Ephesians 6:14b. Having on the breastplate of righteousness.
In addressing you from the first part of this verse, we endeavoured to bring before you the nature of the duty it enjoins. We must remember that the special use of the armour of God, here commended to the believer, is to defend the soul from the assaults of its spiritual enemies. We have tried to show that those enemies are, in the first place, the devil, the author of all sin; and that the evil affections, passions and feelings, inherent in us by nature, are his work. They are spoken of here as the enemies of the soul – the very emissaries of Satan. They join in league with him to destroy the soul, alluring it away from God and from godliness, and making an alliance with the sinful and vain objects of time and sense, which are also in a sense under the power of the adversary.
Although the believer’s soul has a new, spiritual life, it is surrounded with snares, difficulties and hardships against which he has to contend, but the Lord will grant him certain victory over them at length. It is not enough for the believer to have his loins girt about with truth and be prepared to meet his enemies in the contest, and hold firm the garment of his profession – in belief and experience of the truth – continually well secured to his soul; he must put on the armour of God to enter into the realities of this spiritual conflict. The next of his defensive weapons is here commended to him, as provided by Christ, his King and Leader: “the breastplate of righteousness”. We must now explain the term and show you its importance in the actual business of true Christian conduct.
It is almost unnecessary to explain what is meant by a breastplate literally. It is a covering of metal that ordinary weapons of attack cannot penetrate, placed over the breast to defend that most vital part of the body. So our text must mean that righteousness does the same service to the soul when put on as part of the spiritual armour of God. Our explanation may then be confined to the term righteousness and to the practical use of it here enjoined.
The term righteousness has a wide meaning in scripture language, and in the economy of grace. (1) It refers to an attribute of God’s character, and is equivalent to what we mean when we speak of the justice of God in administering His moral government and in all His dealings with His rational creatures. It is that essential perfection in the nature of God which disposes Him to give to all beings their due. In this sense, men cannot be said, in their fallen and lost estate, to have the righteousness of God as a living principle in their minds; indeed they do not even have any semblance of how it is in the mind of God. But there is a sense in which the righteousness, which is an essential perfection in the eternal and unchangeable character of God, becomes truly a breastplate to the believer’s soul. We can refer to this with more propriety when we have first spoken of the other meanings of the term, in which it is obviously intended to be understood here.
(2) In the gospel, this term signifies the righteousness of Christ – that is, the full and perfect obedience which He, as the surety of sinners in the covenant of grace, gave to the whole law of God in His life upon earth, when He was manifested in the flesh, to fulfil the law in the place of sinners, and to endure the full penalty of a broken law. He endured the wrath of God in body and soul – the punishment of all those sins which God saw that His chosen people would commit. This finished work of Christ, commonly distinguished by the two terms, His active obedience and His passive obedience, constitute His righteousness, in His capacity as Mediator between God and man. Now the abundant and glorious grace of the gospel is imputed to the believer – in other words, to the sinner whenever he believes the offer of the gospel, which testifies of this righteousness and conveys to him the offer, pressing it on his acceptance.
The imputation to the believer of the righteousness of Christ absolves him from God’s sentence of condemnation – from the sentence of eternal death. His sins are pardoned and he is held judicially, in the sight of God, to be now righteous, just as if he himself had obeyed the law. But although this wonderful provision is made for perishing sinners, through the eternal grace of God, it is another thing for it actually to do good to the soul. To receive this provision, by believing the offer thus made, is the duty and the privilege of the believer; indeed it is the duty of every individual to whom the gospel is addressed. Nothing can make it do good to the soul unless the principle of faith is established there. The establishment of that principle in the soul is the work of God, but He promises to bestow it on those who ask Him for it. Thus our special business is to come to God, feeling and confessing our natural unbelief, and beseeching Him to bestow this faith upon us.
It is true that the offer made to sinners in the gospel is rejected by those who obviously neglect the matters of eternal salvation, and who do not make it the business of their mind and life to have their salvation made sure. But it is also true that those who are awakened to a serious care for their soul, and careful attention to the testimony of God, will experience many doubts and fears about their actual interest in the precious provision thus made by God to suit their needs, and freely offered to them.
When the sinner is aroused from his habitual carelessness to feel his guilt and danger and to recognise something of the character of God, he sees that the Bible warns about God’s wrath against sin and sinners. He is now conscious that these warnings are addressed to himself; he knows that he is indeed guilty – that he does not deserve favour from God. He has anxious doubts about the possibility that God freely offers the righteousness of Christ to him personally, that he may be blessed with full pardon and have his soul accepted by the holy God.
Now, while the Spirit of God leads the mind to contemplate the offer of grace through Christ Jesus, there is no concealing the fact that the principalities and powers of spiritual wickedness will strive with the soul to keep it back from trusting in the offered righteousness of the Lord Jesus. When the individual would strive to rest his soul on this righteousness, he experiences slavish fear and is thrown back, as it were, on his own personal unworthiness and guilt. In such a state, the righteousness of Christ has not yet become his breastplate, for the arrows of Satan pierce his soul, destroy his peace and lead him to dishonour, in his mind, the love and grace of God in Christ, by refusing to believe that these can be as great as the gospel represents them to be.
Notice that it is not your feeling of your guilt in the sight of God which is wrong or dangerous, but it is that feeling keeping you back from trusting in the righteousness of Christ, and from believing that God freely offers to impute it to you as an individual. The conviction of sin, if indeed it is wrought in you, is the work of God; the doubts and terrors, the suspicions you have about the sincerity and freeness of the gospel offer are the work of the devil. Conviction of sin would indeed lead you to esteem the tidings of the gospel precious to your soul; the fears make you question whether those tidings are addressed to you individually. Thus you remain under the influence of temptation’s power and are excluded from all true consolation and joy, which is set before you in the gospel of Christ.
It is worth noting particularly that the way the enemies of the soul keep it separated from the armour offered in our text is by bringing before the soul its own unworthiness. This sense of unworthiness often appears to be a very deep and desirable humility, saying, I am not worthy that God should show me such mercy and favour; it is in vain that a sinner such as I am should strive for faith in Christ. When such are your reasoning and fears, they obviously do not come from Him who calls you; He tells you that He came “not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”. In your fancied humility you are sinning with a lofty spirit of rebelliousness against God.
Does not God show you, in all His testimony and His doings, that He does not offer the benefits of the way of salvation because anything in man deserves His favour? You are actually rebelling against His testimony when you do not lay hold of the righteousness of Christ as the safety and strength of your soul. You are denying, in fact, the sovereignty and righteousness of God in devising such a plan of salvation. You are telling Him that it is for good people that He ought to have provided it. And what can be more guilty than this in God’s sight? What can be more dishonourable to Him? But those who do not – because, they say, of their own unworthiness – gladly embrace the gospel offer of Christ’s righteousness contract even more guilt.
The next evil which they commit is imagining that their spiritual modesty and distrust of themselves form together a qualification which merits the favour of God. They come now, as they fancy, to Christ with such preparation and merit of their own that they think He must bless them. Such is the result of those proud reasonings which find a place in many a soul through the adversary’s wiles and evil suggestions. Yet, after all this, they are still subject to slavish fear; they assuredly do not have the beginning of the spirit of children before God, as a God in Christ. While you come with any price in your hand, you can never so feel under obligation to saving grace that it will set you free from this spirit of bondage, or generate in your soul true love to Him who first loved sinners. You have the feeling – maybe unconsciously, till you search and try your own heart – that you have paid the price for the benefit, that you have such a frame of mind as makes you not unworthy of the lovingkindness of God.
The true state of the matter is that you have been yielding, in all this experience, to the suggestions of your spiritual enemy since the very first moment when you acknowledged, in your mind and conscience, your need of a righteousness other than your own. And when you also saw that such a righteousness was offered in the gospel, your very first doubts that it was offered to you were the work of the enemy within you. Your soul has been wounded by this and kept back from entering that stronghold in which you could find everlasting safety and strength.
Such convictions of sin showed you your need of the righteousness of Christ, and such a measure of light made clear to your consciousness as a rational being that the offer is made to all. So it is your duty to resist all doubts about the sincerity of the gospel offer to you personally and to lay hold on the Word of God as your authority for believing, for putting your confidence in the Lord Jesus at once as your righteousness and strength. You will indeed feel your inability to do so, and the evil suggestions of which we have now spoken will enter your mind, but you must strive against them and still look to the testimony of God, which is faithful and sure. Feeling your inability to believe, you must come to God with your unbelief as your special sin, and wait on Him for that power from on high which will enable you to receive the offer and embrace it cordially.
In such a situation as we have tried to describe, your duty most assuredly is to consider God’s testimony with increased diligence, to set your mind to recognise in it the sovereign freeness and fullness of divine grace, manifested to guilty, lost sinners in the man Christ Jesus. In thus obeying, or striving to obey, His word of counsel and invitation, and looking to Him for the power of His Spirit to work in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure, you will not be put to shame but will experience that His word is true and that His righteousness is altogether sufficient for you.
We would also observe how unworthy are sentiments we often meet among those who seem to have serious convictions of their sinfulness. It is their unworthiness they continually complain of, their unfitness to be objects of God’s favour; whereas your complaint ought to be that you cannot honour the grace of God by simply and honestly trusting in it, as it is indeed offered to you personally. Your lack of faith in God ought to be the feeling of your soul, urging you to go to a throne of grace as a poor and needy suppliant. This ought to keep you there, pleading with God till it pleases Him to send you His Spirit, by whose heavenly strength you would be enabled to trust fully in the perfect righteousness of Christ, setting you free from all condemnation. “Surely, shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength.” This is the language of the true Church of God in every age, and of every individual who is led to receive cordially the gospel offer which is freely made to them.
But we do not doubt that some will say that they have been led thus to cast themselves on the free offer of the gospel and fancied they had obtained this saving view of Christ as their righteousness and strength, but that unbelief still seems to prevail against them, and that they continually forget both their obligations to redeeming grace and the practical course of holiness to which the gospel calls them. This indeed is sin. But consider how this forgetfulness of yours, in the first place, originates, if indeed you ever have come to entertain clear and settled and believing views of the righteousness of Christ, as the surety and safety of your soul. You have been found – and recollect now your own past mental history – looking more to your own views, feelings and experience for safety and acceptance with God than to the righteousness of Christ. By thus trusting to your own strength, you have fallen away from your steadfastness, and the enemies of your soul have not found it difficult to obtain the victory over you.
The righteousness, or finished work, of Christ, is the way through which you can derive any blessing from God. Not only does the sinner receive the pardon of his sins and justification through this work, but it is also how God continues to bestow on His people every other spiritual blessing which they constantly need. We fear that many think so unworthily of the righteousness of Christ as to imagine that, if they obtain pardon of sin through it, or even experience in themselves a hope of pardon, they have no more to do with it; they have to look to other sources for the other blessings they need.
This is altogether at variance with the covenant of God, which brings salvation. It is through the righteousness of Christ – His having fulfilled all righteousness as the surety and sacrifice for sinners – that God bestows every grace and benefit. It is for the sake of the Lamb who was slain and is alive again and His intercession with God in heaven – as He presents before the eternal throne His own finished work, in His body and soul – that God can look in mercy on any sinner or even that He continues to bestow any gift on those who believe. Now has this view of the righteousness of Christ been upheld in your mind? We fear that it has not but that you have been putting your confidence for continued blessings in other sources. When this is the case, you cannot continue to receive strength from God, or the disposition with which to remember, serve and glorify Him.
As this righteousness of Christ is the only way through which God can bestow mercy and favour, so it must form the continual stronghold of all your hopes. When you cease to look to it, you begin to ask amiss; you ask and you receive not. In consequence of your repeated disappointments, you again doubt the good will and faithfulness of God towards you personally, when the truth is that you refuse His testimony in this matter and put away from you the breastplate by whose strength alone you can be upheld in the paths of practical obedience. Then the sins you commit will rise before you, in condemning and terrifying power, and the spiritual enemies of the soul will add to your fears until you think that all practical religion is vain, that you are making no advance in spiritual life – that you do not arrive at any of the parts of the Christian character which, the Word of God states, belong to His children.
Such doubts often prevail with those who are, we trust, under the guidance of the Spirit of God. But remember that the cause of these doubts is not continuing to look to the righteousness of Christ as your only defence – turning away from Him who says, “Behold Me, behold Me”; “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth”. Seek then to have a more enlarged, more settled, more habitual knowledge of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus – His perfect work as the Mediator of the new covenant. When this is the breastplate of your soul, the enemy can never triumph against you; a believing view of the righteousness of Christ will continually impress you that you owe all to God, and that it is your duty and privilege to give yourself wholly to God. Looking to what Christ has done and suffered for sinners, you will see more and more how high is the privilege of serving and glorifying Him with your spirit and body.
With such views of His character and everlasting love, sin will not continue to have dominion over you. You will be actuated by higher motives than those which prevail with the people of this world, who are led captive by sin. And when you turn away from contemplating the person and work and intercession of Christ, seek again that God would bring you back to the Shepherd and Bishop of your soul, to be implanted in Him through a living faith. To set Him continually before you is the only way in which you can obtain safety, peace and spiritual strength. In thus looking to Him, you will have the well-grounded hope, through His own righteousness and merit, that you will continue to receive those supplies of grace which will keep you from evil and strengthen you in the ways of the Lord.
When the fiery darts of temptation, evil desires and passions assail you, your safety lies in considering the nature of those sins in the light of Christ’s righteousness. Consider how He obtained this righteousness – by enduring the wrath of God which was due to you. Think how He must look on such sins in you, when they crucified Him who is the Lord of glory and put Him to shame. Consider the love which led Him to undertake the work of salvation, and which sustained Him in patience and meekness amid the sufferings due to those very sins which now seek ascendancy in you. Surely then you will be animated with new courage and strength to make a stand against the power of evil. Coming to Him who is made your righteousness, He will also be made your sanctification and redemption – for a believing view of His person, character and wonderful works will repel from your soul those unworthy, unholy and rebellious workings of mind and conduct, by which the world dishonours God and through which Satan deceives them and allures them to their everlasting ruin.
This might all be well, you may say, if we had faith to appropriate Christ’s righteousness and believe that we really have a personal interest in it. But your lack of assurance is no excuse. Do you see that His righteousness is precious in itself – that it is worthy of all reverence, because of the eternal love which provided it and now freely offers it to you? Are you not called to receive this precious offer and devote yourselves to the service of Him who makes it? It is in thus looking to Christ that His righteousness becomes the breastplate of the soul. And if you do not feel that it is effective in quelling the risings of sin and resisting temptations, then you have not yet seen it aright or learned its value. You must submit to God, to be taught by Him, so that your eyes may be enlightened to see your need of it in a way you have not yet learned.
If your views of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus do not make sin hateful to you, and do not quicken your desires after true holiness of heart and conduct, it is because you have not yet believed the testimony of God about your personal character and standing in His sight and the greatness and sovereignty of His redeeming love and grace. The assurance that, through faith, you have an interest in Christ’s righteousness is a different thing from faith itself. And the view of the righteousness of Christ, as offered to you in the gospel, which awakens you to righteousness in your own life is a believing view, whether or not you are yet assured that you have believed.
Seek for such assurance as your duty; ask it from God as a privilege which He alone can bestow. Even if you do not yet possess it, strive to obtain not only an assurance of your personal interest in the righteousness of Christ, but increased knowledge and understanding of that righteousness as the foundation of the soul’s hope, and the soul’s breastplate to defend it from the attacks of every spiritual enemy. You must surely obtain a knowledge of it before you can attain an assurance of your interest in it. And true knowledge of it is evidenced by the effect it produces in the soul, slaying there the enmity of the natural mind against the authority and commandments of God, and repelling the assaults of sin and temptation when these would lead you to forget God and act dishonourably to His name and cause.
It is this view of the righteousness of Christ – your need of it, your absolute dependence on it for every good and perfect gift – which will bring you to pursue that active, sincere righteousness of life, which is one of the fruits of the Spirit. This righteousness is also profitable to show forth the praises of the Lord and to make His grace, in its blessed effects, manifest to all. Time will not now permit us to enter that part of our subject, but we would not consider our labour lost if any individual soul was brought to feel, more than ever before, its need of experiencing the power of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ – the value and excellence of His righteousness.
If any of you do thus feel your need, do not delay to come to Him who faithfully promises to listen to the voice of your supplications. Bear in mind that it is in Christ that all fullness dwells; and that through His righteousness, all that fullness was purchased which will supply all the sinner’s needs and defend him from all his enemies. And when Christ’s righteousness is made available to you, you must be seen and known of all men as showing forth a practical righteousness in your life also. Then sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not under the law but under grace.
Footnotes for The Breastplate of Righteousness (1):
1. The first of two sermons on this text; taken, with editing, from Mackay’s Sermons on the Christian Warfare. For an account of his life, see the February 2007 issue of this Magazine.