Living Witnesses of the Truth

After His resurrection and just before He ascended into heaven, Jesus said to his disciples, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (acts 1:8).

Christians are called to live in this world, not as enforcers for truth-- as some would seem to maintain, but as bold "witnesses" of, and to, the Truth. We have been given "power," in and through the "Holy Spirit," and are called to live lives of forgiveness, love, and grace, always pointing to-- proclaiming in word and deed-- the only Truth that can set man free from the bondage of sin and death, the only Truth that can lay low the strongholds of this fallen and broken world. This Truth is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, crucified for the sins of many, raised again to life on the third day as the guarantee of eternal life, Who even now, stands at the righthand hand of God the Father and makes intercession for us!

In the words of the Apostle Paul, "And I... did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God."

Does this mean we are called to passivity and not to action? Certainly not! Throughout the ages, Christian witnesses have seen some of societies most evil institutions undone, before the power of the Cross. It was the Christian witness Telemachus who helped to bring an end to the gladiatorial blood sports of ancient Rome and it was the witness, and activity, of William Wilberforce that helped bring an end to the practice of slavery in the British Empire. Yet even these great triumphs pale in comparison to-- and are contingent upon-- the victory Christ won at Calvary.

So let us endeavor to first surrender every other effort-- no matter how worthy or noble-- to the primacy of His Gospel, allowing our every act, argument, and/or cause, to flow from this fountainhead of grace and mercy. In so doing, we may just find that God Himself, will use our witness to roll away that stone that we in all our might could never budge, just as He did nearly two thousand years ago on that first Easter morning.