Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place. (Ephesians 6:14)
The Apostle Paul uses figurative language to explain the battle we are engaged in and the weaponry that God has given us. This weaponry is symbolic for the real. In order to understand them we must look behind the symbols to the reality. And in reality, the armor is a symbolic description of the Lord Himself. The armor is Christ, and what He has provided us to enter in and remain in the unseen battle which impacts eternity.
There are two general divisions to the pieces of this armor, indicated by the tenses of the verbs which are used. The first division, covering the first three pieces, is highlighted by the literal translation of this verse: "having buckled around your waist with truth;" and "having put on the breastplate of righteousness." These first two, along with the third, are weapons which represent something already done to us as Christians. These weapons were given to us permanently when we trusted in the finished work of the Lord Jesus when we first believed.
The second piece of armor is the breastplate of righteousness. When we trusted Christ as our savior, He became at that moment the ground of our righteous standing before God, our acceptance before Him.
We have all struggled with the assurance of our salvation due to our lack of understanding of Soteriology which is the study of salvation. When we first became followers of Christ we believed that we played a role in earning or maintaining our right standing before God.
Of course, this is not true, for through Christ's perfect life, death and resurrection our rightness before God was earned only by Him. We accessed this free gift the moment we believed. And, as our text is teaching, we need to be reminded of this daily, otherwise we lack the confidence to stand and make a difference in this battle.
Paul is saying here that we must stand in the merit of the Lord Jesus alone. When we believe, we gave up the idea that we must be good enough in order to access the pleasure of God. We stand only on his merits. We experienced imputed righteousness, which he gave to us the moment we believed in the Lord Jesus as our savior.
This breastplate of righteousness enables us to be strong in His strength amid discouragement and the threat of defeat. In 1 Corinthians 15:10 Paul wrote, "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain." This is the Apostle Paul using the breastplate of righteousness. I don't care, he says, what I have been, I don't defend what I am. I simply say to you, by the grace of God, I am what I am. What I am is what Christ has made me. I'm not standing on my righteousness, I'm standing on His, I am accepted by grace, and my personal situation does not make any difference at all.
As a result, Pau's heart was kept from discouragement. He could say, "Sure, all these things are true, but that does not change the fact that I am Christ's man, and I have His power. He is in me and I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," (Philippians 4:13).
In 1 John 5:13, the Apostle John wrote an entire chapter to assure us that we are right with God only through Christ. "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God: that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God." The word know means absolute assurance. According to this verse, it is possible to be saved and know it. But the very fact that John wrote this verse shows that it is also possible to be saved and doubt it. This doubt can distract us from entering the battle, or if we are in the battle, it can distract us from being effective in the battle. This is unnecessary, and this is why we have this piece of armor.
Martin Luther is known as the one God chose to be the leader of the Reformation. In a day of lost biblical theology his powerful teaching gave birth to Protestantism. In 1510 Luther went to Rome. He was there for a spiritual experience; so he visited Scala Sancta, which means “holy stairs” in Latin. These stairs consisted of twenty-eight white marble steps, encased by wood. The Catholic Church taught that by ascending these steps on your knees in an appropriate fashion, you can buy an indulgence for someone in purgatory. If you ascended each step reciting “Our Father” (Pater Noster), you could release a soul from purgatory. Luther wanted to free his grandfather – Lindemann Luther – from purgatory.
While Luther was climbing the stairs on his knees, he heard a voice which cried, ‘The just shall live by faith.’ He rose up from the steps and proclaimed “The just shall live by faith!”
Luther wrote later of this experience:
“Although I was a holy and irreproachable monk, my conscience was full of trouble and anguish. I could not bear the words, ‘Justice of God.’ I loved not the just and holy God who punishes sinners. I was filled with secret rage against him, and hated him, because, not satisfied with terrifying his miserable creatures, already lost by original sin, with his law and the miseries of life, he still further increased our torment by the gospel. . . . But when, by the Spirit of God, I comprehended these words; when I learned how the sinner’s justification proceeds from the pure mercy of the Lord by means of faith, then I felt myself revived like a new man, and entered at open doors into the very paradise of God.
“From that time, also, I beheld the precious sacred volume with new eyes. I went over all the Bible, and collected a great number of passages which taught me what the work of God was. And as I had previously, with all my heart, hated the words, ‘Justice of God,’ so from that time I began to esteem and love them, as words most sweet and most consoling. In truth, these words were to me the true gate of paradise.”
