The Breastplate of Righteousness
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 around 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.
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with
all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in
mind, be alert and always keep on praying for
all the Lord’s people.
Ephesians 6:10-18
Ephesians 6:10-18
Righteousness, what does that mean? One of the definitions from dictionary.com is “the quality or state of being just or rightful” but “righteousness” (dikaiosynē) in Paul’s letters more often than not means ‘justification’, that is, God’s gracious initiative in putting sinners right with himself through Christ1. “Through Christ” are two fundamental words that are easy to skip over, but they are two words that change everything.
“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags2; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”3 This is our nature, a nature that we cannot escape. We do not have the strength or capacity to change our nature. By ourselves, we are fallen, and not righteous but are like filthy rags2. However, we have been given a righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus, “We are clothed with a righteousness which is not one’s own but Christ’s, to stand before God not condemned but accepted”1“This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe4 and “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God“5.
Because of the sacrifice, Jesus made on the cross, our stench has now been covered by his fragrant offering of Himself . Jesus did not ask us for any payment of any kind for doing this. He did it out of His infinite love for us, because there must be payment for any sin, and we could not pay that high a price without being destroyed by the “Wrath of God”. This is the grace that Jesus showed to us, this is how we can come into the presence of God and not be destroyed, and this is how we, who believe this good news (Gospel), will have eternal life with Jesus, who is seated at the right hand of God6.
How then does our inherited righteousness serve as our breastplate? There is no cost to this grace in which we became clothed in the righteousness of Jesus. And it is ok to just believe in the sacrifice Jesus has made for you. – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”7. You will still be seated with Jesus at the right hand of God through all of eternity, filled with as much joy as you can handle. However, each day I find it becomes increasingly more difficult to sit back and do nothing. I don’t want to continue being evil, the more I experience God’s love for me, the more I understand what Jesus did for me on the cross, and the more I begin to understand that I am God’s Son. I just want Him to be proud of me. I want to have more and more of a relationship with him. Out that comes a desire to serve God and serve others.
I no longer want to submit to sin, I no longer want to hate others. I have a personal issue with habitual sin, which God is really helping me with, I have not conquered it yet, but in Jesus strength I am well on the way to resisting it. Now the thing is why have I chosen to stop sinning in this way! There are many reasons here are a few of them:
- It is our human nature to sin, but we have a spiritual nature, and we were created in the image of God, in the image of love. When a young man courts and falls in love with a young woman. He will naturally stop carousing with his friends, to make time to be with his new love and most of all to please her. So, falling in love changes your nature, as it does when you love God. You just want to please Him.
- The more you get to know Him, the more you realise He really has adopted you as a son. And He is the best dad in the world. And, personally, I just want Him to be proud of me and to say to me well done good and faithful servant.
- When you live in a relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit you are constantly exposed to the purest and most perfect love, and in that love, you witness how much God loves all of us, believers and non-believers alike, and this rubs off, and it is very difficult not to start loving others as ourselves
However, we still live in a fallen world, and the seductions of sin are around us, so sometimes it is hard to choose the path of love. And sometimes we fall and choose sin, we choose not to resist Satan. Paul says:
So I find this law at work: although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7:21-25
Romans 7:21-25
If we fall Jesus has paid the price, so we pick ourselves up and say sorry to God, and we get back to loving him. This what we call “Grace”
To finally answer the question I asked a number of paragraphs ago. How then does our inherited righteousness serve as our breastplate? Well, it wraps our love of God round our core and makes us want to resist the Devil and his Schemes. There is nothing supernatural about it. It is simply an offshoot of our love for God.
