To be bold in our world today is a tricky matter. To take a stand on any matter can improve your reputation or destroy it. One of the biggest concerns that has come to light is that if the position that anyone takes on an issue will be the wrong one if it is against the majority. This person is not just on the wrong side and needs their thinking corrected, but must be cancelled. Everything about them, their history, their present and anything they could do in the future is now pointless and worthless. But still, should this prevent anyone from taking a stand when it is the right one to take? How do we know if it is the RIGHT one to take in the first place? We know that, as men of God, we must start with Him and His Word.
To be bold, whether in person or with our online presence, we must begin with understanding how we are to conduct ourselves with our words and our deeds towards other believers and unbelievers. Being bold is not necessarily holding up a sign on a street corner condemning a particular sin and screaming at the top of our lungs that all that commit it and live in it are going to hell. It is true, but it is the wrong way to go about it. Jesus Christ never did it that way. He went and had a meal with those sinners. He went and had gentle conversations with them. That is incredibly more bold than vocal outbursts of harsh words.
Being bold in today’s world is demonstrating true Christ like love. Our culture is all about love, it is a love-centric love, but it is not a true love, it is the emotional love. This type of love ebbs and flows with the current of emotions; it is not steady and does not weather the storms like the love of Christ. We explored the love of Christ a bit in other articles so I do not need to dive deep into it all here. But it is this true love that drives us to be bold, to get the truth of Christ out into the world. We should have a desire to preach the Word to all creation (Mark 16:15) and to go into all the world and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). This does take boldness, especially, in a culture that is more and more hostile toward Christianity, and Christians in particular.
I can write on boldness time and time again and encourage people to be bold out in the world as they go about their business, but it requires so much more. Being bold does require us to use words, but more importantly it requires our presence, no matter if in the streets, in our place of work, or online. So how might we be bold men of God in a world that is set against God? Let us go to the Word, for that is where we must start. That is our foundation; that is the bedrock of truth that we must stand on that gives us strength for our boldness to withstand the onslaught that will come from back at us.
So, what does the word of God say about being bold? Oh, it says so much. We can begin with the Old Testament, and particularly the Prophets and how bold they were. Looking at Jeremiah 7, God calls the prophet to the gate of the temple and calls the people to repent of their sinful ways. The people for generations have walked in sins making a mockery of temple worship, worshipping Baal along with God, along with many other sins. The people were going through the motions, but did not truly worship God the way He had prescribed. God told the prophet what he was to say and then God even warned him of the outcome in Jeremiah 7:27-28.
27 “You shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you; and you shall call to them, but they will not answer you. 28 You shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God or accept correction; truth has perished and has been cut off from their mouth.
Let’s look at Daniel 3. King Nebuchadnezzar made a very large image of himself out of gold. He gathered all the rulers of his kingdom to come to the dedication of this golden image, and at the sound of the instruments they would bow in worship of the image. And in all likeness, all the peoples would do the same. However, as we see in verse 8, Chaldeans came forward and called out the Jews that had been exiled to Babylon. These Jews that were called out where none other than Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. We know the story, but we may forget the bigger picture of what is going on. These men stood up to the commands of a king even if it meant their death, and even if it was a dreadful death.
The law that went forth was that at the sound of music all are to fall down in worship, and who ever does not fall down is to be thrown into the midst of the furnace. They are to be burned alive. These young men, who were in their teens when they were exiled, now probably in their twenties, are being confronted by a very angry and hostile king, and being threatened with death if they would not do something as simple as bowing down to a golden statue. But look at their response in verse 16-18, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. 17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
This is the boldness that we need to have in today’s world, the kind of boldness that does not look at the consequences that may come upon us and influence our actions and chip away at our boldness, at our resolve to live for Christ. Our light needs to shine bright, especially now, and when we fear the consequences of what this world and the powers of this world might do to us, then we have failed to obey the mandate of the Master. There will always be consequences for our boldness, but we cannot let that dictate our message to the world, because for every action that we take there will always be consequences. This is the way of the world that we live in. There are good consequences and bad consequences, but we cannot let the fear of consequences dictate how bold or how timid we are in living out our faith or preaching the gospel.
Let’s look at Acts 4:13, the NASB reads “13 Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.” That word, confidence, is from two Greek root words, pas meaning “all” and rhesis, “a proverb or statement quoted with resolve, there is a bold resolution to speak all things. It can also be understood as frankness, bluntness, or publicity. Now we need to back up and understand what Peter and John were doing before verse 13, so that we might have a full understanding of what “they” saw as the confidence of Peter and John.
In Acts 2, Peter preached the first sermon after the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and many men came to saving faith. In Acts 3, a lame man is healed and Peter is preaching after the healing. Now in Acts 4, Peter and John have been arrested by the Sanhedrin and are beginning to address the religious elite with the truth. Now that takes boldness and courage. Peter and John are preaching the gospel to men, not behind a curtain of anonymity. Their identity is totally known and these men may be facing the same fate as their teacher, Jesus Christ, and yet they are preaching to the Sanhedrin without holding anything back.
This is boldness. This is what we must do. To let those that need to hear the words of the gospel see our confidence, our boldness in the gospel. So that no matter what they do to us, it will not shake us, it will not move us off our course. We have a singular mission and that is to preach, to share that message of salvation. Not that life on this planet may be better, not that you can have your best life now, or that you will have health and wealth, but that you can be saved from the wrath to come. For the trials and tribulations that we may suffer here are but momentary light afflictions compared to the weight of glory to come.
The Apostle Paul wrote about boldness in many of his letters to the churches as well, and he endured many trials in his missionary journeys. He detailed some of his trials in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, “23 Are they servants of Christ? —I speak as if insane—I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. 24 Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. 26 I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; 27 I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.”
These were some of the consequences that he endured just for going about and sharing the gospel to those that needed to hear it. Many who need to hear it will be hostile to it, but that should not be why we are timid. 2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline. That word, timidity, could be translated as cowardice. We cannot shrink away when it comes to sharing the gospel.
We must be bold in our speech, but not overbearing. It is not the way of Jesus Christ, who is our example, to corner someone and yell and scream and condemn them to hell. Even though He is God, He has every right to condemn every one of us to hell. He is a gracious God, who willingly went to the cross to purchase us from the wrath to come, the just penalty that our sins deserve. That is why we must with all love and gentleness share the gospel. Sharing the gospel also requires listening and having some understanding of where that other person is spiritually.
We see Jesus’ example after He called Matthew in Luke 5:29-23 “29 And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?’ 31 And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’” Jesus did not just eat with them. He would have had conversations with them about the kingdom, about the good news that comes through faith in the Son of God, that glorious truth that can only come through salvation of what is to come. We are living in a Romans 1 culture where the wrath of God is being revealed, where good is being called evil, and evil is being called good. But we must not lose faith or become weary in our resolve to be bold. We must stand firm, even when we are maligned for the faith that we have in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. We must stand fast on the Word of God, even when we are told that it is some ancient text written by men. It is the one book that holds all the truth that is needed for all that we need to know of who our God is, how He has related to us, how we are to relate to Him, and how we are to relate to one another.
Iron Striking Iron 