4. The Armor of God: The Breastplate of Righteousness

The Armor of God and the Breastplate of Righteousness

Okay, so as you guys know, we're going through a series on the armor of God. Today we're up to the breastplate of righteousness. And who can tell me where the armor of God is found in the book of Ephesians?

Chapter 6. Alright. So what we're going to do is we're going to read the first 20 verses. Finally, be strong in the Lord in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with the truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, which is our topic this morning, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

In addition to all, take up the shield of faith, with which you were able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

With all prayer and petition at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. And pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it, I may speak boldly as I ought to speak.

And just to let you know, most of my information comes from the book The Whole Armor of God by Ian Dugood, so that's kind of like the basis for what I'm teaching this morning and throughout the series.

I also use Martin Lloyd-Jones and a couple other commentaries, but that's an excellent book to get if you wanted a broad overview of The Armor of God. Okay, so first of all, the breastplate of righteousness, what is it?

What Paul means by the breastplate of righteousness is not a set of accomplishments that we create for ourselves. Rather, it's something given to us. It's armor to be put on. The breastplate is not our workmanship.

This is not something that we've done. In fact, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, so we don't create the breastplate. He does, and he gives it to us. It's part of the armor that God provides for us.

It's a righteousness not of our own. It's foreign. It's an alien righteousness that we receive, and we're going to go through that a little deeper. Paul didn't invent the different pieces of the armor of God.

They come from various passages in the Old Testament, especially the book of Isaiah. Nowhere is Paul's dependence on the Old Testament clearer than with the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation, which are both drawn directly from Isaiah 59.

Isaiah 59 and the Divine Warrior

So what I figured we'd do, we're going to read Isaiah 59, go through it, see what's being said there, and see how that would apply. So Isaiah 59, beginning at verse 6. This is Isaiah speaking. He says,.

Their works are works of iniquity, and deeds of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their highways.

The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths. They have made their roads crooked. No one who treads on them knows peace. Sounds much like today's U .S. government, the United States in general.

Therefore, justice is far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us. We hope for light, but behold darkness. We hope for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope for the wall like the blind. We grope like those who have no eyes.

We stumble at noon as in the twilight. Among those in full vigor, we are like dead men. We all growl like bears. We moan and moan like doves. We hope for justice, but there is none. We hope for salvation, but it is far from us.

For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us. For our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities. Transgressing and denying the Lord, turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words, justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away.

For truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Can you feel the gloom, the desperation of these people who are seeking or recognizing their own sinfulness and recognizing they've turned away from God?

It goes on. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no one to intercede.

Then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. Here's where the hope comes in. He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.

According to their deeds, so he will repay. Wrath to his adversaries. Repayment to his enemies. To the coastlands he will render repayment. So they shall fear the name of the Lord from the west and his glory from the rising of the sun.

For he will come like a rushing stream which the wind of the Lord drives, and a redeemer will come to Zion to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, declares the Lord. So in the absence of the righteousness of Israel, God himself is going to put righteousness on as a breastplate.

He is going to send a redeemer who will come to Zion, who will become the righteousness, the breastplate, that we will eventually receive through Jesus. So when you're out on the streets, most people think that we get into heaven by doing good works.

Did anybody in here believe that you can get to heaven by doing good works at some point in time? No, I'm the only one. Okay, good. Now, everybody knows. Oh, there you go, Tom. Thank you, Tom. There's one honest man in the room.

Most people think that you can get to heaven by doing good things. That's what I thought. That's what I was taught, actually. Our righteousness, however, will never be good enough. Isaiah would go on to say, all of our good works are filthy rags before the Lord.

And not to get graphic, but that word rags is menstrual rags. All your good works are filthy, bloody menstrual rags before God. The wages of sin is death. And as human beings, we've earned our wages. In fact, death is guilt made visible.

Anyone who dies, it's because they were guilty at some point of sin, even just if by nature. Our righteousness will not protect us from God, no less the devil, right? So we need help. We need help from the outside because the inside of us is corrupt.

We need perfect righteousness, the righteousness from God through faith in Christ Jesus. Not coincidentally, that problematic situation is exactly what the prophet was addressing in Isaiah 59. The same way it was back then is the same way it was today.

Given an opportunity, a man will proclaim his own righteousness. However, the prophet described the divine warrior coming to deal with the far greater and more dangerous enemy of their souls, sin. While Israel was looking out at all their enemies, thinking that the enemy was just a physical, another nation coming in that would destroy them or fight them, God was explaining to them, the real enemy, the more powerful enemy is the sin inside of you, not the enemy on the outside.

To take on this enemy and bring about the final deliverance of his people, God put on his own armor, his breastplate of righteousness and his helmet of salvation. He intervened to rescue them. When I say them, I'm talking about Jesus coming in the New Covenant, coming to earth.

He is God in the flesh. He is the one who's going to live the perfect life we needed to live and die the death that we deserved. So this is the divine warrior. This is Jesus. No one else could have delivered Israel from such a powerful foe, but the Lord's mighty arm would defeat his adversaries and bring redemption to his chosen ones.

This was the plan from all eternity, from Genesis 3 .15, where God promised that one will come who will crush the head of the serpent and defeat the devil. This is Jesus who's coming. He's going to be the divine warrior who lives a perfectly righteous life in our place.

His people have no righteousness of their own to bring him. Indeed, the prophet declares to Israel that even their best righteousness is nothing more than filthy garments. The people know that their iniquities have separated them from God.

Justification, Imputed Righteousness, and the Great Exchange

A true Christian understands and recognizes his own sinfulness before God. You don't go to God. I don't go to God and pray. I pray in the name of Anthony. No. In the name of Anthony means nothing because I'm a sinner.

I'm a saint. I've been washed. I've been cleansed. I've been justified. I'm in the process of sanctification, but I go to God in the name of Jesus. That word name is the power and authority of Jesus. I come in based on his record, not mine.

If I went in based on my own record, I'm going to experience wrath. So I come in the name, in the power, the authority, in the record of Jesus when I approach God. And because it's the power and the name and the authority of Jesus, I can come boldly with full assurance of faith.

If the Lord were to deal with his people according to their deeds, there would be nothing to anticipate but the fearful prospect of judgment. No one can come to God except through Christ. If you come to God apart from Christ, you will end up paying the penalty for your own sins.

Here's something we need to remember. Righteousness is not something you give to God. It's something you get from God. Eternal life is not a reward for the righteous, but a gift for the guilty. That statement is from Steve Lawson.

Eternal life is not a reward for the righteous, but a gift for the guilty. We're saved by grace through faith, and that, not of ourselves. It's the gift of God, not by our good works so that no one can boast.

If it was by our good works, what we're actually saying is, by my good works, I could put God into my debt. He would owe me something because I've accomplished everything he told me. Flat out wrong. God never owes us anything.

That's why it's grace and mercy. Jesus is the one who lives the perfectly righteous life in our place and gives it to us as a gift by faith in him, which we're going to get into. Yet this promise intervention by God would be intensely costly.

The Lord spoke of the suffering servant who would win the victory and intercede for transgressors by bearing their sins himself. The Lord's decisive triumph over transgression would be won through the servant's agonizing submission to pain and disfigurement as an atoning substitute for his people.

In fact, the book of Hebrews says that the Lord learned suffering through obedience. We're going to suffer in this world. If we're going to walk in the steps of Christ, we're going to have to learn to handle suffering.

No one is promised a charmed life. Everybody's going to experience some sort of trials in this life. Last week we talked about it. If you deliver enough mail, the dog's going to bark, bite, and chase you.

If you're Christian for any period of time, there's an enemy who's going to try to trap you and get you to sin. We have to be on guard for that. That's why we have. We've been provided the armor of God.

So what happens is a double transformation, and we touched on this briefly last week. At the heart of the Christian message are two equal and opposite transformations, and each one is dramatic. Each would be unbelievable if we didn't have God's own word on it.

First, God took Jesus, the only perfect person who ever lived, the only one who could ever stand before God on the basis of his own goodness, God's own beloved son, and treated him as if he were the guilty one.

He made Jesus to be blackened with our sin, our iniquity, and our transgression. So when Jesus was on the cross, he was bearing the wrath of God in our place. Jesus never should have died because he was perfectly righteous.

The wages of sin is death. He didn't sin, but he was treated that way for our sake. So last week we talked about the belt of truth. The belt of truth covers your loins. This is exactly what Adam and Eve covered when they hid in the garden.

It was their shame. So first you have to recognize that through the belt of truth, your sins have been paid for. Now, with the breastplate of righteousness, that covers your vital organs, your heart, your lungs, your liver, your esophagus, your stomach.

You can't live without any of those things. So the belt of truth reminds you that your sins have been paid for. The breastplate of righteousness reminds you that it's God's righteousness given to you in your account.

So we talk about the active obedience of Christ and the passive obedience of Christ. The active obedience of Christ is what earns the righteousness. The passive obedience of Christ is him dying on the cross for your sins.

So your sins have been paid for, and now you're given the righteousness of Christ. You now can stand before God because of what Christ has done for you. Last week we talked about the difference between facts and feelings.

This is a fact for everyone who's placed their faith and trust in Jesus. Do not trust your feelings, right? Your feelings are going to fluctuate. You have to go back to the truth of God's word, to the facts that he gives us.

Then second, equally remarkable, having treated the innocent one as guilty, God treats the guilty one as innocent. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

Instead of counting our sins against us, God chooses to count Christ's righteousness as ours. It's not a righteousness of our own. It's being given to us. Isaiah would say it like this, Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

The robe of perfect obedience that God stripped off the back of his own son, he now gives to clothe us, Zechariah 3. In Christ, we have received a breastplate of righteousness that defends us forever against the wrath of God.

Again, that term, in Christ, was used about 13 times throughout the book of Ephesians. Chapter 6 is the summary, the culmination of everything that that points to. When you place your faith in Christ and the Holy Spirit lives inside of you, you are now in union with Christ.

Everything he has, you have. You are a rightful heir to everything that God your Father owns. That's amazing news. Have you guys ever heard the story of Barabbas? I'm the only one again. Okay, so I'm the only one who thinks I can get to heaven by doing good works, and I'm the only one who read about Barabbas.

All right, good. All right, so I'm going to read it for you since nobody's read this before. Now at the feast, the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted, and they had a notorious prisoner called Barabbas.

So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, Who do you want me to release for you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Christ? For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, Had nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him in a dream.

Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, Which of the two do you want me to release for you? And they said, Barabbas.

Pilate said to them, Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called the Christ? They all said, Let him be crucified. And he said, Why? What evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, Let him be crucified.

They would go on to call down curses upon themselves and their children. So what does this have to do with the righteousness of Christ? Anybody have an idea, a guess? Who is Barabbas? No one? He was a criminal, right?

He was actually part of a revolt, right? He was revolting against the Roman government. So that's why he was... What does... look at his name, Barabbas. What does the term Bar mean? Like Simon, Bar, Jonah?

Son! So Bar means son. What does Abba mean? Father. Barabbas, the guilty son of the father, is let go. While Jesus, Barabbas, the innocent only son of God, is put on the cross in his place. This is a picture of substitution, right?

Barabbas, Jesus, is the son of the father. Do you realize, in some translations, like the Lexham English Bible, Matthew 27 .15 says, Jesus was a very common name at that time. It's Yeshua, Joshua, right?

So Barabbas' first name was Jesus. So think of the picture. You have Jesus, Barabbas, the guilty son of the father, being set free, and Jesus, the one and only innocent son, true son of the father, being crucified.

That's our redemption. That's the righteousness that we receive in that exchange. We are righteous in Christ. This is the great exchange that applies only to those who are united to Christ. Those in Christ, that is those who are Christians, as Paul says in Romans 8, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

2 Corinthians 5 .17, We need to continually meditate on these truths and recognize when our faith and trust is in Jesus, we are united to him. Everything he has, we have. We have his righteousness imputed to our account so that when we stand before God, we're innocent.

Not because of anything that we've done. Because if we bring our record to the table, well, then we bring our record to the table, and that includes our sin. And that would include condemnation. So you want that taken away through the crucifixion of Jesus, but in his active obedience, his living the life that we should have lived, imputed to our account through faith.

So this is not our own earned righteousness, and it's not a feeling of righteousness, but a righteousness received by faith in Jesus, which gives us a sense of confidence and awareness of our standing and position.

Assurance, Security, and the Lies of Satan

And this is important. So much of the modern American church is hooked on a feeling. You heard that song, right? I'm hooked on a feeling. And what happens? A couple of hours later, that feeling is gone.

A couple of weeks later, it's a different feeling. You start going based on your feelings, you're in big trouble. Martin Luther King says it this way, I thank God for experiences, but I do not rely on them.

You do not put on the breastplate of experiences. You put on the breastplate of righteousness. You must realize the only true ground of your standing in the presence of God so that in the absence of anything unusual or dramatic or extraordinary, i .e. experiences, you nevertheless know who you are and how you stand and how to answer all that the devil may suggest to you.

So if you're going to be governed by your feelings, okay, and you start walking around, hmm, I'm feeling good today, I must be righteous. You're going to have a problem. Or the opposite is true. If you start with, I'm a filthy sinner, I'm not going to heaven.

That's the opposite, right? Neither one of those two things are where you're to stand. You're to stand on Jesus Christ and his righteousness. You are not good enough to get in, but you are not bad enough to be excluded either if you turn to God in repentance.

That's the beauty of the gospel. This is not about you. This is about him. Christianity is not spelled D-O. Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E. It is finished, paid. Your experience is not the deciding factor, right?

So many churches are, oh, did you see this? I did this. We cast out demons. And it's all these different experiences. Now, I'm not saying some of those things aren't true. But if you're going to base your walk with God on your experiences, you're going to have a tough time.

You're going to be up and down and up and down, up and down. And most of them are. In fact, you're going to find people coming into your church and then leaving your church. And new people coming in and new people leaving.

Because part of their theology is, we've got to go with the move of the Spirit. Really? Where does it say that in the Bible? That's why somebody says, oh, the Spirit left this place. We've got to go to a different church.

And they never commit to a body of believers. The Holy Spirit doesn't shift from church to church. If you're a real church, the Holy Spirit's there. And you are bound to the people that are in that church that you're a member of.

And that's the way you grow. You grow when you learn to love other people. When they love you and somebody does something for you that you never expected. It's like, oh, my goodness. They love me. But you'll never get that opportunity if you keep shifting to try to follow the Spirit.

And what does that mean anyway? How do you know? Oh, I felt it. There you go. You're in trouble. The breastplate declares that no matter how bad you've been, the offer of God's deliverance still stands.

If he can carry the weight of the sins of all of his people, past, present and future, then he can certainly manage your own personal collection. He's powerful enough for that. That's why Christianity has long been good news to the outcasts of society.

The gospel always found a welcome among prostitutes and drug addicts, alcoholics and convicts. Those enmeshed in sexual sins of various kinds. Those who know they've lived immoral lives. All these can receive a perfect righteousness from Jesus Christ that makes them into friends of God.

You are never too far from God for redemption. This is why I think a lot of men and women who end up in prison end up turning to the Lord. Because they recognize, you know what? There is a consequence for sin.

I'm living in it. But now what about the spiritual sins that I've committed? How do I get out of this prison? You can be free while in prison if you trust in Christ. But the opposite is true as well. The gospel is good news for the proud and the self-righteous.

It's really hard to work to maintain the facade of practical perfection and to pretend to everyone around you that you really don't need a Savior because you're doing just fine by yourself, i .e. the prodigal son.

I say that he was lost at home. It wasn't love for his father, but spiritual pride that led the elder brother to stay home. He was just as spiritually broken as his younger sibling. He was just better at hiding it.

In the gospel, elder brothers can also receive a new and perfect righteousness that is given to them as a free gift in Christ. So even the Pharisees and the Sadducees, should they turn and trust Christ, they'd be forgiven.

Nicodemus, right? Turned, trust Christ, forgiven. Because our righteousness is in Christ, not in ourselves. So, how do we get assurance? The central truth of the imputed righteousness of Christ needs to dominate the lives of Christians.

That needs to permeate our minds. On the one hand, it means that nothing I can do could ever stop God from loving me. If God loved me enough to give himself for me when I was his sworn enemy, he will certainly love me enough to forgive me now that I am his child.

Once you're a child of God, that can never stop. My children are my children. Couldn't they ever stop being my children? No, they could be my good children or they could be my bad children. Thankfully, they're good right now.

The righteousness that comes through the cross gives us assurance and security in God's love. Like I said it all the time, I love the illustration that Michael Kruger gives. The cross is God's certified check that your sins have been paid for.

What else do you need? God sacrificed his own son. Is that not enough? If I have been reconciled to God through Christ and am always clothed with his perfect righteousness, then even during the darkest nights of personal failure, when I slide right back into those sins that have the strongest grip on my heart, he will not cast me off.

To him who is able to keep us from falling and present us before his throne without spot or blemish, to him be the glory, honor, and praise. Think about this, 1 Peter 3 .18. Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for who?

The unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. He didn't suffer for the righteous. He suffered for the unrighteous. Romans 4 .5, and to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the good people.

No, he justifies ungodly people. His faith is counted as righteous. Righteousness, right? So to the traditions that believe, oh, I have to work with the grace of God to earn real righteousness. Well, once you get real righteousness in that tradition, Romanist tradition, then you get in.

So God justifies you after you're righteous? No. Abraham believed God. It was credited to him as righteousness, right? Then him and us, we work out our salvation with fear and trouble because we have it.

It's been given to us as a gift. We have been justified. Jeremiah 23, in his days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called. The Lord is our righteousness.

In Hebrew, it's Jehovah Sikenu. Even in the Old Testament, they knew that God himself would be their righteousness. This is not a righteousness that we're going to earn on our own. I mean, I keep repeating myself, but sometimes it needs to be drummed into our head so that if you ever fall to one side of the ditch or the other, oh, I'm doing good.

Stay in the middle. Oh, I'm too bad to be saved. Stay in the middle. If you stand on Christ and you trust in him, it's his righteousness, not your own. He's Jehovah Sikenu. The Lord is our righteousness.

On the other hand, the righteousness that comes through the cross also means that I can never take my sin lightly and just shrug it off. I've been reconciled to God and made a new creature in Christ. God is now at work in me by his Holy Spirit, remaking me into the image of Christ.

His purpose is to make me part of a holy people created for good works in Christ Jesus. So you don't want to overemphasize your sins, but you don't want to underemphasize them either. They matter. God placed his spirit in you to free you from the penalty of sin, but also to free you to keep the law.

We're able to. 1 Corinthians 10 .13. No temptation is overtaking you. Such is not common to man. But God is faithful and within the temptation will make a way of escape that you may enter through it. So as God tests your heart, sometimes you're going to fail.

Sometimes you're going to pass. But you, in and of yourself, by the power of the Holy Spirit, have the ability to obey God. We need to recognize that our obedience is important. It's not counted as our righteousness, but it's important.

Why then would I act, act as if I'm still part of the kingdom of darkness and plunge back into my former way of life among the prostitutes and the pigs as if nothing happened? The righteousness of Christ, painfully won for us at the cross, motivates us to strive hard toward an obedience that fits the new nature that God is working in us.

You are motivated by love. Don't forget who you once were. You were the orphan who came to this country. You had nothing. You had nowhere to go. Somebody put you on a train, sent you across the country.

You got off. Somebody adopted you and brought you into their family. The illustration I used at the beginning was Henry Ford, him adopting one of these orphans and bringing them now in a car, which they've never drove in, to this giant mansion.

This now is yours because I adopted you. If you're adopted by God the Father, you are part of His kingdom and an heir to everything He has given you. I charge you, act like it. Act like it. So the breastplate of righteousness defends vital organs.

Our vital organs are our heart, our lungs, our liver, stomach, esophagus. Vital organs represent vital truths. We know that is really true because the righteousness of God has been given to us in Christ.

We have to go back to that fact. As we strap that righteousness on as our breastplate, it protects our heart against Satan's vicious lies that God cannot really find pleasure in us. When you see that the righteousness obtained for us on the cross gives us profound security in God's love and powerful motivation against sin, you can see why Paul describes righteousness as our breastplate in our fight against the devil.

Just as a breastplate defends a soldier's vital organs, so the righteousness of Christ protects us against two of the chief lies that the devil wants us to believe. First lie, God really doesn't love you that much.

And the second lie, sin doesn't really matter. First, the devil works tirelessly to persuade you that God doesn't really love you. And what does he base that on? Your performance. He continues to point you to your performance.

You need to point him to the cross. That's the performance that I'm counting on. Satan says, how could you love God when you're such a mess? He whispers, maybe if you were a better Christian, God would love you.

Have you ever been in that position? You started doubting yourself and, oh my goodness, I'm feeling condemnation. But the righteousness that God has established for us through the blood of Jesus Christ speaks a better word of God's unmerited favor.

It says you have been reconciled to God through Christ's death and resurrection. Your sin and failure have been taken away, nailed to the cross, once and for all, as part of the charges against Christ.

You have been joined to Christ forever in His holy perfection. So even though you are weak and failing, the Father cannot look you apart from the perfect righteousness of Christ. He loves you like He loves Jesus.

That's a profound truth. The same love that God the Father has for God the Son, Jesus Christ, is the same love He has for you, and it's never-ending. God has perfections. He does not have feelings that fluctuate.

His Son's death on the cross guaranteed that love would be an everlasting love upon you forever. Philippians 3,. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish. In order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

Your righteousness is not your own. It's Jesus's. He was the one who put on that breastplate, lived the life that you need to live. You need to tell yourself that every morning or you're going to fall into despair.

Second, Satan will say, well, then sin doesn't really matter. If Jesus paid the price for all your sins, go have at it. Have fun. Do whatever you want. If God loves you as much as when you're bad as when you're good, why not be bad?

So much easier, right? A lot more fun too. Yet precisely because of the perfect righteousness that has been given us in Christ, we cannot just continue in evil. In Christ, God declares us now to be what we will ultimately make us, what he will ultimately make us through the work of the Spirit, perfectly righteous.

When you look at the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not covet, think of those in a prophetic sense. There's going to come a point in time when you will not murder, you will not commit adultery, you will not bear false witness.

Those are a picture of what we are going to look like complete on the other side, right? Right now, we all live between work begun and work complete. It's that process of sanctification. We're all work in progress.

On the other side, at the end, we're going to get glorified bodies and we're going to be made perfectly righteous because of Christ. 1 Corinthians 6, Paul lists some of the activities that will keep us from inheriting the kingdom of God.

Sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, practicing homosexuality, theft, greed, drunkenness, reviling, swindling, and so on. Many of the Corinthians to whom he wrote had once followed lifestyles that belonged on that list.

But Paul says, you were washed, passed. You were sanctified, passed. You were justified in the name of yourself. No, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. The justification we receive in Christ is just the start of God's work in us.

New creation is the beginning of our transformation, not the end. So once God has begun that process, we're in the process of sanctification and He will complete it. The end of the story is the fulfillment of God's plan from the beginning of time to have a holy people for Himself, completely free from sin.

In the meantime, our struggle with sin is an important part of the story God is writing by the work of His Holy Spirit in our hearts. So as we gain victory in certain areas of our life and people see the difference, you can point them to your testimony.

We overcome by the blood of the Lamb. He's forgiven my sin. The Spirit's inside of me and working in me to do the things I'm supposed to do. You knew me way back then. Now you know me. What's changed?

God has changed my heart. It's an opportunity to share the gospel. And we all know it's a daily struggle. We all have a way to grow in our journey as soldiers engaged in a lifelong conflict with Satan.

It's a daily battle to put on the breastplate of God's righteousness and to fight with all our might to imitate that pattern of righteousness in our own lives. It's not easy to die to self, lay down your own lives, pick up a cross, follow Him.

But that's what we're called to do. That's what He was willing to do for us. That's why I pray every week from the pulpit, Lord, may we be as faithful to You as You have been to us. I want to be faithful to God to the dying of myself.