Ephesians

The Breastplate of Righteousness

The second piece of armor is the breastplate of righteousness. A breastplate fits over the heart and symbolizes God’s protection of our emotional well-being. The breastplate of righteousness is Christ, the source of your righteous standing before God. If you wear the breastplate of righteousness, you can rest secure that your heart is securely guarded and adequately protected against attack.

The heart—our emotional core—is perhaps the most frequent avenue of attack against a Christian’s faith. We often feel a lack of assurance. We feel unworthy of God. We feel we are a failure in the Christian life and that God, therefore, is no longer interested in us. When we feel that emotional sense of guilt and misery, we need to recognize it as a satanic attack, an attempt to destroy what God intends to do in us.

How do you answer an attack like this? You remember that you have put on the breastplate of righteousness. In other words, you do not stand on your own merits. You stand on the merits of Christ. You quit trying to be good enough to please God. You rest on the infinite merits of Christ. This is why Paul begins his great eighth chapter to the Romans with the words, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1, italics added). You are believing a lie when you believe that God rejects you. Remember, you stand on Christ’s merits.

This is not to say that unrighteous living means nothing to God. He wants us to live righteous lives and make righteous choices—but He does not judge us once we have come to Him for salvation. He deals with us as a Father, in love and discipline—but not as a judge.

The apostle Paul wore the breastplate of righteousness when he was under pressure or feeling discouraged. He had tremendous inner struggles because of his past as a brutal persecutor of the church. Writing in 1 Corinthians 15:9, he said, “I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” No wonder Paul often felt discouraged!

But Paul goes on to say, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Here, Paul uses the breastplate of righteousness. “I don’t defend what I am,” he says, in effect. “I simply say to you, by the grace of God, I am what I am. What I am is what Christ has made me. I’m not standing on my righteousness; I’m standing on His. I am accepted by His grace, and covered by His righteousness.”

The breastplate of righteousness protects the emotions. You do not need to be discouraged. Of course you have failed. Paul failed, you fail, I fail, but failure is simply part of our learning curve. It is part of the process of discovering how to overcome. Jesus knows we will fail; we will struggle. Our lives will be an up-and-down experience, and we will lose a battle now and then. But Jesus has won the war, and we do not need to be discouraged or defeated, because we know we will win in the end.