Let’s talk about what a breastplate was for a Roman soldier.
For the Roman soldiers, a breastplate was a vital piece of armor. It protected them from easy shots (in other words, easy-to-inflict injuries) that could otherwise be avoided. These wounds could often be fatal and if not, they were still an unnecessary pain. The breastplate was something that every Roman soldier would have had and understood the importance of.
But, as I may have mentioned before, the Breastplate of Righteousness does not do its job as well (if at all) without the Belt of Truth. Think about it. I said something about this in my post about The Belt of Truth:
“Have you ever noticed that when someone doesn’t tell the truth it often is to cover up something they did or that someone else did that was wrong? If we act upon our knowledge of truth it can (and will) hold our righteousness intact.”
Righteousness and Truth are never apart. In fact, you will find that this applies to every piece of armor we talk about. Without each other they are useless and sometimes impossible to use. There are a lot of different analogies I can think of to describe this, but I think I’ll stick with the one from the Bible.
Righteousness is a big word, but I have always thought it meant something like: doing what is right in God’s eyes. And since God has given us the Bible for instructions we have a way to know what he wants of us. That doesn’t mean we will always be perfect (we are human after all), but it does mean we can try to do what is right.
Read more in this series:
Our righteousness come from the Lord Jesus Christ. When the enemy comes to condemn believers, we put on the light of Christ and silence the voice of condemnation. The righteousness of God, in Christ, means that you are justified, declared righteous because you have had your sins cleansed by Jesus.