n be expressed, however
diversified may be the manifestations, by the one sovereign term
'righteousness,' and that is not merely a hasty generalisation, or a too
rapid synthesis. As all sin has one root and is genetically one, so all
goodness is at bottom one. The germ of sin is living to oneself: the
germ of goodness is living to God. Though the degrees of development of
either opposite are infinite, and the forms of its expression
innumerable, yet the root of each is one.

Paul thinks of righteousness as existent before the Christian soldier
puts it on. In this thought we are not merely relying on the metaphor of
our text, but bringing it into accord with the whole tone of New
Testament teaching, which knows of only one way in which any soul that
has been living to self, and therefore to sin, can attain to living to
God, and therefore can be righteous. We must receive, if we are ever to
possess, the righteousness which is of God, and which becomes ours
through Jesus Christ. The righteousness which shines as a fair but
unattainable vision before sinful men, has a real existence, and may be
theirs. It is not to be self-elaborated, but to be received.

That existent righteousness is to be put on. Other places of Scripture
figure it as the robe of righteousness; here it is conceived of as the
breastplate, but the idea of assumption is the same. It is to be put on,
primarily, by faith. It is given in Christ to simple belief. He that
hath faith thereby has the righteousness which is through faith in
Christ, for in his faith he has the one formative principle of reliance
on God, which will gradually refine character and mould conduct into
whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. That righteousness
which faith receives is no mere forensic treating of the unjust as just,
but whilst it does bring with it pardon and oblivion from past
transgressions, it makes a man in the depths of his being righteous,
however slowly it may afterwards transform his conduct. The faith which
is a departure from all reliance on works of righteousness which we have
done, and is a single-eyed reliance on the work of Jesus Christ, opens
the heart in which it is planted to all the influences of that life
which was in Jesus, that from Him it may be in us. If Christ be in us
(and if He is not, we are none of His), 'the spirit is life because of
righteousness,' however the body may still be 'dead because of sin.'

But the putting on of the breas