Does God Need Defending?
Will We Find Ourselves Fighting Against God?
So many Christians appear to believe that they are soldiers of God, defenders of the faith, called to protect Jesus and the Bible. I don’t know about you, but if God is so weak as to need human bodyguards, that is not a god I would worship.
In the first century, shortly after Jesus rose from the dead and then returned to Heaven, the followers of the Way were at odds with the religious authorities of the time. The Jewish legal authority the Sanhedrin told them to stop preaching the name of Jesus. When they continued to preach, they were arrested:
27 The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. 28 “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.” — Acts 5:27–28
The disciples’ reply was defiant and to the point:
29 Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings! 30 The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead — whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. 31 God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. 32 We are witnesses of these…
