“with the breastplate of righteousness in place,” Ephesians 6:14b
The breastplate was a part of a soldier’s armor used to protect the soldier’s heart, lungs, kidneys and spine, all vital organs to survival. Also, in Jesus’s time, the heart was considered to be the center of a person’s character, so if your heart was good, you were good. No matter how it was looked at, the heart was an organ that needed protected. Our hearts need protected as well, both physically and emotionally.
When we love someone, we don’t say “I love you with all my mind”, no we say “I love you with all my heart.” When we talk about believing something to be true, we don’t believe it only with our thoughts or mind, but we know it to be true when we believe it with all of our heart. As a child, we feel loved by our family and a sense of belonging to them in our heart, not just as a fact that we know.
I believe Paul used the breastplate for the concept of righteousness because knowing that we are the righteousness of God through Christ is one thing, but feeling it in our hearts is something that is on a deeper level. The devil also knows that we carry our feelings in our heart and if he wants to attack us then he comes after our heart. When we have negative thoughts about ourselves and how imperfect we are, we can dismiss them easier when they are only thoughts, but when we put emotion to those thoughts, it becomes very hard to stop feeling those emotions. We need to protect our heart from all the arrows of lies that the devil will shoot as us in an attempt to have us doubt how much we are loved by God. He would love for us to believe that we are too far gone to be forgiven.
We should put on the breastplate of righteousness every morning to protect ourselves, our hearts, from the enemy who sneaks around only wanting to steal our peace, kill our hope and destroy our eternal life. Don’t let the devil win, make sure and wear your breastplate of righteousness today.