“Gird your loins with truth,” Paul
warned. If Christians don’t securely hold on to truth, if we compromise and
dilute His truth, then we open ourselves to devastating attack by our enemy.
So, let’s now look at that breastplate armor held securely by the belt of
truth: Paul calls it for the Christian the breastplate of righteousness.
The word
‘righteousness’ in Scripture often carries the idea of ‘thinking and acting
according to God’s commandments.’ Virtue, integrity, and moral purity are
always considered godly principles.
Seems
simple enough. Obey God’s laws – the more scrupulous the better – and you’ve
got nothing to worry about. But Scripture tells us God has something deeper in
mind when it comes to Biblical righteousness. The former Pharisee and strict
teacher of the law we now know as the apostle Paul wrote to the church at
Philippi what surely confused and angered his former colleagues. Paul said he
longed to be found in Christ, “not having a righteousness of my own derived
from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness
which comes from God on the basis of faith . . . (Philippians 3:9)
It seems he must have been paying attention to
Jesus when the Lord said to the crowd of disciples, curious onlookers, and some
religious leaders during His Sermon on the Mount: “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the
kingdom.” (Matthew 5:20)
The scribes and
Pharisees were meticulous in their observance of the Law of Moses, as well as the
multiple oral interpretations of those laws. According to the two major
theological schools of the time, oral traditions were as authoritative as the
written laws handed down by Moses and the prophets. Those same oral traditions
informed them that if they rigorously followed their traditions, God would
consider them ‘righteous.’
Yet, can you imagine what the crowd thought to themselves when the Lord Jesus told His disciples that unless their righteousness surpassed
that of their religious leaders, they would not enter the kingdom of heaven! If the holy religious teachers of the Temple will not enter
heaven, then who can ever be saved?
Who, indeed?
The New
Testament writers repeatedly inform us, Biblical righteousness is not defined so
much by what we DO, but by what we ARE. And when our breastplate
of righteousness is held securely by the belt of truth, our lifestyle will change
to reflect the works and words and attitudes of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Righteousness becomes imputed to us
– accredited to us by God – not on the basis of works, so no one could boast. It
is imputed to us on the basis of our faith (Ephesians 2:8).
That’s
why painstaking observance of religious rituals and good works by themselves save
no one. Why? Because sin is so much a part of our inherited nature, written like some genetic code into our souls
– which is why sin invariably leads us away from the Savior.
That was St. Paul’s lament. Feel
this man’s passion as he cries out about his sin nature: “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I
am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I
hate. . . . For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil
that I do not want . . . I find then the principle that evil is present in me,
the one who wants to do good . . . Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free
from the body of this death? (Romans 7:15-24)
Yet, Paul also recognized the good
news that God calls us righteous because of our faith. Here is Paul again, this
time from Romans 3: “But now apart from the Law, the
righteousness of God has been manifested . . . even the righteousness of God
through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe . . ..” (Romans
3:21-22). And once again he writes, “[N]ot having a
righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith
in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith . . . (Philippians
3:9)
Did you
catch that? The righteousness that God gives to us is based soley on our faith.
No wonder Paul didn’t stop with the bad news of Romans 7. He moved
directly into chapter eight this way: “Therefore there is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Why? It’s all about our
faith in the finished work of Jesus on that Calvary cross. It’s all our faith
in God’s gracious gift to those who believe that Christ’s blood atoned for
their sins.
Let me repeat myself for emphasis:
It is not so much what we do as what we ARE that imputes or credits to us God’s
righteousness. It’s about what God already did the moment we are born again. Just
as God calls us ‘saints’ – meaning ‘holy ones’ (e.g. Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians
1:2; Ephesians 1:1; Philippians 1:1) because of our relationship with Him
through His Son, God calls us ‘righteous’ for the same reason. Our righteousness,
our ‘saintliness’ in God’s eyes is a fait accompli.
That’s God’s view of us;
Holy and righteous. But if the enemy can create doubt in your
mind about God’s truth concerning what we already ARE in Christ, if he can
insinuate uncertainty in the unalterable promises of God, then he will have created
a critical chink in your breastplate – and he will go in for the kill.
That is why
girding ourselves securely with Biblical truth is so important to the Christian.
God’s truth alone produces the kind of faith that sets us FREE from fear that
God lied to us about of His promises, or that His promises don’t apply to us
because of our past sins.
A few days
before I presented this message to the people I regularly meet with at a 55+
community, I had a sad conversation with an elderly woman in another facility.
I asked her if she loved Jesus. She said she did not. I asked her why. She
said, “Because He doesn’t love me.”
Her matter-of-fact
statement startled me, and I tried to reassure her of His love for her, of His
willingness to forgive whatever it is she thought Christ would not forgive. But
I could tell she wasn’t buying any of it. She’d been made a prisoner of war in
this supernatural battle.
I implore
you. Take this danger seriously. Don’t let it happen that you or those you love
be taken captive by Satan’s lies.
None of the
Roman soldier’s armor was superfluous. Each piece was vital to his safety, and to
his ability to successfully battle the enemy. In the same way, none of our
spiritual armor is superfluous. Each piece Paul mentions in this sixth chapter
of Ephesians is rooted in God’s truth and is vital to our safety – and the
safety of others. Our armor, all of it, is vital to our ability to successfully
wage battle against our supernatural enemy.
Gird your
loins with God’s inerrant and infallible truth. Read it. Study it. Memorize it.
Then put on the breastplate of righteousness which God credits to you through
your faith in the sacrificial atonement of Christ.
Next time
we’ll look at the shield of faith, another important piece of our supernatural
armor.
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