SOLDIERS OF CHRIST! Stand Fast in The LORD JESUS

"Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breast-plate of righteousness." -Ephesians 6:14 [KJV]

Soldiers of Christ! hear and obey the word of command: Stand. Against every enemy, stand to your arms: against all opposition from within and without, maintain your ground. Face all: fight all: conquer all. Does sin attack, Satan assault, the world threaten? Do corruptions rage, temptations beset, and carnal nature rebel? Are thine enemies many and potent? is their fury great? is the battle strong? 

Stand therefore. Why? Because you have put on the whole armour of God. Jesus is with you, upon you, over you, and engaged for you: therefore, “Stand fast in the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 3:8.) “And in the power of His might: having your loins girt.” Long standing makes the loins faint and weak. Is there much pain in the loins? Here is thy Lord’s command: “Gird up the loins of thy mind.” Make thy loins strong. “Fortify thy power mightily” (Nahum 2:1.) 

 How? Here is a girdle for thee: Girt about with truth. What is truth? Christ answers, “I am the truth” (John 14:6.) Christ, and the truth as it is in Him, is like a girdle to the loins, to brace up and strengthen the mind. Hast thou not often found it so, O soldier of Christ? When weary and faint in thy mind, under long and sharp conflicts with the enemy, hath not thy soul been revived, and thy mind animated with fresh strength and vigour, by again girding thy loins with the love, the grace, the truth, and the salvation of Jesus? This was David’s experience: “Thou hast girded me with gladness” (Psalm 30:11.)  

“Thou hast girded me with strength to battle” (II Samuel 22:40.) O! think not of standing, without the girdle of Let Christ and His truths be the strength of thy loins and the glory of thy soul. “Having on the breastplate of righteousness.” Not our own: that is defective. As well have on a spider’s web: it will not defend the heart. The enemy will wound the breast through it. No other righteousness than that in which we stand perfectly justified in the sight of God, can effectually defend our breast against the enemy. 

This is the one perfect, everlasting righteousness of him, who is the LORD our righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6.) Christ, by His obedience unto death, wrought it out; the Spirit convinces us of our want of it; God the Father imputes it; the sinner accepts it by faith, glories of it, and rejoices in it. No enemy can stand against it: It is a guard against, and repels the accusations of Satan, and is security against all condemnation. 

 

"If I could keep God’s holy law, 

And ev’ry jot fulfil, 

My righteousness I would not know, 

But glory in Christ still. 

But since I sin in all I do, 

And yet would never sin, 

I’ll daily to my Saviour go, 

For peace and joy within." 

 

-preacher Wm. Mason (1724-1797 A.D.)

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