Deeper Personal Study Workbook — Week 1
Ephesians 6:10-13 — Be Strong in the Lord

Executive Summary

Ephesians 6:10-13 opens with a single, deceptively simple command — “be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might” — and this week’s deeper study is largely an exercise in taking that command more literally than a quick reading allows. Class established the passage’s basic shape: a defensive, already-secured posture toward a real, organized, non-human spiritual opponent, built around the paired Greek verbs ἵστημι (“stand”) and ἀνθίστημι (“withstand”). This workbook pushes further into the very first word of the command itself. The verb translated “be strong,” ἐνδυναμόω, is grammatically passive-leaning — a command not to generate strength but to receive it — and the two nouns that follow, κράτος (“might,” an inherent reserve of power, the root behind words like “democracy”) and ἰσχύς (“strength,” inherent capacity or vigor), form a doubled, intensified phrase that Paul uses in only one other place in this letter: Ephesians 1:19-21, describing the very power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him far above every principality and power. That repetition is the central discovery of this week’s study. The strength Ephesians 6:10 commands believers to be strengthened in is not generic religious encouragement; it is resurrection power, named in the identical Greek phrase, deliberately positioned by Paul to answer in advance the very spiritual opposition named three verses later in 6:12.

This has a clear theological shape. If the command is passive — “be strengthened,” not “strengthen yourself” — then Ephesians 6:10-13 stands as a direct, practical outworking of two doctrines this project holds as settled: human inability apart from grace, and the Holy Spirit’s active, ongoing work of empowering believers for exactly this kind of sustained spiritual endurance (Ephesians 3:16, using a cognate of the very word κράτος studied here). Paul’s own testimony in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 supplies the passage’s most honest, pastoral qualification: this strengthening is most often discovered not after weakness ends, but precisely within it, “made perfect in weakness.” The historical background reinforces the point from another direction — Paul wrote this command from a Roman prison cell, guarded day and night by soldiers whose very equipment he was about to describe, to a congregation in Ephesus that had personally, and expensively, renounced occult practice at their conversion (Acts 19:19). Neither Paul’s own circumstances nor his readers’ background offered any basis for natural confidence; the entire passage assumes a strength located somewhere other than personal resources or favorable circumstances.

The Old Testament material folded in from the existing Personal Study Workbook — Daniel’s twenty-one-day delay behind an unseen “prince of Persia,” and Job’s accuser who cannot act without God’s explicit, bounded permission — grounds this whole discussion in a wider biblical pattern: real spiritual opposition, genuinely organized and genuinely dangerous, that nonetheless operates entirely within limits a sovereign God sets and answers with resources already secured. Read together, this week’s material presses one bottom-line, practical point for the student’s own life: the specific area of struggle this week — whatever it is — is not first a call to try harder, but an invitation to be strengthened, in the specific, resurrection-grade sense Paul actually intends, by a power that has already proven itself sufficient to raise the dead.

Class Recap: Ephesians 6:10-13

Class this week began the “Spiritual Battle” series with Ephesians 6:10-13, the introduction to Paul’s classic passage on the armor of God. Paul has spent five and a half chapters describing the whole shape of the Christian life — seated with Christ, built into one new humanity, strengthened by the Spirit, walking in unity and holiness — and only now, in his closing words, names what makes that life a battle. The class traced the passage’s tight structure: verse 10 grounds everything in strength outside the believer (“in the Lord, and in the power of His might”); verse 11 commands believers to put on the armor so they may stand; verse 12 names the true opponent as an organized, non-human spiritual opposition rather than “flesh and blood”; and verse 13 repeats the command, closing on the same word the passage opened with — “stand.” This inclusio (a literary frame in which a passage begins and ends on the same word or idea, binding everything between into a single unit) signals that armor, enemy, and strength all exist to serve one outcome: a believer left standing when the assault is over.

Two Greek words anchored the session: ἵστημι (“stand,” to hold one’s ground) and ἀνθίστημι (“withstand,” to plant oneself against an assault already underway) — a word that will resurface in 1 Peter 5:9 and James 4:7 later in this series. The class made a crucial pastoral point: neither word is offensive. Scripture never commands believers to attack or hunt the devil; it commands them to hold a position Christ has already secured (compare Colossians 2:15). Class also introduced “wiles” (μεθοδεία), the devil’s characteristic mode of stealthy deception, and cautioned — consistent with this project’s commitment to avoid overreach — against building any confident, fine-grained account of a demonic hierarchy out of verse 12’s fourfold description (“principalities… powers… rulers of the darkness of this age… spiritual hosts of wickedness”). What is not in dispute is the reality itself: something more than ordinary human trouble opposes the believer’s growth.

Going Deeper: Original Language

The Exegetical Study for this passage already covered ἵστημι (#G2476), ἀνθίστημι (#G436), πάλη (#G3823, “wrestle”), μεθοδεία (#G3180, “wiles”), and the fourfold ἀρχάς / ἐξουσίας / κοσμοκράτορας / πνευματικά terms of verse 12 in depth. This workbook goes further into three words class did not have time to unpack: the two nouns and one verb that together make up verse 10’s opening command, “be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.”

κράτος — The Reserve of Power

The word translated might in verse 10 is κράτος (#G2904), a noun Mounce’s Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament defines as “strength, power, might, force… a display of might… power, sway, dominion,” citing Ephesians 1:19 among its examples. The standard scholarly lexicon of classical and Hellenistic Greek, Liddell-Scott-Jones, traces the same range of meaning: bodily “strength, might,” then “power, authority,” “mastery, victory,” and finally “rule, sovereignty.”[1] English derivatives built on this root are instructive for a modern reader: “democracy” (from δημοκρατία, “popular government”), “theocracy,” and “autocrat” all carry κράτος inside them, because the word regularly describes not merely strength in the abstract but effective, ruling dominion — the kind of strength that governs and prevails. In the New Testament it appears repeatedly in doxologies ascribing to God “power forever” (1 Peter 4:11; 5:11; Jude 25; Revelation 1:6), always as an attribute belonging to God alone, never as something a creature possesses independently.

David Guzik’s Enduring Word commentary offers a helpful, teachable distinction here between κράτος and the more familiar New Testament word δύναμις (“power,” from which English gets “dynamite”). Guzik writes that κράτος names “inherent power or force… the reserve of strength,” using the picture of “a muscular man’s big muscles” that “display his might, even if he doesn’t use them” — whereas δύναμις is “the exercise of might,” what happens when “the muscular man uses his might to bend an iron bar.”[2] Applied to Ephesians 6:10, the distinction sharpens Paul’s point: God’s κράτος is a bottomless, ever-available reserve of strength that does not run low no matter how often the believer draws on it — unlike human willpower, which is a limited, exhaustible resource. This same word appears again in Ephesians 1:19, forming the direct cross-reference explored below.

ἰσχύς — Inherent Strength

The word translated power in the phrase “the power of His might” is actually ἰσχύς (#G2479). Mounce defines it as “strength, might, power… faculty, ability,” and Liddell-Scott-Jones gives “strength of body,” “might, power,” and “brute force” as opposed to cunning — the inherent capacity or vigor resident within a person, as distinct from the exercise of that capacity. The noun is derived from the verb ἴσχω, “to hold, to have strength to hold.”[3] Paul’s Greek phrase is literally τῷ κράτει τῆς ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ — “the might [κράτος] of His strength [ἰσχύς]” — a doubled expression pairing two near-synonyms for emphasis, a pattern common in both Hebrew poetic parallelism and Pauline Greek when the apostle wants to press a point past any doubt. Rather than two clearly separable ideas, the two nouns together form a single, intensified statement: God’s strength is not marginal or occasional but an overwhelming, settled reality. This is worth pausing over pastorally: Paul does not tell a struggling believer to find a little strength “in the Lord.” He points to a strength doubled over on itself for emphasis — strength squared, so to speak — as the actual resource available for the fight ahead.

This exact phrase, “the might of His strength,” recurs in only one other place in the New Testament: Ephesians 1:19, applied there to the power that raised Christ from the dead. That repetition is not incidental, and is explored fully in the cross-reference section below.

ἐνδυναμόω — The Command to Be Empowered

The verb actually translated “be strong” in verse 10 is ἐνδυναμόω (#G1743), formed from the preposition ἐν (“in”) intensifying the verb δυναμόω (“to make strong,” itself built on the noun δύναμις). Mounce defines it as “to empower, invigorate… mid. to summon up vigor, put forth energy… pass. to acquire strength, be invigorated, be strong”; Liddell-Scott-Jones gives “strengthen, confirm,” and, in the passive, “endow with vitality.”[4] The grammatical form Paul uses in verse 10 — ἐνδυναμοῦσθε — is a present imperative, but it is in the middle or passive voice, not the active voice. This detail matters more than it might first appear. Paul does not command believers, “strengthen yourselves” (an active command, generating strength from within), but something closer to “be strengthened” or “keep on being empowered” (a passive-leaning command, receiving strength from a source outside oneself). The imperative mood means it is still a real command — something the believer is responsible to do, not a promise that happens automatically apart from any response — but what the believer is commanded to do is to keep yielding to, drawing on, and receiving a strength that is not their own to manufacture.

This same verb appears in several other significant New Testament texts worth holding alongside Ephesians 6:10: Paul tells Timothy directly, “be strong [ἐνδυναμόω] in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1) — using the identical verb form for endurance in ministry hardship; he testifies of himself, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13), using the related participle ἐνδυναμοῦντί; and of Abraham, that against all natural hope “he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God” (Romans 4:20). In every case the pattern is the same: the strengthening is received, not self-generated, even though the person strengthened remains genuinely active — obeying, enduring, believing.

Going Deeper: Cross-References

Ephesians 1:18-21 — The Same Power That Raised Christ

Paul does not leave “the power of His might” as an abstract phrase in Ephesians 6:10. He has already used the nearly identical wording, and the same cluster of power-vocabulary, earlier in this same letter, in a prayer for the church:

“…and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” (Ephesians 1:19-21)

This one sentence piles up four distinct Greek power-words in a way English translation can only partly preserve: δύναμις (“power,” #G1411, the exercise of might), ἐνέργεια (“working,” #G1753, effective operative action — the Greek word behind the English word “energy”), κράτος (“mighty power,” literally the same κράτος studied above, #G2904), and ἰσχύς (“might,” the same ἰσχύς studied above, #G2479) — the phrase actually reads κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν τοῦ κράτους τῆς ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ, “according to the working of the might of His strength.” This is the identical doubled phrase, κράτος… ἰσχύς, that reappears word-for-word in Ephesians 6:10. Paul is not being repetitive by accident. He is deliberately identifying the two occurrences with each other: the very same power, described in the very same words, that “raised [Christ] from the dead and seated Him at His right hand” (Ephesians 1:20) is the power a believer is commanded to draw on in Ephesians 6:10 to stand against the devil’s schemes.

The practical weight of this cross-reference is considerable. Ephesians 6:10 is not asking believers to summon a vague, generic religious confidence. It is pointing them to a named, specific, historically demonstrated power — resurrection power, the exact power that reversed death itself and enthroned Christ “far above all principality and power” (language that anticipates, and answers in advance, the very “principalities” and “powers” named as the believer’s opponents three verses later in Ephesians 6:12). The spiritual opposition described in Ephesians 6:12 is real, but it is categorically outranked by the power already available to the one who commands the believer to stand against it.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 — Strength Made Perfect in Weakness

A second, complementary cross-reference comes from Paul’s own testimony about his unanswered prayer for relief from “a thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7):

“And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’… Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

This passage does not use κράτος or ἰσχύς directly — its key word is δύναμις (“power,” the same word studied in the Ephesians 1:19 cross-reference above) — but it illuminates Ephesians 6:10 from a different, valuable angle. Where Ephesians 6:10 states the principle positively (be strengthened in the Lord’s might), 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 shows what that principle looks like when it is tested by real, unrelieved, ongoing weakness that God chooses not to remove. Paul’s own experience models the passive-imperative grammar of ἐνδυναμόω studied above: he does not generate strength by overcoming his weakness, but discovers Christ’s power specifically “made perfect” — brought to its full, intended expression — in that weakness, not despite it or after it ends. For a believer who reads “be strong in the Lord” and assumes this means feeling strong, or having one’s circumstances resolved, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 supplies an essential corrective: the strengthening Ephesians 6:10 commands is often most evident, not least evident, in seasons when the believer’s own natural strength has run out entirely.

Historical & Cultural Background

Paul wrote Ephesians from prison — almost certainly Roman imprisonment in Rome itself, as Ephesians 6:20’s “ambassador in chains” and the wider testimony of Acts 28:16, 20 make clear. David Guzik’s commentary notes an often-overlooked detail about the letter’s composition: Paul wrote “while in the custody of Roman soldiers,” and “it was easy for him to look at the equipment of his guards and see how God has equipped the believer.”[5] The detailed piece-by-piece treatment of that Roman soldier’s equipment belongs to next week’s study of Ephesians 6:14-20; this week’s passage supplies the setup rather than the details — the command to “put on the whole armor of God” (v. 11) and to be strengthened “in the power of His might” (v. 10), addressed to a congregation whose teacher had spent months, if not years, looking directly at armed Roman soldiers as he dictated these very words.

A second piece of background bears directly on why Paul writes so specifically about organized spiritual opposition to a church in Ephesus in particular. Ephesus in the first century was widely known throughout the Greco-Roman world as a center of magical practice, occult arts, and the cult of the goddess Artemis, whose great temple stood in the city. Luke records that when Paul’s ministry there produced widespread conversions, “a large number of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all” — books whose value, Luke notes, “totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver” (Acts 19:19), a striking indication of just how deeply occult practice was woven into the city’s economy and daily life. A church planted in this specific environment, among believers who had personally renounced costly involvement in magical arts, would have had unusually little difficulty believing Paul’s claim in Ephesians 6:12 that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood” — they had, in effect, already lived that reality before their conversion. This claim about Ephesus’s occult reputation is well attested in standard New Testament background resources; the specific application of it as background for Ephesians 6:10-13 (rather than simply Acts 19) should be independently confirmed against a dedicated resource such as the IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament before being taught as a settled point, since that specific volume was not directly consulted this session.

Theological Reflection

Ephesians 6:10’s grammar — a passive-leaning imperative, “be strengthened,” rather than an active command to strengthen oneself — is not a minor point of syntax. It reflects a doctrine this whole series will keep returning to from different angles: the doctrine of human inability apart from grace. Scripture is direct about this elsewhere in Paul’s own writing: believers before conversion were “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1), and Jesus tells His disciples plainly, “without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). If this is true of the Christian life generally, it is no less true of the specific, additional demand of spiritual combat described in Ephesians 6:10-13. A believer who attempts to “stand against the wiles of the devil” (v. 11) by sheer determination, moral resolve, or native courage has misunderstood the passage from its very first word. The command is to be strengthened — to receive, not to generate.

This connects directly to this project’s confessional statement on the Holy Spirit, who “empower[s] for sanctification and service.” Paul has already prayed, earlier in this same letter, that believers would be “strengthened with might [κραταιωθῆναι, from κραταιόω, #G2901, a verb of the same root family as κράτος] through His Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16).[6] Read alongside Ephesians 6:10, this earlier prayer supplies the means by which the passive-imperative command of 6:10 is actually fulfilled: the “power of His might” a believer is commanded to be strengthened in is not a mystical force accessed through willpower or technique, but the ordinary, promised ministry of the indwelling Holy Spirit, who strengthens the believer’s inner life for exactly this kind of sustained resistance. This is not a contradiction of human responsibility — Paul still issues a command, and Philippians 2:12-13 holds both truths together without tension: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” The believer genuinely acts — puts on armor, stands, resists — but the acting itself is empowered, moment by moment, by a Spirit who supplies what human nature, fallen in Adam and incapable of self-generated righteousness, could never produce on its own.

From the Old Testament: The Unseen Court

Class this week studied Ephesians 6:12’s fourfold description of an organized, non-human spiritual opposition — principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual hosts of wickedness. The existing Personal Study Workbook for this series goes to two Old Testament scenes that put flesh on that organized opposition, both worth carrying forward into this deeper study.

Daniel 10:12-14, 20 — The Prince of the Kingdom of Persia

After three weeks of mourning and prayer, Daniel receives a visitor with an extraordinary explanation for the delay:

“Then he said to me, ‘Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come.’” (Daniel 10:12-14)

This is one of the only places in Scripture where the reader is given a direct, narrated glimpse behind the curtain of spiritual conflict. An angelic messenger, sent the moment Daniel began praying, is delayed for three full weeks by a spiritual being called “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” — almost universally understood as a spiritual power exercising influence over that earthly kingdom, not a merely human ruler, since a human king would not “withstand” an angel of God in this way. The delay happens entirely in a realm Daniel cannot see, and is resolved only when “Michael, one of the chief princes,” comes to help. Later in the same chapter, the messenger states that after leaving Daniel he must “return to fight with the prince of Persia,” and that “the prince of Greece will come” next (Daniel 10:20) — describing an ongoing, extended spiritual conflict behind the rise and fall of earthly kingdoms, not a single skirmish.

The word translated withstood is the Hebrew עָמַד (#H5975), “to take one’s stand, to stand.” Brown-Driver-Briggs records precisely the hostile use found here — to “take a stand against… in opposition to” (compare Judges 6:31; Ezra 10:15) and, in military contexts, to “make a stand, hold one’s ground” — so the messenger is describing a spiritual being that planted itself in his path and blocked it.[7] This is a different word from the Greek ἀνθίστημι class studied this week from Ephesians 6, though the underlying image — a spiritual being planting itself in opposition — is strikingly similar. As with verse 12’s fourfold terminology, this passage should be handled with care: it is tempting to build an elaborate, speculative system of territorial spirits assigned to nations from this one narrative detail, and Scripture simply does not give enough information to construct a full doctrine along those lines, however popular that reading has become in some contemporary teaching. What the passage does establish plainly is this: real spiritual conflict occurs in a realm believers cannot see, prayer can set events in motion whose visible answer is delayed by causes entirely outside the one praying, and God’s own angelic forces are engaged in this conflict on believers’ behalf. Daniel is simply told that his prayer was heard immediately — a sobering and comforting word for anyone who has prayed faithfully and waited, without visible answer, far longer than three weeks.

Job 1:6-12 — The Accuser Who Needs Permission

The word “devil” in Ephesians 6:11 translates the Greek διάβολος, “slanderer, accuser.” That same basic idea appears far earlier in Scripture, in the opening scene of Job:

“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. And the LORD said to Satan, ‘From where do you come?’ So Satan answered the LORD and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.’ Then the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?’ So Satan answered the LORD and said, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing?… But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!’ And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person.’” (Job 1:6-12, selected)

The Hebrew word translated “Satan” throughout is שָׂטָן (#H7854), “adversary, opponent” — functioning here almost as a title or role (“the satan,” “the accuser”) rather than a personal name, though the New Testament clearly identifies this figure as a real, personal being (compare Revelation 12:9-10). Brown-Driver-Briggs divides the entry into exactly two senses: “adversary, in general, personal or national,” used of ordinary human opponents (1 Kings 11:14, 23), and “superhuman adversary,” the specific, personal spiritual adversary named in Job 1-2, Zechariah 3:1-2, and 1 Chronicles 21:1.[8]

Two details in this scene matter enormously for how this whole series should be understood. First, Satan’s accusation against Job is not that Job has sinned, but that Job’s righteousness is merely self-interested — strip away the blessings, and the true, faithless heart underneath will show itself. Second, and most important: Satan cannot act against Job at all without first receiving explicit, bounded permission from God — “all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person.” He is not an equal, independent power locked in genuine uncertainty with God; he is a subordinate creature who must ask, and who operates only within limits God Himself sets. This grounds everything Ephesians 6:10-13 assumes but does not spell out explicitly: the organized spiritual opposition named in verse 12 is real and genuinely dangerous, but it operates entirely within the bounds of a sovereign God’s permission — which is itself part of the reason the believer’s posture in this passage can be one of standing firm in confidence, drawing on strength already secured (Ephesians 6:10), rather than facing an uncertain, evenly matched contest.

Personal Reflection & Journaling

1. Ephesians 6:10 commands believers to “be strengthened” — a passive-leaning grammatical form — rather than “strengthen yourself.” Where in your own spiritual life have you been quietly operating on the opposite assumption, that spiritual strength is something you must generate through willpower or discipline alone?
2. κράτος and ἰσχύς together form a doubled, intensified phrase — strength piled on strength, for emphasis. Does your current picture of God’s power for your daily struggles feel that emphatic, or does it feel more like a thin, occasional reserve you are not sure will be there when you need it?
3. Ephesians 1:19-21 identifies the power available to you in Ephesians 6:10 as the exact power that raised Christ from the dead. If you genuinely believed, this week, that resurrection-level power — not merely encouragement or good advice — was what stood behind your ability to resist a specific temptation, what would you approach differently?
4. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 shows Paul’s strength being “made perfect” specifically in unresolved weakness, not after the weakness ended. Is there a weakness, limitation, or unanswered prayer in your own life right now that this passage might reframe — not as evidence God’s power has failed, but as the very place it is being perfected?
5. Job’s trial began with an accusation Satan could not act on without God’s explicit, bounded permission. Does remembering that the “principalities and powers” of Ephesians 6:12 operate only within limits God Himself sets change the tone — more confident, less anxious — with which you approach a specific spiritual struggle you are currently facing?

Prayer Focus

This week, before naming any specific request, simply ask God to make Ephesians 6:10 concretely true in you: not a slogan to recite, but an actual, received strengthening — His κράτος, His ἰσχύς — supplied through His Spirit (Ephesians 3:16) for whatever specific “evil day” this week holds. Where you have been relying on your own resolve rather than receiving what only He supplies, confess that honestly, and ask Him to show you one place this week where standing firm will mean leaning on His strength rather than proving your own.

Sources Consulted This Week

Directly Retrieved/Verified This Session

1. David Guzik, “Ephesians 6 – The Believer’s Spiritual Armor,” Enduring Word Bible Commentary, accessed at enduringword.com/bible-commentary/ephesians-6/ — quoted and paraphrased above regarding κράτος vs. δύναμις and the letter’s Roman-imprisonment context.[9] [10]
2. William D. Mounce, Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament, entries for κράτος, ἰσχύς, ἐνδυναμόω, and κραταιόω, accessed at billmounce.com.
3. Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, entries for κράτος, ἰσχύς, ἐνδυναμόω, and δημοκρατία, accessed at lsj.gr.
4. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, entries for עָמַד (#H5975) and שָׂטָן (#H7854), accessed via biblehub.com.
5. Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, entry for ἰσχύς, consulted only for the derivation of the noun from the verb ἴσχω, where no more recent accessible lexicon supplied the etymology. Thayer’s predates the discovery and publication of the Koine papyri that reshaped New Testament lexicography, and its judgments should be checked against a modern lexicon.
6. Greek text of Ephesians 6:10, 6:11-12, 1:19, 3:16, and Philippians 4:13, verified word-for-word against the interlinear text at biblehub.com this session; all Greek script in this workbook was checked against those pages.
7. NKJV Scripture text for Ephesians 1:18-21, Ephesians 3:16, and 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, verified against biblegateway.com and biblehub.com this session.
8. Acts 19:19 (NKJV), verified as Scripture evidence for Ephesus’s reputation for magical practice.

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[1] William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament, s.v. κράτος, accessed at billmounce.com/greek-dictionary; Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ), s.v. κράτος, accessed at lsj.gr. The Strong’s number given in the text above is supplied only as a lookup identifier for locating the lemma, not as the authority for the definition. The BDAG entry for this term should be independently confirmed before use in teaching. For the English derivative noted here, see LSJ, s.v. δημοκρατία, “democracy, popular government.”

[2] David Guzik, “Ephesians 6 – The Believer’s Spiritual Armor,” Enduring Word Bible Commentary, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/ephesians-6/, commenting on Ephesians 6:10.

[3] Mounce, Concise Greek-English Dictionary, s.v. ἰσχύς, accessed at billmounce.com/greek-dictionary; LSJ, s.v. ἰσχύς, accessed at lsj.gr. The derivation of ἰσχύς from ἴσχω is taken from Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, s.v. ἰσχύς, accessed via biblehub.com/greek/2479.htm; Thayer’s is retained here only because no more recent accessible lexicon supplied the etymology, and the reader should note that Thayer’s predates the discovery and publication of the Koine papyri that reshaped New Testament lexicography. The BDAG entry for this term should be independently confirmed before use in teaching.

[4] Mounce, Concise Greek-English Dictionary, s.v. ἐνδυναμόω, accessed at billmounce.com/greek-dictionary; LSJ, s.v. ἐνδυναμόω, accessed at lsj.gr. The Strong’s number above is a lookup identifier only. Note for accuracy: Mounce classes the form in Ephesians 6:10 with the middle voice (“summon up vigor, put forth energy”) rather than the passive, while listing the plainly passive sense (“acquire strength, be invigorated”) for Acts 9:22 and Romans 4:20; the point made in the text above — that the form is not active, and so does not command believers to generate strength out of themselves — holds on either reading. The BDAG entry for this term should be independently confirmed before use in teaching.

[5] David Guzik, “Ephesians 6 – The Believer’s Spiritual Armor,” Enduring Word Bible Commentary, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/ephesians-6/, noting the letter’s composition in Roman military custody.

[6] Mounce, Concise Greek-English Dictionary, s.v. κραταιόω (“to strengthen, render strong, corroborate, confirm; pass. to grow strong, acquire strength”), accessed at billmounce.com/greek-dictionary. The form κραταιωθῆναι in Ephesians 3:16 was verified against the interlinear text at biblehub.com/interlinear/ephesians/3-16.htm. The Strong’s number above is a lookup identifier only. The BDAG entry for this term should be independently confirmed before use in teaching.

[7] Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB), s.v. עָמַד, accessed via biblehub.com/hebrew/5975.htm, for the senses “take a stand against, in opposition to” (Judges 6:31; Ezra 10:15) and “make a stand, hold one’s ground.” The Strong’s number above is a lookup identifier only. The HALOT entry for this term should be independently confirmed before use in teaching.

[8] BDB, s.v. שָׂטָן, accessed via biblehub.com/hebrew/7854.htm, dividing the entry into “adversary, in general, personal or national” and “superhuman adversary,” and listing 1 Kings 11:14, 23 for the former and Job 1-2, Zechariah 3:1-2, and 1 Chronicles 21:1 for the latter. The Strong’s number above is a lookup identifier only. The HALOT and TWOT entries for this term could not be retrieved this session and should be independently confirmed before use in teaching.

[9] David Guzik, “Ephesians 6 – The Believer’s Spiritual Armor,” Enduring Word Bible Commentary, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/ephesians-6/, commenting on Ephesians 6:10.

[10] David Guzik, “Ephesians 6 – The Believer’s Spiritual Armor,” Enduring Word Bible Commentary, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/ephesians-6/, noting the letter’s composition in Roman military custody.