Christian Warfare - Pt. 3
In our previous studies in this series, we have seen that we are engaged in a spiritual war. All of the forces of evil are arrayed against us to prevent us from doing the divine will of Jesus Christ our Lord and reaching our Heavenly Home. We have learned that Christ Jesus does not leave us unequipped for battle but, on the contrary, He has provided us with powerful spiritual resources that can enable us to achieve victory - the armor of God.
If we are to have strong victorious spiritual lives, we must know about our armor and weaponry and use them each day of our lives. Last week, we learned about our first piece of combat equipment - the belt of sincerity. The first requirement for victory is to be supported and strengthened by a genuine and singular desire to please the Lord and promote His glory. If we have put on that belt of sincerity, we are ready to put on the next piece of armor - the "breastplate of righteousness."
I. The Breastplate.
The Roman soldier wore a bronze plate, lined with leather, on his torso. It extended from the neck down to the navel. It was to provide protection to the vital organs, especially the heart, from sword thrusts, arrows, spears and javelins. If unprotected, wounds to this part of the body were quite grievous and oftentimes fatal. Obviously, the breastplate was an essential piece of the soldier’s combat armor.
II Righteousness.
The Apostle Paul says that the Christian’s breastplate is "righteousness". Let’s consider exactly what he is talking about.
Righteousness is moral and spiritual up-rightness such as is seen in the character of God. When the Scriptures speak of righteousness in relation to the Christian, it speaks of it in two different ways. It speaks of (A) imputed righteousness and (B) imparted righteousness.
A Imputed Righteousness.
Imputed righteousness is the Divine righteousness of Christ Jesus which is given to us as a free gift when we are saved. You see, because God is holy, He cannot have a relationship with anyone who is sinful. Yet, by nature we are sinful rather than righteous. Romans 3:10 states the truth that "there is none righteous, no not even one." Verse 23, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
Left to ourselves, we could never make ourselves acceptable to God. But, Romans 5:6 tells us the blessed fact that "while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Christ not only shed His blood to remove our sins, His righteousness - His record of perfect obedience to the Father - is given or imputed to us as a gift. When we are brought in union with Christ, at baptism, we arise from the waters wrapped in the robe of the righteousness of Christ. When God views us, He does not see our record of disobedience or sin but He sees Christ’s perfect record of obedience or righteousness. 1 Corinthians 1:29-30, "that no one should boast before God… by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, Who became to us…righteousness."
But imputed righteousness is not the end of righteousness for the Christian. Imputed righteousness gives us a right standing before God and is the foundation for ‘imparted’ or ‘practical’ righteousness. Because the Christian has been, by a Sovereign act of God, made righteous in Christ, he or she is now responsible to act and live-out what is already true of them in Christ We must let the righteousness of Christ be seen in our attitudes, words and actions
B Imparted righteousness.
Imparted righteousness is the righteousness that the Spirit of Christ or Holy Spirit works in us with our cooperation. As we sincerely desire and strive to please the Lord, the Spirit imparts to us all that is necessary to be obedient as was Christ We become Christ-like according to the will of God. We think, feel, speak and act correctly or righteously as did our Lord.
Ephesians 4:22, 24, "put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man, …and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth."
Romans 6:11-13, "Thus also consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. Neither present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God"
Philippians 1:11, "being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."
III The Breastplate of Righteousness.
Let us now consider how righteousness - imputed and imparted - corresponds to a breastplate in our spiritual warfare. If Satan is to conquer us, he must control our hearts. He must resurrect our old self and entice it to take dominance over our new self. He must tempt us to think, feel, speak and act inappropriately or unrighteously. Righteousness, both imputed and imparted, can guard or protect our heart from Satan’s attacks.
How does imputed righteousness serve as a breastplate against Satan’s attacks? It protects from two of Satan’s chief weapons: self-righteousness and despair.
Sometimes Satan tempts us to be proud or self-righteous by thinking we’ve worked our way into God’s good graces… that our efforts and works have lead to our present acceptance by God. We feel proudly righteous and view others who do not measure-up to our maturity level or amount of good deeds with contempt as being inferior. This is the Pharisee-ism that Christ frequently condemned.
If, however, we are daily conscious that we must rely entirely on Christ’s imputed righteousness and regard our own righteousness as rags and rubbish, we are protected from the sin of self-righteousness. After all, how can we be proud of ourselves when our entire standing depends on someone else, on Jesus? The breastplate of imputed righteousness protects us from the destructiveness of self-righteousness
If a congregation promotes the demonic notion that we must constantly earn God’s approval and acceptance by works, then that congregation will perish. If we relay the idea that one must constantly measure-up, they will be destroyed by Satan’s other chief weapon - doubt and despair.
If a person believes that they must constantly earn God’s acceptance and approval, what happens when they stumble and sin? When they do something wrong or when they remember past failures, Satan is quick to condemn by saying, "Do you really think God would accept someone who did something like that? God is holy, and you are bad. God is pure, and you are rotten. Look at the sort of person you are! Look at the things you’ve done! You might as well forget about God accepting and blessing you."
I have seen so many brethren fall because they fell victim to this Satanic attack and did not know how to repel it. This is because their heart was not protected by a knowledge of and faith in the imputed righteousness of Christ.
If you try to resist spiritual despair by working up certain feelings or depending on special experiences, or performing good works or duties, your heart will not survive.
When we have the breastplate of imputed righteousness in place, we can tell Satan, "I know everything you’re saying. I am not perfect. But I look to Jesus, not to myself. I don’t count on my own ability to measure up. I count on Christ and God imputes to me Jesus’ perfect righteousness. Satan, before you can slay me with despair and fear, you will have to find something unrighteousness in Jesus, for his imputed righteousness is my breastplate."
Satan can’t handle that because he can’t find even one tiny weakness in Jesus’ righteousness. Our heart is safe from spiritual despair if it is protected by the imputed righteousness of Jesus.
Romans 8:1, 31-34, "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us."
Once you rest in the imputed righteousness of Christ, when it comes to your standing with God, you are set free to live in the same kind of joyful, loving obedience that Jesus gave to his heavenly Father. However, such loving obedience requires that we have a heart prepared for obedience. Our hearts are not naturally inclined to obedience; on the contrary, our hearts are inclined to disobedience and sin.
Mark 7:20-23, "And He was saying, ‘… For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.’"
We cannot, alone, make our heart inclined toward obedience. We need Divine assistance We are granted that assistance through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. When we are baptized, the Spirit of God takes-up residence within us: 1 Corinthians 6:19, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God?"
One of the chief reasons we receive the "gift of the [indwelling] Holy Spirit" is that the Spirit works upon our heart to renew it and incline it toward obedience. This was prophesied in Ezekiel 36:26-27, "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances."
Galatians 5:16-17, "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please." Romans 8:12-13, So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh -- for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
We can rely on the Spirit to do His work within us; however, we must cooperate and do our part. We must not, as Paul puts it in 1 Thessalonians 5:19, "quench the Spirit." That is, we must not hinder the Spirit’s work but, rather, become working partners.
How are we to cooperate with the Spirit to bring-about this transformation of our hearts? We can get a clue from what Jesus teaches in Luke 6:45, "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil."
If a person places dirt in a treasure chest, they will only be able to take out dirt If a person places gold in a treasure chest, they will only be able to take out of it gold. One can only later draw-out of the chest what has been earlier placed in there. Our hearts are like treasure chests. What proceeds from the heart is what has been placed in there. Turn with me to Proverbs 4:23, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life." Note that this proverb repeats what Jesus taught. Out of the heart all the actions of our life flow. For as the heart is either pure or corrupt, so is the whole course of a person’s life… their feelings, intents, attitudes, words and actions. This being true, the proverb begins by saying, "watch over your heart"; that is, guard what has entry to your heart "with all diligence." Do not be careless and allow anything to enter your heart that you do not want to proceed from your heart by way of your attitudes, words and actions. As an alert sentry or security guard, keep a diligent watch. Do not allow anything unauthorized enter the heart’s gates.
What are the gates to our hearts? They are our eyes, ears and thoughts. Basically, it is anything we allow our minds to feed upon. We quench or hinder the Spirit’s renewing of our hearts when we allow unrighteousness to enter the gates of our heart. If we want spiritually righteous thoughts, intents, attitudes, words and actions, to dominate our lives then we must feed on and dwell on spiritually righteous things.
We are instructed on what is authorized and unauthorized to enter our hearts, in Romans 8:4-8, where Paul says that the righteous obedience desired by God will "be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God."
Paul is saying that if you want to continue living a life dominated by our sinful, fleshly human nature you will do so if you allow your mind to feed on non-spiritual, sinful things. If you want your life controlled by sinful lusts, keep feeding your mind on things that cater to those lusts. Fill your heart with wicked and sinful material and guaranteed you will be unable to live a life obedient to God. Guaranteed you will not bear good fruit so as to please the Lord God. Guaranteed your fate is eternal death rather than eternal life and peace.
However, if you want to have a new life characterized by righteous obedience, you will have such a life if your mind centers upon and feeds upon things that are approved of through the revelation of the Holy Spirit…. Which is to say, those things that the Scriptures say should dominate our lives.
If you want to develop consistent righteous thinking, feelings, attitudes, speech and conduct, the best thing that you can feed your mind on is the Word of God. Listen to David in Psalm 119:11, "Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You." The treasure he placed in his heart was God’s word for the express purpose that the principles and standards promoted in God’s word would dominate his thinking, attitudes, speech and conduct so that he would not be dominated by sinfulness.
If we think that we can become more Christ-like and godly without regularly feeding our minds on the Word of God, we are deceiving ourselves. If we think we can grow and mature by opening our Bibles merely on Sundays and Wednesday nights, we are deceiving ourselves. The primary way in which the Spirit of God renews our minds and hearts is through His Scriptures. Listen to Peter in 1 Peter 2:2, "like newborn babes, long for the milk of the Word, that by it you may grow." It takes discipline, but taking-up and putting-on the breastplate of righteousness involves daily feeding our minds and filling our hearts with the Word of God There is no substitute. It is true that we cannot spend the entire day reading the Scriptures; however, we can and should meditate on what we have read through-out the day.
I want to close our study by examining a checklist by which we should test everything we propose to feed our minds on to determine if it should enter our hearts or not. Turn to Philippians 4:8, where we read - "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things."
Everything that we hear, everything that we read, everything that we watch, everything we think about should fit these qualities or we must discard them right away:
1. True - It must agree with the truths revealed in the Scriptures. If it is not consistent with the teachings of Christ, we must reject it. We must not allow error to enter our hearts.
Beyond the Scriptures, is the material you are placing in your mind factual? We do not want to entertain anything that is not true. We reject gossip and hearsay. Usually gossip and hearsay is never 100% fact. At best, gossip and hearsay usually consists of half-truths and half-truths are as dangerous as pure lies. We do not allow our minds to dwell on speculations. We don’t speculate on how another person feels or thinks. We do not speculate on another person’s motivations and intents. We want facts and only facts.
2. Honorable - This word combines the meaning of a sense of gravity and dignity. It is treating serious matters seriously. It is not taking lightly or treating lightly things that of importance. There are certain subjects that ought not to be joked about or be made fun of. We do not want to feed on irreverent matters.
3. Right - It must be just and fair. If it is not respecting the rights and feelings of others, we do not want to consider it. If it is unfair and demeaning to others, it ought not be in our heads or hearts.
4. Pure - It must be morally upright as opposed to filthy and obscene. This speaks of clean thoughts, words, deeds. Perhaps, we can say it means "G-rated" thoughts, words, humor, and actions.
5. Lovely - Things that serve to cultivate and increase love and goodwill between people rather than things that cultivate and increase contention, strife, wrath, and hatred between people. It is dwelling on things that will promote harmony, unity and goodwill.
6. Of Good Repute - Things that tend to get and establish a good name and make us well spoken of, as well as well thought of, by others. There are actions which all men agree in commending, and which in all ages and countries are regarded as virtues.
7. Any Virtue - Moral Excellence. Anything that promotes the general good and well-being of society.
8. Worthy of Praise - Anything that God would praise and reward.
It is a spiritual truth that righteousness and unrighteousness cannot co-exist. At any given time, our heart is either unrighteous or righteous. For, you cannot entertain a bad thought if your mind is entertaining a good thought. You cannot have a bad attitude if you have a good attitude. You cannot speak sinfully at the same time that you are speaking words of goodness, kindness and righteousness. You cannot sin in action at the same time that you are doing good works.
Replace harmful input with wholesome material. Above all, read God’s Word and pray. Ask him to help you focus your mind on what is good and pure. We must be diligent to fill our heart with righteousness - imputed and imparted - so that there is no room for unrighteousness. By allowing righteousness to dominate our hearts, Satan cannot penetrate and wound or destroy.
