Risk is right. And the reason is not because God promises success to all our ventures in his cause. There is no promise that every effort for the cause of God will succeed, at least not in the short run. John the Baptist risked calling King Herod an adulterer when he divorced his own wife in order to take his brother’s wife. For this John got his head chopped off. And he had done right to risk his life for the cause of God and truth. Jesus had no criticism for him, only the highest praise (Matthew 11:11). Paul risked going up to Jerusalem to complete his ministry to the poor. He was beaten and thrown in prison for two years and then shipped off to Rome and executed there two years later. And he did right to risk his life for the cause of Christ. How many graves are there in Africa and Asia because thousands of young missionaries were freed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the enchantment of security and then risked their lives to make much of Christ among the unreached peoples of the world!
And now what about you? Are you caught in the enchantment of security, paralyzed from taking any risks for the cause of God? Or have you been freed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the mirage of Egyptian safety and comfort? Do you men ever say with Joab, “For the sake of the name, I’ll try it! And may the Lord do what seems good to him”? Do you women ever say with Esther, “For the sake of Christ, I’ll try it! And if I perish, I perish”?
- John Piper,
Don't Waste Your Life, p. 89-9o
Risk is right. And the reason is not because God promises success to all our ventures in his cause. There is no promise that every effort for the cause of God will succeed, at least not in the short run. John the Baptist risked calling King Herod an adulterer when he divorced his own wife in order to take his brother’s wife. For this John got his head chopped off. And he had done right to risk his life for the cause of God and truth. Jesus had no criticism for him, only the highest praise (Matthew 11:11).
2 comments:
Good stuff.
One of my all time favorite books.
In the 1987 Oliver Stone film "Wall Street," corporate raider Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) said at a stockholders' meeting: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." I heard Douglas say in an interview related to the film that young business students and Wall Street suits would come up to him and say, "Yeah! Greed is good!" And he'd reply that no, actually it's not;" he meant to show how bad it is. You're right, Mike (as though I know the guy)...but right enough?
For too many people, those carnally minded (which we who have been converted to Christian faith once were, still would be, and still struggle against) operate in the "Greed is good" mentality. Comfortable retirement is the goal of many, home ownership regardless of affordability the goal of others. We want to give to missions (which we ought!), when we remember or when we're not burdened with this bill or that. Sometimes we want to go, but we have this or that commitment. Granted, God is not sending EVERYONE to Guatemala or Southern Spain or wherever...for who then would be lights in THIS present darkness, here?! But then who should be going and isn't? Me?
Paul says in Romans 7:7
Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet."
What do we covet? And why? Why do we, Christians, STILL covet, still chase after what the Jonses next door, or up in the Heights, have?
Paul also writes, in Ephesians 2, that God in His grace made us alive with Christ and has "seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."
Both already, and not yet in its full realization, the elect, redeemed children of God, have a citizenship and a seat in Heaven. To live is Christ, and to die is so much great gain (Phil 1:21). So yes...risk, THIS kind of risk, the risk for Christ's sake and His glory, is in fact right. So what shall we say then, to make a TRUE statement to contrast that of Gecko (and echoed too many times in the last month in the actions of many!):
Risk, for the sake of Christ...is good.
Is it REALLY risk, after all?
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