June – For the Gospel’s Sake
Day 164 – 13 June
When the guard finally drops
and pray on my behalf, that speech may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. (Ephesians 6:19, NASB)
Sit through a tense meeting and watch how carefully people talk. Someone has a real objection to the plan on the table, you can see it forming behind their eyes, and then you watch them fold it away, soften it into a question, hedge it about with three qualifications, and finally let it out in a shape so cautious that nobody quite catches the worry underneath. We become experts at this guarded speech, weighing each sentence for how it might land, editing ourselves in real time, saying a careful nine-tenths of what we actually mean. Catch that same person a few hours later at a kitchen table with two old friends, and listen to how differently the words arrive. The hedging falls away, the real thoughts tumble out half-finished and unpolished, laughter keeps interrupting, and something in the whole body unclenches. That second kind of talking, open and unguarded and unafraid, sits close to what the New Testament means by a particular word for the courage to speak about Christ.
A word that means free speech
The word is παρρησία (parrēsia, meaning freedom of speech, openness, or frank boldness), and our usual rendering, boldness, sells it a little short. Long before it ever touched religion, παρρησία belonged to the life of the free city, naming the prized right of a citizen to stand up in the assembly and say everything on his mind, out in the open and without fear of the powerful. At its root it carries the idea of speaking it all, holding back nothing, the very reverse of the careful editing that fills a tense meeting. So when Paul asked his friends to pray that he might preach with παρρησία (parrēsia, meaning openness free of fear), he was reaching for far more than mere nerve. He wanted the freedom of a man wholly at home in what he was saying, able to speak of Christ with the same unbuttoned ease the rest of us save for the people who already love us. Boldness, read this way, turns out to be a kind of liberty, and liberty changes the entire feel of the thing.
Where the freedom comes from
Here is the part that turns the lock, and it shows why this manner of speaking sits at the heart of living for the gospel’s sake. The reason you can talk so freely at that kitchen table is that you feel utterly safe there, sure you are loved and in no danger of losing your place. Free speech grows out of secure standing. Carry that same person into a hostile boardroom and the tongue locks, because all at once there is something to lose. Paul’s freedom to speak of Christ ran along precisely this line, flowing out of a man who knew, past all argument, who he was and whose he was, and who had long since accepted that his worth rested in hands no human audience could lay a finger on. That very freedom stands on offer to you. Once you grasp that your place is secure, that your value was decided in your favour long before you ever opened your mouth, the terror drains out of speaking, since rejection can no longer reach the thing that matters most. You grow free to say the true and loving thing, careless of applause, able to speak of what you treasure with the open face of someone among friends. The world meets that sort of unguarded freedom only rarely, and it proves strangely disarming whenever it does.
Declaration
I speak with the freedom of someone who has little left to protect. Because I know where I stand and whose I am, the careful filters that once policed my every sentence have loosened their grip, and I can say the thing that matters without first totting up the cost to my image. I offer my words openly and warmly, unafraid of how they might be received, since my worth was decided long before anyone in the room had formed a single opinion of me. When it would be far easier to stay quiet and safe, I choose instead to speak plainly and kindly about what I have come to love. Today I trade the strain of guarded speech for the ease of an open mouth and an honest, unhurried heart.
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