Zach’s Blog

This will lead to an opportunity for your testimony.

Once again, the Bible comes in and turns upside-down man’s thinking completely right-side up.

The Christian people nowadays, including the missionally-oriented ones, tend to think that the menacing Beast of the Sea (even if they don’t know it by that name), with his scary intimidation threats, is a barrier to the advance of the message of the Kingdom of God. Not so, O ye Christian people! Much to the contrary, O ye Christian people!

[T]hey will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness (Lk 21:12–13).

Bruh! Srsly tho! “Opportunity,” not “barrier!” OP-POR-TUN-ITY! Or, more literally translated, “This will lead you into witness.” Jesus wants all manner of authorities — kings, governors, magistrates, etc., to hear about the Bigger King who is coming to town. But if Jesus wants His message to reach society’s big wigs, here’s the question: how will little ole you — you silly, uneducated, politically unimportant, simple little fisherman — how are you ever going to get an audience with the governing authorities?!? Ah! Good news! Wise Jesus has a solution! When you are arrested, taken hostage, or dragged by your hair to the city gates on accusations of having “made a ruckus” by talking about the Son of God, then all of a sudden, lo and behold, the governing authorities will take some time out of their busy schedule to bend their ear to hear your testimony!

Arrest is the magic sauce that puts Jesus’ witnesses in front of the leaders and powers of this world. So when a missionally-oriented person says, “Well, we just need to be careful because if we get arrested that will destroy our opportunity for witness,” you need to point them to the words of Jesus so that they can stop doing a headstand and wondering why their hair is stuck to the ceiling!

2 responses to “This will lead to an opportunity for your testimony.”

  1. whitejd2013 Avatar
    whitejd2013

    Surely, though, this is not typical of the “average” Christian who is encouraged to live a primarily Christian-communo-centric life?

    1 Thessalonians 4

    “9Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.”

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    1. Zach Harris Avatar
      Zach Harris

      The harmonization of a passage like Luke 21:12 with a passage like 1 Thes 4:11 is a good question indeed. It is by no means obvious to me that the Luke passage applies exclusively to the original Twelve Apostles or to any other restrictive subclass of Christians. There are plenty of parallel passages such as Mt 5:11, found in the famous Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, which indicate that persecution should be expected as normative for the “average” person who desires to “live a godly life in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:12). I believe I can see a viable path towards harmonization of the full set of data, but in any case, my own mind would certainly be uncomfortable with prefixing “surely” to any statement that might dampen the “average” Christian reader of this post from taking its message to heart.

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