Bullet-Proof Heart
Depending on which version of the Bible you read, you’ll find that Ephesians 6:14 describes the armor as “the breastplate of righteousness,” or “the body armor of God’s righteousness.” When consulting with my husband on these two terms, he informed me that, when Ephesians was being written, body armor and the breastplate were the same thing. Thus, we’ll treat them as such.
Strong’s Concise Concordance describes the breastplate as having two parts that protect the torso (from the neck to the middle of the body) front and back. This piece of armor, generally made of leather, bronze, or iron, protected the heart and all other major organs from being penetrated. Think of it as your bullet-proof vest.
Therefore, we can assume that we wear the breastplate to protect our spiritual hearts. I like how the New Living Translation of the Bible tells us to wear the “body armor of God’s righteousness.” Let’s dig a little bit into the word “righteous,” before you assume you already know how to “wear righteousness.” (I can say that, because I thought I knew!)
Before I sought out a definition for the word righteous, the thought that immediately came to mind was that of a person who is righteous: someone who is good, who is godly, faithful, and who follows all of the commandments. My husband said he thinks of righteous as being “holy.”
When I looked it up in the dictionary, I felt like we were both on the right track, because Merriam-Webster says that righteous is an adjective that means “morally good: following religious or moral laws.”
I was in for a surprise when I looked up the term in the concordance, though. Righteousness doesn’t actually mean that you are “morally good” and that you “follow religious or moral laws.” In reality, the word righteous is translated as tsadaq, which means “to be in the right, be justified, be just,” in reference to the process of justice itself—or God’s justice (because we all know that God’s justice system is much better than our own).
So if we go even further with this we can say that righteousness is the equivalent of justification. This is where things are beginning to really click for me, so I hope they are for you too. We read in Romans 5:1 that:
“…since we have been made right in God’s sight (justified) by faith, we have peace with God, because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.”
The reason we have to put on the belt of truth before we can put on our breastplate of God’s righteousness is because without the truth, we are not aware of God’s righteousness. When we find that God is truth and the Word is truth, and we dig into that Word, we understand that Jesus Christ came as a sacrifice to save us from our sins. Because of His sacrifice, we have been justified—made right in God’s sight—by our faith. Jesus has paid the price for our sins.
The best part of this is that you can’t earn it. You can wear this breastplate of righteousness, but it’s not something you just bought like a different shade of your favorite shirt. You can’t stand proud and say, “Look what I got.” It’s been given to you. You can’t buy it. You can’t earn it. You may have do so some work to know the truth, to obtain salvation, to put on peace, to have faith, and to know how to wield the sword of the Spirit, but not righteousness.
You’re not righteous on your own. That’s why the New Living Translation calls it “God’s righteousness.” It is His sacrifice that made it available to us—we only have to accept it (salvation) and use it (faith).
How do we use it? I think the best way we can use our breastplate of God’s righteousness to fight fear is to let it wash over you, first of all. Then think about it for a moment. Remember that God paid the price so that you could be paid in full. Satan will try to tell you that you’re not good enough—you’re worthless, you’re guilty, you’re a sham. But whatever He tells you, remember the breastplate. The paid-in-full awesomeness that comes with God’s love. You’re paid in full.
The breastplate of righteousness really ties together many of the pieces of the armor for us: the belt of truth (which we need to know first before we can have anything else) leads us (the helmet of) salvation through Jesus Christ. Through the belt of truth, we also begin to understand that we are justified (made righteous, or made right in God’s sight) by (the shield of) faith. Because of that we have (the shoes of) peace with God. How do we actually get that peace? Good question. You can find the answer in last week’s post.