Having your loins girt about with Truth - Gurnall on Ephesians 6:14a

[Ed Walsh]

From Gurnall's
The Christian in Complete Armour
Ephesians 6:14a
having your loins girt about with truth.​

In the first chapter, Gurnall expounded what the loins represent in Scripture:

Our Strength in General: (as go the loins, so goes the whole man)

"The loins are to the body, as carina navi, the keel to the ship; the whole ship is knit to that, and sustained by it; and the body to the loins; if the loins fail, the whole body sinks. Hence, to ‘smite through the loins,’ is a phrase to express destruction and ruin, Deut. 33:11, weak loins, and a weak man." Gurnall​

Our Thinking -

1 Peter 1:13 - Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ​

What I quote below is from chapter 2, just a section that describes three classes of believers that are targets for false and novel doctrines propounded by the Prince of Darkness--those with a weak knowledge of the Truth. I.e., Sound doctrine. Here is where the strengths of our Reformed Faith are the greatest safeguards against false teaching. Let us all the more strive to increase in our knowledge of the Faith once delivered to the saint.

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From pages 210-211:

It is observable that in 2 Tim. 3, where the apostle compares the seducers of that present age to those sorcerers, Jannes and Jambres, that resisted Moses, and shews what kind of persons they were that fell into their snare; ‘such as though ever learning, yet never come to the knowledge of the truth,’ (2 Tim. 3:7). Then he turns to Timothy, (2 Tim. 3:10): ‘But thou hast fully known my doctrine.’ As if he had said, I am out of fear for thee, thou art better grounded in the doctrine of the apostle, than to be thus cheated of it. Indeed, those whom seducers lay in wait for, are chiefly weak, unsettled ones; for as Solomon saith, ‘In vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird,’ Prov. 1:17. The devil chose rather to assault Eve than Adam, as more likely of the two to be caught. And ever since he takes the same course; he labors to creep over where the hedge is lowest, and the resistance like to be weakest.

Three characters you may observe of those who are most commonly seduced.

First, they are called simple ones, Rom. 16:18: ‘By good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.’ Such who mean well, but want wisdom to discern those that mean ill; incautious ones, that dare pledge everybody, and drink of any one’s cup, and never suspect poisoning.

Secondly, ‘children,’ Eph. 4:14: ‘Be no more children, tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine.’ Now, children, they are very credulous, prone to believe everyone that gives them a parcel of fair words; they think anything is good, if it be sweet; it is not hard to make them eat poison for sugar; they are not swayed by principles of their own, but by others; the child reads, construes, and learns his lesson as his master saith, and thinks it therefore right. Thus, poor creatures that have little knowledge of the word themselves, they are easily persuaded this or that way, even as those of whom they have a good opinion please to lead them; let the doctrine be but sweet, and it goes down glib; they, like Isaac, bless their opinions by feeling, not by sight: hence many poor creatures applaud themselves so much of the joy they have found since they were of this judgment, and that way, not being able to try the comfort and sweetness they feel by the truth of their way from the word, they are fain to believe the truth of it by their feeling, and so, poor creatures, they bless error for truth.

Thirdly, they are such as are unstable, 2 Pet. 2:14: ‘beguiling unstable souls,’ such as are not well-grounded and principled. The truth they profess hath no anchor-hold in their understanding, and so they are at the mercy of the wind, soon set adrift, and carried down the stream of those opinions which are the favorites of the present time, and are most cried up, even as the dead fish with the current of the tide.

Gurnall, W., & Campbell, J. (1845). The Christian in Complete Armour (pp. 210–211). London: Thomas Tegg.​