Lesson 9: Breastplate of Righteousness, part 2

Ephesians 6:14 - …and having put on the breastplate of righteousness

As we read in the last lesson, spiritual attack will come at you from all directions. The enemy is always looking for a chink in our armor from any angle he can get! He is not always going to come at you head on! It is not always going to be that obvious. He is sneaky and cunning! Sometimes, he will look down at you from on top, sometimes he will sneak up and go around your back. He is evil and he will look anywhere he can for a crack, just so he can stab us with his unrighteousness! The breastplate of righteousness counteracts this attack.

Someone has described it this way, “No Roman soldier would have thought of going into battle without his vital organs protected. You can take a shot in the thigh, you can take a shot in the arm, you can take a shot in the shoulder, but you get one [in the vital areas of your body] and it is serious.”


That is true of our spiritual battle too. If there is a weakness in your armor: sins, acts of disobedience, wrong attitudes, unconfessed or unrepented of sins in your life, you are vulnerable. If you are “regarding sin in your heart” (Psalm 66:18) you cannot hear warnings from Jesus of coming attacks, and you will fall to them. When Satan sees sin, he moves into that crack. You become vulnerable as the world system appeals to that crack in your armor. And the smallest crack can be exploited in a very fatal way. That is why the Bible says to make no provision for the flesh regarding its lusts.

But the Breastplate comes off so easily, and we go through life picking it up and trying to get it on before the next attack. But we need to keep it hooked on every day if there is to be any real victory in Christ. It simply demands a life of righteousness. And that is the key here. The Breastplate is not something to impress others. “Righteousness” means living the way God designed us to live. It means integrity, virtue, purity of life, right-living, correctness of thinking, feeling, and acting according to God's holy character. This is what we need to put on and keep on every day. This makes sense when we consider that Satan is the total opposite of this – he is unrighteousness, sin, unholy and wrong living. He is where unrighteousness began.

God’s perfect armor is the very thing we need to be able to stand in this warfare. We need to take this seriously, and keep it on for our own protection.

*How do you see the difference in you today because you are wearing His righteousness?