Therefore put
on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able
to stand your ground and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth
buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and
with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of
peace. In addition to all this, take up
the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of
the evil one. Take up the helmet of
salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with
all kinds of prayers and requests. With
this in mind, be alert and always keep praying for all the saints. (Eph 6:13-18)
I'd like to continue the study of Ephesians 5:13-18 from my unpublished work Depression, Demons and Discipleship. This study is relevant to most of us, not just those who deal with depression. (I did not include the entire chapter on the Belt of Truth as it needs further editing.)
Chapter 6 The Breastplate of Righteousness
One
lie of Satan that I often buy into is that righteousness means perfection. With this lie in my head, I read God’s
promises to the righteous and get discouraged believing they can’t apply to
me. However, righteousness does not mean
perfection!! The definition of righteous
found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is:
acting or being in accordance with what
is just, honorable, and free from guilt or wrong.[1]
I
want to focus on the last phrase -- “free from guilt or wrong”. Perfection would be one way to meet this part
of the definition, but then no human could ever be considered righteous. Our freedom from guilt and wrong comes from
our faith in the power of the cross! God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we
might have the righteousness of God. (2Cor 5:21) Without
Christ in our life we cannot be righteous.
However, just claiming that I am a Christian does not automatically mean
I am righteous and free from guilt. “Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just
as he is righteous. He who does what is
sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.
(1John 3:7) If we are still living to please our sinful
nature, we are not righteous, but rather children of the devil. Also, we must DO what is righteous. The mere absence of major sinful acts in our
lives does not make us righteous.
You foolish man, do you want
evidence that faith without deeds is useless?
Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when
he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his
faith was made complete by what he did. (Js 2:20-22)
Abraham’s faith and actions together revealed his righteous
character.
The first part of our
breastplate of righteousness must be our faith, since it says in both the Old
and New Testaments that “the righteous will live by
faith.”[2]
To be continued...
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