A gentle spirit isn’t cultivated through gritted teeth, clenched fists, and a strained smile. Gentleness grows in a heart set on this truth: the Lord is near (Phil. 4:5b). A gentle woman holds a deep, residing peace in her heart that comforts her anxieties. She knows her life is in God’s hands, therefore anything that passes by her, it first passed through him. She trusts in the full truth of Romans 8:28–30.

As suffering rattled through our lives, I felt like an acorn clinging to a branch as an axe sliced into the trunk of my tree. We spun in every direction as we tumbled to the ground, until we finally hit the leafy, forest bottom.
We tried to make the best of it, to see the good. Here’s a nice, shady spot to dig our roots deep. Maybe now we’ll begin to grow. Instead, we were further kicked, tossed, and thrown, receiving a few cracks to our shell throughout. When it all finally ended, I didn’t dare believe it.
As we suffer, and our bodies and hearts finally begin to recover from the richeting and shaking we’ve received, bitterness settles in easily as if it had always lived there inside us. Without any effort, our words are slightly sharpened to an edge from the cracks we’ve endured. “Of course, bad things always happen to me.” “I mean, is it any surprise something like this would happen again?” The people we love distort to look like our enemies in our vision—rather than come together to recover and carry one another, we snap and snarl instead. Not a single offense gets covered, and each one endures our full wrath.
What doesn’t come naturally is gentleness. Yet this is the calling of the Christian: to not be formed into a crusted, bitter-hard shell from our suffering, but to gently flourish into a beautiful, strong tree, bearing fruit for others to receive.
The Molding Power of Suffering
When the axe comes for our trunks, when tree-cutting season inevitably comes, people often remind us of Romans 8:28—for God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God.
This is intended to fall on our ears as a comforting promise, but when it stands alone with us in the midst of a trial as we soak our pillow with tears and bark splinters below, we may wonder what that good could possibly be.
If we continue to read past verse 28, God defines the good. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (vv. 29–30 ESV). Sanctification is the goodness beyond our eyesight. God predestined each believer before the foundations of the earth to become Christ-like, and he promises to see each of them to glorification (Eph. 1:4; Phil. 1:6; 1 Thess. 5:23–24).
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We should pray that governing authorities, both local and federal, would not seek to thwart or suppress our faithful and public Christian witness. Opposing the witness of Christ’s church is foolish because opposing Christ’s church is opposing Christ himself (Acts 9:1–5). And that won’t end well.

In 1 Timothy 2:1–2, Paul wants believers to pray all kinds of prayers for all kinds of people. This practice is good and pleasing to God (1 Tim. 2:3). But what are the kinds of things we should pray for?
Paul says to pray for “kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Tim. 2:2).
When Paul wrote those words to Timothy, the emperor in power was Nero (from AD 54–68), and Nero was an emperor who opposed Christians. Paul was eventually martyred sometime in the mid-60s, during Nero’s reign. Apparently Paul’s prayers for rulers weren’t contingent on their goodness or wisdom. In fact, Nero’s hostility and spiritual rebellion were reasons why Christians should pray!
Paul’s hope for the saints is that they could “lead a peaceful and quiet life” (1 Tim. 2:2). He’s talking here about a political and social climate that allows Christianity to thrive and not be suppressed. A “peaceful and quiet life” is the opposite of hostile or persecutorial conditions.
The biblical authors never tell us to pray for persecution. In fact, when Paul does tell believers what to pray for, he says to pray for those in high positions that we might live peaceful and quiet lives. That doesn’t necessarily mean the leaders will be Christians, though praying for leaders to be saved is an important part of the prayers we offer on their behalf.
People in positions of authority can make things harder for Christians to live as Christians and to spread the gospel. Paul calls believers to pray that leaders would govern in such a way that Christians could live peaceably. This kind of life means a convictional, faithful, public life, a life without the worldly powers seeking to suppress and thwart Christian devotion.
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The grave duty of the magistrate was not to be taken lightly nor administered flippantly, nor was executed with exaggerated eschatological expectancy. Prudence and patience should guide the magistrate here, for the good of the church and commonwealth, not personal prejudice or private gain. Taking “care of God’s glory” and the preservation of religion and civil peace is the point. And this by removing “the external impediments of divine Worship or of Ecclesiasticall Peace,” which includes erroneous propagation and false worship. 

A few months ago, Jonathan Leeman debated Brad Littlejohn at Colorado Christian University on “Religious Liberty and the Common Good.” What the confrontation really amounted to was a question of the coercive power of civil authorities in religious matters. It is worth the watch. (The edited remarks from Leeman and Littlejohn were published here at American Reformer.)
In the course of the debate, Leeman fairly dubbed Littlejohn a “First Tabularian.” That is, a proponent of the magistrate’s duty to take note of and enforce the first table of the Decalogue, not merely the second. Littlejohn embraced and defended that decidedly traditional position ably. Leeman, self-professedly representing a Baptist position, nevertheless demurred.
This, it seems to me, is the fundamental divide within American Protestantism on this question. Will it be the Baptist position or the Magisterial one?
Per usual, someone else in our Protestant past has already addressed the question at hand. In this case, multiple persons, but we will take up just one: George Gillespie (1613-1648) who was unarguably conventional within the stream of historic Protestantism on the question at hand but, perhaps, best at expressing it.
The central focus of Gillespie’s Wholesome Severity (1645) was “Whether Christian Judges may lawfully punish Hereticks.” More directly, this introductory inquiry implied a more fundamental question:
The plaine English of the question is this: whether the Christian Magistrate be keeper of both Tables: whether he ought to suppresse his own enemies, but not Gods enemies, and preserve his own ordinances, but not Christ’s Ordinances from violation. Whether the troublers of Israel may be troubled. Whether the wilde boars and beasts of the forest must have leave to break down the hedges of the lord’s vineyard; and whether ravening wolves in sheeps clothing must be permitted to converse freely in the flock of Christ.
Were heresy and schism really to be admitted to society “under the name of tender consciences” like a “pestilence or a Gangrene”? (Published in 1645, Gillespie’s Severity could not here have been referencing Thomas Edwards’ (1599-1647) infamous and massive Gangraena (1646), but the terminological overlap is worth noting— Gillespie was decidedly more gracious in his presentation than Edwards.)
Gillespie’s entire purpose is to “vindicate the lawfull, yea necessary use of the coercive power of the Christian Magistrate in suppressing and punishing hereticks and sectaries.”
Gillespie was self-consciously responding to Baptists, viz., Christopher Blackwood (1604-1670), a Baptist in Ireland, and his Storming of Antichrist in his two Last and Strongest Garrisons (1644), which railed against infant baptism on conscientious grounds; and Roger Williams’ (1603-1683) The Bloody Tenent of Persecution (1644), which needs no introduction; and also, William Walwyn’s (1600-1681) The compassionate Samaritane (1644). (A compatriot of John Lilburne and other undesirables, Walwyn appears to have been as much a rabble rouser as Williams.)
To this end, Gillespie distinguished himself from two alternative views.
First, the opinion of “the Papists.” Their position was that all heretics who, following notice and instruction, “persist in their error, are to be without mercy put to death.” The second view was that of Baptists, viz., that no heretics or sectarians should endure any punishment but should be granted “liberty and toleration.” Gillespie finds both extremes wanting.
The third way, if you will, was Gillespie’s. The magistrate possesses and ought to exercise coercive power in suppressing heresy and schismatics with a level of discrepancy, discrimination, and prudence. That is, according to “the nature and degree of the error, schism, obstinacy, and danger of seducing others” presented by the heresy or blasphemy in view. Gentility in the execution of this duty cannot be neglected. Its application is not wanton or indiscriminate. The goal is not the “building of Zion with bloud.” For “the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men.” Gillespie insisted that it was his “soul’s desire that the secular coercive power may be put forth upon those only who can by no other means be reclaimed, & who can be no longer spared without a visible rupture in the Church, and the manifest danger of seducing and misleading many souls.” Neither should adiaphora be coercively chastised. The grave duty of the magistrate was not to be taken lightly nor administered flippantly, nor was executed with exaggerated eschatological expectancy. Prudence and patience should guide the magistrate here, for the good of the church and commonwealth, not personal prejudice or private gain. Taking “care of God’s glory” and the preservation of religion and civil peace is the point. And this by removing “the external impediments of divine Worship or of Ecclesiasticall Peace,” which includes erroneous propagation and false worship.
This, says Gillespie, was the consensus Protestant opinion expressed by Theodore Beza and John Calvin, Wolfgang Musculus and Heinrich Bullinger, Martin Bucer and Johannes Brenz, and the Helvetic, French, Saxon, and Belgic Confessions. Of course, Gillespie refers to Scripture as well for support, Exodus and Deuteronomy, in particular.
But is the New Testament magistrate bound by the same standard as that of the Old regarding heretics, violators of the first table? Indeed, they are, and Gillespie marshals Johannes Piscator’s commentary on Exodus to demonstrate that the Christian magistrate is “obliged to those things in the Judiciall law which are unchangeable, & common to all Nations: but not to those things which are mutable, or proper to the Jewish Republike,” for these are “laws concerning Morall trespasses.” These are perennial things which include blasphemy and heresy against the very source of the governing power, God himself.
From Scripture, we know that God intended the perpetuation of the moral law imbedded in and undergirding the law of Moses by the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) which vindicated the judicial and moral law against the false traditions of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
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