Sermon Notes

January 19, 2025

Breastplate of Righteousness

Ephesians 6:14

Last week we looked at the importance of the Belt of Truth and its role in being able to see victory in our lives as we experience spiritual warfare. We saw how truth was the piece of gear that is the foundation and holds all the other parts of the Armor of God together. We also saw how important this piece of gear was because of Satan’s hate for truth. He will constantly and consistently attack the truth and those who have been entrusted with the Truth. We looked at a few different ways Satan attacks truth, but there is one more way that he attacks that I want to look at this morning as we continue in our sermon series “Gearing up”. This attack is probably the most prolific and painful attack we will personally experience. It's when Satan attacks the truth that God is good and more specifically it’s when he attacks that truth that God is good in your own life. This is a tactic that Satan has used since the beginning of these dark days. Satan loves to try to make us doubt the truth that God is good, because this can absolutely decimate a Christian in their walk with Christ. If you were to start reading the biographies of the church fathers and go from those first century Christians all the way to the life stories of the contemporary heroes of the faith, it is very likely that you will find a chapter in their lives about a time when they struggled with doubt concerning God’s goodness in their lives. It’s not just those who are the “famous” followers of Jesus who are attacked and struggle with doubt. These types of attacks happen in the lives of everyone who is a believer. Just a quick google search will show you many Christians who have written about their struggles with the goodness of God even right now. We see that some of Jesus’ contemporaries had the same struggles. An example is John the Baptist. In Luke 7, we have a record of a couple of the students of John the Baptist coming and speaking to Jesus concerning some doubts that John was having. John the Baptist had been imprisoned and was starting to question the goodness of God because of his present circumstances. He had sent these messengers to ask Jesus a very specific question concerning his doubts. They asked, “Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?” Jesus immediately stopped this attack on His truth in the life of John, but how He did is very telling on how we should confront those same types of attacks. Jesus sent an answer to John, but He did not simply answer, “Yes”. Rather Jesus wanted him to come to know the truth himself so that when Satan attacked again, he would know how to fight. He did so by providing evidence of the truth, He told John's messengers, “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the Gospel preached to them.” Jesus did not want John to just take his word for it, but to see what He had done and understand the truth that the life of Jesus brings to us. This seems to be one of the reasons that Paul follows the Belt of Truth with the Breastplate of Righteousness. It is because when we find ourselves doubting the truth of God’s goodness and His goodness in our lives, we can look to the Breastplate of Righteousness and be assured that God is good all the time.

The Breastplate of Righteousness - Ephesians 6:14

Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,

When we speak of righteousness in a Biblical sense, we are talking about our behavior that is morally justifiable or right before God. If we are talking about being righteous in a worldly sense, we would have to say that it is behavior the majority would deem acceptable. The problem is, as we saw last week, the truth is not defined by the majority’s opinion. Since we are talking about Biblical righteousness, we must go to the truth about righteousness that’s found in God’s Word. We see in Romans that there are none that are righteous because we all have sinned and have fallen short of God’s standard of righteousness which is a perfect standard. That's the truth about righteousness. We all have a righteousness problem that the Bible is very clear about. It’s in the solution to this problem that we will see the undeniable goodness of God on display. But before we get to that point in this sermon, we need to start with a truth that is being insinuated here in Chapter 6 of Ephesians. When Paul commands us to put on the entire Armor of God it means there are times, we don’t have the pieces of God’s armor equipped or that those pieces are equipped improperly. This is very true when it comes to the Breastplate of Righteousness because we tend to wear our own righteousness most of the time. It’s the most comfortable and when we wear our own, we are in trouble when it comes to spiritual warfare.

When it comes to the breastplate on a Roman soldier’s armor, two things can be said. First is that this piece of armor was the most important piece when it came to protecting the soldier against fatal blows from their enemy. The very best of materials must be used for the very best protection. This piece of armor and the man who smithed it were the things that a soldier must trust to protect all their vital organs. Second for a Roman, the breastplate didn’t provide protection to one's back. When you think about your breastplate, you must remember that to not put yourself in danger you must stand against your enemy and never retreat. Again this is something Paul would have been aware of when he equated righteousness with a breastplate. Remember the name that Paul used to refer to our enemy was the accuser or the devil. This name is important because the breastplate is what protects us from those accusations. These accusations are meant to be fatal to us. Many of these accusations are going to be about our sins, the devil accuses us before God concerning those sins, He reminds God that He cannot tolerate sin and that our sin must be judged because He is just. To protect ourselves from such accusations we must rely on righteousness. However righteousness must be made of the best materials just like a soldier's breastplate.

Rejected Self-Righteousness

Before the Roman metal breastplate was the standard, a soldier would wear a linen breastplate in battle. We can read about this linen armor all the way back in Homer’s Iliad. We can read about them in a later source by reading the writings that chronicle the life of Alexander the Great and all his military conquests. The linen breastplate would be a piece of armor that everyone would trust in for many years. However when the Romans found a cheap and effective way to produce metal breastplates, they quickly realized how ineffective linen was when it came to fighting their enemies and the newer weapons of warfare. Isaiah 64:6 tells us that our own righteous deeds are not like linen, they are worse. Our righteousness is like filthy rags. When it comes to spiritual warfare, neither rags nor even linen armor will give us the ability to stand against the attacks of our enemy. Nevertheless, many people will still try to use their own righteous deeds to fight these accusations and try to justify themselves before God. We think that we have an answer to the accusations that Satan makes against us. We think that we can use our own deeds to protect ourselves and answer those accusations. However, just like rags on the battlefield, if we try to use our own righteousness, we are going to find ourselves as casualties because of those very deeds that we are hoping would protect us. The problem is we think that we are good with our own armor. Proverbs 30:12 tells us, “There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.” That’s all of us. We have all trusted in our own ragged linen breastplates to save us at one point in our lives or another. But when the accusations come, they will pierce our very hearts because the wages of our attempts at righteousness are still stained with sin — the wage of sin is death. Our own righteousness can never and will never be able to protect us in the way that a breastplate is meant to protect a soldier.

Embracing Christ’s Righteousness

Again we need to be reminded that all the gear that Paul commands us to put on is borrowed gear. It’s not going to be our righteousness that can protect us from our enemy — it’s going to be God’s. As Paul tells us to put on the whole armor of God, surely, he was recalling Isaiah 59:17 when Isaiah speaks of the breastplate that belongs to God. Isaiah states (concerning God), “He put on righteousness as His breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on His head; He put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.” God’s righteousness is the breastplate that we need. It’s made with the perfect material that we must have for an effective breastplate for our battles. But how do we get it? Because God is a just God and because the consequences of our sins is death, the transaction of obtaining God’s Breastplate of Righteousness to use on ourselves is not a simple one. It all starts with a debt that everyone owes — a debt caused by our sins. When we try to pay that debt ourselves, we are effectively putting on our own ragged righteousness by trying to follow rules to pay the debt ourselves. When this happens, we see the truth of Romans 3:20 played out in our lives. It tells us that “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.” We can try to be righteous ourselves following the law, but the only thing that will do is show us how unrighteous we really are. From God’s Word we can see there is no doubt that we cannot pay this debt with our own works. The reason we can put on the Breastplate of Righteous is Jesus Christ. He is the one who paid our debt. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that Jesus became sin even though He never sinned, and He did so to give us the opportunity to put on the Righteousness of God through Jesus Christ. To accept this gift that Christ gives us, we must look at what is written in Philippians 3:9, “and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” That’s how we can put on the Breastplate of God’s righteousness — it’s through faith in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2:8-9 also tells us that, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” For this debt to be paid we must put our faith in Jesus Christ. There is no other way. When we put our faith in Jesus then we must put on the Armor of God instead of our own. Although we have been saved, Satan will still attack us with those same accusations even when we are saved, we can still have a tendency to try to use our own righteousness to combat them. Just like Paul said, we don’t boast in ourselves, but we boast in the cross of Jesus when it comes to those accusations. It’s not what we have done or what we will do, it is what Jesus has done. We are sinners, but we have been forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ and in Jesus there is no condemnation. Satan’s attacks have no ground to stand on.

This takes us back to the attack on truth that we mentioned at the beginning of this sermon and that is Satan’s attack on our belief in the goodness of God. When we start to doubt God’s goodness we look to this breastplate. When it comes to the righteousness of God, we did nothing to earn it because even at our best, our deeds are like filthy rags. Even if we commit ourselves to prayer, Bible reading, and every other religious activity we can think of, we will still not be deserving of it. It’s by grace and grace alone that we can be clothed with the righteousness of God. Jesus did this while we were still His enemy. He did so because of His love for us. This alone is enough to squash any thought of doubt of the goodness of God. When we trust Jesus as our Lord and Savior. There will never be a reason to doubt the Goodness of God in our own lives. We have been forgiven for the unforgivable. We have been made new in Christ, and we are promised a future with Him. If salvation is the only thing that God did for us this would be enough to squash our doubt in the goodness of God once and for all. However that’s not all He has done for us. There is so much more God has done to show that God is good all the time. Therefore we must commit ourselves to knowing the truth of God’s Word to stop these lies.

Living out Righteousness

When it comes to the Breastplate of Righteousness there is another part of it other than the Righteousness of Jesus that was credited to our account when we put our faith in Jesus Christ alone. When speaking of righteousness the Hebrew readers of this letter would have been looking at the Biblical understanding of righteousness that we have spoken of already. They would have understood the importance of imputed righteousness for our sake. When a Roman citizen read this letter, they would have understood this as how one would live righteously in society. Paul knew this and was concerned about this as well. As we have seen this type of righteousness can’t be based upon the majority's opinion, but instead this type of righteousness must come by living by the truth of God’s Word that flows from the Righteousness of Christ. 1 John 3:7 tells us that we do that by treating others like Jesus did. We can do that by being motivated by love. We help those who are in need, we lovingly confront sin, we share the truth, we do everything with humbleness and gentleness. We can’t expect to go through life with the Word of God on our lips but not demonstrated in our lives. For many people our lives will speak much louder than our words ever will.

So we must make sure that we first have access to the Breastplate of Righteousness by putting our faith in Jesus Christ. Then we must make sure we are not trying to fight for our own righteousness, but rather we live righteousness from the righteousness that comes from Christ alone. Then and only then will we be able to stand against the accuser.

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Sermon Notes

Breastplate of Righteousness

Ephesians 6:14

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