Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians 2:1-6. Throughout the scriptures again, the men are summoned to God’s presence. They fall down as dead men. They’re brought back to life by God. And it is always for a purpose to give them a message. They would be his prophets. They would be forth tellers of his word and what they do and say when they leave his presence. This then is the command word of our King of Kings.

1 Thessalonians 2:1-6. For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance unto you, that it was not in vain. But even after that, we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated, as you know, at Philippi. We were emboldened by our God, to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak.

Not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts. For neither at any time used we flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness. God is witness. Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ. This time the younger children whose parents desire may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools, receive instruction from the word of God in a way in which they can comprehend.

We’re speaking of courage today. Okay, that’s the topic. And I know that it may seem that for most of us here gathered this afternoon, a discussion of courage is maybe seen as somewhat of an intellectual exercise. But for roughly 1 million troops who are combatants, this is a subject that is certainly pertinent and at the foremost of their thoughts involved in a ground war in the Persian Gulf.

Last week we dealt with a summary of chapter 1 in the last couple of verses. Remember chapter 1 according to our original outline from the book of First Thessalonians is involved with thanksgiving which is the main one of the main thrusts of this book. Of course, chapter 1 was essentially Paul’s thanksgiving for the Thessalonian church and particularly thanks for the evidence of their election by God. And that was all summed up in verses 9 and 10, the end of that chapter that we spoke of last week.

So chapter 2 begins another section within this general section of thanksgiving. Chapter 2 verses 1 through 12 relate Paul’s manner with the Thessalonians. From that he goes on to thank them again for their acknowledgement of God’s word, or give thanks to God rather for their acknowledgement of his word in verse 13. But the next 12 verses what we’re going to look at have to do with Paul’s manner with the Thessalonians recounted.

Now he’s talked a little bit about this already. Remember from chapter one we said there’s much more detail in chapter two about it. He kind of expands on that talk about what their entrance was with the Thessalonians, but how they behaved themselves. Some people think that chapter 2 begins a defense of the Apostle Paul. There is definitely a break here. I thought it might be good just to read a couple of lines from some of the hymns we’ve sung in the past.

Remind you of last week’s message. It doesn’t do us any good to walk away from here and forget what we’ve heard and not apply it on a regular basis. Last week we talked about the consecration of all of our lives and turning away from idols to God to serve him in everything that we do. And one of the songs written by Alfred Albert Bailey talks about this in one of the stanzas: “We give our minds to understand thy ways, hands, eyes, and voice to serve thy great design, heart with the flame of thine own love ablaze, till for thy glory all our powers combined.”

The need is to take all that we have and all that we do, to use these things, not for idolatrous purposes, but for the purposes of serving God. Again, John Dykes living in the 1800s wrote a song and part of that song reads: “Behold, oh Lord, a little space from daily tasks set free and meet within thy holy place to rest a while with thee. Around us rolls the ceaseless tide of business, toil, and care, and scarcely can we turn aside for one brief hour of prayer.

Yet these are not the holy walls wherein thou mayest be sought. On holiest work thy blessing falls in truth and patience wrought. Thine is the loom, the forge, the mart, the wealth of land and sea, the worlds of science and of art revealed and ruled by thee. Then let us prove our heavenly birth in all we do and know, and claim the kingdom of the earth for thee, and not thy foe. Work shall be prayer if all be wrought as thou would have it done, and prayer by thee inspired and taught itself with work be one.”

And so that was really what Paul was thanking God for in the lives of the Thessalonians—that all their lives manifested the work of God. And there was a self-conscious effort to turn away from idols not just to the point of conversion but to drive idols out of their lives continually as well. And so we’re called to do that same thing till the loom, the forge, the mart, the places of work, places of industry, the places of recreation, all are seen under the headship of King Jesus.

That’s what Christian reconstruction is. Today, we’re going to talk about courage to do these things.

Now, I mentioned that some people think Paul’s going on the defensive. That’s probably true. There were certain charges laid against Paul and Paul may well be going on the defensive here. But what he does is he gives us a good picture of a various string of attributes, some negatively framed, some positively framed that again provide us with a model.

Remember, we said that the Thessalonians were imitators of Paul. We’re called to imitate godly men and certainly the lives of the godly men in these scriptures who themselves imitated Jesus Christ and to have become examples in that way. I’ve chosen to take these 12 verses and break them up in terms of three topics: courage, mother, and father. First, the courage of the apostles. And then next week, verses 7-10, the apostle as mother.

Sounds a little weird, but that’s not a bad title, and we’ll get to that next week. And then in verses 11 and 12, he also talks about how he was as a father to them. So we’ll talk about the apostle as father for the third talk in this first section of chapter 2 of First Thessalonians talking about the manner of the apostles. And I want the plan now is to give you kind of a fast overview of these six verses and then go back to our outline and talk a little bit slower about it. We’re going to really focus in on verse two.

But I want us to go through a fast overview of these verses before we do that. So verse one says, “For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance unto you, that it was not in vain.” That’s really pretty much a repetition of some things he said in chapter 1 and now we’re going to find out why it wasn’t in vain—the various manifestations in the apostles’ lives. He’s going to now begin in verse two to talk about some of these things.

Verse two says, “But even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated, as you know at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention.” This verse we have persecution before and after as we’re all around the apostle and it’s actually before and after his preaching the gospel in this very verse. He talks about the suffering before and being shamefully treated.

Still we were bold to preach the gospel amid much contention. So both in the verse itself he is for and after persecution. We’ll come back to that verse in more detail for a basic outline of what courage is. I think that the next several verses help as well to get a picture of what courage is not—which ways courage does not act. Verse three: “For our exhortation was not of deceit nor of uncleanness nor in guile.”

Three specific terms there are used for saying the way that apostles did not act with them. That first term deceit really talks about being self-deluded or the term can have the implication of vanity opposed to being the true thing. It was a false thing and Paul wouldn’t even know it was false—that’s what he’s saying here. So the word doesn’t mean that he would subconsciously lie to the Thessalonians as much as it means that he’s saying we weren’t deluded.

We weren’t crazy. Okay, remember we said last week about how the gospel we have—we turned from idols to serve the true God, the God of gods, the God who is very God of very gods, the only real God. And this is kind of like the opposite. And he’s saying here that we didn’t serve a falsehood or a delusion or a huge hoax or a deception. It’s very important when we get to courage. And hopefully I’ll remember to draw this verse back in.

But courage also is not seen appropriately when there is delusion on the part of the person who is supposedly brave. But in any event, that’s what that word means. We weren’t crazy. And then he says, “We weren’t unclean. We didn’t—we wouldn’t—we didn’t come to you. Our exhortation was not of uncleanness.” Uncleanness can be seen—some commentators think it has specific reference to sexual impurity.

But I think it’s a broader term than that and speaks to the motivation of the apostles. Their motives were not impure. They were not unrighteous. They did not act in disobedience to God’s law. Their aim was not in disobedience to God’s law. And so they were not unclean in that sense. Then he says their exhortation was not in guile. And this is the term that means falsehood. In other words, we didn’t lie to you to achieve an end that we wanted to achieve in and of ourselves.

So Paul says, “We didn’t use falsehood with you. We really sought your best in all of this.” This particular word Calvin says in the Greek is the word that described how to catching fish with bait. The use of bait to catch fish. The bait isn’t really there for food for the fish. It’s there to catch the fish. And Calvin said the apostle’s manner with them was not this sort of thing.

And so these three things I think speak to what Calvin said. The first speaks to the content of their gospel. It wasn’t delusion or deception. Secondly, their heart, their heart affection was not impure, unclean, or in opposition to God’s law. No base motives that way. And then third, their matter of conduct wasn’t deceitful. And so their content, their heart conviction, and then the manner they were in terms of the Thessalonians.

All these things were pure and all these things I think characterizes well the man who is courageous. Verse four: “But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.”

And so he then ties back to the idea that he wasn’t these things. He was approved of God to be entrusted with the gospel. If he had these sort of motivations going on, unclean or whatever, he wouldn’t have been approved by God, but he was. And since we’ve been given this task to preach the gospel, so we speak. And that ties back to this courageous aspect we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. The last phrase is important for the basic meaning of courage: “not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.”

So that’s verse four. Verse five: “Neither at any time used we flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness. God is witness.”

And he kind of repeats then—there’s a parallelism between those two things. The flattering words would be like the guile, flattering words to attain an end which was not apparent to them. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily flattering them as individuals. What it means is again using words falsely to achieve an end, buttering people up to achieve an end. Maybe not even buttering them up in terms of appealing to how good they are, but simply using words for that sort of deceitful mechanism.

So it correlates back to the guile. We didn’t have a cloak of covetousness. He said a couple of verses earlier, we weren’t—we didn’t—our exhortation was not of uncleanness. We didn’t have a covering that we came to you with that really was just a ruse for our covetousness, our desire for your dollars or your backing here as our base motive. So he clears himself of all those charges and he points out—I think the very basis for all of this clearing up is that they didn’t seek glory from men.

And in verse six he says: “We didn’t seek glory from men and neither from you nor yet of others. We might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ.”

They didn’t seek glory from man. They didn’t seek the pleasure of man. They didn’t seek man’s money. Their motivation was simply to serve God. And that was the reason they were bold and courageous in the light of the persecution that he speaks of in verse two.

Okay. So that’s generally an overview of the passage and I want to take this opportunity to address one of the seven virtues that we’ve talked about which is courage in the context of this passage because I think it’s central to these six verses.

There’s different ways to do this but I’ve chosen the way of talking about courage here and then as I said the next two weeks talking about mothers and fathers and courage really is and is needed for both mothers and fathers. My reading this week I read a quote by G.K. Chesterton who said that we would not have very many people around if it wasn’t for the courage of mothers in terms of child birth. It’s a courageous act to bring a child into the world.

And so next two weeks when we talk about mothers and fathers this courage applies to both those two groups of people as well as to all believers as we’ll talk about today. Now, as I said, I want to discuss this. Courage is one of the seven virtues. The particular word for the normal Greek word for courage at the time of the writing of the New Testament referred to manliness. But it’s interesting that particular Greek word is never used in the New Testament.

The word that’s used here in verse two means to speak openly or freely. It talks about courage and speech—even though there’s a lot of opposition, we spoke freely about the gospel of God. We felt we had courage to speak the truth in that way. But the words that are normally used both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, the biblical words used refer to strength and refer to the heart. Courage or strengthening one’s heart.

Now the very term itself courage has at its root the Latin word “cor.” We talked about the “cerseum cord”—lift up your heart. “Core” is Latin for heart and that’s the basis for our English word courage. And so our own language correctly reflects the strengthening of the heart that is taught in a general sense by all the Hebrew and Greek words that are used in the scriptures, and not this manliness aspect.

Remember, one of the things that an elder is not supposed to be—and I’m talking about an elder in the church or an elder in business, a man who grows up in distributes the character qualities of God. None of those men are supposed to be macho men. They’re not supposed to be, you know, overtly manly in the sense of liking to pick fights and being real, you know, macho. That’s not what’s talked about, and that’s not what courage is either.

I want to root that out of our minds and let the word of God teach us here what these things are. Now, I said that it’s one of the seven virtues. I wanted to just list quickly for you four different works that I’ve used in terms of the seven virtues. One is a book called The Seven Cardinal Virtues by James Stalker. He lived in the late 1800s, early 1900s and he was pastor for years of the Free Church of Scotland.

The Seven Cardinal Virtues by James Stalker. Another good book is The Four Cardinal Virtues by Joseph Piper who was a German Catholic published by University of Notre Dame Press. And there are also two books I have on the seven deadly sins that also had sections on the seven virtues. One written by a man named Shoemaker and the other by Carl Olsen. You might have noticed there I said there’s one book The Seven Cardinal Virtues.

Another book that said The Four Cardinal Virtues. Well, how many cardinal virtues are there? If you remember what we talked about before, begin to review it. First, the word cardinal means something that is the origin of other virtues. So, the cardinal virtues are the basic virtues from which all other virtues are derived. Okay? The same way the seven deadly sins are like the roots of all other manifestations of sin as seen by the early church.

So, the four or seven virtues are cardinal virtues and that everything else comes out of them. Now the Greeks believed in four cardinal virtues. They believed that these virtues were like the four sides of a perfectly symmetrical character. And the man who possessed all four of these virtues could stand four square to all the winds that blow. The Old Testament Apocrypha cites these same four Greek virtues that were extant in the Greek world.

Several hundred years prior to the coming of our Savior. Also, Philo of Alexandria, who was a Jew who lived during the time of Christ, compared the four cardinal virtues to the four rivers that watered the garden of Eden and hence the whole world. And so these were seen—these virtues were seen as being necessary to fertilize, water and cause the growth and adorning then of all of human nature and all of human virtues.

The Greeks had these four virtues then which were wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. Wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. And the early church, as we pointed out before, took those four and added on the three obviously stressed virtues in the New Testament: faith, hope, and love. And that gives us seven cardinal virtues that the early church fathers talked about a great deal. And by the way, which have been taught in many portions of the church along with the seven deadly sins for thousands of years.

It’s interesting that the term “virtue” itself means valor or courage in a sense. And so some people think that courage in order to have all the other virtues—it doesn’t come first in the order of development or logic but it just is needed to support all the other virtues. John Stott said that fortitude—and that was we’ll explain the difference there in a couple of minutes. Fortitude which is analogous—well I’ll explain it now.

The only difference they saw between fortitude and courage, and I’m using the term somewhat interchangeably, is that fortitude has courage plus patience. And that was the concept of fortitude, which is really the virtue that we’re talking about here, but courage is used very often today in the same way. Stott said that fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues. Samuel Johnson said that unless a man has that virtue, courage or fortitude, he has no security for preserving any of the other virtues.

And so it is necessary in terms of keeping all the virtues—not necessarily flowing out of it but it’s necessary for the preservation of them. Now what is courage or virtue? Well I think that we have in verse two a good summary statement of courage. We have Paul having the courage to speak in verse two in the midst of great affliction. And so it’s a model for us and essentially I’ve given you my definition of courage.

Courage is self-sacrificial actions stemming from a trust in God undertaken to accomplish a God-appointed task. And now if you take that as a working outline, you’ll soon see that what I’m saying is that the only true courage is Christian courage. That people who do not do things for the purpose of God are not courageous. And I do that very self-consciously.

We can argue about the terminology used, but I think it’s good for us to remember that somehow these virtues are not out there as some kind of abstract entity the way the Greeks might have perceived them to be. But rather they’re things that flow from the person of God. Okay? And we’ll talk toward the end, but obviously if you’ve thought a little bit about models for courage, the greatest model we have is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so to be truly courageous and not foolish or some other thing, courage flows from indeed taking risks to one’s life but that coming from a trust in God for the purpose of accomplishing something that he has called us to do. That’s what Paul does and Paul is characterized as in verse two is doing just that thing.

Now first then, courage involves self-sacrificial actions and suffering. And as we said in verse two, Paul says that we suffered before and were shamefully entreated as you know at Philippi. Acts 16 and Acts 17 gives us the historical record of Paul’s entrance into Philippi and what happened to them there. Remember they were thrown in jail, they were beaten and scourged and thrown in jail and put in the stocks and they sang and the Philippian jailer was converted. You remember that story probably from your many years back in Bible school or whatever.

But the point is that this gives us the picture of what historical context Paul speaks of here in verse two. What he’s talking about are these first two terms—in terms of their persecution he suffered related to the physical beatings that he received, the scourges, but also to the mental degradation, I guess, of being placed in stocks and being stripped of their clothes while yet being Roman citizens is what some people get the inference of here.

It was not really proper to throw a Roman citizen in the stocks in that way and later on, they want to get him out of jail because they’re afraid that he’s going to press charges against them. But even beyond that, we’re talking here not just about a Roman citizen. We’re talking here about the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who are sent out to proclaim the message of the King. What a disgraceful thing to take the King’s messenger. If President Bush sent his great aide to us, one of his big assistants or something. Instead we beat him and throw him in jail. That is to treat him shamefully.

And Paul is treated shamefully at Philippi. So, part of that persecution is physical, but there’s other parts of the persecution going on as well. He says, “In spite of those two things, we went ahead and had courage to speak amid much contention.” And I think there he’s referring to what happened to them at Thessalonica. Remember, they talked for about three weeks in the synagogues, maybe an undetermined number of weeks after that.

And what happened? Great outlaw occurred. Great problems, a lot of persecution. They went to find Paul. They had to actually send Paul out of the city to keep his life safe. Remember all that from Acts 17. So, Paul faced life-threatening situations and he was courageous. He did his job in spite of them. Courage takes self-sacrificial actions, not words, not thoughts, deeds that involve the sacrifice or potential sacrifice of oneself.

This by the way—the contention, the word for contention at the end of verse two, “he spoke to you the gospel of God with much contention”—that word is the root word for agony and was originally had reference to what happened in the arena, the struggles that people would face in the arena in various sports contests and battles and this kind of thing. And of course, I suppose these words were pretty prophetic in a certain sense for the courage, the self-sacrificial actions, the profession of Christ as Lord that would lead to agony of death in those very colosseums for Christians sometime later.

So these three terms I think give us a broad definition of the sort of injury and affliction that courage stands in the face of. Certainly injury is part of that but it’s a lot broader than that. It’s every attempt, every bit of danger as it were to ourselves—to our pride, our proper sense of pride, to our well-being emotionally and mentally, to our sense of inner peace, et cetera. All these things are referenced to by these three particular words.

Now the ultimate injury, the deepest injury that all these things really are just pointing toward is death itself. Even injuries which are not fatal—physical injuries which are not fatal—are prefigurements of death. You bleed, you look like you’re going to die or something. Death is the extreme violation. As Piper wrote, the final negation and it is reflected and effected in even lesser injuries.

Piper said on the basis of this that all fortitude then has reference to death. All fortitude stands in the presence of death. Fortitude or courage is basically a readiness to die or to fall in battle. I think that’s correct. Hebrews 2:15 says that Christ came to deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetimes subject to bondage. Through fear of death. The fear of death is at the core of our being subject to bondage and hence not being able to break free and to exhibit courage in our lives.

Now in 2 Samuel 10:12 and 1 Chronicles 19:13, you have a picture of courage in battle in the scriptures. This was Joab and his brothers and he tells them, “Be of good courage. Let us behave ourselves valiantly for our men. First second Samuel says, “Let us play the men for our people and for the cities of our God, and the Lord do that which seemeth good to him.” Courage does not assume that God is going to deliver you out of the problem.

Joab says, “Let us perform valiantly and courageously. If God delivers us, it’s great. But if he has fallen battle, that’s fine, too. Willing to be self-sacrificial for a particular purpose. Real loss is present to the courageous man. Fear is not absent, but rather overcome by the brave man. It’s the story of a soldier who was mocked for being so afraid as the battle drew near that he was trembling.

He turned to the man who was making fun of him and said, “Yes, I am afraid. But if you were as afraid as I am, you would have run a long time ago.” He really exhibited more courage than the man who trembled not because he knew the fear. He knew the real danger that was approaching. And the other man had no cognizance. He was that deluded man that Paul said he wasn’t. Paul said our exhortation was not of deceit. Wasn’t delusion. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t a lunatic. A lunatic is not afraid and can face death, but he does not exercise courage. It is because man is vulnerable—because we are vulnerable to death and injury—that we can be brave.

R.J. Rushdoony, the definition that he has used for a number of years now for his definition of bravery or courage, he takes from H.G. Wells. Wells wrote that brave men are men who do the things they are afraid to do. They do the things they’re afraid to do. Some have said that courage is fear which has said its prayers. The man with no sense of fear then is not brave. He is a fool in the scriptures.

And you know, it’s interesting. We have children, a lot of children in the church, and we’ve seen our children do funny things and what’s what we might call courageous or brave things. I remember our little guy likes to jump. And I don’t know how many times when he was real little, real little, he would jump off the stairs and jump all the way down here. And now, see, he’s taking—he’s being self-sacrificial. He can hurt himself real badly doing that kind of thing. And children routinely throughout our households do things that are dangerous to them physically. But it’s not courage because they don’t understand that they could get killed doing these things.

And we don’t call that courage. Then we call a child a fool for doing those things. Okay? We call them foolish. We might call him pigheaded. We might call him a showoff. We don’t call him a brave child for doing it. The brave one is the one who understands the danger implied and still proceeds on in what he’s doing. Okay. So, first of all, courage involves that central aspect of self-sacrificial actions. But secondly, the self-sacrificial actions, if we use Paul as the model in verse two, stem from a trust in God.

He didn’t just do these things. He was courageous for a particular purpose. He says in verse two, “we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention.” So his boldness is in God—from a trusting in God ultimately and not in his own abilities. Paul says he was bold in the Lord.

Now I want to go back now to the way the Greeks looked at the relationship between wisdom and courage. Remember I said there was wisdom, justice, and courage. And they had a particular reason for that order. The Greeks also believed that courage had to be tied to an ultimate good in order to be courage and not just foolishness or pigheadedness or ferociousness or rashness or whatever other things we may categorize a man who seems courageous and yet uses his courage for evil purposes. I mean in some sense the mass murderer may be courageous in you know risking his life to do these things.

We wouldn’t call him a brave man. We would say that he is ferocious or animallike and not courage. The Greeks recognized also that wisdom was necessary for courage to be truly courage. Courage, the Greeks held, is the force by which the obstacles which impede the pursuit of the good or the wise are overcome. Okay? It clears the path to the goal for the person. Okay? It’s connected to wisdom then. Otherwise, as he said, so we speak of foolhardiness.

Stalker in his book said that courage is the power of going forward in spite of difficulties to reach a chosen and worthy object. It has to have an end pursuit and that end pursuit has to be linked to wisdom or so said the Greeks. Suffering for its own sake is nonsense. Piper defined fortitude as suffering injury in the battle for the realization of the good. One must know the good then to have true courage, church.

The truly brave man is the one who loves some worthy object so much that he is willing to risk everything for its attainment, including if necessary, his own life. Now, for the Christians, this sort of definition can only be true if in place of wisdom, we put the wise course that is determined by God. The ultimate one that we love and for which we perform courageous acts is God himself. That is the ultimate goal of our courage—is to achieve his ends.

And it’s interesting because wisdom according to the scriptures begins with the fear of the Lord. So it is the fear of the Lord that is the necessary component to cause us to act in spite of our fear of danger to ourselves or our fear of men. We’ve got to fear God more than we do men.

I was talking to Keith Hansen earlier and he said I guess it was Montaigne, a French man of letters, who said that the liar is brave to God, but he is a coward to man. If you think about it, the liar is brave to God. He doesn’t pay attention to God’s threatenings and punishments who can cast him into hell, but he is a coward to man. He lies to make himself look good to the man. And that is foolishness. For the Christian, true courage has as its goal God himself and our love of God.

F.E. Marsh in his commentary on this particular portion of the book of Thessalonians said that there were four necessary components of boldness in God. First, one must be confident before God, before God. And that confidence, he says, grows in the soil of an unaccusing heart. Secondly, a man must have courage for God. And he said as David’s mighty men loved David so much that they were brave to secure a drink and to go out and risk death themselves to get a drink for him from the well of Bethlehem, so our love for God should inspire us to act of courage for him.

His love for us moves us to have a love for him and to have courage for God. So we must have confidence before God, courage for God, consecration to God, he said, and communion with God. And the man who has these four aspects, he said, indeed will be bold in God, and he will be like the great Atlantic steamliner in the face of a storm at sea. So we’re going to go through these. I’ve changed the order a little bit, but under this trust in God that characterizes Christian courage rather.

First we have a courage for God which implies a love for God. Now Paul loved God and as a result he was courageous in God because he was courageous for God. For him the exceeding great thing to do with life was to serve God and to serve the Savior who himself laid down his life for Paul. You know the scriptures tell us that hardly ever will a man risk a life for a friend. But he may risk a life for a friend, but hardly ever will a man risk a life for his own enemies.

And yet Jesus laid down his life for us. While we were yet enemies of his and in opposition to him and hated him, Jesus laid down his life. Well, that’s the picture of Paul as well. Because Jesus did that, he earns our love. And the person that loves Jesus understands that we are called also to lay down our lives if need be for the sake of the Savior and to do it to the very people who may be our enemies.

And so Paul, in spite of the danger to his life that existed, was willing and necessary to face the ultimate test of courage—martyrdom—because of his love for the Savior. So Christian martyrdom is essentially a picture of the ultimate in Christian courage. And it’s interesting here that in a very real sense we’re all called to be if necessary, martyrs for Jesus Christ. The very term martyr has as its root the word the same word that means witness.

So witness and martyr are from the same root word as it were. To be a witness is to be a potential martyr. And Jesus has called all of us to be his witnesses to the world. So we’re also all called to be potential martyrs if need be for the sake of Jesus Christ. And I want to make real clear that this may sound a little strange when you realize that remember we said that with Paul things got so bad they had to get him out of town real quick before he was killed.

He ran in the face of martyrdom. Well, martyrdom the Christian church has always held is not something we’re supposed to want or desire for ourselves. We are to be courageous to that end if necessary. We are never to seek that end in and of itself. We must be ready to die for the faith. That is Christian fortitude. And as a result, you could say that martyrdom is the root of all Christian courage. But a willingness to die for the faith is not a willingness to die simply to demonstrate your ability or willingness to do that.

It’s interesting that there’s a letter put out by the church of God in Smyrna in AD 150, around that time, put out to all other churches that was entitled the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp and this was during a period of great persecution to the church and this is what they sent out to these other churches. They recounted a particular man who had—well I’ll just read it: “But one Phrygian called Quintus became afraid when he saw the wild animals. It was this very man who had presented himself voluntarily to the court and persuaded others to do the same. By repeated urging, the proconsul brought him to sacrifice and to forear Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, we have no praise for those who offer themselves voluntarily. This is not the counsel of the gospel.”

St. Cyprian, who was himself beheaded in 258, declared to the council of Paternus, “Our teaching, that is Christianity, forbids anyone to report for himself. Christian courage is not romanticism. It is not seeking to die for the faith. It is a willingness to die for the faith. That is the last course of action that God has planned for us. And this is because the early church fathers believed and taught in their writings that God would most readily withdraw his strength of endurance from those who arrogantly, trusting their own resolve, thrust themselves into martyrdom.

So courage is a trust in God because of a love for him, not a love of dying for him and not a trust in our own selves. Ambrose said fortitude does not trust itself. And the early church fathers taught that to actually seek to die rather than to serve Jesus Christ was to put yourself in the very position where he would withdraw the only support of courage that you may have in a time of martyrdom. So we must have courage in God.

We must have confidence before God for this as well. In 1 John 3:21, we read that if our heart doesn’t condemn us, we have confidence before God. Well, then, well the side of that is that if our heart does condemn us, then we don’t have confidence, we don’t have the basis for Christian courage in the way we live our lives. And so, a life of consecration to God and to his law, his standard of consecration, and his standard of the activities by which our heart is to judge itself in terms of God.

A consecration is necessary as the root as a basic component of Christian courage. Sin saps bravery. Sin left in our lives unconfessed, undealt with saps us of confidence before God and hence saps us of Christian courage or bravery. Now this is where again referring to this order of the Greeks and their order of virtue—again this is why the Christians picked this up so readily because they were right here too.

They said wisdom, justice, then courage. Wisdom and justice together inform, tell, or instruct but also give form to the internal character too. What courage is—that’s what the word informed meant in its classical sense. The word inform—to give the form to something, to give it its delineation. Wisdom, the person of God, in our in what the scriptures teach, and justice, his standard, his law, inform, give us the outlines of what true courage is for the Christian.

More than that, not just for the Christian, that’s reality, folks. God’s standards, his words are the words. All other outlines of courage are perversions from that. But in any event, this is related then to the need for confidence before God and consecration to God in the standard which defines justice, which tells us what courage is and what saps it from us. That being sin unconfessed in our lives. Now if we understand this then we understand that courage is the result of a well-thought-out action frequently.

Pericles said this: “For this too is our way to dare most liberally where we have reflected best. To be most courageous in the things that we’ve thought about most with others.” Only ignorance begets fortitude, and reflection begets hesitation. For the non-Christian to reflect on a situation is more and more to back away from any danger to yourself. But for the Christian to reflect on a particular situation the way that Paul could reflect on whether or not I should keep preaching the gospel brings him to consider what God’s standard for his actions is.

Reason to consider what is the goal of what he’s doing. Has he been entrusted with God to this task. And if he has then his courage is in place because he has confidence with God. He’s consecrated his fast to God and he’s thought it through. Augustine said it’s not the injury but the cause that makes martyrs and Ambrose said that fortitude without justice is a lever of evil. Brave men without the justice of God in their hearts are really brutish men who then produce evil in the world around us.

Joshua 23:6 says, “Be therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses.” Courage is to do the law of God. That’s what it tells us in Joshua 23:6.

Hebrews 13:5, “Let your conversation, your walk, your life be without covetousness, and be content with such things as you have. For he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” So that we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what men shall do to me.”

This is why it’s related to Paul. He’s saying he’s bold. On the other hand, he says, “I did not have motives of uncleanness. I was not covetous.” Covetousness drives out the nearness of God and the ability to boldly proclaim no matter what man does I won’t fear it and so consecration to God’s standard is an important component of our trust in God in times of persecution.

And then finally, communion with the God who enables us for a task. Courage springs ultimately from Christ’s work and released from death in se—remember we said that people were held in bondage through fear of death and in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 Paul says he has great confidence in things to be if necessary, absent from the body because he knew that death had been overcome by Jesus Christ.

So a meditation upon Jesus Christ enables us to face death because of his death and resurrection. 2 Chronicles 32:7 says, “Be strong, be courageous, do not be afraid or dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all his multitude that is with him. For there is more with us than with him. If we have communion with God, we have communion with the one who equips us and brings us to a place of victory.

This particular verse was quoted to Hezekiah when Sennacherib was challenging the people. And Hezekiah then prayed to God to deal with the enemies around the gates. And God did so and delivered him. The same phrase is repeated in the New Testament: “Greater is he who’s in us than he that’s in the world.” It’s also repeated in 2 Kings. There the Syrians were plotting to kill Elisha and Elisha’s servant got fearful and Elisha put him in communion with God, as it were, with the God who enables. And he opened his servant’s eyes up to see that indeed literally more were with Elijah and his servant than those who were encamped against them.

Because his servant’s when his eyes were opened saw an angelic host around them in chariots and an angelic host to protect Elisha. Elisha prayed then that God would deliver him and God struck them with blindness and led the Syrians into Elisha’s hand and he kept them all captive. So communion with the God who gives us enablement is necessary for our courage.

Psalm 27:14, “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart.” If you don’t have enough courage, wait on the Lord. Be of good courage. Exercise what you have, and he shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say on the Lord.

Psalm 31:24, “Be of good courage, and you shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.”

Okay, so courage is self-sacrificial actions taken for the sake of the greater good of God, his purposes. I’m going to read an extended quote here from Piper on this. He said, “To be brave is not the same as to have no fear. Indeed, fortitude actually rules out a certain kind of fearlessness, namely the sort of fearlessness that is based upon a false appraisal and evaluation of reality. Such fearlessness is blind and death to real danger. One who has lost the will to live does not fear death.”

Now, this is important because if that’s true, and it is, then it means that the answer for our fears is not to convince ourselves of particular situations.