The Armour of Righteousness and Faith

We’ve been preaching a series on the armour of God - let’s recap by reading our main text again: Ephesians 6:10-18:

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12 For our STRUGGLE is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 THEREFORE PUT ON THE FULL ARMOUR 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.

14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Today we’ll look at two more pieces of the armour we need to wear: RIGHTEOUSNESS and FAITH. Please remember that we need to wear ALL of the armour, not just our favourite pieces!

At first glance, righteousness and faith may not seem closely related, but consider these Scriptures:

Genesis 15v6: Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Romans 1v17: …in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

And Philippians 3v7-9:

7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

The righteousness that is part of our armour is not “human righteousness”.  It is not a “righteousness of my own”; it is not us trying to be righteous.  It is, rather, a “righteousness from God”; it is God giving us righteousness.  It does not come from our effort, but our faith: as we put our faith in Jesus Christ, God gives us righteousness. 

This “righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” that has two aspects to it:

1.     There is a passive aspect – in that we are declared to be right with God.  I say passive, because it is all about what Jesus did on the cross; our only part is to believe in him.

2.     There is also an active aspect – in that we begin to make right choices, and our words and deeds begin to visibly demonstrate this righteousness that God has given us.  We begin to make right choices and, as a result, live righteous lives.

Before we put our faith in Jesus, we did not have this righteousness from God.  The best we could do was try to be good and try to be nice.  This may work when everything is going our way, but it falls apart when things don’t go our way!  Listen to Paul’s description of the human condition found in Romans chapter 7:

19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing… 21…I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Paul was a devout man – yet he found that his own righteousness failed.  He needed to be rescued from the grip of sin – and Jesus rescued him, giving him righteousness from God!

When we put our faith in Jesus, we receive righteousness from God – AND THIS WORKS!  Through Jesus Christ our Lord, we are set free from the grip of sin!  Paul says we were enslaved to sin – but now we have been set free!

It’s wonderful news!  But unfortunately, our minds and bodies have to catch-up with our new status.  Let me try to illustrate this:

Imagine you have been in prison all your life – and then the authorities declare you and your fellow inmates free.  You have been set free – but all you know is prison life.  Freedom is yours, but you have to walk through the gates into your freedom and learn to live as a free person. 

Some people are so used to the “prison life” of sin that they don’t walk out into the freedom Christ has given them!  The gates are open, but they stay inside the prison.

Or consider the armour analogy of Ephesians 6.  When we put our faith in Christ, God gave us righteousness – as a gift.  Imagine this gift as a suit of armour: when we put our lives in Jesus’ hands, we were given this suit of armour.

We can do two things with this suit:

1.     We can put it in the cupboard – like that expensive suit that is there for that special occasion that rarely or never happens.  We may admire it, we may tell people about it – but it stays in the cupboard and nothing really changes in our lives.

2.     Or we can put it ON!  Friends, the armour of God is not for the cupboard, it is not for special occasions – it is for everyday life!

I urge you today: PUT IT ON! 

But you may say: “I’ve tried to put it on, but it didn’t fit – it don’t work out!”

One of the reasons we don’t wear this righteousness from God is because it cannot be worn over our old clothes!  We can’t put on our old clothes and then put the armour on; we have to first take off the old clothes and then put on the new. 

Paul put it like this in Ephesians 4:20-24:

20 You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21 Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

So we have to be active in this righteousness from God.  We have to leave our sin-prisons behind.  We have to take off our old clothes and put on the armour of righteousness.

Now let’s get practical and see how this principle works in daily life:

Our Ephesians text tells us that our armour protects us against the devil’s schemes.  He devises evil schemes to try to keep us living in sin-prison instead of living in the freedom of our God-given righteousness.

One scheme is temptation: advertisements tempt us to buy what we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like!  Movies portray immorality as glamorous and tempt us to follow their example.

Our defence is righteousness.  We remember that we are now free to choose not to sin – and we choose to use our freedom and do the right thing. 

This can be a battle if we are used to giving in, used to living in “sin prison”.  We have to break the old habits and establish the new ones.  We have to learn to wear the armour!

One way to do this is to set boundaries.  If you know that the park down the road is full of violent thieves, you won’t take a stroll through it – you’ll keep away.  Similarly, if you know a night-club is full of temptations, you should stay away!  Or if the movie is rated 18SNLP, pick another one to watch!  Some of us live without boundaries because:

-        We think we’re “above it” (Scripture warns us in 1 Corinthians 10:12: if you think you’re standing strong, be careful you don’t fall – let’s not be so arrogant and naïve!)

-        Or we think we’re “exercising our freedom under God’s grace” (what a con, we’re actually throwing our freedom away!)

-        Or we just aren’t thinking!

So set boundaries – it’s a great way to wear righteousness.

The passive aspect of our righteousness from God kicks in when we stumble.  We were caught off-guard, we had a moment of weakness, and we sinned.  At that stage the devil may lay into us with a barrage of guilt and condemnation.  He wants us to feel unable to come to God because of our sin.

1 John 1:8-9 makes it very clear that, even with this gift of righteousness, we are not yet perfect, not yet without sin.  But the good news is that when we acknowledge our sin, he forgives us and cleanses us of all unrighteousness.  We still have access to the Father, even when we sin!  We still have this righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus – we still have a position of favour because of Christ!  So we can come to God, get cleaned up, and continue living in righteousness!

I’ve said little specifically about faith so far… apart from the righteousness it brings to us.  Let’s take a specific look at our shield – the shield of FAITH!

Hebrews 11v1 gives us a great definition of faith:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

By definition, faith is hard; we prefer “seeing is believing” – but there is no faith in that!  So the devil schemes against our faith… by presenting visible situations that seem to contradict God’s words and his nature.

He’ll present a terrible situation and ask: “Where is God now?”  Our sight cannot see God in the situation; it seems as if he is absent…

Or he’ll ask: “How can God be just and allow THAT?”  Our sight cannot see God’s justice in the situation; it seems as if he is unjust…

If the devil can lock us into depending on our limited senses, he is setting us up to question God and his nature, even to be offended and walk away from him.

Now here is the truth behind these schemes:

Our senses are inadequate to know exactly what is happening – and our understanding is inadequate to understand what is happening.  This scheme of the devil cons us into trusting a faulty instrument!

So when situations make no sense to us, when they seem to contradict what Scripture has taught us, we need to LIFT UP THE SHIELD OF FAITH!  We need to look beyond WHAT WE SEE to WHO WE CANNOT SEE – and TRUST GOD!  We need to recognise that we cannot see or understand all that is happening – so we doubt our doubts and trust our God! 

For me, Job is a faith hero.  He lost virtually everything, all he could sense was terrible, yet he clung to God.  The long, painful debates with his friends are all based on mere men trying to understand God and his “big picture” – and failing dismally.  God’s stern rebuke was to recognise that some things are too big for us to understand.  He is God and we are not!  Job and his friends did not know what was happening “behind the scenes” in the heavenlies, and their attempts to make sense of things only caused more pain. 

An old song put it like this: “Blessed are you when you trust… when you just can’t understand.”

This is FAITH.  We don’t trust our senses and our intellect… we trust GOD.  When we do this, we lift up a massive shield: the shield of FAITH.

Ephesians 6v16 tells us: “take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”

Let’s do that!!!

Here’s my conclusion:

There is a heavenly battle going on – between darkness and light, between the kingdom of the devil and the Kingdom of God. 

Jesus Christ has rescued us from the dominion of the devil and from slavery to sin.  The devil would love to keep us living as if we were still his prisoners, as if we were still slaves to sin.  Jesus wants us to live in the freedom that he bought for us with his own blood!

We need to put on the breastplate of righteousness.  Not the puny, faulty righteousness that we can come up with, but the righteousness that God gives to everyone who trusts in Jesus.  We need to take off our old, faulty armour and put on the righteousness of God.

We wear this armour by making choices based on God’s righteousness – by choosing to do the right thing.  We also wear it by setting boundaries that keep us out of the devil’s minefields.

From time-to-time, we will stumble – but God is on our side, and as we confess our sin, he will forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness – our armour will be beautifully shiny again!

The devil would have us doubt God – by trusting our senses and intellect; yet our senses and intellect are inadequate to judge situations accurately!  When we stop trusting in our own senses and start trusting God who knows exactly what is happening, we lift up the shield of faith and block the devil’s arrows!

Church, let’s wear our armour!