In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Now we are dealing with a moving part. Up to now the only movement of our armor was on or off. In other words, do we have our belt of truth on or is it off? But, once we put the shield of faith on our arm, we can move it around for additional protection. It can be moved to protect a strike against the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, or the shoes of the gospel of peace. It is moveable and it is additional.

In addition to all this: The breastplate of righteousness can keep an attack against us from killing us. But, because of its close proximity to our sensitive being, we will still feel the sting of the strike. The shield of faith, however, is to be kept out in front of us; it can absorb the sharp vibrations as a hurling object strikes it. Also, the shield of faith has extinguishing capabilities.

With which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one: When we are dealing with flaming objects being sent our way, having extinguishing capabilities is a very important characteristic. If a flaming object strikes and sticks to our breastplate of righteousness, we are going to feel the heat. In this case we are talking about a fast moving, flaming, sharp object, an arrow. If this weapon of destruction hits us in the breastplate of righteousness, we are going to feel the shock of the hit, the heat of the flame, and the piercing of the point into our spiritual chest. It won’t be able to kill us; but, it will cause us a lot of suffering.

In addition to all this. These words are telling us to add the shield of faith as an additional protection. We are being encouraged to see the need for adding this piece of armor in front of everything else. We need all the other armor pieces. This piece won’t take the place of all the other pieces. If for some reason a flaming arrow gets past the shield of faith and we don’t have the appropriate plating on the area where it hits, we are going to suffer major spiritual damage. We won’t just experience tremendous pain; we will experience great spiritual debilitation. It can be such a strategic blow that we are kept from being able to help anyone else.