As believers, we are reminded afresh of the full forgiveness of our sins through the death and resurrection of Christ. The good news of the gospel never gets old to the heart of a redeemed sinner because we never stop needing grace. We know that never-ending grace is ours because of our Savior’s empty tomb.

Sin is not a popular topic to discuss in our world today. Our culture has virtually banished sin out of its vocabulary. Sin has been re-defined, re-labeled, re-directed, and even revered. People who sin are not sinners because nearly everyone is a victim.
The reality, though, is that you can erase sin from a culture, but you can’t erase guilt. There is the sense that all human beings have that we are guilty of doing wrong. We are born into this world having been created in the image of God, and because we live in God’s world as creatures who bear His image, we can never escape the reality of our guilt because of our sin.
What has been so fascinating and so tragic to watch over the past several years is that the more the world has tried to deny the reality of sin, the greater the guilt they feel. We can see the reality of that all around us. Wokeness, social justice, anti-racism, virtue signaling, false religions, vague forms of spirituality, mindfulness, psychology, and more – all attempting to do one thing: erase the guilt we feel over our sins and make us feel like we are good, righteous people. But all of these attempts at self-justification are ultimately futile and useless.
The real tragedy is that they don’t work at the spiritual level. Denying your sins will never erase your sins before a holy and just God. The real problem we have as sinful human beings isn’t that our existential happiness is hindered by sin; it’s that we are destined for an eternity under the wrath of God because of our sin. This is the tragedy of denying your sin; simply wishing it away or pretending your sin is virtue doesn’t deal with the problem of the wrath of God abiding on you. And you know that in your conscience, and you can’t escape it no matter what you do.
It’s into this setting of a world of sinners in need of real forgiveness from God that Mark begins the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Mark tells his readers from the outset that he has good news to share with sinful people about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. He ensures we understand at the outset of his Gospel that Jesus has come into this world to defeat Satan by bringing forgiveness to sinners. The miracles, the healings, the casting out of demons are external signs of a spiritual truth, that Jesus has the authority to do the most important thing for us that we need: to forgive our sins. That’s the good news of the gospel that Mark is writing about.
As this Gospel progresses, we learn in Mark 10:45 exactly how Jesus is going to provide forgiveness for our sins. He will do it in the most degrading manner possible, by giving His life for sinners on a cross. There’s one detail, though, that Jesus includes in Mark 10:34 that will vindicate Jesus’ claim that His sacrifice was accepted by God and brought forgiveness to sinners: He would rise again three days later.
Here, we come face to face with the most crucial fact of all: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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None of this is to defend the cruelties associated with slavery. It is simply to say that Brown’s response was the wrong one, and that we should neither approve it nor celebrate him. Brown was celebrated for his militancy, and he seems to have regarded such militancy as the proper fruit of the Christian faith.

In 1860 a newspaper called The Christian Watchman and Reflector published a series of letters from Charles Spurgeon, in one of which he denied rumors that the American publishers of his works excised material that might be offensive to slaveholders. Highly perturbed at the suggestion, Spurgeon said, amongst other things, that “any slaveholder who should show himself in our neighborhood would get a mark which he would carry to his grave, if it did not carry him there.” He finished the letter in view by saying that “John Brown is immortal in the memories of the good in England, and in my heart he lives.” Here we have a minister of the gospel with a high reputation and wide influence expressing his opinion with such fervor as to descend into talk of his neighbors possibly murdering foreign citizens and praising an insurrectionist.
This is of interest because the statement in view is cited as proof that many evangelicals condemned slavery at the same time that many southern Protestants were defending it. It is certainly proof of that sober truth, though there are plenty of other sources that make the same point that lack the regrettable character of Mr. Spurgeon’s statement here. To be sure, he did not say that he would approve such lawless violence, much less that he would participate; and it is conceivable that Victorian era Englishmen were not quite as prone to waylaying foreigners as Mr. Spurgeon suggests. It could be that he was so caught up in a fit of high dudgeon that he wrote more boldly than was warranted, and that the talk of lawless violence was idle banter.
Whatever the case, it was not in accord with the duty of his office to speak in such a manner, and it is a point of curiosity that contemporary critics of 1800s southern evangelical attitudes about slavery so readily latch upon examples such as this. Such critics are quick to point at the perceived hypocrisy of claiming Christ while at the same time defending a civil institution that oppressed its participants and was often attended by great physical cruelty. And so in finding grounds to condemn the violence and hypocrisy of slaveholding they . . . . latch upon examples of evangelicals mentioning violence approvingly.
This is a strange method, surely, and it goes far to undermine the critics’ own moral authority. Why, pray tell, do we consider slavery wrong? Is it not because it does violence to the dignity of its unwilling participants, holding them in bondage and subjecting them, in many cases, to harsh punishments for flight or disobedience? Is it not because of the chain and the lash, the separation of families and the prohibition of literacy, and because of all the other things that denied equal protection and rights under the law and reduced slaves to being a permanent under caste? Is it not because the whole institution denied them their rights as human beings whose nature is no different from that of people of other classes and ethnicities? Why then would it be any less evil to do similar things to other people, including slaveholders or people who are citizens or public officials of places where slavery was legal? Mistreatment is wrong regardless of who does it or why, and our Lord forbids vengeance (Lev. 19:18; Deut. 32:35; Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30) and prohibits former victims of oppression oppressing others in turn (Ex. 22:21; comp. Deut. 23:7).
It is here that John Brown enters the question. Many people in his day regarded him as a hero with few equals, and after his death he was hailed as a martyr and prophet, Henry David Thoreau saying that he had become “an angel of light” and a popular camp tune saying that he was “John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see.” That enthusiasm has not dimmed, it seems, for Christianity Today has published an article urging the glad acceptance of Brown as an evangelical hero.
John Brown was hanged for treason and murder for leading the seizure of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) as part of a scheme to forcibly abolish slavery in the southern states. Brown’s plan was to use his action to incite slaves in the surrounding areas to flee their masters and join his forces, after which they would march southward, collecting men and materiel as they went. Ostensibly his forces would fight only in self-defense if accosted.
That last bit makes for a large claim to swallow when we remember that Brown had already attained national notoriety for organizing private militants in the Bleeding Kansas crisis earlier in the 1850s. Brown had presided over the Pottawatomie Massacre, in which five men had been hacked to death in what can only be considered cold-blooded murder. The other facts are also against interpreting his plan and actions as a scheme of fomenting an armed-but-purely-defensive insurrection, such as that two of the five men his band killed at Harpers Ferry were unarmed. One was the mayor, the other a free black man who was the first victim and who was shot in the back. If these killings were against Brown’s intentions, as has been suggested, they nonetheless suggest that he had poor control over his force that he had trained for his occupation of the arsenal; and it is hard to imagine that he would have had any better control over the multitudes of strangers whom he expected to rally to his standard.
It is likely that arming large numbers of escaped slaves, whatever Brown’s ostensible intention, would have led to aggression and even the wanton taking of vengeance on their part. Virginia’s earlier slave revolt 28 years before (Nat Turner’s) had been attended by the killing of civilians, including women and children. It is simply not human nature for spontaneous mobs to act only in self-defense and to eschew all criminal and vengeful tendencies. And notwithstanding that Brown attempted to give legitimacy to his efforts by establishing a ‘provisional government’ replete with offices and constitution, what Brown actually attempted, whether he realized it or not, was to foment an enormous mob, probably the largest in the history of the country. Had he succeeded he would have been culpable for any excesses that such a mob committed, but as it was he gained very little support.
There is another fault with such an argument, which is that it is generally a principle of law that one cannot provoke resistance by threats or assault and then use force to repel the violence that ensues: the initial provocation makes one the aggressor, so that every subsequent action is a furtherance of the aggression and cannot be justified as defensive. Brown was the aggressor in the Harpers Ferry affair, for he started it by seizing the arsenal, and then continued it by taking hostages and preventing the lawful authorities from repossessing it or rescuing them. When it was then claimed that his subsequent fighting with state and federal forces was in self-defense (as his defense attempted at his trial), the claim is null – and more than a little brazen and absurd.
One cannot break into someone’s house and take him captive, and then say that he acted in self-defense by firing at the police when they surrounded the house. All notion of self-defense goes out the window when one first commences his criminal venture. And yet that is essentially what Brown did, except that he acted not merely against a single private individual and domicile, but against an entire commonwealth and its populace.
I have no desire to impugn the faith or integrity of those who have lionized Brown through the decades. Indeed, anyone who would allow that Spurgeon remark above to dissuade him from reading Spurgeon appreciatively would be doing himself an enormous disservice, for flights of indignation notwithstanding, Spurgeon was greatly used by God and is well worth reading. Remarks like that above are drowned out by the enormous quantities of edifying material he produced: it is as a flake of chaff in an ocean of grace.
But I do think that such people, be they past or present, are sorely mistaken on this point. There is nothing in the New Testament that justifies fomenting armed rebellion. Romans 13 says, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” and “whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” Granting the institution of southern slavery was evil, it does not follow that it should have been countered by violent force. “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all” (Rom. 12:17). Evil must be opposed righteously; and fomenting rebellion that was likely to lead to widespread bloodshed cannot be deemed righteous. It is in direct contradiction of the commands to “live peaceably with all” and “overcome evil with good” (12:18, 21).
And in the outcome of Brown’s misadventure at Harpers Ferry we see the wisdom of our Lord’s instructions on this point. Brown’s insurrection failed utterly. He gained only a handful of supporters among the local slave population; succeeded in getting himself, many of his men, and several citizens killed; and further aggravated the already tense relations between North and South, ultimately playing an important role in provoking secession and the subsequent war that killed more than 620,000 men.
Over against all this we must remember that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and that he did not come to establish it by means of force (Jn. 18:36). When someone mentioned an example of Pilate’s cruelty toward the Jews (including sacrilegious murder), Christ declined to cry aloud for temporal justice and instead urged his hearers to take heed for their souls and repent while they had time (Lk. 13:1-3). His way is not the way of social revolution, but of patient long-suffering (Matt. 5:39) and of repaying evil with good (Lk. 6:28; Rom. 12:14, 20; 1 Pet. 3:9). Those who, like Brown, attempt to find in Christ’s message a justification for armed revolution contradict the essence of that message, and many of its particulars (2 Tim. 2:24; Tit. 3:1-2; Heb. 12:14; Jas. 3:17).
None of this is to defend the cruelties associated with slavery. It is simply to say that Brown’s response was the wrong one, and that we should neither approve it nor celebrate him. Brown was celebrated for his militancy, and he seems to have regarded such militancy as the proper fruit of the Christian faith. In his speech at his conviction he appealed to Scripture as justifying his actions:
Court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction.
When someone celebrates Brown he is therefore celebrating a man who contradicted the teaching of Scripture under the guise of fulfilling it. Against this, consider these words and ponder whether John Brown’s behavior accords with them: “Whoever says he abides in him [Christ] ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 Jn. 2:6). Christ walked in the way of works of mercy and witness, and his death redeemed the souls of many. Brown walked in the way of the sword and came to the end which Christ predicted of those who do so (Matt. 26:52), and his death brought not peace but division and strife and a war that consumed multitudes. It is no part of our faith to honor such a man, and the scriptural data abundantly point the other way.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 
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Knowing God’s providence doesn’t guarantee easy sleep. It isn’t Nyquil. We may go to bed every night feeling like the Hamans of the world will still win. Trusting in God’s providence isn’t magic. It’s a daily habit of remembering the gospel. The gospel is the greatest evidence of God’s providence. God plans, accomplishes and applies our salvation (Eph 1:3-14). God’s good providence was at work before we were even born.

My anxieties get excited when I go to bed. The sound of my head hitting the pillow is their alarm to wake up and send my mind spiralling about things I can’t control.
I tell myself, “Trust the Lord and go to sleep.” That’s easy to believe when I can pinpoint clear signs of God’s presence. But can God be trusted when life is chaos? When God seems absent how can I trust him and rest?
The Bible leads us to meditate on God’s providence so that we will not freak out when life is chaos.
Providence describes the purpose of God in history. John Piper’s definition is a good one: Providence is God’s purposeful sovereignty. The Bible shows us that God governs all things, and his purpose is his glory and the good of his people (Gen 50:20 & Rom 8:28-30). To contemplate God’s providence, we may linger in Romans 8, considering the scope and certainty of God’s purposes. Or maybe we sit with Psalm 23, meditating on his goodness in leading us along a hard path. But Esther 6 is a great passage for contemplating God’s providence when God seems invisible.
The Book of Esther never mentions God by name. Esther lived in the time of exile when Israel was under Persian rule under King Ahasuerus. Haman, the king’s right-hand man, gets royal permission to annihilate the Israelites. God seems absent and his people seem destined for a swift and sudden end.
In many ways, Esther resonates with our lives today. Day after day we go through the motions, and unless we are intentional, God is not referenced. On top of that, the gospel doesn’t seem to make any progress. Society feels under the control of godless people, who call good evil and praise evil as if it were good. It’s not hard to assume God is absent and his purpose has failed.
Esther 6 gives us hope by reminding us that God is never absent, and never on his heels. Unknown to the characters in the story, God works for Esther and his people. Esther 6 reveals the invisible hand of God, helping us trust his unseen providence.
Coincidence or Providence?
Many so-called coincidences happen in Esther 6. Ahasuerus happens to have a sleepless night. He happens to ask for the book of memorable deeds. The scribes happen to read from an obscure place about an event five years ago. It just so happens that Mordecai never received a gift for saving the king. Haman happens to be in the court at the time, so he has to carry out the command to honour Mordecai, his sworn enemy. After plotting to destroy Mordecai, Haman proclaims Mordecai’s honour throughout the city. This all takes place the night before Esther pleads with the king to rescue Mordecai’s people from Haman’s horrible, decreed massacre! Coincidence? I think not.
These so-called coincidences are the purposeful providence of God. Hidden from the characters, but blatant to readers.
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