It’s 70 A.D.. The ancient historian Josephus is in Rome to witness the greatest spectacle of his life. It starts outside the gates of the city.
“During the hours of darkness the whole military force had been led out in companies and battalions by its officers… For Titus and Vespasian had spent the night there, and now, as dawn began to break, they emerged, crowned in laurel wreaths and wearing the time-honored purple clothes…
As they walked forward to take their seats, all the soldiers raised an immediate cheer, paying abundant testimony to their valor, while Titus and Vespasian sat unarmed, dressed in silk garments and wearing their laurel wreaths. Vespasian acknowledged their acclaim… Afterward, donning the triumphal robes and sacrificing to the gods stationed at the gate, they sent the procession on its way through the theaters to give the crowds a better view.
It is impossible to do justice in the description of the number of things to be seen and to the magnificence of everything that met the eye, whether in skilled craftsmanship, staggering richness or natural rarity. …but resembled, as it were, a running river of wealth.
The greatest amazement was caused by the floats. Their size gave grounds for alarm about their stability, for many were three or four stories high, and in the richness of their manufacture they provided an astonishing and pleasurable sight.
The procession was completed by Vespasian, and, behind him, Titus.” Josephus, Wars of the Jews Book 7.
The Roman ‘triumph’ was a great event in the ancient Mediterranean world. It was an experience granted by the government to a military commander who victoriously concluded a war on behalf of Rome. In an article of the Villanova University library online, it’s suggested that “the triumph was the honor that men dreamt of achieving. It was thought to be the pinnacle of the Roman military, and often political, career. The general himself was supposed to be the main attraction…” And as Mary Beard writes in The Roman Triumph, “the triumph, in other words, re-presented and re-enacted victory. It brought the margins of the empire to its center.”
The commander, as Vespasian and his son Titus who also led the war, rode in an elevated chariot and were so garbed as to very specifically represent the Roman deity Jupiter Optimus Maximus - Jupiter best and greatest. So literal was this imagery taken, that an additional passenger stood behind them whose job was to whisper in their ear that they’re yet mortal humans.
Spoils of the campaign led the parade procession. In the case of Pompey the Great’s triumph parade, there were so many spoils, that the parade took two days to complete. In Vespasian’s triumph, the spoils came from Jerusalem and its temple, and were so valuable as to fully provide the funding to build the great colosseum in Rome that stands today.
Following the commander and his procession, came his soldiers who participated in the campaign. As they marched through the streets of Rome, they sang songs about their leader whose day of veneration this was. The soldiers were blissful. They were grown wealthy from the grace of their commander who shared the spoils of war with them. The fighting men were also proud of their accomplishments, to have vanquished those the commander identified as an enemy. Proud to have endured the hardship, and shared camaraderie with their commander. They knew they wouldn’t be there without him.
Reading Josephus’ description with all the lofty grandeur, one might mistake it for a passage from John’s Revelation as a picture of heaven. We can indeed recognize the self aggrandizement of all the deific overtones and display of wealth as yet another attempt to replace God with the worship of self.
Again Paul is using here, historical information commonplace in the life of the Roman Empire. He captures imagery of ordinary knowledge to ripen wisdom from God in the mind of contemporary believers. This imagery is worth revisiting for the modern Christian to grasp the precision and depth of Paul’s message.
In the modern vernacular of the American gospel, one would be tempted to assume the focus of the triumphal parade that Paul describes would be the Christ-follower. As if it was our triumph.
In fact Paul said that Christ will lead us in thriambeuo - an acclamatory procession of victory. Christ leads us in the procession where we honor, applaud and celebrate, not ourselves in the likeness of Vespasian, but His victory as the vir triumphalis - man of triumph. Recognizing that the imagery that Paul uses is of the Roman triumph, it’s easier to properly see that the believer’s place in the procession is behind the leader, and singing songs about him. The event is about the victorious leader: Christ the Captain of the army of God, as Joshua knew Him, our commander in spiritual warfare. He is The vir triumphalis. One that makes no apology for His deity. Like the Roman soldiers, we can be thankful and blessed to participate in His triumph since we too are benefactors of the commander’s grace and generosity.
For the born again, Christ following, seeker of the path of God, this is the only possible outcome of the trouble, conflict and spiritual warfare they might experience. This is because, for all the reasons we’ve discussed thus far, there is no power in creation that can undermine the will of God or His promises to His people, despite the frailties of humanity and the current allowances given for sin to run its course. Dudley Hall of Kerygma Ventures instructs “We fight with weapons that cannot be matched by the forces of evil or the schemes of the world.”
God has made provision for the proper equipment of His people. It’s already done and given. There is no need to find a Christian quartermaster to whom one must give justification in asking for the armor of God. Christ has given it already. It’s His armor.