The Courageous Christian

“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua; Joshua 24:15)

“But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods, nor worship the golden image which you have set up.” (Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah; Daniel 3:18)

“We ought to obey God rather than men.” (The Apostles; Acts 5:29)

“Eighty and six years have I served him, and he never did me any injury; how then can I blaspheme my King and my Savior, who has saved me?” (Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, before the Roman Governor, 155 A.D.)

“Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.” (Martin Luther, Diet of Worms, 1521)

“I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” (Patrick Henry, at St. John’s Church, Richmond, March 23, 1775)

“Give them the cold steel, boys!” (Gen. Louis Armistead, at the “Bloody Angle,” the last charge of the Confederacy, Gettysburg, July 3, 1863)

            Men who talk like this are not nursed on secularist education. They did not value security over liberty. Their childhood insecurities were not nurtured into adult idols. Each of them was committed to the idea that God’s principles are more important than convenience, holding on to this world’s possessions, and protecting one’s own life. Some things, they knew, are worth dying for: God, freedom from tyranny, uncensored access to the Bible. Without these, life is not worth living; to secure them our lives must sometimes be sacrificed.

                Human society cannot thrive without the courage of men. Courage is not spending hours each day buffing up, trying to forestall death or look good for social media posts. Courage is not looking for a feminist or a Jew under every rock. Courage is not being a podcast pope and announcing you are restarting Christendom in your back yard. Courage is not doing your own thing or dyeing your hair blue and daring anyone to say something against it. Courage is the inner conviction that nothing is more important than God’s truth and honor.

                Courage comes from standing before the holy God and being struck to the quick by his holiness, goodness, mercy, and truth. Christian courage is cross-inspired. Courageous men and women have seen the wonder of God’s love and grace in the face of Jesus Christ. Loving him and desiring his sweet grace and fellowship more than life, they stand, like Joshua and the three Hebrew boys, the apostles and Polycarp, Martin Luther and Patrick Henry, with invincible courage. They cannot be bought off by the world. They are indelibly marked by the sight of the thrice-holy God. 

Courage grows in us as Christ grows in us. This is the wonderful truth about Christian courage. We do not need a club or a podcast; we need quiet, consistent communion with Jesus Christ. This is the secret of courage – not feel-good religion but fellowship with the Lord by his Spirit. We are not pre-Pentecostal, though we often think and pray like it. We have the Spirit of truth and holiness, the same Spirit who empowered our Lord Jesus to offer himself without spot to God. Let us walk in the Spirit, and we shall partake of our Savior’s immovable commitment to do his Father’s will.

Evidences of real Christian courage abound! It is evident in churches standing for the truth of God against non-apostolic Christianity: doctrinal and cultural compromise, offend no one, make me comfortable, consumer-driven religion. It is evident in the homeschooling movement, which though it has potential dangers in hyper-patriarchal, man-cult, is nonetheless at its core a declaration of war upon secularism. Secularists know that a culture’s educational system is far more important than its political system. In many places, the statists and technocrats have already lost the battle to criminalize homeschooling. Parents are voting with their feet because they are living by their faith. The tsunami will continue until we have state and national referendums to end forced subsidization of state religious education by property taxes. Then, secularist, statist education will go deservedly bankrupt.

Courage is fed by union with Christ in obedience. It must feed upon God’s holy truth revealed in him – not what works, not what avoids offending the world, not what we can market, but what God has revealed in his word. Armed with a sense of his glory and majesty, with the untouchable principles of his word, and animated by love for Jesus Christ, courage grows and expresses itself daily in a hundred ways. For the Christian is in communion with the Prince of life. Greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.  In communion with him, faith overcomes the world.

T.S. Eliot once wrote that a Christian culture is not something we can aim directly at, a set of guidelines or programs that if followed will produce the desired result. It is rather the fruit of long-term, multi-generational faith and faithfulness. By the faithfulness of Christ, we sow the seeds of courage and light each day! The seed of courage, and therefore of faithfulness, reformation, and victory, is sown by the Christian man who makes a covenant with his eyes not to look upon a maiden – to turn away from all entertainment that mocks sexual chastity and thus assails the very purity of God. It is sown by the Christian family that worships the Lord each day and educates its children by his word, even when its extended family ridicules them for so doing. It is sown by the Christian woman who joyfully embraces her domestic calling and adores her Lord by her serving. It is sown by the Christian young man who abides in Christ’s word, practices self-control, and dedicates himself to developing his gifts and pursuing a calling. It is sown by the Christian young woman who dresses like a daughter of Christ rather than a street-walker and commits herself to holiness of life and the development of a truly Christian mind and spirit. It is sown by preachers who speak the whole counsel of God, not with one finger in the air trying to read the wind, but with both eyes up to heaven, like Stephen, seeing the glory of the risen Christ and speaking boldly without fearing the faces of men.

Courage does not require battlefields, dramatic moments in history, or a martyr’s smoking ashes. Courage can flourish in cities as much as in the country. It can certainly thrive in a consumer culture, for consumerism is nothing but vain sinners trying to buy off their consciences with new clothes, surgically improved bodies, and a new car every three years. To practice courage, we must see past whatever circumstances in which we are providentially placed by God, live by his word in every situation, and walk with him through his Son. 

Courage will dawn in your soul. Commit yourself afresh to Jesus Christ. Like Him, commit to living by every word of Scripture. Live by God’s truth. Love God’s truth more than your own life. Feed the conviction that your life has been blood-purchased by Jesus Christ, and then live to please Jesus Christ. Our lives are hidden with Christ in God; for us, to live is Christ. Let us be such a people, and pray that the Lord’s work and word will spread throughout our land and the world. The Spirit has been poured out. Christ is King. The Bible is the sword of the Spirit. The Lord of Hosts is with us. All the world has is the arm of flesh – dust and ashes.