Ephesians 6:14b. Having on the breastplate of righteousness.
Thus far we have been endeavouring to show you only one side, as it were, of the true Christian’s breastplate. To examine it in its strength and solidity, as the defence of the soul from Satan’s temptations and this world’s vexations and trials – and also its seductive allurements – we must try to bring before you still more of its excellence and strength.
We have hitherto been speaking of the righteousness of Christ, which He brought in and perfected in His finished work as Mediator. We are now to endeavour to follow the workings of a mind which is anxious about its everlasting salvation. We might presume to say that we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices, and thus we would seek to guide those who are truly anxious to use this defensive armour aright in their spiritual warfare. We must undoubtedly learn to view the righteousness of God – in the sense of an eternal and unchangeable attribute of God’s character – as distinct from the righteousness of Christ, of which we have spoken. The righteousness of God is one thing; the righteousness of Christ – the finished work which He performed by His active and passive obedience, in His office of Mediator between God and man – is another thing. We would wish you to bear this distinctly in mind.
When I speak of the righteousness of God as an essential, eternal attribute of His character, I mean the justice of God. Now no one will readily follow us on this subject but those who have experienced in their conscience a sense of sin as committed against God. To them the justice of God became an attribute of His character fearful to contemplate: to consider it leaves on their mind a sense of God’s undeviating strictness in punishing sin with everlasting punishment. This strictness on God’s part frequently fills their mind with fear, if not with terror.
If this is so with you, you have perhaps not yet learned to contemplate this attribute with comfort to your soul. When you feel your own sinfulness both by nature and in actual deeds, your conviction of guilt brings immediately before you the justice of God in punishing sin, and this depresses your spirit. You may think of the righteousness of Christ – of His finished work for sin – and you may seek comfort there, and yet in practice you do not find the comfort you would seek to lay hold of. The remedy for this fear is an enlarged contemplation of the scheme of redemption in Jesus Christ. You are filled with fear, or at least deprived of comfort, when you think of the justice of God as still an attribute of His character but one which is opposed to you. Indeed you cannot think too seriously or solemnly of the justice of God; beyond all controversy it is an unchangeable attribute of God, as are all His glorious attributes.
But we would call you to consider whence the righteousness of Christ, as already explained, originated, whence it was brought in and perfected. It was the justice of God which demanded the sacrifice of Christ as surety. And all that Christ did and suffered for sin was what the justice of God demanded. God’s strictness to punish sin is unquestionable, but is it not made manifest to you in His Word that He consented to punish it in the person of a surety? Thus the Prophet testifies of Christ: “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.”
Now the justice of God in punishing sin is made known in Christ, and surely more emphatically than it could otherwise be made known – when we consider who He was that endured the punishment. This is what you will readily admit if you have at all been turned to contemplate the great mystery of the gospel: God manifested in the flesh. But you are still prone to consider that this manifestation of God’s justice brings all the more vividly before you the danger of your sinful soul, and that it is manifested against you. But such thoughts can only arise when you turn your mind away from God’s testimony in His Word. “Christ also hath once suffered for sin, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” This was the purpose for which God inflicted sufferings upon Him: not only to make known His justice and anger against sin, but to substitute Christ for sinners like you, to be a sin offering, that their soul might be set free from condemnation and guilt.
So you need to contemplate the covenant of grace and learn about it, the covenant in which God was pleased to ordain this sacrifice in the room of sinners, that His justice might be glorified and souls set free from the punishment which their sins deserved. And when you contemplate the righteousness of God now, you are to think of it as already satisfied for sin, in the person of Him who is at once the sin offering and the great High Priest of His people. In Him, as an atonement for sin, God is well pleased, and He has given such ample testimony of this in Christ’s rising again from the dead and in being received up into glory. The promise of the covenant has been visibly fulfilled in the experience of His saints in every age of the Church – the Holy Spirit was sent to dwell with them, to create them anew in the spirit of their minds, and to guide their footsteps in the paths of love and obedience to God, and in holy perseverance and in godly zeal for the advancement of His cause in the world.
It is thus seen that the righteousness of God, though distinct from Christ’s mediatorial righteousness, is so closely connected with it as to be the cause why Christ’s righteousness was brought in and perfected, on behalf of guilty sinners. Christ’s righteousness does not stand in opposition to God’s, but has entirely satisfied it. Thus peace and good will from God is clearly proclaimed to sinners; the gospel testifies to you all: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”.
Here “mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other”. And the spiritual benefits flowing down to sinners, because Christ has satisfied God’s justice, are beautifully expressed in the next verses: “Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven. Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good, and our land shall yield her increase. Righteousness shall go before Him, and shall set us in the way of His steps.” Now, the Christian finds safety and comfort for his soul in seeing by faith that the justice of God is satisfied for sin, through that work of Christ which constitutes His mediatorial righteousness. Thus the righteousness of God becomes indeed his breastplate.
But still more is implied in this view of what the gospel reveals about God’s character and government. Because His justice has been satisfied for sin, it is consistent with all His glorious attributes to bestow every good and perfect gift, even on the chief of sinners. We cannot have proper, comforting views of this without learning about the conditions of the covenant of grace, made with Christ as the representative of His people. We may learn this through the testimony of God’s Word, when it is effectually applied to our souls by the Spirit. In that covenant, God engages to bestow gifts upon sinners: “When Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.”
The greatest sinner is called to come to God and, through Christ Jesus, is entitled to plead with God for His spiritual gifts. He is entitled to plead even the righteousness of God, that He should, in Jesus Christ, according to His own conditions stipulated in the covenant, bestow pardoning mercy and sanctifying grace on the sinner. Thus John says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. So instead of the justice of God being a cause of terror or dismay to your soul, it ought rather to be the comfort and safeguard of your soul’s hope and confidence in God through Jesus Christ – that He is just and true to bestow on you every mercy you need.
The very view which may depress you most – your own sinfulness and guilt, if you are contrasting your character and state with God’s strictness in punishing – ought to make you the more solemnly and steadily contemplate the way in which God has been graciously pleased to find out a ransom, and to perfect for you in Christ a way of escape from the wrath to come, which your sins had deserved. And the more the sinner sees into this way by the spiritual enlightening of the understanding, the more comfort, peace, and joy in believing will result from contemplating it. The sinner sees that all that the justice of God required as punishment for sin is already given, in the way of His own appointment. His righteousness and truth are pledged to bestow upon the believing sinner the pardon of all his sins, through Jesus Christ, and every spiritual blessing which provides for the eternal salvation and happiness of the soul.
Strive then to obtain this habitual view of God’s righteousness as fully satisfied for sin, and now pledged in Christ to bestow upon the believer all the blessings of salvation, until he is able to say with the Apostle: “If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”
God is now your judge, as He will be at the great day of account, and if you lay hold on Christ as your righteousness, freely and fully offered to you, He looks upon you as righteous, acquitted of every condemnation which formerly lay against you. And as God is the ruler of the world and His creatures, He is pledged to bestow upon you, if you are a believer in Christ, whatever is necessary to ensure your everlasting salvation. The justice of God is on your side to defend you from every evil; let this be your breastplate in your time of need. Behold the promises which are made to you in the Scriptures of truth, that God will be your strength and your stronghold according to your need: “He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”
Now the righteousness of God, thus secured to the believer through the mediatorial righteousness of Christ, constitutes the safety of the believer’s soul, and through it He will protect, uphold and deliver all who trust in Christ, and in God as manifested in Him. Their safety is suspended on God’s righteousness as much as on any of His other perfections; and if your safety is here, your comfort is also suspended upon your believing view of it. Then, in your doubts and fears, seek to have your mind enlightened in the knowledge of His righteousness. Christ has promised that the Holy Spirit will convince of righteousness as He does of sin. Come then to God in your time of need, beseeching Him to bestow upon you, according to His righteousness in Christ, the Spirit of truth to guide and enlighten, and to establish your soul in the knowledge and belief of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. That truth will make you free and deliver your soul from the slavish, unbelieving fears which now oppress or discourage you.
We trust it is clear that every hope which the sinner desires to exercise towards God for salvation, on the ground of his own merit, must be utterly vain. Such hopes are utterly at variance with the testimony of God and with the way of salvation which He has revealed in the gospel of Christ. As they are contrary to the will of God, they must also prove unsatisfactory to the mind which seeks to cherish them. They afford no solid foundation on which to rest. Every fresh feeling of sin in the conscience must take away the comfort of that mind which seeks to lean on its own good qualities, good sentiments, or good doings, for acceptance with God.
Such a mind is the slave of every sinful passion. It is unacquainted with the character of God as manifested in Christ; it has no higher motive to obedience than the slavish terror of punishment. In such a state it continually disobeys and dishonours God; at every renewed act of disobedience which conscience testifies against, the fear of punishment is awakened anew; and its only impression of God is a fearful looking for of indignation and wrath. This is anew augmented whenever the person falls into sin, and judgement and eternity are brought near to the mind.
But the enlightened believer is enabled to confide in God. Feeling that in himself there is nothing that deserves God’s favour, and that God’s favour is the life and happiness of the soul, he looks to the righteousness of Christ as the strength of his confidence. The more he contemplates the scheme of salvation perfected in Christ, the more reason he feels to set his confidence upon God, as a God of infinite righteousness. Beholding the wonders which God has wrought for him in Christ, he desires to serve God with his whole heart and to be conformed to His will in all things. In seeking those gifts of grace by which his soul might grow in conformity to God’s will, the believer knows it is consistent with the justice of God that the sinner should receive these bounties abundantly.
There is strong consolation for those who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before them, and this hope in the righteousness of Christ and of God is as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast, which entereth into that within the veil. At the same time, their hope of conquering their spiritual enemies constitutes the breastplate of the soul. In the hour of temptation, the Christian is kept from falling into sin through this enlightened view of God’s character. His affections are now on the side of God, the God of his salvation, and he will strive to honour Him. And in his trials, fears and difficulties – when, in particular, he feels as if sin abounds and grace is denied – this view of the righteousness of Christ and of God will be the breastplate of his soul.
It will keep out of his soul those evil purposes and feelings – the fiery darts of the wicked, which when admitted into the soul would light up a conflagration of evil by which God would be dishonoured, His allegiance cast away, and the soul carried on in a headlong career of self-destruction. And how mournfully is such a work of Satan often seen in those who are stout in defending their own righteousness; let but one evil passion be awakened and the whole inner man is eager to commit some deed of clear iniquity. God’s commandments are then trampled on as if they were words of vanity, the sanctions of His law are utterly disregarded, and the sin defiles the outward man also and makes him as injurious to his fellows as he is hateful to God.
There is still another aspect of the righteousness of Christ and of God offered in the gospel as the breastplate of the believer’s soul. The believer is called to consider God habitually as the ruler of all things, in providence as well as in grace. His temporal destiny and circumstances are in God’s hands, and all government is committed to Christ, the Mediator of the new covenant, to be administered for the good of His people. Despised or afflicted though they may be in the view of the world, the whole of history will be seen at last, in the great day of judgement, to have been ruled in subservience to their eternal salvation. The whole procedure of God in providence will then be unfolded, dark and mysterious though it now is, and it will all exhibit God’s purpose to bring many sons and daughters to glory.
A believing view of this administration, by Jesus Christ for the good of God’s people, will comfort and strengthen those who have trusted in Him. He is righteous and true in this administration, to make all things work together for good to those who know and love Him. We are but of yesterday and know nothing. But God, who is judge and governor, knows all things, even the end from the beginning; His eye is always on each of His people for good. When His providence seems adverse and when He shows them hard things, still His essential righteousness as God does not fail. Moreover, according to His mediatorial righteousness, He has procured for them not only what is good – the temporal and spiritual gifts necessary for them – but distributes them in the way most conducive to their best, eternal interests. When the righteousness of God – exercised in providence as in grace through Jesus Christ – is looked into and trusted in, it will prove the breastplate of the soul in the hours of mysterious dispensations, when God sees it good for the soul to dispense to it the sorest outward afflictions.
If you seek for comfort and peace here, do not seek it in the multitude of your temporal benefits. They will be to you as the shadow which changes continually, and mocks the watcher’s eye, for it can never be seized; but seek both your comfort and peace in the faith that the Lord your Saviour reigns, that all your blessings flow from His hands, and that He is righteous and faithful to give to you all that He knows will prove for your good. And He is faithful to withhold and to take away from you what would prove injurious to your spiritual and eternal well-being.
When this trust is established in your soul, then the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus will prove a breastplate to you. In the first place, this view of the government of God will give you courage, patience, and resignation in the time of trouble. It will uphold you from being victims of despair or of those injurious doubtings of God’s care over you or His good will towards you. These are so ready to seize the soul in days of dark adversity and make it forget the Lord and murmur at His dispensations – as if He had no right thus to deal with you and as if there was no profit in waiting on Him.
Again, consider that it is the want of this habitual view of God’s righteous government that causes you to plan many a scheme as if God was not ruling at all, not referring every issue to His sovereign control. Such schemes, however much they may promise, and even prosper for a time, must wound you at last in some of their results if you indeed believe in the Lord. But the Lord’s righteousness in His government will truly become your breastplate when you are made submissive to it, seeking that all you do should be according to His will. He wills that you should be sanctified. Do you concur in this purpose of God when you plan your future doings? If you have not yet done so, do not wonder that the dispensations of providence have been contrary to you; rather bless His name for His faithfulness in re proving you.
Seek now to be humbled under His mighty hand, against which you have so often offended. Is it not of His longsuffering that He continues to bless you and uphold you while you forget Him and practically reject His divine authority over you. Let it become your habitual study to examine whether your motives are such as a holy God can approve, who in all His loving-kindness unchangeably hates iniquity, and calls you from all iniquity into purity of heart and life – in all things to desire His glory and the good of your fellow men. Surely if you believe in the gracious purpose and counsels of God, that even in His providence He overrules all for the salvation of His chosen people. And if you desire to be found among their number, or know that you are so, you must feel it your duty and privilege to do all things as to God. Thus, when the believer acquiesces in God’s righteousness and reverently adores it, that believer will be found in the paths of righteousness, far removed from every sinister purpose, and from every end which seeks concealment.
This view of God’s righteousness in governing the world will be as a breastplate to the believer, defending him from the arrows of the adversary and the allurements of this present evil world, which, when they obtain influence over the mind, will turn him away from the paths of a practical righteousness. “But the path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day”; and it becomes manifest that his deeds are wrought on the high principles of spiritual integrity of conscience and mind, in reverence and love to God, and in peace and good will to men.
It would be too much to say that all this will ensure to the believer the prosperity of everything he undertakes in this world, or sets his heart on. His aim must be higher; and the wisdom and faithfulness of God, as well as His righteousness, will allot all events to him. But this confidence in the righteousness of God will ensure to the believer – whatever may happen in this life – a peace which passes knowledge in having stayed himself on God. It will ensure an unspeakable comfort and joy in knowing that this scene of trial and toil is not his rest, and that he is but a pilgrim and sojourner here, travelling onwards to an infinitely better and happier country, to a city of rest and enjoyment, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. In the way towards it, the righteousness of Christ and of God will continue to defend and uphold him, and they will bring him at last into the enjoyment of the desired and expected inheritance.
In conclusion, consider that God, the righteous judge of all, is now offering this righteousness to each of you, that you are freely invited – indeed God earnestly entreats you – to come and receive it. But if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven and who wrought out an everlasting righteousness for sinners such as we are, how shall we escape? Your own righteousness may give you a measure of favour with men, but Christ’s righteousness alone can give us acceptance with God. May God grant that each one of us may now seek and receive it, to our true comfort and happiness here, and to our everlasting good and enjoyment in the life to come!
1A second sermon on this text; taken, with editing, from Mackay’s Sermons on the Christian Warfare. The first part of this sermon is omitted as it is a summary what he had said in the first, printed last month, explaining the righteousness of Christ as “His doings and sufferings in behalf of sinners”.