If you were watching our service last week, you
might have thought that Bible passage sounded familiar. Yes, it’s the
same one we used last week, and no, I did not forget to change the slides on
the power point. Paul, in this passage, describes the full armor of
God. Last week we talked about the belt of truth. This week, we
talk about the breastplate of righteousness.
That word, righteousness, is really kind of off-putting to
a lot of people. We hear “righteousness” and we tend to think of
self-righteousness. And self-righteousness is not good at all.
Self-righteousness is a feeling that we are better, that we are somehow morally
superior to other people. That’s not good. Nobody likes being
around someone who thinks they’re better than everyone else. And we
especially don’t like being around someone who thinks they’re morally superior
to everyone else. In fact, one of the surest ways for a Christian to turn
people off is to have that attitude that we’re better than others.
But while Christians are not supposed to be self-righteous,
we are supposed to be righteous. Righteousness means to be morally right
or virtuous. As Christians, that what you and I are supposed to be.
We are supposed to have “the breastplate of righteousness” in place.
Righteousness is referred to as a breastplate. What’s
a breastplate? A breastplate is something you wear around your
chest. It protects your heart, your lungs, things like that, and other
vital organs.
The thing is that a breastplate is a purely defensive
thing. It’s something we wear to protect ourselves. It’s not an
offensive weapon. In fact, it’s not a weapon of any kind. I mean, i
guess you could take it off and bonk someone over the head with it, but that’s
not the point of it. A breastplate is worn solely for your own
protection. It protects your vital organs from attacks.
So that tells us a couple of things. For one, it
tells us that we are not supposed to use our righteousness as a weapon.
We try to be morally right and virtuous, but we don’t use that as a way of
attacking someone else. That’s what happens when we’re self-righteous,
right? We’re saying that we are the ones who are virtuous, we are the
ones who are holy, we are the ones who have it all together, and the rest of
you don’t. The rest of you need to take a lesson from us, because we’re
so great.
That’s a misuse of righteousness. That’s trying to
use our righteousness as a weapon. And when we do that, we’re not being
righteous or virtuous at all.
So, we wear the breastplate of righteousness for our
protection. But protection from what? Protection from an attack,
obviously. But whose attacks?
Well, remember what we talked about last week. The
Apostle Paul, who wrote the letter to the Ephesians, told us we are to put on
the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and all the rest of the
armor 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.”
If we remember that, we’ll be able to resist the temptation
to be self-righteous. Because the fact is, it does not matter whether
we’re better than anyone else. I mean, I don’t think God looks at us that
way anyway. God does not compare us to each other and say this one is
better than that one and that one is worse than this one. God looks at us
in comparison to Himself, and of course we all fall far, far short in that
comparison. And so, God looks at each one of us and sees the same thing,
a sinner in need of forgiveness and salvation.
But even if we could be better than someone else, it would
not matter. It would not do us any good. Because, as Christians,
other people are not our enemy. Our battle is not with them. Our
battle is against the devil’s schemes. Our battle is against the powers
of the dark world and the spiritual forces of evil.
Now, in writing that other people are not our enemy, the
Apostle Paul was not being naive. Paul knew full well what people could
do to him. Paul was constantly in trouble with both the religious
authorities and the governmental authorities. He was thrown in prison
more than once. He ultimately was killed because of his faith in Jesus.
But Paul’s main concern was not with life on earth.
Paul’s main concern was with eternal life. And that’s what all this armor
of God is supposed to protect us against--the attacks on our eternal
life. The attempts of the spiritual forces of evil to turn us away from
God.
The breastplate of righteousness does that. Being
morally right, being virtuous, will protect us from the spiritual forces of
evil.
How does it do that? Well, how can we be morally
right? How can we be virtuous? By following Jesus Christ. By
doing the things Jesus told us to do. Loving God. Loving our
neighbors. Loving our enemies. Praying for those who persecute
us. Teaching others to do those same things. Going and making
disciples of Jesus Christ. If we do those things, we will be morally
right and virtuous. And we will be protected by the breastplate of
righteousness.
You put it that way, and in a way it sounds kind of
simple. And in a way, it is simple. It’s simple, but it’s not
easy. Loving God sounds easy--probably all of us would say we love
God. But if we truly love God, we need to show that by doing all those
other things Jesus told us to do, those things I just went through. And
that’s the part that’s not easy.
Loving our neighbors, for example. Some of our
neighbors are easy to love. There are some of our neighbors we have no
problem loving. But there are other neighbors who are a little harder to
love, right? In fact, some of our neighbors are a lot harder to
love. And it’s not necessarily because they’re bad people or
anything. It can be, but it may not be.
Have you ever had someone just
kind of rub you the wrong way? There’s just something about them, you
know? They mean well, they’re not bad people, but--you just don’t like
having to deal with them. And neighbors like that are just hard to
love. But we need to try. If we’re serious about putting on that
breastplate of righteousness, we need to try.
And what about loving our
enemies? Boy, that’s one our whole country is struggling with right
now. When you listen to our national discussion right now, you don’t hear
a whole lot of love. You hear a lot of anger. You hear a lot of
frustration. You hear, sometimes, outright hate. And you hear, many
times, a refusal to even listen to anyone who has a different opinion.
Loving our enemies does not seem to have a lot of support from society right
now. But it’s still what Jesus told us to do. And if we love God,
if we want to really have that breastplate of righteousness, we’ll make our
best effort to do it.
We could go through all those
things we mentioned that same way. Praying for those who persecute us,
making disciples of Jesus Christ, teaching others to follow the teachings of
Jesus--those are all hard things for us to do. But if we love God, if we
truly want to wear that breastplate of righteousness, we need to make our best
effort to do it.
We need that breastplate of
righteousness, because again, remember who we’re fighting against. Other
people are not our enemy. Our enemy is the powers of the dark
world. Our enemy is the spiritual forces of evil. That’s who’s
trying to attack us. And the only way we can defend ourselves against those
powers and forces is with God’s virtue. The only way we can defend
ourselves is with the morality that comes from God. Our own virtue and
morality will not be enough to protect us. But God’s virtue and morality
will. And again, they may or may not protect us in our human lives on
earth. But they will protect our salvation and eternal life.
The reason righteousness is a
breastplate is that righteousness is never supposed to be used as a
weapon. Righteousness cannot be used to attack someone else--if it is, it
becomes self-righteousness, and self-righteousness is never good or
helpful. Righteousness is purely defensive--the way we protect ourselves
from the attacks the powers and forces of evil throw at us. And with
God’s virtue and morality, we will have all the protection we need.
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