The Bullet Stops Here

Someone is trying to kill you. There might as well be a red laser targeting-dot wavering on your chest. There is a finger on the trigger and he will take the shot.

Yeah, right. You don’t believe this even a little bit. After all, you’re not a politician entangled in some international scandal. You have not acquired a flash drive that might incriminate a billionaire. As far as you know, you have not angered a Columbian drug cartel.

It’s going to be hard to convince you. In fact, as soon as you realize this all about Satan attempting to spiritually destroy you, any slight anxiety stirred up by the first paragraph will quickly settle into the mundane apathy of everyday life—comfortably devoid of assassins.

Sure, sure. Got it. Satan is trying to kill me. I got that memo clear back in VBS. And just like that, all of this is reduced to a preacher analogy. Something to make you nod your head thoughtfully until the next email or text pulls you back into the flow.

But it’s true. He is trying to kill you. Literally. The word “kill” is not a metaphor. If the hit is successful, you will not figuratively die. The death God describes in Ephesians 2:1 is literal, spiritual death.  Don’t put quotation marks around it. It isn’t “death.” Actually, it is far worse than just your heart stopping and all brain wave activity ceasing. This particular strain of death results in your soul being completely severed from the Creator. Decapitation would be less damage.

Until you fully grasp the literal significance of the real danger you’re in, you will be extremely easy to take out. You’ll be only so much target practice.

God is not kidding around when He tells you to take precautions.  ^“Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11). But no one really buys it. The few of us who might ponder this passage end up briefly considering the imagery of antiquated armor, making a few possible analogies, and then we go on strolling through life just like before, a walking bull’s eye.

If you really believed someone was going to try and shoot you, then you would find a bulletproof vest and you would put it on. Your new Kevlar T-shirt would be a permanent addition to your wardrobe. You would sit up and take notice when God urged you to “put on the breastplate of righteousness” (Ephesians 6:14). But you have to get past the fog of apathy. You have to get past the shallow conclusion that this is all just an object lesson.

It might help if you realize what the bullet is going to do to you. In the lesser assassin-with-a-high-powered-rifle-with-hollow-points scenario, the projectile would hit you in the chest, instantly renovating your vital organs and brutally evicting your soul from your body. This won’t be like that. The scenario we’re talking about is far worse. The vital organ in question is your heart, but not just the CEO of your cardio-vascular system. It is all about the very essence of you. The part of you that feels emotion and shapes your perception of reality.

This is why God is so adamant about protecting your heart. “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23). This is why a breastplate of righteousness is absolutely essential. Without it, Satan will penetrate your heart and that will be the end of you. Your heart won’t bleed to death. It will become hard. Casualties are “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:18). A spiritual autopsy would document “darkened understanding” and death by being “excluded from the life of God.” You’re just as dead as Caesar or JFK. You just don’t know it.

You will continue to go about your days just like a living person, but you will become more and more unreachable—more and more comfortable with the decay of your soul.

The danger is real. “Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:12-13). What a horrifying thought. To discover that your heart has been gradually replaced with an evil heart—an unbelieving heart. A heart that is less like flesh and more like stone. And the most frightening aspect of this is that the worse it gets, the less you care.

You need armor. And your only hope is Jesus because “He put on righteousness like a breastplate” (Isaiah 59:17). He in turn provides “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe” (Romans 3:22). This breastplate is the ultimate bulletproof vest. Nothing can get to you. The trick then is to wear it all the time.

In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was getting ready to make a speech at a hotel in Milwaukee. Before he could begin, an angry man stepped out of the crowd and shot Roosevelt two times in the chest. Fortunately, the speech that Roosevelt was about to present was folded up in his jacket pocket and the paper was thick enough to prevent the bullets from killing him.

The written words of Roosevelt foiled his assassin. But you’re going to need a lot more than a political speech to stop the bullet with your name on it. King David had the right idea. “Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You” (Psalm 119:11). Sin was stopped cold when David kept God’s Word in his heart.

A Christian becomes bulletproof when he puts on the righteousness of Christ in baptism (Galatians 3:27). Then the Word reinforces that protection. It helps to remind you that you are in the crosshairs and that when it comes to spiritual survival, a bulletproof vest will always be in style.