3 Truths to Make Us Brave
Genuine Christian commitment takes courage, more now than ever before. But how do we obtain it? What will make us brave?
We live in a world that is more and more suspicious of genuine religious commitment. Many of the people we know would prefer not that we would have no religious faith, but that our inner Christian commitments would have no effect on our lives as citizens, as family members, as moral decision-makers, as handlers of money, as those who think about our future. These people wish that religious faith would be strictly a private affair.
So Great a Cloud of Witnesses
And in fact, the kind of phrase we often hear when we bring religious conviction into those kinds of conversations is, “Well, you know, that might be true for you, but I have my truth, you have your truth.” As if somehow truth itself was malleable and could be shaped according to what you think versus what I think.
Christian conviction says something very different from that. Christian conviction says that truth has been expressed clearly in the person and work of Jesus Christ, who said, “I am … the truth” (John 14:6b).
That means we must measure the way we think about things by the plumb line of what Jesus says. And the task for Christians is to wrestle with the teachings of Jesus as well as the rest of the scripture and say, “OK, let’s work together, because it takes all of us to do this. How do we find a way to live this out, especially in those places where it might feel less popular or not popular at all?”
What Does It Take to Live Like That?
And how do I bring that Christian faith to bear in my neighborhood, in the place where I live, in the places where I serve? In other words, what does the Christian faith have to say about my everyday life wherever I am?
In fact, the Christian life has no place for statements such as, “You know, you have your faith, but this is business.” That may get lived out, but it’s not part of the gospel. In fact, it’s in contradiction to the gospel, because the earth is the Lord’s. So the question for us as people who have made Christian commitments is “What does it take to live like that?”
What does it take to live with that kind of courage, that kind of poise, that kind of powerful and yet gentle confidence, that no matter where I am—in the church building for worship, at the convenience store down the street getting gas, at the diner down the street having breakfast, or—you fill in the blank—I’m a consistent (God being my helper) believer in Jesus Christ? What does it take to show I’m willing and committed to being that faithful believer in all of those contexts?
Of course, none of this means I always get it right. In fact, just the opposite. We can be assured of the fact that we will not always get it right. That’s a part of what it means to be sinful people who need forgiveness. As John reminds us, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). So we’re all in this one together. But John also adds, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
In other words, the Holy Spirit is always at work inside of us, bringing the good word of his mercy and working within us that which we need to be able to live out this Christian faith.
So what do we need? Let’s take our cues from the first chapter of the book of Revelation. Here, we find three truths that make us brave.
- He Is the Faithful Witness
John writes describing Jesus to the group of people receiving his letter, people who are suffering genuine persecution. Think Isis persecuting Christians in the Middle East. In other words, they’re in a life-and-death situation. And what is said to a group of people in a life-and death situation applies to any Christian who is committed to finding a way to serve Jesus, even if that invokes a certain level of opposition. So John writes to them, and he says, “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come” (Rev. 1:4b).
What that says is that there has always been a great consistency in the godhead. In other words, what we see in Jesus, when he comes to this planet and says the things he says and does the things he does, that’s God in our midst. And that’s not just who God revealed himself to be in Jesus, that’s who God is always. Even now.
So what does that mean? He’s kind. I can trust in him. He loves me.
And that’s important to know. Why? Because especially when you’re in difficult circumstances, it’s easy to ask the Job questions: “Well, what’s happened, has God forgotten me? Does he really not love me anymore? Have I done something to offend him in a way that causes God to withdraw his presence from me? Or, worse, maybe I’ve never really believed after all.”
A part of what John is saying is, “You can count on what you’ve seen in Jesus.” That’s true, regardless of what’s happening within the context of your circumstances. The eternal consistency of the godhead is as true right now as it was when Jesus walked the earth.
Because who is Jesus? He is “the faithful witness” (Rev. 1:5b). In other words, he didn’t come down and present God to be something that Jesus is not. He is faithful in what he has declared.
- He Is the Firstborn of the Dead
He is also, it says of him, “the firstborn of the dead” (Rev. 1:5c). This means that not only did Jesus come back to life, but those who were “asleep in Jesus,” to use Paul’s phrase, will also be raised from the dead because he’s the firstborn. No matter how a believer dies, if Jesus is the firstborn of the dead, when we gather and celebrate their life, we can say with great confidence that he is raising them from the dead.
Resurrection, you see, didn’t just happen to him. He is the firstborn of the dead and finally “the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5d). In other words, even when things go incredibly wrong, God is actively at work, and he will redeem even the worst of what has happened.
- He Ever Loves Us
When John says, “to him who loves us” (Rev. 1:5e), the literal meaning in the Greek is “to him who is ever loving us all the time.” The love of God is consistent, never-changing. And it is not in any way predicated on your behavior! There is no sense that when you mess up, God says, “Oh, I don’t want to talk to you today.” No, the faithful consistency of God means that his posture toward us is always one of invitation, of love, of a call to draw closer.
You see, if I think that in any way, my relationship with God is predicated on my behavior, I’m sunk. Remember? “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves” (1 John 1:8a). In other words, I need the consistent love of God in the midst of the ups and downs of my attempts to live the right way.
“He who ever loves us” (Rev. 1:53) means he is always loving us and has freed us from our sins by his blood. No matter what I’ve done, I can still go to him and have him declare me forgiven. Nothing I have done or will do ever causes him to turn around and say, “That’s too big for me.” Or, “That sin is too strong; it’s not worthy of my forgiveness.”
No. The posture of God’s love is always to receive and forgive. He ever loves us.
Now What?
That’s who he is, you see. And that means because I can trust in his character, in his faithfulness, in his goodness, I can say yes even more deeply. Because I know as I continue to say yes to Christ, more will be asked of me. God is looking for people who are willing to be faithful disciples not just when life’s going well, but in the face of those times when life is hard, when he calls us to forgive what feels like the unforgiveable, when being a faithful witness seems very difficult indeed.
That’s exactly what God wants to empower and to bless. That’s why he makes us brave.
I wouldn’t say yes to him if I couldn’t trust him. If I didn’t know that I could step into even the most difficult situations and know that he would not abandon me or that if I mess up, he would forgive me, I wouldn’t take those steps at all. Otherwise, the Christian life is all really up to me, and God’s looking down to see how well I’m going to do with it all. That’s great agnosticism, but it’s terrible Christianity.
And that’s not what the scripture says, either. God is not the one who is up there looking down at us. He’s the one who by his Holy Spirit is here within each of us, working in us that which he desires.
And it is because of who he is that we as his followers can commit our lives to him, that we can say, “I will, with God’s help,” that we can have courage. We will believe together, knowing that no matter what is asked of us (and much is asked) he will be faithful. He will give us what we need. That we might walk in that kind of assurance, that we might be brave.
Forever and ever.
How has Christ made you brave? Share this blog and your comments on Twitter and include my username, @revgregbrewer.
(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on April 4, 2016, at Shepherd of the Hills, Lecanto).
Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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