When I was growing up, the front yard of our old ranch house boasted two of the best trees in the entire world, in my opinion. Two large, old crabapple trees perfectly created for three young ranch kids to climb up and wage ongoing crabapple battles with one another. I’d often walk down the sidewalk unsuspectingly and suddenly get dinged on the head or the chest with a crabapple coming out of nowhere from a high tree branch where one of my brothers would be sitting, patiently waiting to launch an apple at me. I learned to protect myself with my heavy chore coat that provided adequate defense from random crabapple missiles that found their mark on my chest! 

Having a protective covering helped deflect the weapons that my brothers shot at me. We need the same kind of protective covering over our hearts to defend against the flaming arrows that Satan aims at us. 

The second piece mentioned in the armor of God is the “Breastplate of Righteousness.”  A breastplate, or “cuirass,” provided essential protection for the most vital organs of the Roman soldier,  protecting the body on both sides from the neck to the middle. The breastplate would guard the body against mortal wounds from knives, swords, spears, or arrows.

Just as the armor protected the body of a soldier, the breastplate of righteousness works to protect us in this spiritual battle, keeping us from opening ourselves up to attacks from the enemy and falling further into sin. A soldier on the battlefield wouldn’t be able to effectively fight without his breastplate in place for fear of being mortally wounded. So we too need to be armed with God’s righteousness covering our hearts to fight the enemy effectively.

Of course Satan wants to attack our hearts! God’s Word tells us that the heart is the source of life and that we should be guarding it. (Proverbs 4:23). That’s the goal of the enemy – to take us out of the battle and render us ineffectual in God’s kingdom. Knowing his battle plan tells us why it’s important to guard our hearts with armor strong enough to deflect his attacks.

I’m sure we’ve all experienced a heart-hurt that has left us feeling exposed and vulnerable, weak and ineffective. If you’re like me, there have been times when you’ve put up some kind of protective covering over your heart to keep it from further woundings. We sometimes put up walls or barbed wire fences when our hearts are wounded; we do this as a defense strategy to prevent further hurt. But this isn’t the breastplate that God wants us to use to guard our hearts. 

Just as the armor protected the body of a soldier, the breastplate of righteousness works to protect us in this spiritual battle, keeping us from opening ourselves up to attacks from the enemy and falling further into sin.

Jana M. Fraley

So often what we use to defend our hearts winds up either completely ineffective and useless in protecting us, or sometimes how we guard our hearts just ends up wounding us more and hurting those around us. If we desire true protection when we encounter the enemy in battle, we need to protect our hearts. 

Because Satan is wily and knows how best to attack God’s people, it’s important to know his strategy and schemes so we won’t be ambushed. Unfortunately, his schemes haven’t changed much through the years because he’s found success in this age-old battle plan: find where we’re vulnerable and aim at the heart. 

Our hearts are the seat of our emotions, self-worth, and trust. When this area is left exposed, Satan can attack us from multiple angles:

• He convinces us to live selfish, pride-filled lives that are all about self-preservation. We lose sight of the battle and what we’re fighting for when our lives become all about looking out for number one and serving ourselves. We put up those walls and barbed wire fences instead of God’s armor to protect ourselves by keeping the enemy out. But, unfortunately, this also shuts out our fellow soldiers, leaving us isolated and vulnerable on the battlefield. 
• He deceives our hearts into believing that God doesn’t love us, that we don’t belong to Him, that our worth and identity come from other people, circumstances, accomplishments, physical appearances, and personal strengths and righteousness. Relying on ourselves and not on the God who loves us only serves to render our hearts weak and wounded, unable to defend ourselves effectively.
• He causes us to doubt the strength, power, goodness, and love of God. Satan will try to convince our hearts that we are alone in this battle, that God doesn’t care and isn’t for us. If we doubt God and His power to bring victory, then Satan has won the battle before it’s even begun because we’ll look for protection in places other than God. 
• He encourages us in ignorance and apathy. If we aren’t drawing closer to God through reading and studying the Bible, then we aren’t growing in our knowledge and understanding of Him. Without spending time with the Lord in His Word and prayer, we won’t know come to know Him more intimately, grow in godly righteousness, or discover who we are in Him and what His battle plan is. It’s hard to trust the Commander of our army if we don’t know Him, and we come to know Him and trust Him when we are daily in His Word.
• He keeps us stuck in discouragement and depression. If our hearts are hurting and heavy, we aren’t able to battle him effectively. Satan loves to keep us stuck in a cycle of discouragement and darkness because that’s where he can ambush us, keep us from God’s truth, and attack us when we’re down. Satan hates when our hearts are at peace and rejoicing in the truths that God is in control; if we are in the pit of despair, then we tend to forget that truth.
• He uses diversion and distraction. If Satan can keep us from seeing these battles from a biblical viewpoint, then he can keep us distracted with little skirmishes here and there that we aren’t even supposed to be fighting. Battling with other people keeps us diverted from the real battle at hand that God has called us to fight.
• He fosters our fears. Satan loves to stop us in our tracks by placing fear in our hearts. If we allow fear to overwhelm us, we’ll become stuck on the sidelines, unable to join the battle against him. Satan will continually bring up cares, concerns, worries, and terrors to keep us from really seeing God and how He’s working. Fear keeps us from walking forward boldly in faith and keeps us stuck and ineffective because it paralyzes us.
• He gains access to our hearts through anger. Anger is a destructive and deceptive tool that Satan uses to keep us from righteousness and from having a proper perspective of the battle at hand. Anger is what will keep us from seeing who the real enemy is and fool us into thinking it’s a person or a group of people. It makes mountains out of molehills and will cause us to say and do things in our own strength and not in the wisdom and power of the Lord. Anger causes us to wound those who aren’t the real enemy, further wounding our hearts in the process.
• He attempts to divide and conquer the Church. There is so much contention and division happening in the world today, and unfortunately, it has infiltrated the Body of Christ. . . the Church as a whole, and local churches individually. Satan loves nothing better than to keep us biting at one another instead of joining together as an army of Believers to defeat his schemes. If he can keep us divided he can gain a foothold. 

Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:14 that the breastplate we should be armoring ourselves with is a breastplate of righteousness. He’s talking about a righteousness that comes from God, not protection credited to any kind of righteousness of our own. According to Strong’s Concordance, this righteousness is “integrity, virtue, purity of life, sincerity of devotion, correctness of thinking, feeling, and acting.” Living according to this righteousness means we live in obedience to God’s commandments and in an honorable and pleasing way to Him.

Psalm 106:3 says that “Blessed are those who keep justice, and he who does righteousness at all times!”. When our conduct is right, we experience blessing and joy, but more importantly, we experience protection from Satan’s attacks. When we observe the rules of justice in our behavior, actions, and attitudes, and when the principles of integrity govern us, we will find ourselves armored with a breastplate made up of God’s righteousness which is like the strongest of metals capable of deflecting the most evil of weapons. 

Like the rest of the armor God has offered to equip us with, we have to actually put it on which implies that it’s a decision we make whether we wear it or not. If we want to be appropriately armored up we have to choose to put the armor on!

We put this breastplate on by believing God (Genesis 15:6) and seeking His kingdom and righteousness first (Matthew 6:33). We put off our old self and our former ways of corruption and deceitfulness and we put on our new self, created according to God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:22-24). And we possibly suffer for the sake of righteousness, knowing that there is victory even in that (1 Peter 3:14).

This breastplate provides much better protection than our own righteousness, which is akin to nothing more than a flimsy breastplate made out of cardboard. Isaiah 64:6 describes our righteous acts as even worse than a cardboard breastplate: “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. . . ”