“…and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,”
The breastplate on a Roman soldier really covered more than the chest. It extended down and covered the abdomen as well. So the entire trunk of the body, in the front at least, was protected by this piece of armor.
Notice please, the order he uses in donning this spiritual armor. Here in verse 14 he has said,
“Stand firm therefore, having guarded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness…”
If a soldier has put on the belt that provides for the girding of his loins, and then over that the breastplate that covers his torso from collar bone to abdomen, everything but the limbs and head are now protected.
But look at the spiritual application.
First truth, and then righteousness are to be applied. Righteousness is right standing with God, which cannot be had until the truth is learned in reference to sin and salvation. So truth must come first.
Now last week I did say that this truth Paul is talking about is Biblical truth that pertains to the fundamental doctrines of our faith, upon which all other scripture learning is founded. But it cannot be denied, nor would I want to deny, that understanding of the gospel message for salvation itself is not only included, but primary and prerequisite to the apprehension of any spiritual truth.
Nothing else of a spiritual nature can be understood until the person is first born from above. And the truth that must be known in order to appropriate to one’s self the gift of salvation, is the gospel message.
This takes us right back to the basics, and I never want to assume that everyone in the room is secure in the knowledge of those basics. So let’s cover them today.
THE GOSPEL (GOOD NEWS)
When we say ‘the gospel’, we are saying ‘the good news’. That’s what gospel means. Good News.
Specifically, it is good news of the way to be right with God, through faith in Jesus Christ. Hear what Paul calls the gospel, in I Corinthians 15:3,4
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.”
Now when it says, ‘according to the scriptures’, it means that these things were predicted in the scriptures; being, in Paul’s mind, what we refer to as the Old Testament.
When he says, “…that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures”, he is referring back to Isaiah 53:5-12. I want us to read that passage together today.
“But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; by His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong; because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.”
That’s a long passage to read, but well-worth the reading and full of blessing for the one who understands that Isaiah was talking about what the Messiah would suffer for us all.
Paul understood, and he referred to it as the first part of this powerful gospel message.
Then he said, “…that He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures”, and he was thinking of Psalm 16:8-10
“I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; my flesh also will dwell securely. For Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol; neither wilt Thou allow Thy Holy One to undergo decay.”
Notice also that there in I Corinthians 15 he was careful to tell us that Christ was buried. He was dead. People don’t keep dead people in the living room, or in a bed, waiting for them to revive. They bury them. And in those days it was important to bury dead people right away. In the case of Jesus, He had to be put in the ground before sundown, for two reasons. One was that it was their law that if a man was hung on a tree he was not to be left there, but was to be buried before sundown. That is found in Deuteronomy 21:22,23
Secondly, in Jesus’ case, He died at the time of Passover, which would officially begin at sundown on the day of His crucifixion, and to preserve the holy day they had to put Him in the ground. It is why they asked Pilate’s permission to take him down and bury Him.
He was dead. He was crucified for our sins according to the scriptures, He was buried, having been confirmed dead by professional soldiers, and He rose bodily from the dead on the third day, which was also predicted by the scriptures.
That is the gospel. That is the good news.
Now having established that in your hearing, whether anew or for the first time, I want to take you to Romans 1:16,17
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith’.”
RIGHTEOUSNESS
Now this brings us to the next thing it is important to make clear from our text.
When Paul talks about putting on the breastplate of righteousness, there is a tendency in our thinking, if not thought through carefully, to assume that he means we are to act righteously.
In fact I am certain that it is often taught as though this word ‘righteousness’ refers to a personal integrity. A show of good character.
I have heard this entire passage preached, including all the pieces of this armor, as though the Christian is to put on a sort of suit of high moral fortitude and thereby live an exemplary life for the on-looking world.
This is wrong teaching, and I want to spend a few minutes clearing it up.
This is probably the most common error in the church, and the reason for that is that it is the most common misconception in the mind of man concerning a relationship with God and a future that includes Heaven.
We’ve had much discussion on this issue recently in our mid-week Bible study, and I have addressed the issue with you before, and I will again. I’m referring to the error of a works-based acceptance with God.
You may remember my reference in the past to a television show I stumbled across one night while channel surfing. I was looking at the menu on the screen, and saw that on the Roman Catholic channel the title of the program about to come on was “Justification: Not by faith alone”. Well, the title itself had me bristling, so I had to watch it to find out what was going to be said. I hoped that the title was some clever play on words to grab the watcher’s attention; but my hopes were soon to be dashed.
This young priest stood behind a lectern and began his lesson, and he wasn’t very far into it before I realized that he was using Paul’s own words from Romans, and twisting them to say that Paul was teaching justification by works. The very thing that the Apostle Paul spent his entire ministry defending himself against; legalism, trust in the works of the Law; this man was saying Paul was teaching! I was astounded!
But the problem does not only exist in the Roman church, Christians. They may teach the error as their doctrine, but even in fundamentalist churches that preach grace and justification by faith alone, apart from the works of the Law, often go on to deny that very teaching by sending out a message that in order to be ‘good Christians’ there is a certain life style that must be maintained, and they even send the message to the unbeliever and the seeker that certain things must be put out of their life before they’ll be accepted in church!
There are many things about the church in our society that turn off potential seekers, and this is one of the biggest. They are already starting with an unclear and distorted mental picture of the church.
I was doing some surfing in reference to this topic, and on the Clarifying Christianity web site they listed responses they got to the question, ‘how do I get to heaven?’ Here are the most common ones:
Everyone becomes an angel and goes to heaven when they die.
Whoever obeys the Ten Commandments will go to heaven.
Whoever goes to church will go to heaven.
Whoever does more good things than bad things will go to heaven.
Whoever believes in God will go to heaven.
Whoever has not killed anyone or done anything really bad will go
to heaven.
The nature of the fallen mind of man is to believe that he has to work to get anything. People will often even become angry if you insist that salvation and heaven are gifts and there is nothing they can do to attain to them.
If I admit that salvation is by grace through faith alone, and that I can play no part in it, I am relinquishing control.
I am placing myself entirely in God’s hands, and acknowledging His Sovereignty and Lordship. That goes diametrically opposed to the fallen nature.
Let me say this another way. As I have pointed out before, the very foundation of sin is self-pride and the desire to be one’s own god. Satan used this temptation in the Garden, and thereby deceived Eve, and her husband ate with her, and they died spiritually.
The same evil desire to usurp the authority of God and be one’s own god, is what feeds the presumption that we can or must play some role in being right to stand in God’s presence.
This is not just error, believer, it is deadly evil and our hearts must be guarded against it, because in the most sincere and mature Christian it will continue to sneak into our thinking and our speech if we are not alert.
John Flavel wrote, “Did Christ finish His work? How dangerous it is to join anything of our own to the righteousness of Christ, in pursuit of justification before God! Jesus Christ will never endure this; it reflects upon His work dishonorably. He will be all, or none, in our justification. If He has finished the work, what need is there of our additions? And if not, to what purpose are they? Can we finish that which Christ Himself could not complete? Did He finish the work, and will He ever divide the glory and praise of it with us? No, no; Christ is no half-Savior. It is a hard thing to bring proud hearts to rest upon Christ for righteousness. God humbles the proud by calling sinners wholly from their own righteousness to Christ for their justification. “
And MacKintosh said the same thing a little more concisely:
“If our works are to be put in with Christ’s, then He is not sufficient. We dishonor the sufficiency of His atonement if we seek to connect aught of our own with it, just as David would have dishonored the Lord by going forth to meet the Philistine champion in Saul’s armor.”
And here I remind you, Christian, that Paul has exhorted us to put on the full armor of God. It is God’s armor, not Saul’s
I want to make one more point of contrast, then we’ll spend some time talking about what this righteousness is that Paul tells us to protect our hearts with.
In Romans 10:4 and 5, Paul says this:
“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness.”
Throughout the entire New Testament, only one Greek word is used that is translated ‘righteousness’, except for right here in Romans 10:5
In every other case, the word is used that refers to justification and right standing with God.
I took the following from Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words.
“…he (speaking of Paul) uses it (this Greek word) of that gracious gift of God to men whereby all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ are brought into right relationship with God. This righteousness is unattainable by obedience to any law, or by any merit of man’s own, or any other condition than that of faith in Christ… The man who trusts in Christ becomes ‘the righteousness of God in Him’ ( II Cor 5:21), becomes in Christ all that God requires a man to be, all that he could never be in himself.”
Now here is the contrast. In Romans 10:5, it is this word that is used early in the verse, “For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law…” In other words, if he is to be right with God based on his keeping of the law…
But in the second half of the verse, “…shall live by that righteousness” is the only instance in the New Testament that a different word is used, and it refers to a self-righteousness. A righteousness that trusts in one’s own ability for attainment.
So to paraphrase, Moses wrote that if a man is to be right with God by keeping the law, then he must live by that self effort, because he is not approaching God by faith.
Of course, Paul goes on in Romans to establish the fact that one can only come to God on the basis of faith, and not by the keeping of the law.
And he repeats himself to the Philippians.
“More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, 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…”
Phil 5:8,9
GOD’S ARMOR
It is God’s armor, not our own. We are to put it on, but it is of His making entirely.
In the previous sermon we discussed being girded with truth, and saw that specifically, the truth we are to be girded with is that which pertains to our salvation, and the fundamental doctrines of the faith so that we might be protected against error.
The very next piece Paul tells us to put on, as of primary importance, is right standing with God; justification.
It is our justification that protects us from error.
It protects us from error that comes from without. When a Christian understands that his justification, his right standing before God, is entirely of God and not of himself, then he is prepared to recognize doctrines that base salvation on works. He is able to recognize error that tells him he has any power whatsoever to ascend on his own.
It protects from error that comes from within. It lets him see that his security is complete in Christ, because Christ’s work was sufficient, and therefore he must not listen to the inner voice that tells him he is a failure and unacceptable to God. When he understands that he is forever declared right with God through the atoning work of Christ only, he will not be puffed with pride in his own ability to stand, but will come back humbly and often to the Throne in gratitude and submission.
Paul did not say, ‘put on the helmet of righteousness’, believer, because salvation is not of the head, but of the heart.
God gives us a new heart, indwells there, and from there begins to transform the mind.
“But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ - that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” Romans 10:8-10
So I’ll close, reminding you that here in Ephesians 6 Paul is telling the Christian to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. He is reminding us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the forces of wickedness. He is telling us to stand firm and to be able to resist in the evil day; and he is telling us how to go about those things.
If you want to stand, if you dare to resist, if you would be aware and prepared for the devil’s schemes, here is Paul’s advice. Know what you believe. Know what the scriptures teach you about the efficacy of Christ’s atoning work for you, that it is sufficient and complete forever, and let that knowledge guard your heart against error. And stand firm.
Not only for yourself, but for your brothers and sisters in the Lord. I know a lot of what I’ve been saying to you today is already clear in your thinking and perhaps you’re feeling like you didn’t learn much. But my duty is to be certain that you are clear about them, and I feel constrained to remind you that there are many even in the Christian church who have not understood these basics, and they continue to flounder as a result.
That is why Paul wants you to have your heart guarded with these truths, so that you may follow his admonition in verse 18 of chapter 6, and be a blessing to the body of Christ. “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.”
