For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloke.
— Isaiah 59:17
But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
— 1 Thessalonians 5:8
And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.
— Revelation 9:9
And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.
— Revelation 9:17
The Christian’s Breastplate, by William Gurnall. The following contains an excerpt from his Chapter Nine of this work, “The Christian in Complete Armour.”
DIRECTION SIXTH.
THE SEVERAL PIECES OF THE WHOLE ARMOUR OF GOD. Second Piece—The Christian’s Breastplate.
‘And having on the breastplate of righteousness’, Eph. 6:14c.
These words present us with a SECOND PIECE OF ARMOUR, commended to, and charged upon, all Christ’s soldiers—a breastplate, and the metal it is to be made of, righteousness—‘and having on the breastplate of righteousness.’ Concerning this, there requires that a double inquiry would be made. FIRST. What is the righteousness here meant? SECOND. Why is it compared to this piece of the soldier’s armour, the breastplate.
THE EXPLANATION OF THE WORDS.
FIRST INQUIRY.
The righteousness meant.
What is the righteousness here meant? The Scripture speaks of a twofold righteousness; the one legal, the other evangelical.
FIRST. A legal righteousness—that which God required of man in the covenant of works: ‘Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by them,’Rom. 10:5. Three things concur to make up this law righteousness. First. An obedience absolutely perfect to the law of God, that is, perfect extensively, in regard of the object; intensively, in regard of the subject. The whole law, in short, must be kept with the whole heart; the least defect either of part or degree in the obedience spoils all.
Second. This perfect obedience to the law of God must be personally performed by him that is thus righteous. ‘The man that doeth these things shall live.’ In that covenant, god had but man’s single bond for performance—no surety engaged with him—so that God having none else to come upon for the default, it was necessary, except God will lose his debt, to exact it personally on every man.
Third. This perfect personal obedience must be perpetual. This law allows no after-gain. If the law be once broken, though but in one very thought, there is no place for repentance in that covenant, though it were attended with a life afterward never so exact and spotless. After-obedience being but due, cannot make amends for former disobedience. He doth not satisfy the law for killing a man once, that doeth so no more. How desperate were our condition, if we could not be listed in Christ’s muster-roll, till we were provided with such a breastplate as this is? Adam indeed had such a righteousness made to his hand. His heart and the law were in unison; it answered it, as face answers face in a glass. It was as natural to him to be righteous, as now it is to his posterity to be unrighteous. God was the engraver of his own image upon man, which consisted in righteousness and holiness. And he who made all so perfect, that upon a review of the whole creation, he neither added nor altered anything, but saw ‘all very good,’ was not less curious in the master-piece of all his work, he ‘made man perfect.’ But Adam sinned, and defiled our nature, and now our nature defiles us; so that, never since could Adam’s plate—righteousness, I mean—fit the breast of any mere man. If God would save all the world for one such righteous man—as once he offered to do Sodom for ten—that one could not be found. The apostle divides all the world into ‘Jew and Gentile,’ Rom. 3:9. He is not afraid to lay them all in the dirt; —we have before proved that they are ‘all under sin. As it is written, There is none, no, not one.’ Not the most boastful philosopher among the Gentiles, nor the precisest Pharisee among the Jews—we may go yet further—not the holiest saint that ever lived, can stand righteous before that bar. ‘Enter not into judgment with thy servant,’ saith David, ‘for in thy sight shall no man living be justified,’ Ps. 143:2. God hath nailed that door up, that none can for ever enter by a law- righteousness into life and happiness. This way to heaven is like the northern passage to the Indies —whoever attempts it, is sure to be frozen up before he gets halfway thither.
SECOND. The second righteousness, which the Scripture speaks of, is an evangelical righteousness. Now this also is twofold—a righteousness imputed or imparted. The imputed righteousness, is that which is wrought by Christ for the believer; the imparted, that which is wrought by Christ in the believer. The first of these, the imputed righteousness, is the righteousness of our justification, that by which the believer stands just and righteous before God, and is called, by way of distinction from the latter, ‘the righteousness of God,’ Rom. 3:21; 10:3. Not, as if the other righteousness were not of God also, but,
First. Because this is not only wrought by Christ, but also performed in Christ—who is God —and is not inherent in us, so that the benefit of it redounds by faith to us, as if we had wrought it. Hence Christ is called ‘the Lord our righteousness.’
Second. Because this is the righteousness, and not the other, which God hath ordained to be the meritorious cause of the justification of our persons, and also of the acceptation of our inherent righteousness imparted by him to us. Now, this righteousness belongs to ‘the fourth piece of armour’—the ‘shield of faith’—indeed we find it bearing its name from that grace, Rom. 4:11, where it is called ‘the righteousness of faith,’ because apprehended and applied by faith unto the soul. The ‘righteousness’ therefore which is here compared to ‘the breastplate,’ is the latter of the two, and that is, the righteousness of our sanctification, which I called a righteousness imparted, or a righteousness wrought by Christ in the believer. Now, this take, thus described. It is a supernatural principle of a new life planted in the heart of every child of God by the powerful operation of the Holy Spirit, whereby they endeavour to approve themselves to God and man, in performing what the word of God requires to be performed to both. Briefly let us unfold what is rolled up in this description.
1. Here is the efficient, or workman—the Holy Spirit. Hence it is that the several parts of holiness are called ‘fruits of the Spirit,’ Gal. 5:22. If the Spirit be not at the root, no such fruit can be seen on the branches as holiness. ‘Sensual,’ and ‘having not the Spirit,’ are inseparably coupled, Jude 19. Man, by his fall, hath a double loss; God’s love to him and his likeness to God. Christ restores both to his children —the first, by his righteousness imputed to them; the second, by his Spirit re-imparting the lost image of God to them, which consists ‘in righteousness and true holiness.’ Who, but a man, can impart his own nature, and beget a child like himself? and who, but the Spirit of God, can make a creature like God, by making him partaker of the divine nature?
2. Here is the work produced—a supernatural principle of a new life. (1.) By a principle of life, I mean, an inward disposition and quality, sweetly, powerfully, and constantly inclining it to that which is holy; so that the Christian, though passive in the production, is afterward active, and co-working with the Spirit in all actions of holiness; not as a lifeless instrument is in the hand of a musician, but as a living child in the hand of a father. Therefore they are said to be ‘led by the Holy Spirit,’ Rom. 8:14. (2.) It is a principle of new life; the Spirit’s work was not chafe and recover what was swooning, but to work a life de novo—anew, in a soul quite dead: ‘You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses,’ Eph. 2:1. The devil comes as orator, to persuade by argument, when he tempts; the Spirit as a creator, when he converts. The devil draws forth and enkindles what he finds raked up in the heart before; but the Holy Spirit puts into the soul what he finds not there—called in Scripture the ‘seed’ of God, I John 3:9. ‘Christ formed in you,’ Gal. 4:19, the ‘new creature,’ Gal. 6:15, the ‘law’ put by God into the inner man, Jer. 31:33, which Paul calls ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,’ Rom. 8:2. (3.) It is a supernatural principle. By this we distinguish it from Adam’s righteousness and holiness, which was co-natural to him, as now sin is to us; and, had he stood, would have been propagated to us as naturally as now his sin is. Holiness was as natural to Adam’s soul as health was to his body, they both resulting ex principiis recte constitutis—from principles pure and rightly disposed.
3. Here is the soil or subject in which the Spirit plants this principle of holiness—the child of God. ‘Because ye are sons, he hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,’ Gal. 4:6. Not a child in all his family that is unlike his Father—‘as is the heavenly, so are they that are heavenly’—and none but children have this stamp of true holiness on them. As the apostle, Rom. 8:9, concludes, we ‘have not his Spirit’ if we be ‘in the flesh’—that is in an unholy sinful state—so he concludes, we are ‘not his’ children if we ‘have not his Spirit,’ thus transforming and sanctifying us. There is indeed a holiness and sanctification, taken in a large sense, which may be found in such as are not children. So all the children of believers are ‘holy,’ I Cor. 7; who are not all children of God. Yea false professors also gain the name of being sanctified, Heb. 10:29, because they pretend to be so. But that which the Scripture calls righteousness and true holiness, is a sculpture the Spirit engraves on none but the children of God. The Spirit sanctifies none but whom Christ prays his Father to ‘sanctify,’ and they are his peculiar number given to God of him, John 17:17.
4. Here is the efficacy of this principle, planted by the Spirit in the heart of a child of God, whereby he endeavours. As the heart— which is the principle of the natural life in the body—from the infusion of natural life, is ever beating and working, so the principle of new life in the soul is ever endeavouring. The ‘new creature’ is not still-born; true holiness is not a dull habit, that sleeps away the time with doing nothing. The woman cured by Christ ‘arose’ up presently ‘and ministered unto them,’ Matt. 8:15. No sooner is this principle planted in the heart, but the man riseth up to wait on God, and act for God with all his might and main. The seed which the sanctifying Spirit cast into the soul, is not lost in the soil, but quickly shows it is alive by the fruit it bears.
5. Here is the imperfect nature of this principle —as it shows its reality by endeavouring, so its imperfection, that it enables but to an endeavour, not to a full performance. Evangelical holiness makes the creature rather willing than able to give full obedience. The saint’s heart leaps when his legs do but creep in the way of God’s commandments. Mary asked ‘where they had laid Christ?’ meaning, it seems, to carry him away on her shoulders; which she was not able for to do. Her affections were stronger than her back. That principle of holiness which is in the saint, makes him lift at that duty which he can little more than stir. Paul, a saint of the first magnitude, he gives us his own character, with other eminent servants of Christ, rather from the sincerity of their will and endeavour, than perfection of their work. ‘Pray for us; for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly,’ Heb. 13:18. He doth not say ‘In all things we do live honestly,’ as if no step were taken awry by them; no, he durst not say so for a world. But thus much he dares assert for himself and brethren, ‘that they are willing in all things to do what was holy and righteous.’ Where ‘willing’ is not a weak listless velleity, but a will exerted in a vigorous endeavour, it weighs as much in an impartial ear, as that of the same Paul, Acts 24:16, ‘herein do I exercise myself.’ He was so willing, as to use his best care and labour in the ways of holiness, and having this testimony in his own breast, he is not afraid to lay claim to ‘a good conscience,’ though he doth not fully attain to that he desires: ‘We trust we have a good conscience, willing,’ c.—he means in the favourable interpretation of the gospel, for the law allows no such good conscience.
6. Here is the uniformity of this principle in its actings—‘to God and man.’ True holiness doth not divide what God joins together: ‘God spake all these words,’ Ex. 20:1, first table and second also. Now a truly sanctified heart does not skip or blot one word God hath written, but desires to be a faithful executor to perform the whole will of God.
7. Here is the order of its actings—as ‘to God and man;’ so, first to God, and then to man; yea, to God, in his righteousness and charity to man. Paul saith of the Macedonians that they first gave ‘their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God,’ II Cor. 8:5. God is first served, and man, in obedience to the will of God.
8. Here is the rule it goes by—‘what the word of God requires.’ Apocryphal holiness is no true holiness. We cannot write in religion a right line without a rule, or by a false one. And all are false rules besides the word—‘to the law, and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them,’ Isa. 8:20.
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