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Be Bold

When I was a child “to be bold” was a bad thing. It was equated with rudeness. For a child to be forthright, self-confident, and direct was rude in that time and place. However, appropriate boldness is a virtue, not a vice, and we see it expressed perfectly in the life of the Lord Jesus. As I look at the facts, though, I am convinced that Jesus’ boldness was not rooted in self-confidence, but in His faith in His Father.

Because He was totally committed to pleasing His Father and doing His will, Jesus could be confident that nothing untoward would happen to Him until His work on earth was finished. Consequently, He did not fear anyone. He knew He was safe until His hour would come. The words “His hour” refers to the time He would spend on the cross as He experienced the holy wrath of divine judgment against sin, not His own, but ours.

Until that time, nothing harmful could touch Jesus. He confidently expressed faith in His Father by saying: “... I know Him, for I am from Him, and He sent Me.” (John 7: 29) Immediately after He made that statement, His enemies tried to capture Him, “but no one laid a hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come.” (John 7:30)

A little later, in the next chapter, we read of Jesus being confronted by those who hated Him. “Then they said to Him, ‘Where is Your Father?’ Jesus answered, ‘You know neither Me nor My Father. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.’ These words Jesus spoke in the treasury, as He taught in the temple; and no one laid hands on Him, for His hour had not yet come.” (John 8:19-10)

Another aspect of Jesus’ boldness was that He was never afraid to accept the challenges of His enemies. He knew that His healing the infirm on the Sabbath was an affront to the Pharisees and He also knew that this was entirely unnecessary. It did not break God’s law, only their traditions. So He did not hesitate to heal people on the Sabbath even though it roused the anger of His enemies.

Jesus never minced words, softening His message to make it more acceptable. He used parables which sometimes placed His hearers in an unfavourable light. He said things that were hard for those listening to understand. At one point we read that after He had used some very strong imagery that, “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” (John 6:66)

Jesus was bold in the way He spoke and in the way He acted. Many of us would like to be like that - to have the personal confidence to speak and act without fear of what others might say and do. As I look at the life of Jesus, I see the key to how this might happen. It would be based on the same thing that allowed Jesus to be so bold.

When we have the same unshakable confidence in God, in our relationship with Him and are unalterably committed to doing and saying only what pleases our Heavenly Father, then we, too, can have the same kind of boldness Jesus did.

Ron Hughes
© June 2009