Live a life of Righteousness
Ephesians 6:14 (NIV)
14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,
In the Spiritual Warfare that we are going through it is critical that we put on God’s armor. One of the critical pieces is the breastplate of righteousness. Paul referred to the Roman soldier of his day when he spoke of the armor the soldiers wore. The Christian must put on God’s armor to prepare for battle. In verse 14 it talks of the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness to defend us from the attacks in the battle against evil. We had talked last week about the belt of truth and how it referred to us as living the truth in our lives.
So, what does this mean to put on the breastplate of righteousness? The breastplate protected the soldier vital organs such as the heart. We as Christians have received positional righteousness by putting our faith and trust in what Jesus did on the cross. Jesus lived a sinless life for us and then He paid the price of our sin, which was death by shedding His precious blood on the cross. When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, God looks at us through Jesus sinless life and righteousness not ours. This is positional righteousness. We are righteous in God’s eyes because of Jesus' life and death on the cross.
Does this mean we can live like we want? No, we are called to live a righteous life. In 1 John it talks about how we should live as Christians.
1 John 3:10 (NIV)
10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.
Sanctification is the process of us Christians living a life that we practice living a righteous life. This is important for us as Christians to live a life that practices Godly living and pleases God. We need to live like this daily in order for the breastplate of righteous to protect us properly. Another was of putting it, is that we can’t live like a Christian on Sunday while at church and then live like the rest of the world the rest of the week. To be fully protected we need to live as close to God as we can.
So, to properly wear the breastplate of righteousness, we need to allow God to mold us into the Christian that not only lives the truth but lives a righteous life. This is a good start of putting on the armor of God.
