Risk Is Right: Better to Lose Your Life Than to Waste It by John Piper & David Platt

Author:John Piper & David Platt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Christian Life, General
ISBN: 9781433535345
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2013-01-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

WHEN THE PEOPLE

OF GOD RISK AND

WHEN THEY DON’T

The first three centuries of the Christian church set the pattern of growth under threat. Stephen Neil , in his History of Christian Missions, wrote, “Undoubtedly, Christians under the Roman Empire had no legal right to existence, and were liable to the ut-most stringency of the law. . . . Every Christian knew that sooner or later he might have to testify to his faith at the cost of his life.”1

Might. There’s the risk. It was always there. Maybe we will

be killed for being Christians. Maybe we won’t. It is a risk. That was normal. And to become a Christian under those circumstances was right.

THE GENERATIONS WHO RISKED

In fact, it was the Christ-exalting love that the Christians showed in spite of risk that stunned the pagan world. The Roman em-peror Julian (AD 332–363) wanted to breathe new life into the

1 Stephen Neil , A History of Christian Missions (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1964), 42–43.

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34 RISK IS RIGHT

ancient pagan religion but saw more and more people drawn to

Christianity. He wrote with frustration against these “atheists”

(who did not believe in the Roman gods, but in Christ):

Atheism [i.e., Christian faith] has been special y advanced

through the loving service rendered to strangers, and

through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the god-less Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours

as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the

help that we should render them.2

It is costly to follow Christ. There is risk everywhere. But this very risk is the means by which the value of Christ shines

more brightly.

THE GENERATION THAT DID NOT RISK

But what happens when the people of God do not escape from

the beguiling enchantment of security? What happens if they

try to live their lives in the mirage of safety? The answer is wasted lives. Do you remember the time it happened?

It had been less than three years since the people of Israel

came out of Egypt by the power of God. Now they were on the

borders of the Promised Land. The Lord said to Moses, “Send

men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the

people of Israel” (Num. 13:2). So Moses sent Caleb, Joshua,

2 Ibid., 42.

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When the People of God Risk and When They Don’t 35

and ten other men. After forty days they returned with a huge

cluster of grapes hung on a pole between two men. Caleb is-

sued the hope-filled call to his people: “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it” (Num.

13:30). But the others said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are” (v. 31).

Caleb was unable to explode the myth of safety. The

people were gripped by the beguiling enchantment of secu-

rity—the notion that there is a sheltered way of life apart from the path of God-exalting obedience.

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