Ephesians 6:13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.
William Gurnall reminds us that our standing is to be done in our proper place, and according to God’s design.
Consider what thou doest out of thy place is not acceptable to God, because thou canst not do it in ‘faith,’ without which ‘it is impossible to please God;’ and it cannot be in faith, because thou hast no call. God will not thank thee for doing that which he did not set thee about. Possibly thou hast good intentions. So had Uzzah in staying the ark, yet how well God liked his zeal, see 2 Sa. vi. 7. Saul himself could make a fair story of his sacrificing, but that served not his turn. It concerns us not only to ask ourselves what the thing is we do, but also who requireth this at our hands? To be sure, God will at last put us upon that question, and it will go ill with us if we cannot show our commission. So long must we needs neglect what is our duty, as we are busy about that which is not. The spouse confesseth this, ‘They made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept,’ Ca. i. 6. She could not mind their [vineyards] and her own too—our own iron will cool while we are beating another’s. And this must needs be displeasing to God—to leave the work God sets us about, to do to do what he never commanded. When a master calls a truantly scholar to account, that hath been missing some days from school, would this be a good plea for him to tell his master, that he was all the while in such a man’s shop at work with his tools? No, sure his business lay at school, not in that shop. —William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (Banner of Truth Trust, 2002), 1:281.
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