Years ago, when I was a new believer in Cameroon, a woman in Nigeria published a testimony about working for the devil. She shared that midnight until 2:00 were the most active hours in the world of darkness. As a result, she encouraged believers to pray warfare prayers during those hours. Unfortunately, her story (and others like it) influenced a generation to have a narrow understanding of both prayer and warfare, restricting it to a couple of hours at night for battling the devil.

While there is nothing wrong with praying from midnight to 2:00 (or any other time of day), to think that those are the most spiritually hostile hours is grossly wrong. Paul teaches to the contrary. Every hour is an hour of war. For believers, war is a way of life. If any Christian is not fighting, that Christian is losing the battle with sin.

We must arm ourselves at all times “in the evil day” (Ephesians 6:13), this present evil age when the god of this world, the devil, constantly raises his claws against the people of God. Every day on earth is a day when evil and the evil one are trying to overcome believers (Ephesians 5:16). Christians are always at war against principalities, rulers, cosmic powers, darkness, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And if all of life is war, we must always be armed and well-clothed for battle. We need armor like the breastplate of righteousness.

What Is the Breastplate?

The breastplate of righteousness is one of several pieces of armor that the church puts on as it engages in spiritual war (Ephesians 6:14). In Isaiah 59, Yahweh presents himself as a warrior King with armor that includes this breastplate:

His own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. 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. (Isaiah 59:16–17)

Yahweh comes as a warrior King to repay evil so that the nations “fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun” (Isaiah 59:19). The Old Testament knows only one warrior who clothes himself with the breastplate of righteousness to war against evil for his glory (see also Isaiah 11:5). He fights for his fame.

When Paul draws from this Old Testament imagery of the warrior God and applies it to the church, he shows that the church now represents Yahweh as his army. In Christ, the church has become like her God, waging war against evil with the same armor as her warrior King. In putting on the same attire as Yahweh, Christians not only fight for Yahweh and his fame, but we also fight in the form of our God.

In Ephesians 6, the breastplate of righteousness is an active, Spirit-filled pursuit of righteousness as opposed to imputed righteousness. That Paul commands us to “put on” the breastplate shows it is our responsibility to wear the attire of our warrior King. If it were imputed righteousness, Paul would not have charged us to put it on. Rather, God declares us righteous the moment we believe, and then we grow in Christ by putting on the breastplate of righteousness.

The Christian’s new self was “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). New creations, like the earth when God created it, bear fruit, the fruit of righteousness (Ephesians 5:9). As God’s new creation, by faith in Christ, we live and grow in righteousness. The breastplate of righteousness, therefore, is a lifestyle fueled by faith in Christ Jesus.

How Do We Put On Righteousness?

Paul calls us to continually and progressively put on the breastplate of righteousness. But how do we do it? We do so by faith. Paul says, “In all, taking the shield of faith” (Ephesians 6:16, my translation). The word “all,” in the immediate context, has the pieces of armor in view. Thus, Paul tells us how we put them all on. We put on the breastplate of righteousness by faith in Christ who is our righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30). The “faith” Paul has in mind in Ephesians 6:16 is our present trusting in Christ and his work of redemption.

“In Christ, the church has become like her God, waging war against evil with the same armor as her warrior King.”

One way we express that faith (and so put on righteousness) is through prayer. Paul tells us to put on the armor, “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:18). How does praying relate to putting on the breastplate of righteousness? We actively put on the breastplate by asking God, our Righteous Warrior, to grow us in righteousness. When we are tempted to sin, we cry to him. When our faith is weak, we cry to him. In dependence on him, by faith, we become more like him.

Taking up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, is also a means by which we put on the breastplate of righteousness. In the Scriptures, we see God’s glory (1 Samuel 3:21), and in seeing God’s glory, we become progressively like him (2 Corinthians 3:18). So, read to be righteous. If you neglect the word of God, you cannot wear this breastplate.

We also put on this breastplate of righteousness together with the church. The call to clothe ourselves like our warrior King and engage in war against evil is a corporate call. The church is the army of God. You cannot separate yourself from the church and expect to put on the armor and fight. Although our individual pursuit of righteousness is necessary, we are far stronger together. You cannot war alone. You need your local church in order to stand in these evil days.

Give Evil No Opportunity

In this spiritual war, Satan aims to hinder us from glorifying God and imaging him with lives of righteousness. He hinders our pursuit of holiness because he hates the glory of God.

One might ask, How does the breastplate protect us against the rulers, authorities, cosmic powers, and spiritual forces of evil? When believers engage in sinful behavior, they open the door for the devil to have influence. Paul calls the church to “give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27). When we give him an opportunity with our sin, we allow Satan to exert his destructive, God-dishonoring influence in the world. We allow him to hinder our efforts to glorify God in ministry, missions, marriage, and life. Our sins also give the devil the occasion to slander the church and her Messiah (1 Timothy 5:14).

When we actively submit to God, however, trusting God’s power for salvation from sin in the gospel and pursuing righteousness, we resist the devil and drive him away. He cannot devour our faith (James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:8).

When Satan Tempts Us to Despair

When we fail to put on the breastplate (as we all do), the cross of Christ is our hope. Because Jesus died for our sins, because Jesus is our righteousness, we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us and gave himself up for us (Romans 8:37). So, we can sing in our failures,

When Satan tempts me to despair,And tells me of the guilt within,Upward I look, and see him there,Who made an end of all my sin.

Because the sinless Savior died,My sinful soul is counted free;For God, the Just, is satisfiedTo look on him and pardon me.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, not the satanic condemnation, and see your righteousness and perfection in him. In the strength of what he has accomplished for you, get up, dust off the filth, and put on the breastplate of your increasing righteousness. None of Satan’s arrows will be able to pierce your heart.

Audio Transcript

Last time, we looked at the God-centeredness of God. “God, with all of his heart and soul and mind and strength, loves God.” Pastor John, you said this back in 1992. “God delights in his glory. He rejoices in his magnificence. He is not an idolater. He always has himself at the center of his infinitely worshiping heart.” That was APJ 1901, in a sermon clip I shared on Wednesday.

The God-centeredness of God provides the foundation for us to understand why our salvation hinges on the life and work and blood of Christ. It’s essential. But on the flip side, this God-centeredness of God is one reason why many others reject Christ. They simply cannot stomach the idea of a jealous God. Well, he is jealous — so jealous that his name is Jealous (capital “J,” Exodus 34:14). God reserves for himself the right to our exclusive worship. For believers, that’s the greatest calling in the universe. But for others, this is sheer folly. And that includes Oprah Winfrey, one prominent rejector of God’s jealousy. For many people, divine jealousy seems defective. It seems immature. How can a great and all-sufficient God be jealous? Doesn’t this make it sound like he’s an insecure tyrant, complaining about losing his grip on his lover?

So, Pastor John, I know you’ve been giving this theme some fresh though lately. Help us understand what the Bible means by God’s jealousy. And why should this truth bring us into worship rather than repel us away from God?

You mentioned Oprah Winfrey. It might be helpful to start there. You can go to YouTube and listen to her explain why she left traditional Christianity. She described being in a church service where the preacher was talking about the attributes of God — his omnipotence, omnipresence — and here’s what she said. I wrote it down.

Then he said, “The Lord thy God is a jealous God.” I was caught up in the rapture of the moment until he said “jealous,” and something struck me. I was 27 or 28, and I was thinking, “God is all. God is omnipresent. God is also . . . jealous? A jealous God? Jealous of me?” And something about that didn’t feel right in my spirit because I believe that God is love and that God is in all things.

Now, why did she stumble over the jealousy of God? She doesn’t say exactly why, but many have said that they are uncomfortable with the idea that God demands our affections, our allegiance, our love — and if we don’t give them, he’s going to punish us because he’s jealous. They don’t like the idea of God commanding that our hearts belong to him and being angry if we give our hearts to another.

God Is Jealous

Now it’s true. It’s just plain, straight-up, on-the-face-of-it true that God commands our affections, that they be entirely his. Jesus said that the first and great commandment is to love the Lord your God. “You shall [it’s a command] love the Lord your God with all your heart (Matthew 22:37). All of it. “With all your heart,” God demands that we love him. “Don’t give any of your affections that belong to God to anyone else,” he’s saying. Or the way the Old Testament put it in Exodus 34:14: “You shall worship” — that is, treasure, reverence, admire, esteem, praise, love, delight in — “no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”

In other words, God demands that you and I and Oprah Winfrey give him all our worship, all our allegiance, all our affection. Nothing is to be loved more. Jesus said, “Whoever loves father or mother . . . [or] son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). So Jesus is demanding all of our supreme affections and allegiance for himself. If we give any of our worship to another, God is jealous, because it belongs to him. And if we don’t repent, he will break forth in wrath. “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24).

“God is the greatest good in the universe, and he is the greatest joy, and he is the all-satisfying pleasure.”

Now, why do sinners — that’s all of us, unless the Lord breaks our hearts and causes us to be born again — bristle at this? People don’t want to be told where to find their greatest pleasure. We want to be autonomous, self-determining people. We want to decide for ourselves, like Adam and Eve before the tree, what is good and evil, beautiful and ugly, satisfying and unsatisfying. And our sinful hearts recoil at the thought that anyone, including God, would demand that we find our satisfaction in him.

Sin does not like that for at least two reasons. First, we don’t like being told what to do — period. And the second reason is that sin does not find its greatest pleasure in God. So we don’t want to be told what to do, and we certainly can’t be told to find our greatest pleasure in God because we don’t have our greatest pleasure in God. That’s the very meaning of sin. And so, the way we justify our resistance, both to God’s authority and to our finding all satisfaction in him, is by finding fault with his jealousy.

Jealous for His Bride

But suppose — here’s my alternative view that I hope people can embrace, by God’s grace — that God does have a right to tell us what to do because he made us, he owns us, and he’s the only person in the universe who knows everything, and is infinitely wise and infinitely good, and knows what’s best for us. And suppose he is the greatest good in the universe, and he is the greatest joy, and he is the all-satisfying pleasure. Suppose we are utterly and totally dependent on him for our greatest and most lasting happiness. Suppose all that’s true — which it is. Then how would we think about God’s jealousy?

Maybe we would think biblically like this. God looked at fallen, sinful, rebellious humanity, and in his immeasurable grace, he decided to call out a people for his own possession. And the way he would relate to these people is as a loving husband to a beautiful wife. She would find her joy in his greatness and wisdom and strength and love and care and protection, and he would rejoice over her and protect her and provide everything for her that she needs to find her fullest joy in his presence.

Married

So that’s what he did; that’s what God did. In the Old Testament, it’s described like this in Hosea 2:19–20. This is God talking to his people: “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you will know the Lord.”

Here it is again in Isaiah 62:4: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.”

And then in the New Testament, the church — God’s people, God’s chosen people, his own special possession — is described as Christ’s bride, his wife. “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25, 27). In other words, Christ aims to have a beautiful wife, and he died for this.

“Christ aims to have a beautiful wife, and he died for this.”

And Paul himself, he thought of his apostolic ministry as an apostolic Cupid, so to speak, bringing people into this relationship with Jesus. Isn’t that what he said in 2 Corinthians 11:2? “I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.” That’s Cupid. That’s glorious, divine, apostolic work.

Unfaithful

What happens, then, if the church, the bride, starts drifting into a love affair with the world? What happens? And here’s the way James describes that happening: “You adulteresses!” Now, that’s very significant, because not all the translations get the fact that it’s a feminine word. It’s not “adulterers”; it’s not “adulterous generation”; it’s “adulteresses” because it’s treating the church as the wife of God. “You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world” — in other words, a love affair, a paramour affair with the world — “is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend [a lover, a paramour] of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” He turns God into a cuckold. “Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’?” (James 4:4–5).

Jealous for Our Joy

So here’s the bottom line: the jealousy of God is the measure of his zeal for our happiness in him. His anger at our spiritual adultery, at our having other lovers besides him, is a reflex both of his zeal for his own worth, but also of his zeal for our joy. If we turn away from him as the greatest treasure, we turn away from our own greatest pleasure.

In Jesus Christ, God offers himself to all, to all as a great Savior, a great treasure, an all-satisfying pleasure. “In your presence there is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). And his jealousy is a massive emotional thunderclap that says, “I mean it: I’m your Savior. I’m your treasure. I’m your pleasure. I really mean it. Don’t turn away.”

“Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?”

So asked a curious lady on the streets of Philadelphia in September 1787, giving voice to the question of her fellow citizens. The “Doctor” to whom she directed her query was none other than the aging Benjamin Franklin, who was emerging from the Constitutional Convention. Delegates from across the colonies had met all summer in their city. Beyond Pennsylvania, twelve other colonies waited to hear from the Franklins, Washingtons, Madisons, and Hamiltons, What is it?

“A Republic,” Franklin replied, and then, with his typical wit, added, “if you can keep it.”

For almost 240 years, the collective American psyche has often suspected — sometimes mildly, other times more acutely — that the republic was fragile, and someday soon, an ascendant Caesar would take it away, as happened with Rome’s republic. Frequently, left- and right-leaning parties have suspected the other side. Franklin’s memorable condition “if you can keep it” has been explained against an array of looming threats.

No Christian Founding

Such suspicions played out ferociously in the 1790s, the Constitution’s first full decade. Some suspected Washington; more suspected Hamilton, his de facto prime minister. By 1800, the Federalists suspected Jefferson. Long had Jefferson and Hamilton suspected each other, and now both suspected Aaron Burr. Hamilton and Burr would soon suspect each other — even after both had fallen from power — and take it to the dueling grounds.

Those early administrations in the new republic were not idyllic, peaceful, and pristine, like we might presume from elementary history lessons. Nor were the 1790s as culturally Christian as many today might assume. An early form of what we might now call “secularism” was on the rise, and it was widespread, particularly in the halls of influence. (Conservative evangelicals at the time would have called it “infidelity,” their watchword for Deism and progressive, Enlightenment Christianity.)

The Declaration of July 4, 1776, had mentioned “Nature’s God” and “Creator,” but that is a far cry from any distinctively Christian notion. A decade later, in 1787, the drafters of the Constitution found no need to mention the divine at all. Jefferson, of course, made his own Bible of what he was willing to accept (and not) in the Gospels, and Washington, despite his public mentions of Providence, was conspicuously reticent to say the name of Jesus. Formally, the founding of the United States was not distinctively Christian. In fact, at the time, perhaps as few as 10 percent of Americans were church members.

That is strikingly low compared to almost 40 percent in 1860, on the cusp of the Civil War, and more than 60 percent in the post-WWII era of the 1950s and 1960s. So, what happened that made America feel so culturally Christian from the Civil War until Civil Rights?

God’s Surprising Work

Given the acute sense of decline that U.S. Christians today have lived through — from the heights of church membership and attendance in the 50s and 60s, to the subsequent dip in the 70s and 80s, the small uptick in the early 90s, and now the rapid decline of the last two decades — we should not be surprised that many alive today assume a simple declension narrative. That is, they observe the decline of the last twenty years, or the decline of the last seventy years, and project that trajectory back onto the full 250 years of the nation, presuming the founding to be the height from which we’ve fallen. But such is fiction.

For many, the present sense of alarm stems from a recency bias, comparing their own sense of the state of our union to what’s been mediated to them in their own lifetime — whether in school, in conversation, through television, or now through social media. But the 1950s proves to be a very different standard of comparison than the 1790s.

As for Christianity and the church, American history has been far less a smooth downward trajectory and far more a story punctuated by the surprising work of God. Some historians talk of third and fourth “great awakenings” in the late nineteenth century and in the 1960s and 70s. But most fundamentally, the Second Great Awakening significantly altered the landscape of American life in the early 1800s and produced a nation that felt different, more Christian, than the founding.

How was it that this Second Great Awakening made America feel more Christian? The answer isn’t government power. Neither the Apostles’ Creed nor even God was added to the Constitution. Governments at the national, state, and local levels did not newly mandate Christian professions or church membership, or censor free speech by those deemed heretical.

What changed the social landscape was widespread revival and Christian mission. It was the growing and bearing fruit of the Christian gospel — the power of God, not government, through the movement of his Spirit, making much of his crucified and risen Son. From around 1810 to 1840, the tenor of American life changed, in a way Franklin and Jefferson never would have foreseen, through a Second Great Awakening that lasted far longer and had a far greater impact than the First of the 1730s and 40s.

Religion Indispensable?

Whatever lay behind Franklin’s sly “if you can keep it,” Washington, through the pen of Hamilton, expressed his concerns for the republic in his 1797 farewell address. Framed as “the disinterested warnings of a parting friend,” he warned first of the destructive forces of partisanship, and he praised “religion and morality” as “indispensable” to the prosperity of the republic. And note again that the “religion and morality” in view is not expressly Christian.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,” he wrote, “religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Moreover, “let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”

Now, on the one hand, from a Christian point of view, these are surprisingly measured commendations of “religion and morality.” Our Scriptures, from beginning to end, aren’t the least bit affirming of paganism so long as it’s religious and moral. So too, Washington’s frame honors and appreciates religion not as true and valuable in itself, but in terms of its usefulness for the life and prosperity of the republic.

But on the other hand, in our increasingly secular climate, with immorality or amorality seemingly on the rise, Washington’s affirmation of “religion and morality” is met with enthusiasm by many Christians. Oh, for a return to virtue and order, for more men and women of principle, for a moral citizenry — the kind that Washington and Franklin believed would be necessary to keep a republic.

‘We Need to Work’

In a recent interview with Kevin DeYoung, Allen Guelzo (who, according to George F. Will, is “today’s most profound interpreter of this nation’s history and significance”) calls American Christians to remember the heart, and hands, of that Second Great Awakening that so transformed the nation’s life. When DeYoung asks, What can we do if it seems like interest in virtue, and the Christian foundations for that societal virtue, have almost disappeared? Guelzo answers, “We need to work.” He explains,

When I hear people say today, “Oh, if we could only get back to a Christian America,” my response is, Then we need to work as hard as the people who created the Second Great Awakening. We need to dedicate ourselves that way, rather than sitting on our hands complaining about it, whining about the situation we find ourselves in, and then imagining, as I’m afraid some of our friends do, that all we need to do is to put some kind of authoritarian regime in place that will enforce the Ten Commandments.

No, that’s the lazy way. If you really want to transform the culture, then you have to take on the culture itself, and you have to meet it on its own terms, and you’re going to have to arm wrestle with it. And my recommendation is that we take a serious leaf out of the book of the Second Great Awakening. If what we want are the recovery of those mores, then my recommendation is that this is a signal that some very hard work has to get done, and we are not going to accomplish it simply by waving our hands and introducing some kind of authoritarian solution.

To the degree that we would like American life to feel more Christian, or at least less anti-Christian, the lesson to take away — both from the New Testament and from our own history — is that of the Second Great Awakening and the power of God through conversion to Christ and spiritual revival and renewal. American life was first transformed not through any seizure of political power nor through the ballot box. Rather, it was transformed through Christian awakening, through the constant preaching of the gospel, through Christian disciple-making, through the widespread movement of the Holy Spirit to grant new birth and spiritual growth, and through Christian initiative and energy and hard work to plant new churches, and build Christian institutions, and establish gospel witness and vibrancy in new places.

Hands to Prayer and the Plough

Here on this 248th Fourth of July, we remember not only the nation’s markedly unevangelical founding, but also the remarkable societal changes brought about by Christian revival — and the prodigious evangelistic efforts and Spirit-blessed industry that served as kindling for that awakening.

On this anniversary of the Declaration, American Christians concerned for the state of the republic will do well not to settle for wish-dreams about seizing power but, like the evangelists and missionaries of the early nineteenth century, put their faith and hands to the plough, believing, in the Spirit, we need to work.

Revival and its lasting ripples has changed the social feel of this nation before. It remains to be seen how long we might “keep” this republic. I don’t presume it will endure until Christ’s return. But being real, rather than nostalgic, about our history, and God’s surprising work, might feed fresh hope that he could work the same remarkable changes in the days ahead, beginning in us.