Embracing God's Righteousness: Our Spiritual Armor

The Apostle is here dealing with the vital importance of realizing as Christian people that we are engaged in a mighty Warfare and struggle against what he calls the Wilds of the devil and against the principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high places. [00:26:50]

Righteousness here refers not to our own natural Integrity nor indeed to our own efforts in any respect as such. He means here the righteousness of God which is by faith in Jesus Christ. That's the great theme of the New Testament that we don't have to work out our own righteousness any longer. [02:38:00]

The breastplate of righteousness means that we realize certain things in detail and constantly remind ourselves of them, and as we do so, we are putting on the breastplate of righteousness. Now how do we do this? What does it mean in practice? [06:21:00]

The system essentially is this: that you observe certain Seasons. You only do it at certain Seasons. I'm not going to wear you with the ramifications of the details, how at first it was done very strict, but more and more concessions are made. [12:17:00]

The Apostle says, why do you have been set at Liberty in Christ go back to the observance of days and times and seasons and believe that abstinence from this and that and the other is the way of Holiness and the way of righteousness? You're going back, he says, to the rudiments of the world. [12:49:00]

Putting on the breastplate of righteousness is, I want to try to show, almost the exact opposite of that. It's always, as the very passages we've read this morning show so clearly, it is always the application and the outworking of Doctrine, in other words, of the truth about ourselves. [14:16:00]

We are no longer in the Kingdom of Satan and under the Dominion of Satan. Now all of us by Nature are in the kingdom and the Dominion of Satan. Here again is an obviously vital thing to realize. The whole world, says the Apostle John in his first epistle chapter 5, the whole world lith in the wicked one. [23:40:00]

The Apostle teaches the same thing exactly in his epistle to the Colossians. He reminds these Colossians of this most wonderful thing that has happened to them who ha delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear son. [26:39:00]

We are dead to sin but say somebody that comes be true I still fall into sin to be dead to sin must mean that I'm absolutely perfect and sinless and incapable of sinning. It means nothing of the kind. What the Apostle is saying is this: that we are dead again to this territory, this Kingdom of sin. [31:57:00]

We are not under the law, trying to earn our salvation through our efforts. Christ has fulfilled the law for us, and we live righteously not to become Christians but because we are Christians. This understanding brings freedom and joy. [36:50:00]

Putting on the breastplate of righteousness partly means this: that I realize that I am to live the good life not in order to make myself a Christian but because I am a Christian, and what a difference. I am to live this good life not because I make a frantic hopeless effort to be make myself a Christian. [40:14:00]

You don't live the good life to be a Christian; you live a good life because you are a Christian. That's putting on the breastplate of righteousness, reminding yourselves, you see, that the old man is dead, you're no longer under the power of the devil, you're no longer under the power of sin. [41:47:00]