THE FABRIC OF GOD'S ARMOR

  This finishes up my series on the Garments of God.

  So, there it is — God always provides Garments for preservation. No one was ever forced to wear His Garment but were free to put them on or leaving them. Whenever anyone was without his Garment, he was exposed to the fiery darts of the Wicked One! Even with the Garments worn, there was aways some vulnerability. For instance, Noah got drunk, and in his insobriety and lack of vigilance, his Garment of God was stolen by Ham, according to the ancients.

  Of course, it was not the Garment that was so important but the faith in wearing the Garments of God!

  David’s “Garment” was not even of fabric. He “wore” God to his battle with Goliath. His Garment was faith! Paul explained that when he wrote, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).

  David’s armor was of a different fabric, but it was still fabric. Substance is hypostasis in the Greek. It is a firm foundation. Stasis in the Greek is “standing firm.” Hypo means “under or beneath;” thus the firm foundation.

  God is three stasis, all standing firm. Theologians write of the three states of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and refers to those states in homeostasis, or foundations of the same kind and standing firm.

  Thus, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost are one foundation of different substances but of the same kind, and that is Supreme and full of Glory.

  With that explanation, “wearing” God’s “Coat,” the Holy Ghost is as if wearing the Flesh of God, or Jesus. When one exclaims, “I have Jesus!” that means that he has the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Son is the visible “fabric” of the Father, and the Holy Ghost, the invisible “fabric.”

  Faith is knowing that the invisible fabric is the real fabric, therefore David’s faith was real and tangible. His faith was in the invisible fabric of God, and he depended on Jesus for his faith.

  He was a man after God’s own heart. Yahweh said of David, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after Mine own heart, which shall fulfil all My will” (Acts 13:22).

  Paul wrote the word, kardia, for heart. Kardia is the innermost part. After God’s own kardia was to fulfill His Will but it is also the central organism of life. After God’s own heart is after His innermost Man, Jesus Christ!

  David put on faith, and had on himself the invisible Flesh of God, or Jesus. He had the heart of God to do the Will of God. His “coat of armor” was inside of him, and he wore it proudly! It was his flesh that he bared to Goliath, but the Spirit of God killed Goliath.

  Why were shoes not part of David’s armor? Surely, he wore flesh of lambs on his feet, but his real armor was invisible to Goliath, but also remember that the shoes of the whole armor of God was for peace, and not battle.

  Jesus wore simple “armor,” and it was removed, “They said therefore among themselves, ‘Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be:’ that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, ‘They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots.’ These things therefore the soldiers did” (John 19:24).

  Get that? The soldiers did not know scripture, but the apostle John did. The soldiers were fulfilling prophecy unbeknownst to them! Urim and Thummim were used to steal the Garment of Christ. The Garment of Jesus was so much more than the simple robe. Scripture describes it as a seamless one-piece tunic. They could not rent it, or it would be worthless. That tunic may still exist to this day.

  They humiliated Jesus by making Him virtually naked, but they did not remove His Power and Strength. The Garment of Jesus was not his chiton, but His invisible foundation — the Holy Ghost.

  Jesus was wearing the “Priestly Garment” that was called “Melchizedek” in Abraham’s time. Melchizedek, as He is described, was the Innermost Part of God to which Abraham tithed. Tithing is always to God, and Abraham recognized Melchizedek as the innermost part of Yahweh.

  Not only did Abraham tithe to the Innermost Man, but Jacob wrestled with Him, and Nebuchadnezzar saw Him in the fiery furnace saving three men (Dan 6).

  The tunic of Jesus was not His real Garment of Preservation; it was His Innermost Part. When Jesus died, he gave up the Ghost (Luke 23:46). Luke saw Jesus give up the Ghost and so did Mark and John. They saw the Person, Jesus, release His Innermost Part.

  Luke had seen Jesus assume the Innermost Part: When Jesus was baptized, it was not by the efficacy of the water but a Ghost, “And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him…” (Luke 3:22). Luke recognized the Innermost Part of Jesus at His baptism and at His crucifixion.

  That Part of God was Spirit who looked like Jesus. The shape of the Holy Ghost was the shape of Jesus’s body! The Holy Ghost IS Jesus and IS God of a different substance. That stasis is the foundation of the Man, Jesus.

  But how is it known that the Garment of Jesus was the Holy Ghost?

¹⁵ If ye love me, keep My commandments. ¹⁶ And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; ¹⁷ Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (John 14:15-17)

  Adam had a coat of skin put on him and so did Eve as they found grace. With Noah, it was perhaps the same thing. However, it was not the coats that preserved Adam and Eve but their restored faith in their Creator. They finally understood that they had been had, and that the Word was the Truth. They revered their Father again, and He put grace on them.

  The Word slayed lambs for the skins — things that He created. God put some of Himself on the two until the real Lamb of God, Jesus, would come. It was not the coat of skins that kept Adam and Eve from the wiles of the Devil, but the Innermost Part of God. They had received the Holy Ghost!

  That is substantiated by some of the patriarchs, even Abraham, who was protected by God and when he died, he “gave up the Ghost” (Gen 25:8). When Adam died, he too would have given up the Ghost because he remained faithful until the end. It was not the skin that preserved him, but the Innermost Part of God!

  Jesus described His Innermost Part as the “Spirit of Truth” (above). “God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). The Innermost Part of God is Spirit, and the “fabric” is truth. In other words, the Spirit is real whether He can be seen or not!

  Jesus also described His Spirit as the “Comforter” (parakletos) — a helper and assistant (Strong’s Dict.).  A “comforter” is thought of as a heavy one-piece fabric that warms and preserves in the cold. Essentially, that is what the Holy Ghost of Jesus does for Christians. Rather than keep the flesh warm and secure, it does that for the innermost part of man — the human soul. The Comforter warms from the inside, and not as a covering.

  Jesus put on the Comforter at His baptism. His physical baptism was merely the baptism of John with water, but God stepped in, and gently wrapped Jesus with the bodily shape of the Comforter. It was not the water that baptized Jesus, but God ascending His Innermost Part to preserve the Man until His crucifixion. He does the same with Christians. That is why, “To die is gain” for those in Christ as Paul remarked (Phil 1:21). There is one baptism (Ephes 4:5) and that is certainly not physical immersion in water but the aspersion of the Holy Ghost!

  Christians, at their death, give up the Holy Ghost because they are in no need of protection because they are no longer in the visible realm where Satan can seduce them.

  No longer think of the “Garments” as material fabric but fabric from another world. Not only is substance physical but invisible. The unseen is just as real as the seen. That is why Paul said that what is seen is evidence of the unseen.

  With that, Christians “wear” the Garment of Jesus, but not on the outside, but the innermost part, the soul. Sacred literature describes the soul as the shape of man from the fingertips to the innermost part. The human soul is an image of us in another fabric which we cannot understand.

  The Garment of Adam is the same “Garment” that Christians wear, but now “it” is the very Lamb of God, the Innermost Part of God, called “Jesus”!

  And that concludes the commentary about the Garment of God.

(picture credit: Holy Spirit Fire Anointing Ministries)