I don’t consider myself courageous. Courageous people bungee jump or swim with sharks. They enlist in the military and run towards hard things, while I tend to run into books when things get hard. I’ll ride a roller coaster here and there, but I don’t necessarily enjoy the ride. As I was thinking about courage this morning, I realized that I erroneously judge courage by either personality or propensity to take physical risks.

We are in the middle of a series through the book of Acts, and sometimes I have to stop and wonder at the courage of not only the leaders of the early church but also the members of the early churches. They were thrown into prisons, stoned, and ridiculed. They were quick to give up their possessions for the needs of others. They sent out their best and brightest to go plant churches in remote places. In short, they were courageous. But their courage was less an indicator of the strength of their personalities and more an indication of the strength of their hope.

Courage in Corinth

The Apostle Paul makes an unexpected connection between courage and hope in his second letter to the Corinthians. The church at Corinth seems to have been as enamored by novelty and power as we are today. They loved hearing fresh teaching from the newest teacher. It was a common practice at the time for teachers or leaders to come with letters of recommendation that served as resumes or reassurances of their authority, wisdom, or giftedness (2 Corinthians 3:1). We do this today by looking at the list of letters after people’s names or seeing how many followers they have on their socials. Do they have a blue check?

Paul refused to take part in such practices, as he cared less about prestige and more about the condition of the souls of believers there. He wanted to see them continue to grow and mature in the gospel, but they kept entertaining fresh false teaching and the latest cultural trends. As such, Paul borrows the imagery of letters of recommendation to point them back to their own experiences of the transformative power of the gospel. He says they are, in fact, his letters– not letters written on tablets of stone, but living letters written on the tablets of human hearts by the Spirit of the Living God (2 Corinthians 3:2–3).

He goes on to state that his confidence and subsequent courage did not come from his schooling or his personality but from the person of Christ (2 Corinthians 3: 4). In a culture all about flaunting accolades and boasting in adequacy, Paul located his adequacy outside of himself and in the person of Christ. His sufficiency had nothing to do with himself and everything to do with his Savior (2 Corinthians 3:6). He could say (and had already said in his first letter to the Corinthians) really hard things because the gospel gave him courage to love like Christ. The strength of his gospel hope led Paul to speak boldly, courageously and confidently to the Corinthians about Christ and their lives. His argument moves from here into the resilience and stout-heartedness gospel hope gives us to withstand suffering (2 Corinthians 4:1;16–18).

Cowardice & Courage

Resilience and courage grow in proportion to our hope. What heartening news for those who feel anemic in their courage and thin-souled in their resilience. The answer to fainting, melting hearts (the Hebrew term for fear in the Old Testament actually means to have a melting heart) is not to work harder or will better, but to hope more. Fainting spirits and cowardly hearts are symptoms that we are forgetting the hope of the gospel. They are invitations to look again to the Cross and to sit longer in God’s Word; they are invitations to remember that our hope is attached to the throne of the Resurrected and Ascended Christ (Hebrews 6: 13–20).

Those who have an unshakeable hope can be bold in the way they love, risk, serve, speak, and live. If our hope is as sure and solid as our Savior, then we won’t afraid to speak the truth in love or give generously out of budgets. We will be emotionally emboldened to advocate for the marginalized or to experience the censure of man for holding fast to the Word of God. Seen this way, the courage of the saints in the early church shows off their dogged hope not their dominant personalities.

Maybe courage is less about a penchant for swimming with sharks and more about boldness in speaking of Christ confidently. Strong hearts are fed by strong hope. Weak hearts need to be strengthened by grace (1 Timothy 2: 1; Hebrews 13:9).

Lord, look upon your cowardly, faint-hearted flock and make us bold in correlation to the surety of our hope.