On Courage and Compromise in the Christian Profession

History teaches us that there has always been the tendency to compromise Christian doctrine and godly principles to avoid the frowns of one’s peers or adversaries, or to mitigate the vitriol of those who are energized by the Enemy of every righteous soul. No doubt they are most at risk who are esteemed as leaders in the Christian testimony, or those who achieve prominence in religious circles due to their talent or charisma. These have the most to lose in terms of influence and wealth should the tide of popularity flow away from them.  But none of us are exempted from this tendency and danger, for our egos generally seek either acceptance, praise, or peace.  The “pride of life”, and perhaps to a lesser extent, the lusts of the eyes and of the flesh (those worldly principles which all find a point of connection to our fleshly natures), are all arrayed against the soul in the spiritual battle to maintain sound scriptural doctrine and principle.¹

In recent years, numerous prominent Christian individuals and groups² have come under pressure from the outsize influence of the LGBTQ movement in the western world.  The ancient understanding of the nature of man as created by God to be male and female, and intended by Him to be married for life in an exclusively heterosexual, monogamous relationship, has been challenged and dismissed by those who deny God’s creatorial prerogative. We are bound as believers to hold this moral imperative as fundamental to the faith.  I have no doubt that in general, this denial of the Creator’s rights over His creation is born of a hatred for the living and true God, and motivated by the Devil himself. It is his aim to destroy the work of God, including the incremental destruction of faith and faithfulness in the souls even of those over whom he knows he has no ultimate power: the genuine Christian. It is probable that many who have come under the spell of compromise for the sake of peace would not have dreamed just ten or twenty years ago that they would be forced into such a fainthearted position.

We can read of compromise by prominent Christians in the church’s history who “caved in” to authoritarian or peer pressure. We find it in the story of Martin Luther and his loyal cohort Philip Melanchthon in the 16th century.  Luther, for all his personal failings, held firm in maintaining the truth of sola fide and sola gratia, that salvation is by faith alone by grace alone apart from works, and that the will of the natural man is in bondage and plays no part in the quickening work of the Spirit of God in the soul. The Roman Catholic Church, of course, could not bear the truth nor the implications of these principles, and sought by various means to counter them.  After Luther passed off the scene, Melanchthon sought to appease and make peace with the Roman church by modifying his earlier position on those principles that Luther had so clearly understood from the word of God, giving place to the works and the will of man in conversion and salvation. The Lutheran movement lost its way doctrinally, and has never recovered from Melanchthon’s pacifistic compromises.

We are shown by example in the biblical record the danger of compromising fundamental truth, for the Spirit records there for our learning the failures of even His devoted servants. The apostle Paul is found making what might appear to be compromises out of deference to his Jewish brethren, during the time of transition from Jewish religious habits to a fully Christian walk of faith and practice.³ God in patience bore with this, until He revealed clearly that “we have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle” (Hebrews 13:10).  However, God used Paul to preserve the integrity of the gospel by giving him the courage to withstand Peter (and to call out tenderhearted Barnabas) for compromising the gospel in order to keep the peace with those who had come up from Jerusalem with their religious prejudices (Galatians 2).  For a Jewish believer in Christ to have a difficult time giving up the Mosaic law and their traditions was understandable and could be borne with in grace; but to hypocritically cave in for fear of men, pressuring the Gentiles to live like Jews under law, was an assault on the truth of the gospel of the grace of God, and could not be tolerated. Peter and some others had compromised the gospel, and courageous Paul was bound to defend it with vigor.

It is the responsibility of every Christian, not just prominent ones, to “earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).  To do so takes courage, and appeasement is destructive to the testimony of the Lord. But will it really matter if you or I allow the latest contemptuous attack on God’s creatorial rights to cow us into a compromising attitude or position?

It matters indeed to Christ, who will reward faithfulness and godly courage, and that ought to be enough motivation for us who are His. If Genesis 2 is not to be taken literally as God’s revelation of how He made man in His own image and constituted mankind as male and female, for both pleasure and procreation, then Luke 1 & 2 may be just as doubtful, and the incarnation of Christ may be mythical. If God’s promise to Eve in Genesis 3 was not really to a woman whose seed was distinct from that of her husband’s, because their gender and orientation could become fluid and subject to their own capricious meddling, then multiplying and filling the earth does not happen, and the incarnation cannot either. You see, holding the truth of God’s revelation of His purposes for man and His ways of accomplishing those purposes, including their culmination in redemption wrought by the Man Christ Jesus, seed of the woman, is vital to Christianity and the gospel.

“God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power, and of love, and of wise discretion” (II Timothy 1:7).  May God help us use what He freely gives in defense of the truth for His glory.

¹   I John 2:15-17;  I Peter 2:11-12

²   “Caving Under LGBTQ Pressure” by Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association

³   Acts 18:18; 21:20-26