24 February - Witnessing with Godly Virtues
“Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed.”
1 Thessalonians 2:9-10
It’s always God’s plan for us that we must use our time, resources and career to bring others into God’s kingdom but, invariably, such endeavours entail much “toil and hardship” (v.9). However, the apostle Paul was no stranger to “toil and hardship”. With three successive, successful missionary journeys to his credit, he had travelled many long, hard miles, aggressively preaching Christ across the world. In a gripping account, Paul recounts his grizzly experiences: shipwreck, imprisonment, flogging, stoning, beatings, exhaustion and hunger (2 Corinthians 11:23-28), resulting from his unrelenting witnessing for the Lord.
In verse 10, Paul tells the Thessalonians the kind of person he was – “holy, righteous and blameless”. These are character traits that are attributed only to God the Father and his Son, our Lord Jesus. However, in describing himself as “holy, righteous and blameless,” (v.10) Paul was certainly not claiming equality with God but, rather pointing to the godly virtues every teacher or mentor must have before preaching the gospel to others. Basically, Paul was reminding the Thessalonians of what he had told the Corinthians so that they may be saved, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1). Paul had already become a person fully transformed on the inside ever since his personal encounter with Jesus (Acts 9:4-5), in a threefold way. Firstly, he was called and equipped by the Holy Spirit to reflect God’s character as demanded by God, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). Secondly, the Holy Spirit had worked in Paul’s heart so that he could live righteously by putting off his former way of life and putting ‘on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness’ (Ephesians 4:24 cf. 1 Timothy 6:11). Thirdly, Paul had become blameless, which meant being sexually moral, pure, truthful (Revelation 14:4-5) and a receptacle for God’s honour and favour (Psalm 84:11). Thus, with holiness, righteousness, and blamelessness as his spiritual armour, Paul took the gospel to the world at large.
Not all of us are called to endure hardship to spread the gospel to distant lands, as Paul was. But each of us is responsible as a servant of God to share Christ with people in our own sphere of influence. People without a born-again personal relationship with Christ are in our workplace, in our neighbourhood, among our friends and relatives and, nay, for that matter, even in our church and our home! They need the Lord, and we have a wonderful opportunity to reach out to them with the soul-inspiring, life transforming and destiny-changing message of Christ. Yet, we sit in silence, make lame excuses and let that opportunity slip by. Come on, people of God, let’s all be motivated by Paul’s undying passion for evangelism and let’s not withhold the Good News from anyone any longer (Proverbs 3:27).
PONDER
What is the most severe hardship we have ever endured for the sake of saving a lost soul? Are we preparing ourselves to be “holy, righteous and blameless” so as to become a role model to prospective believers?
PROMISE
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of things against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you. (Mt 5:11- 12).
PRAYER
Lord, please lay some souls upon my heart and help me to love them, pray for them, care for them and meet their needs. Lord, please grant me the grace to nobly do my part to win these souls for you. Amen.
Article by Mr Philip Nainan, a Lay Reader at St. Christopher’s Church, Johor Bahru. Philip is a lawyer.