The Breastplate of Righteousness

What a marvelous plan God had for us! God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt-worthy off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt-worthy. The greatest determinant of our mental health and freedom is a true understanding of God’s reconciliation.

The insidious reality of Satan and his forces relentless assault of deception on our mind can keep us from experiencing maturity and freedom, because our past has shaped our present belief system and will determine our future unless it is dealt with. We have been tricked into believing that what we do makes us what we are.

We fail, so we see ourselves as failures, which only causes us to fail more. We sin, so we see ourselves as sinners, which only causes us to sin more. We have been sucked into Satan and his forces futile equation, and that false belief sends us into a tailspin of hopelessness and defeat.

It is absolutely vital that we put on the breastplate of righteousness, so that we can resist the persistent accusations of Satan and his forces, they never give up trying to get us down and keep us down by hurling one false accusation after another. Wholeness and meaning in life are not the products of what we have or do not have, what we have done or have not done, we are already a whole person and possess a life of infinite meaning and purpose because of who we are in Christ.

Our understanding of the identity that Adam had before the fall, that identity has been restored to us, that restored identity is the critical foundation for our belief structure and our behavior patterns. Many people that are of the body of Christ have obsessive-compulsive behaviors because of this relentless battle for their minds, and the battle for our mind can only be won as we personally choose truth.

A mentally healthy person is one who is in touch with reality and relatively free of anxiety. Rejoice in Christ always, in our minds is what this is all about, everything whether good or evil begins in the arena of our minds. Joy is a trust issue; joy in Christ for a believer is that of a state of mind independent of surrounding circumstances.

Rejoicing is the exhibit of that interstate of mind, because no longer do we have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who we are and what we can do, no longer are our sins held against us, no longer does the death penalty for sin hang over us. Joy comes from an understanding of the grace of God, an understanding and appreciation of the resultant peace with God that we now have because of God’s grace.

Paul wants us to know at one point in time something was true, but now something else is true. Paul presented the evidence that all people of all time justly deserve the wrath of a perfectly just God, because people glorifies themselves by filtering everything they say and everything they do through that screen of self-protection, self-elevation, and self-gratification.

But now, as far as God is concerned, he loved mankind so much that he was willing to let his own son die for sinful people, and have his son pay all the penalties of their sins, forget their rebelliousness and overlook their hostility, while they were still sinners, still rebellious, and still hostile. God made up his mind to become completely reconciled to mankind before people made any signs of making peace with God.

God has one-sidedly reconciled himself to mankind through what the death of his son accomplished; all sins and hostility are paid for as far as God is concerned. By removing the sin issue from the table of God’s justice, God effectively canceled Satan’s ownership of all mankind.

Those who put on the breastplate of righteousness know that we have peace with God, for a person to have to make their own peace with God would be nothing more than an exercise in futility, it could never be done. We could not make peace with God, to say that anyone could make peace with God, would be to limit God to his mercy, because grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built.

There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.