Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Ephesians 6:10-17
A Roman Soldier would have been dressed in a longish robe. So the soldier would have needed a belt to hold his robe up to stop it wrapping around his legs and tripping him up in battle. It would also help to strap on the rest of his armour. The belt formed a foundational part of his armour, as he wrapped it around himself. This is why Paul mentions the belt first and names it the belt of truth, as truth is fundamental to the rest of God’s armour.
We live in a world that has come into conflict with God, and conflict with His grace. The world no longer sees God as relevant, even as a made-up concept. We are cynical about the truth. We have spin doctors who spin their own versions of the truth. There are different faiths, which have mixed and matched from each other. There is no absolute world truth. If you dare to object to another’s version of the truth, that is politically incorrect and shows prejudice, racism etc. We are forced into believing what is currently trendy.
There is nothing for us to hold onto, nothing that everyone agrees on. This such a cunning scheme of the Devil, a lie of the trickiest kind. If he can confuse us and keep us battling with ourselves how much harder does it make it for us to turn and see the real truth?
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” 1 What other sets of values can claim that. We know that God is perfect, totally truthful and incapable of falsehood, with many other perfect attributes. If this were not true then he could not be God. This axiom means that every word of the Bible MUST be true because God is truth. The truth may be presented as poetry, an allegory or parable to help us understand, but it is still the truth. If a single word is a lie, then the Bible is not of God. To a greater or lesser extent, I have been reading the bible for twenty years, personally, I have not found a single falsehood, and don’t know of anyone who has in the last 10,000 years or so. We must, therefore, conclude the bible is the “God-breathed TRUTH”.
Reading the Bible (or the scriptures) is fundamental to learning the truth, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 2. Free to stand firm and resist the Devil and his schemes. The Devil has been defeated and is in chains, so the only thing he can do is lie to us, and he is very good at it. His first lie to Eve of “Did God really say….” Was so good, it caused the fall of all creation. 
Our defence is knowing the truth, the truth will always defeat lies, it is our first line of defence. When Jesus went into the wilderness, after his baptism, He combatted and defeated Satan by quoting “Scripture” to combat each of the three lies that Satan brought. We have access to the same knowledge Jesus used, the truth. My advice to myself is to study the truth (the Bible) and for me to learn the truth by heart. If I do this then when I am tempted and lied to by the Devil I can quote the truth and defeat temptation too.
The truth is the foundation of our armour to combat sin, it is no good saying “God is gracious and will forgive me, so I might as well continue sinning, I am already saved.”. This is another lie, an excellent lie because it is mostly true. Yes, God’s grace does cover us continuing to sin. But, “We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” 3. I find that the more I learn of who I am in Jesus and how much love he has for me I really don’t want to sin, unfortunately, I still do, so “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” 4 To develop our relationship with Jesus, and our desire to stand firm and resist temptation, speaking the truth to Satan will defeat his lying temptations.
Finally, and I am talking to myself more than anyone else here, learning the truth to resist the Devil is a very good reason to read and study the Bible, but the best reason is that, how else are we going to learn of who Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God are and build our love for them if we don’t read about them.
