http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15972848/where-did-baptists-come-from
The question of the origins of the Christian tradition called Baptist has been, and to some extent still is, a much-debated issue. For example, when W.H. Whitsitt (1841–1911), the third president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, argued in the late 1890s that the earliest Baptists in both England and America did not practice immersion, he set in motion a controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention that eventuated in his dismissal as president.
Whitsitt’s leading opponents held to a position known as Landmarkism, of which a cardinal tenet was the assertion that there had been an unbroken line of baptisms by immersion (sometimes colloquially called “The Trail of Blood”) that went back to Christ and that were necessary for the existence of true churches. In other words, there have always been Baptists, it was alleged — though they might have used different nomenclature, such as Anabaptist in the sixteenth century or Waldensian in the late medieval era.
Whitsitt lost his presidency over this issue of Baptist origins, but his argument against Landmarkism was sound. In the past century or so, few historians have found Landmarkism to be a credible explanation of Baptist origins. The two major explanations today link modern-day Baptists to the continental Anabaptists of the Reformation era or the Puritan renewal movement within the Church of England.
Anabaptist or Puritan?
There are certainly similarities between the Baptists and the Anabaptists: both emphasize believers’ churches and credobaptism, and both are critical of church-state unions. But there are also significant differences. Some of the Anabaptist communities were fundamentally unorthodox on some basic issues like the Trinity and the person of Christ. The mainstream Anabaptist movement — that is, the Mennonites and the Hutterites — is strongly committed to pacifism, a perspective that has never been a significant part of the Baptist tradition. The Sabbatarian ethos of the Baptist movement is largely absent from Anabaptism. Finally, there are next to no major organic historical links between the continental Anabaptists of the sixteenth century and the English Baptists of the seventeenth century.
On the other hand, the ties between Puritanism — which emerged in the 1560s as a renewal movement within the Anglican state church — and the Baptists — who arose as General (i.e., Arminian) Baptists in the mid-1610s and as Particular (i.e., Calvinistic) Baptists in the late 1630s — are patent and multiple. All the leading Baptists of this era — men like John Smyth (d. 1612) and William Kiffen (1616–1701) — began their careers as Puritans. Like the Puritans, most of the Baptists of this era were convinced that the Lord’s Day is the Sabbath of the new covenant. And Baptists, like their Puritan contemporaries, wholeheartedly believed that a political life could be a Christian’s vocation. Finally, most of the Baptists of this era firmly rejected any connection to the continental Anabaptists.
Calvinistic Seedbed
The forebears of most modern-day Anglophone Baptists are the Particular Baptists, who emerged from the womb of English Puritanism in the 1630s. For me personally, these Puritan origins of the Baptist movement offer the best historical explanation of where the tradition of my spiritual forebears came from. I do not assert this because I, like those seventeenth-century Particular Baptists, am a Calvinist. I affirm it because the historical data leads me to this conclusion.
“The forebears of most modern-day Anglophone Baptists are the Particular Baptists.”
With the rise of interest in Reformed theology among evangelicals since the 1960s, it is not surprising to find similar interest in Baptist circles. In the last sixty years, there has developed a distinct movement of Reformed Baptist churches (though the term “Reformed Baptist” is a one that was rarely, if ever, used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) as well as similar-minded congregations within such Baptist bodies as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada. Prior to this rise of interest in and commitment to Reformed thinking among these North American Baptist communities, the regnant theology in many of them was a mixture of revivalism, non-Calvinistic dispensationalism, and pragmatism.
When these Reformed or Calvinistic Baptists began to ask about the origins of the Baptist movement, they were excited to find Calvinism and Reformed theology as a seedbed of the Baptist tradition. But some Baptists, who sought to retain what had become traditional Baptist practice and thinking during the twentieth century, reacted to this new stress on Calvinist origins by asserting the non-Calvinistic Anabaptist link. And thus, the discussion of historic Baptist origins became shaped by modern-day concerns, a good example of what historians have come to call presentism — namely, the use of the past to validate present-day positions. But as noted already, the investigation of the origin of the Baptist movement must be directed by the evidence from the seventeenth century. And to this historian, that evidence is patent: the English-speaking Baptist movement has its origins in Puritanism. (See, for example, B.R. White’s The English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century.)
Why Does It Matter?
What, though, is the importance of this assertion about Puritan origins? Does it make any difference to modern-day Baptist life and thought? For some, this determination of genesis means that as it was in the beginning, so it should be now. For this way of thinking, the theological position hammered out by the seventeenth-century Particular Baptists — usually taken to be epitomized in the Second London Confession — is the gold standard by which all present-day Baptist thought must be judged.
“To this historian, that evidence is patent: the English-speaking Baptist movement has its origins in Puritanism.”
Now, this idea of going back to the past for modern orientation was a key element in the Reformation. The watch cry of ad fontes, “back to the sources,” was an important principle that directed the efforts of the Reformers. Yet as the heirs of the Reformation discovered, this principle did not mean that one tradition could claim to be the true representation and repristination of the apostolic era. Was the purest form of the church to be found among the Scottish Presbyterians or the French Huguenots or the Calvinist state church of Hungary? The quintessential Puritan Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was forced to recognize this truth when he found his New Model Army facing the Scottish Presbyterian military on the battlefield. As he asked the Scottish Calvinists, “Is all religion wrapped up in . . . any one form?”
Personally, I think the heirs of the seventeenth-century Particular Baptists — the Baptist men and women of the long eighteenth century, figures like Anne Steele (1717–1778), Caleb Evans (1737–1791), Andrew Fuller (1754–1815), and Maria de Fleury (fl. 1770s–1790s) — are extremely helpful here. While they clearly treasured the confessional legacy that came from the lives and thought of their seventeenth-century forebears, they certainly did not believe themselves to be restricted solely to repeating the arguments and formulations of a bygone era. They lived in challenging times of revolution — intellectual, political, industrial, and even sexual — and they needed to address these matters in ways that spoke to the men and women of their day. In other words, present-day discussion of Baptist origins must reckon with the fact that we do not live in the times of our spiritual ancestors. Some of their battles are no longer our battles, and some of our battles could never have been envisioned by the men and women of those days.
Our investigation, then, of Baptist origins cannot be driven by antiquarianism — that is, a misguided attempt to live in the past. Rather, as with any study of the past, we seek to understand historical questions — in this case, what gave rise to the Baptist movement — that we might better understand some of the forces shaping Baptist identity over the centuries (for good and for ill), and also that our study of the past might help us to live as more faithful Christian disciples in the present.
So, for example, Baptists in the seventeenth century found themselves having to differentiate themselves from their Anglican paedobaptist neighbors, and sometimes they did so with a degree of vim and vigour that frankly went beyond the pale. While we can learn from this battle against an oppressive Anglican regime and state-church union, that battle is not ours to wage. Rather, we thank God for Bible-believing, faithful Anglicans.
-
The Seeds None Could Afford: How Martyrs Built the Early Church
When the emperor Nero blamed Christians for starting the fire that destroyed much of Rome in AD 64, persecution became official policy for the first time. Though it remained sporadic, many early Christians never knew when they might be forced to pay the ultimate price for their faith.
Pictures of such Christians facing lions in the Colosseum or being burnt at the stake are familiar to many of us. Those who lost their lives in this way are venerated as martyrs, a term that originally meant witnesses but that is now reserved for those who died for their beliefs. To be sure, some of the stories told about the early martyrs have been exaggerated. (We need not believe the legend of Dionysius, for example, which says he was put to death in Paris about but managed to walk ten miles or so with his severed head!)
Nevertheless, there were certainly many people who went to their deaths because they refused to renounce their devotion to Christ. Why was this? The church father Tertullian (c. 155–c. 220) offers a fascinating window into early Christian martyrdom — and how God used it to build his church.
Jesus’s Unique Death
The idea that someone might be put to death for his or her beliefs was not entirely unknown in the ancient world, but such deaths were uncommon and generally disapproved of. The classic case is that of Socrates, the Athenian philosopher who was executed in 399 BC by his fellow citizens because they thought he was an atheist who was leading young people astray. The scandal caused by that injustice was so great that nothing like it ever happened again in Athens.
Though some have compared Jesus to Socrates, the early Christians saw him differently. They knew Jesus had suffered because Jewish leaders had accused him of blasphemy, and the Roman authorities in Palestine were too cowardly to resist their calls for the death sentence. Jesus was no mere philosopher. He didn’t die as a victim in the cause of free speech. His death was a sacrifice that God had foreordained as the fulfillment of his promise to the Jews that he would save them from their sins. The men who condemned him were certainly guilty of shedding innocent blood, but they were also unwitting agents of a divine plan that they did not understand (Acts 4:24–28).
Jesus died to pay the price for our sins, but he did not stay in the grave. Three days later, he rose again from the dead — and forty days after that, he ascended into heaven. He was a victim of human injustice, but subsequent events revealed him as the Savior of the world, and it was that salvation that his disciples proclaimed.
Christian Martyrdom
The disciples of Jesus were unpopular, particularly with the Jewish establishment, which thought they were destroying Judaism by claiming that Old Testament sacrifices were no longer valid. Many of the earliest Christians were arrested and subjected to severe beatings. Some even lost their lives at the hands of their Jewish persecutors (Acts 7:58–60; 12:1–2), though these occurrences were rare. And then, after fire consumed Rome, persecution became a matter of imperial policy.
Curiously, neither the Christians nor their persecutors could explain what the crimes were. Christians were typically model subjects of the Roman Empire and did nothing to offend anyone beyond refusing to worship the pagan gods. The Romans disapproved of that, of course, but Jews did not worship the gods either, nor did many of the philosophers who regarded all religion as superstition, and nobody tried to put them to death.
Educated Christians did not hesitate to write defenses of their faith in which they pointed out how wrong it was for pagans to persecute them. Among them was Tertullian, a North African convert to Christianity. Tertullian, who seems to have escaped execution, wrote a number of books in which he expounded his faith to unbelievers and encouraged martyrs to stand firm as witnesses to Christ, even regarding their martyrdom as proof that what they believed was true.
Tertullian’s Witness
Tertullian was the first Christian to write specifically about martyrdom and persecution, though there is no sign that he suffered either himself. He wrote a couple of short books to other Christians who were facing martyrdom themselves or who were tempted to run away from persecution and save their lives. In To the Martyrs and On Flight in Persecution, he told them to stand firm and sacrifice themselves for the spiritual truth that they cherished more than life itself. As he put it, Jesus had died for them, so it was a privilege to be able to die for him. It was also a sign to unbelievers that Christians meant business. Just as Jesus came back from the dead, so too they would rise again to a higher life with him in heaven.
Tertullian’s most important treatment of the subject, however, was in his Apology, a lengthy argument addressed to the pagans who were putting Christians to death. Many pagans were blaming Christians for causing earthquakes and floods, an absurd charge that was easy to refute. Natural disasters had been occurring long before the coming of Christ, so how could his followers be responsible for them? On the contrary, Christians prayed for the welfare of all people, and when disasters occurred, it was they who helped the victims, not the pagans.
“The witness of the martyrs bore fruit that they did not live to see.”
Moreover, people who saw Christians going to their deaths, often praying and singing as they went, were moved by their courage and tempted to examine their beliefs more carefully, which was the exact opposite of what the persecutors wanted. In fact, it was often the martyrs’ witness that persuaded others to believe in Christ. The world was against them, but Christians had nothing to fear, and they demonstrated their faith by being willing to die for it.
‘I Will Build My Church’
Tertullian was grieved by the injustice inflicted on his fellow believers, but he was able to see beyond the horrors of persecution to the purposes of God that lay behind it. As he explained to his pagan contemporaries, the more they persecuted Christians, the more their blood bore witness to the truth of their faith. As modern writers have paraphrased his words, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.”
Many people who saw what was happening were not indifferent to the wrongdoing they witnessed. The martyrs who went to their deaths willingly, often joyfully singing hymns, were sending a more powerful message to bystanders than even the Christian preachers they may have heard. That believers acted this way led many to think there must be something to this faith. Imperceptibly and incrementally, the church began to grow. One by one, people who were hostile or indifferent began to ask questions and, as they got answers, became convinced of the truth of what they were seeing and being told.
“Like the martyrs of old, we walk by faith, knowing that death in this world is but the gateway to eternal life.”
Tertullian did not hesitate to remind his readers of the legendary heroes of early Rome, who had stood up against the city’s enemies and rescued it from destruction. Centuries later, their devotion had produced a worldwide empire. The church, he was convinced, would one day achieve such a worldwide scope. Though he did not live to see it, he was not wrong. Suffering and martyrdom were not sought by Christians, but God used such persecution to build his church. The witness of the martyrs bore fruit that they did not live to see.
As Christians today, we naturally do not want to suffer for our faith any more than they did, but we can see from their example that our sufferings have a purpose in the mind of God that will be revealed in his good time, to the honor and glory of his holy name. Like the martyrs of old, we walk by faith, knowing that death in this world is but the gateway to eternal life in the world to come.
-
Young Love in a Cruel Land: The Wife Who Sailed with Adoniram Judson
On February 18, 1812, Ann and Adoniram Judson (ages 21 and 22) boarded the Caravan in the New England port of Salem. They had been married for less than two weeks, and set sail for Asia, expecting not to see America again.
They arrived in Burma (now Myanmar) to commence pioneer gospel work in July of 1813 — having already endured a four-month sea journey, a painful separation from their sending body and colleagues (due to their conscientious decision to be baptized as believers), the death of Ann’s friend Harriet, and the stillbirth of Ann’s first child.
The next thirteen years would be punctuated by serious illness, lengthy separations, and continual harassment. Ann’s second child, Roger Williams, died at eight months. She was pregnant with her third child when Adoniram was taken into the notorious Death Prison in Ava in June 1824. They would not know freedom together until February 1826. During that time, both suffered immensely; Ann daily risked her own life to care for Adoniram. These privations resulted in her death, at age 36, in October 1826. Little Maria Eliza would die six months later.
So much suffering. So many tears.
Yet Ann’s determination to serve Christ shone, undimmed, to the end. What fueled her resolve? To answer that question, we have to go back to her profound conversion, which resulted in a passionate concern for God’s glory and a powerful certainty in God’s promises.
Profound Conversion
Ann Hasseltine was born in 1789, in Bradford, New England. Popular and sociable, she would confide in her diary that she was “one of the happiest creatures on earth” (Ann Judson, 20). Ann attended church each Sunday, but her life revolved around friends and parties.
When she was 15, a teacher arrived at Bradford Academy who urged his pupils that repentance was urgent. Many were convicted of sin, including Ann. But she lurched, for months, between fear of judgment and terror of what friends would say if she became “serious.” Ultimately, God drew her to himself. At age 16, she wrote,
A view of [God’s] purity and holiness filled my soul with wonder and admiration. I felt a disposition to commit myself unreservedly into his hands, and leave it with him to save me or cast me off, for I felt I could not be unhappy, while allowed the privilege of contemplating and loving so glorious a Being. . . .
I felt myself to be a poor lost sinner, destitute of everything to recommend myself to the divine favour. [I knew] that it had been the mere sovereign, restraining mercy of God, not my own goodness, which had kept me from committing the most flagrant crimes. This view of myself humbled me in the dust, melted me into sorrow and contrition for my sins, induced me to lay my soul at the feet of Christ, and plead his merits alone, as the ground of my acceptance. (24–25)
Ann joined the Congregational Church in Bradford in September 1806. Her parents and siblings were also converted and joined the church. This is a vignette of what was taking place throughout America — a movement we now refer to as the Second Great Awakening.
“Christ did not issue the Great Commission on the condition that health, comfort, and safety could be assured.”
One outworking of revival was increased concern for those unreached with the gospel. Previously, American Protestants had sent missionaries to the North American Indians, but not overseas. Now, some young Christians were convinced that Christ’s command to go to all nations applied to them too.
Following her conversion, Ann began teaching in a small school. She wanted the children in her charge to follow Christ, but in her prayers she ranged across the globe, praying for the conversion of all nations:
My chief happiness now consisted in contemplating the moral perfections of the glorious God. I longed to have all intelligent creatures love him. (27)
Passionate Concern
Ann now knew that she was here on this earth to serve God. At 18, after reading the journal of David Brainerd, she wrote in her own journal of her passion to pray for all nations, and of her willingness to go wherever Christ would choose.
A year after that, in June 1810, four young students met with the General Association of Congregational ministers in Bradford. They were volunteering to take the gospel to the unreached people of Asia. One of them was Adoniram Judson. The brilliant son of a Congregational minister, he had been converted after a period of rebellion. Like Ann, his conversion resulted in a passionate concern that all nations should praise God.
That day, the would-be missionaries were given lunch at the home of the Hasseltines. Unsurprisingly, Adoniram set his heart upon Ann. One month later, he wrote to her father,
I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life . . . to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left his heavenly home and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? (37)
Mr. Hasseltine left the choice to Ann, who resolved to marry Adoniram and to leave all she knew for the unknown:
I rejoice, that I am in [God’s] hands — that he is everywhere present, and can protect me in one place as well as in another. He has my heart in his hands, and when I am called to face danger, to pass through scenes of terror and distress, he can inspire me with fortitude, and enable me to trust in him. Jesus is faithful; his promises are precious. (40)
At this time, sea journeys were hazardous. Letters took months, and some never arrived. There was no established mission network to which these pioneers could go. Nothing was guaranteed: safety, health, toleration — least of all success. Many thought the idea insane.
But Christ did not issue the Great Commission on the condition that health, comfort, and safety could be assured.
Shortly after arrival in Burma, Ann’s journal records her desire that all should honor God, her concern for the plight of people deprived of gospel light, and her conviction that it was a privilege to have been called to sacrifice comfort for the kingdom:
If it may please the dear Redeemer to make me instrumental of leading some of the females of Burma to a saving acquaintance with him, my great object would be accomplished, my highest desires gratified: I shall rejoice to have relinquished my comforts, my country, and my home. . . . When shall cruel, idolatrous, avaricious Burma know, that thou art the God of the whole earth, and alone deservest the homage and adoration of all creatures? Hasten it, Lord, in thine own time. (83–84)
Cruel and avaricious were not malicious terms. Burma’s penal system was indeed brutal, including public torture for minor offenses. And the country’s exorbitant taxation trapped the majority of the population in dire poverty. Ann’s passionate concern was warranted.
Powerful Certainty
The day-to-day routine of surviving in harsh and hostile circumstances, acquisition of a new language, hundreds of hours in discussion with inquirers — all was motivated by the conviction that God is sovereign, and his promises are sure. “We have nothing to expect from man, and everything from God . . . we are in the service of Him who governs the world” (55, 172).
Such confidence liberated Ann to see the long-term perspective. They were laying a foundation for future work:
We cannot expect to do much, in such a rough, uncultivated field; yet if we may be instrumental in removing some of the rubbish, and preparing the way for others, it will be a sufficient reward . . . when we recollect that Jesus has commanded his disciples to carry the gospel to the nations, and promised to be with them to the end of the world; that God has promised to give the nations to his Son for an inheritance, we are encouraged to make a beginning, though in the midst of discouragement, and leave it to him to grant success, in his own time and way. (73, 83)
She longed for Christ to be magnified and souls to be won in Burma — whether she saw the harvest or not.
Permanent Contribution
Ann’s life, albeit short, was hugely influential in the expansion of the missions movement in the nineteenth century. Ann and Adoniram established the first church in Burma. Ann was fully engaged in evangelism. She engaged in translation in both Burmese and Siamese (Thai), including a catechism. She started schools and stirred up support for female education among American women.
Ann died prematurely. Her valiant efforts to secure her husband’s survival in prison had shattered her own strength. He would minister in Burma for another 23 years, during which time a firm foundation for church life was laid (including his magnificent translation of the Bible).
In time, the epic drama of the Judson story inspired generations of Baptist missionaries. Ann’s writings were among the first at a popular level to stir up missionary interest among the Protestant population in America, and beyond. Her Memoir was printed soon after her death, and ran through many editions. She was the childhood heroine of Adoniram’s second and third wives.
In 1815, a 10-year-old American girl, Sarah Hall, wept when she heard of the death of Ann’s baby Roger, and she wrote a poem to mark the sad event. Little did she know that eighteen years later she would become the second Mrs. Judson!
“The epic drama of the Judson story inspired generations of Baptist missionaries.”
In 1828, a 12-year-old factory girl, Emily Chubbuck, was moved to tears by reading of the death of baby Maria. Eighteen years later, she would become the third Mrs. Judson! Emily said to a friend before meeting Adoniram, “I have felt, ever since I read the Memoir of Mrs Ann H. Judson when I was a small child, that I must become a missionary” (253).
Pray for Burma
Ann’s God-centered testimony inspired, and continues to inspire, many. It challenges the self-absorption of our comfort-obsessed culture. It spurs us on to plead with God for many to come to a living faith and a joyous determination to serve God whatever the cost.
It also reminds us of Burma (now Myanmar), where the military regime is brutalizing the population, including many Christians. We can pray that their testimony of eternal hope would win many to Christ, and that God would be honored in the nation Ann Judson so willingly served and departed from into glory.
-
Death Can Only Make Me Better: Remembering Tim Keller (1950–2023)
Audio Transcript
Today we say farewell to our friend, pastor and author Tim Keller. Tim passed away in New York City at the age of 72. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020.
Over the years, Dr. Keller graciously appeared as a guest on this podcast, leaving us with nine rich APJ episodes on topics like vocation (or work) and on the themes of prayer and solitude. I’m thankful for the time he invested with us.
Cancer, for Dr. Keller, was an old nemesis. Back in 2002, he was first diagnosed with thyroid cancer, a battle he would fight between 2003 and 2004. God would heal and restore Keller, but not before thyroid surgery knocked him out of the pulpit for three months. A decade later, Keller preached a sermon on boldness in the face of death and recounted what he learned during that first cancer battle, opening up about his fears as he was rolled into the operating room. In that moment, he caught a glimpse of something otherworldly. He saw the sheer magnitude of God’s glory and God’s joy beyond this world of pain and suffering and cancer and death.
I want to play for you a sermon clip that comes to my mind on this day, celebrating his life, knowing he has passed into the presence of God and into God’s incredible, unspeakable joy that the rest of us are left longing for. Here’s Tim Keller, in 2013, answering this question: Where do we find courage for life’s scariest moments?
To me, my favorite version of this example of what real courage is comes out of this little passage near the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you’re one of the three or four people in the world who has never heard of The Lord of the Rings, it’s a story. There are these two little heroes. One is the master, and one is the servant of the master. Sam is the servant, and he loves his master. They’re on this terrible quest, and at one point, his master is imprisoned in a tower. Sam rescues Frodo, his master, largely by screwing himself up and saying, “You are not going to hurt him. I’m going to do this. You can’t stop me. I’m the great . . . here I come.” He does rescue him.
After that, they’re still on their terrible quest, and the danger is still very real. One night, Sam looks up into the sky and sees a star. This is in the book, not the movie. This is what the passage says:
Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart. . . . For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now . . . his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him . . . [and he fell] into a deep untroubled sleep. (922)
The author, Tolkien, is trying to say there’s a difference between defiance, in which you screw yourself up (“I can do it!”) — that’s still, in the end, not the courage you need, because you’re looking at yourself. Courage, on the one hand, is not looking at yourself and banishing fear. No, it’s just letting the fears play their role, and not letting the fears play too much of a role by looking away from yourself. “Okay,” you say, “but then to what?” It’s even in the text I just read. It was defiance, not hope. Hope.
When Paul met Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, “‘Who are you, Lord?’ [I asked.] ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting’” (Acts 22:8 NIV) — the resurrected Jesus. When we were going through Acts 9, the first account of Paul’s conversion, we talked a little bit about this. When Paul realized that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, suddenly everything broke open. Suddenly the meaning of his death made sense, and the hope for the future made sense.
If Jesus Christ really died on the cross, taking our punishment, and he’s now raised from the dead, now when we believe in him, not only are our sins forgiven, but now we have an incredible hope about the future. We’re going to be raised, and everything in this world is going to be put right, and there is not going to be any suffering or death. That is an astonishing hope.
As I said, the first part of courage is looking away from yourself. The world tells you, “Look at yourself and banish fear.” The second part of courage is looking toward hope, getting a hope. Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy — so much joy that the fear plays its proper role. Well, how do you get that joy?
“Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy.”
Before we get to that, let me just tell you there is a second way out there in the world that people are counseling each other to get courage. I think the primary way is this sort of “self-esteemism.” The primary way the world tries to tell you to get courage is this: “Just tell yourself, ‘No fear — you can do it!’ Summon up the blood and go do it.”
I do think there’s an alternate discourse out there, and it’s older. It’s more ancient. It goes back to the East. It goes back to the Greeks. Cicero, for example, who was one of the Roman Stoics, wrote a very famous couple of treatises on why you shouldn’t be afraid of anything, especially not death. You shouldn’t be afraid of death. He says, “Courage makes light of death, for the dead are only as they were before they were born. It encounters pain by recollecting that the great pains are ended by death. Others we can usually control, if they are endurable, but if they are not, we can serenely quit life’s theater when the play has ceased to please us.”
What he’s saying here is, “There is no reason to be afraid of anything, including not of death. Why? Because when you die, that’s it. It’s like before. You’re just not there.” What is he saying? You shouldn’t be afraid of anything, because you tell yourself, “I’m going to lose it all anyway. There’s no use crying over spilled milk. When you die, that’s it. I’m enjoying things, but everybody loses things.”
What are they doing? You’re still deadening your heart, aren’t you? There is a way of getting courage, not by deadening your heart to fear, but by deadening your heart to love. And it’s not just Cicero — I’ve read it in the New Yorker. So many smart secular people today say the same thing. “There’s no reason to be afraid of things. There’s no reason to be afraid of death. When you’re dead, that’s it. There’s no reason to be afraid of death.” Oh no?
What is it that makes your life meaningful? Is it your health? Partly. Is it your wealth? Partly. Is it your success? Partly. But what if you had those things and you didn’t have love? What if you had nobody in your life to love you, nobody in your life for you to love? It would be meaningless. What makes your life meaningful are the people you love and the people who love you. That’s what makes your life meaningful.
Now you’re going to stand there, Cicero (or whoever), and you’re going to tell me I should not fear a future state in which the one thing that makes life meaningful is taken away? All love and all loved ones are taken away. That’s the state. And you’re telling me I shouldn’t be afraid of that? Are you crazy? Of course we should be afraid of that. I’m sorry, but deadening your heart to love is just like deadening your heart to fear. It kind of works, partly, but I don’t know. It’s certainly not good for your heart.
Here’s a better way. George Herbert, a seventeenth-century Anglican priest — incredible poet. One of my favorite poems in the history of the world is his little poem called “A Dialogue-Anthem.” It’s a dialogue between a Christian and Death. Christian starts.
Chr.Alas, poor Death! where is thy glory?Where is thy famous force, thy ancient sting?
Dea.Alas, poor mortal, void of story!Go spell and read how I have killed thy King.
Chr.Poor Death! and who was hurt thereby?Thy curse being laid on Him makes thee accursed.
Dea.Let losers talk: yet thou shalt die;These arms shall crush thee.
Chr. Spare not, do thy worst.I shall be one day better than before;Thou so much worse, that thou shalt be no more.
Do you want to be fearless? Do you want to look out there and say, “Nothing can really hurt me because of my infallible hope”? Do you want to look out there, saying, “Even the worst thing that can happen to me — death — can only make me better”? “Spare not, Death! Come on. All you could do is make me better than I am now.”
George Herbert has a great line where he says, “Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener.” All he can do is plant you, and you finally come up into the beautiful flower that you were meant to be. You’re just a seed, and death just plants you, and then you finally become who you were meant to be. That’s not courage the Ciceronian way. “Just kill your heart. Just say, ‘Well, we’re going to lose everything anyway.’ Just deaden it.” This isn’t Hercules. This isn’t King Arthur. This is Jesus.
“Christianity is the only religion that even claims our God has the attribute of courage.”
How can you be utterly, utterly sure you have that hope? How can you say to even death itself, “Spare not, do thy worst”? I can tell you how. You have to believe in the only God. There are a lot of religions out there, and they all claim “God, God, God,” but Christianity is the only religion that even claims our God has the attribute of courage. Why? Because when God became Jesus Christ, he became vulnerable. He became human. When he was in the garden of Gethsemane, when everybody was asleep and it was dark and there was nobody there and he realized what he was about to face.
I actually think the garden of Gethsemane is the place where you see the greatest act of courage in the history of the world, because by the time he got nailed to the cross, even if he wanted to turn around, it would have been too late. There he was, nailed to the cross. But that night, he could have left. In fact, he even thought about it. He says, “My soul is overwhelmed . . . to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38 NIV). What do you see in Jesus Christ? You see courage.
You don’t see him saying, “Bring it on.” The bloody sweat showed he was feeling fear. He wasn’t saying, “Come on.” What was he doing? We’re told all about it in Hebrews 12:1–3 (NIV):
Therefore . . . let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
There it is. He looked away from himself, and what did he look toward? Joy. What was the joy? The joy of pleasing his Father and redeeming his friends. The joy of that enabled him to have courage. Listen: if you see him courageously dying for you like that so you can say to death, “Spare not, do thy worst,” then you can have courage.
One of the few times I needed courage, God was very happy to give it to me, and it was very nice. When I was going under, being wheeled in for my only cancer surgery — I had thyroid cancer years ago — I do remember (it was so nice) I suddenly had this sense that the world is wonderful and the universe is this big ball of the glory of God, and we’re just trapped in this little tiny speck of darkness. And even that’s going to be taken away eventually. Therefore, no matter what happens now, whatever happens with the surgery, I’m going to be all right. My family is going to be all right. The world is going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right. It was very nice to have a moment of courage.
“By looking at the joy of what is now there for you, you’ll face whatever you have to face.”
I have to tell you, I haven’t had many of those moments. I can’t hold on to them. But guess what? The courageous Jesus Christ holds on to me and holds on to you. And if you look at him and the joy of what he accomplished through his courageous act — by looking at the joy of what is now there for you, you’ll face whatever you have to face.
“Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy.” A moving testimony of the sheer magnitude of God’s glory. A clip from Tim Keller’s sermon titled “The Gospel and Courage,” preached on May 26, 2013.
A couple of years later, Dr. Keller took this story and wrote it into his book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (2015). I want to read his published version.
There have not been many times in my life when I felt “the peace that passes understanding.” But there was one time for which I am very grateful. . . . It was just before my cancer surgery. My thyroid was about to be removed, and after that, I faced a treatment with radioactive iodine to destroy any residual cancerous thyroid tissue in my body. Of course my whole family and I were shaken by it all, and deeply anxious. On the morning of my surgery, after I said my good-byes to my wife and sons, I was wheeled into a room to be prepped. And in the moments before they gave me the anesthetic, I prayed. To my surprise, I got a sudden, clear new perspective on everything. It seemed to me that the universe was an enormous realm of joy, mirth, and high beauty. Of course it was — didn’t the triune God make it to be filled with his own boundless joy, wisdom, love, and delight? And within this great globe of glory was only one little speck of darkness — our world — where there was temporarily pain and suffering. But it was only one speck, and soon that speck would fade away and everything would be light. And I thought, “It doesn’t really matter how the surgery goes. Everything will be all right. Me — my wife, my children, my church — will all be all right.” I went to sleep with a bright peace on my heart. (318)
I trust that in his last days Tim was given this courage and this vision again of the magnitude of God’s joy enveloping everything else.
Dr. Keller escaped this speck of darkness for the high beauty forever beyond the Shadow’s reach and entered into the boundless joy of his master at the age of 72. Farewell for now, Dr. Keller.
