662. I take up where I left off, at verse 12: “The nature of the War, and character of the Assailants.”
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Gurnall brings a “Reproof to Such as Are Not True Wrestlers.” Among these are they who “wrestle with sin, but they do not hate it.” He writes:
Others wrestle with sin, but they do not hate it, and therefore they are favourable to it, and seek not the life of sin their deadly enemy. These wrestle in jest, and not in earnest; the wounds they give sin one day, are healed the next. Let men resolve never so strongly against sin, yet it will creep again into their favour, till the love of sin be quenched in the heart; and this fire will never be die of itself, the love of Christ must quench the love of sin, as Jerome [saith] excellently [one love extinguishes another.] This heavenly fire will indeed put out the flame of hell; . . . Then and not till then will the soul’s decree stand against sin, when the soul hath taken Christ into his bosom.
—William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (Banner of Truth Trust, 2002), 1:119–120.
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