How to put on the full armour of God. – Part 3 of a 3 part series.
The breastplate of righteousness and the belt of truth
The Breastplate of righteousness in the sense of a Christians armour protects us from being defeated by a loss of credibility.
This is not speaking of the righteous of Christ, that’s something that we have when we are “born again” and will never change. No what is being spoken about here is our righteousness. Do you do the right thing? You are a Christian first and foremost. There is an expectation that you will not steal or lie or cheat or take bribes or have sex outside marriage. If you fall into any of these sins your credibility as a Christian will falter.
And who will take seriously a minister or leader in the church who falls in this way. Once credibility has gone you have no breastplate of righteousness and you are now very vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy. “ you are a failure, etc etc” so repent publicly and start building from scratch your breastplate – it will take time.
The Belt of Truth
And what about the belt of truth – You need to uphold the truth always – no compromise. The truth will uphold you and keep you from falling but beware of deception as this will cause your belt of truth to unravel and allow all sorts of evil half truths to damage your walk and witness for Jesus.
Beware of believing what the world or other Christians say or teach you without checking them out. The devil doesn’t mind you knowing half truths as long as his lies get in the back door. Even 99% truth if it allows the 1% of error in. Obviously he prefers to sneak in as much error as possible.
The only way to keep your belt on is to consistently check what someone is teaching you against the whole word of God (the sword of the Spirit). Even if they quote scripture to back up what they say see what other scriptures say, check against the original Greek or Hebrew words in the online resources available to you. Even check what you read in the bible against other parts of the bible. This is where you really need to know the whole word of God. For instance we read in 1 Thessalonians 5:15-18 That we are to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” – If we did not check out other scriptures and made a theology out of this verse we would be telling people who are grieving the loss of a loved one to “Rejoice”! BUT we are told to weep with those who weep in Romans 12:15 AND Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb before He called him to come out. So is Jesus wrong to weep with those who weep and this instruction to weep with those who weep was given by the same apostle Paul who said rejoice always. OK so we can see now that we have to handle God’s word carefully to avoid making mistakes. Very briefly the context here is key to understanding that Paul is talking in Thessalonians about our walk with the Lord when he says “Rejoice always, pray continually” as he did when he was imprisoned for the sake of the gospel. You can’t pray while you are asleep! So what does continually mean? It means you can have an attitude of continual prayer when you are awake. We must never give up praying or rejoicing or giving thanks to God!
I am sorry to say that there are some bible teachers throughout the ages who plainly have mishandled the word of God and have made mistakes like these and as a result heresies and cults form. For others, while not compromising on gospel issues, like the Trinity, nevertheless lead others to damaging theology like Theological Determinism (God is responsible for everything – Which He isn’t, unless you want to blame Him for all our sins and evil in the world). That’s why its so serious when you find something that does not make sense to you being taught as “truth” that you use the belt of truth to discern “The Truth”. This means relying on the Holy Spirit who is the one, as Jesus said, who guides us into all truth. If a teacher has faltered in one area it doesn’t necessarily make them a false teacher e.g. If they teach you that Jesus ascended from Galilee basing that on the great commission in Matthew 28 rather than The Mount of Olives as mentioned in Luke, its a mistake that can be rectified pretty quickly but if they say you need to be baptised in order to go to heaven and they don’t acknowledge this to be false teaching ( The thief on the cross was not baptised, neither was King David) then pride may be a problem. In this case it’s easier to find another bible teacher than try to decipher what they are saying is completely right or 95% right or completely wrong. It becomes tedious and risky because you are probably not a bible teacher. However the Holy Spirit is! So if you find a teacher that has in your opinion made a mistake, bring it to their attention. If they are humble and accept and look into it, that’s a good start. If they never come back to you or fail to explain why they still hold their view you better find another teacher. In the book of James it says that those who teach will be judged more harshly. James 3:1 They have a great responsibility to get it right and rightly so.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5 To question everyone and everything that sets itself up against the knowledge of the Lord. We are allowed to question and if we get no decent response you are free to go somewhere else for your information. Your questioning may bring that soul back into the light and if it does then the belt of truth has done its job thanks to the Holy Spirit.
Feet shod with the readiness of the Gospel
Feet shod- we need to be prepared to give an answer for the hope we have. Preparedness being the operative word – not prepared then no boots on. This is an offensive weapon in that you are attacking the enemies ground and enabling the rescue of souls from darkness to light. If all we do with our armour is withstand the attacks of the enemy then what do we achieve for the kingdom of God. Yes we are not a casuality for hospital treatment but in a war you fight to win. Our shoes have to be versatile as folk come from different backgrounds and so we need to depend on the Holy Spirit at all times. In fact you cannot put the armour on and keep it on without the Holy Spirits help.
One way to prepare is to go to bible studies devoted to this area of sharing our faith. We should try to avoid formula and glib statements and learn how to depend on the Holy Spirit to help us find the right passage and words to say. It would certainly help if we again knew certain passages off by heart and where they are in the bible. That is preparedness with dependancy on the Holy Spirit.
If you think of anything else please put your comments below.