The current COVID pandemic has created numerous challenges. Of chief interest to me at the present moment are the ways in which it has made it difficult to maintain faithfulness to Jesus Christ. No, I am not referring to whether we choose to hold congregational gatherings on Sundays or not. I mean the way that we treat one another and the motivations behind our actions: the very attitudes with which we hold our dear beliefs.

This past Sunday, pledging to follow Christ rather than Caesar, prominent pastor John MacArthur and the elders of his church chose to have their very large congregation meet for worship without adopting basic health measures that have been almost universally recommended by the medical community and officially ordered by numerous national and local governments, including that of their own state. Rev. MacArthur has been lauded as a hero by some and derided as a villain by others. My concern is less with the specific decision taken by the elders of that church and more with the attitude that seems to lie behind it. I see this attitude popping up throughout Christendom.

Many have pitted the current debate over whether churches are allowed to meet as a battle between the forces of secularism and religion, a new persecution of the Church, or a fight to preserve the gospel. This fits within a general trend that has been occurring for some time in the United States of America and beyond: a standard view that the Church is under threat from hostile government and cultural forces, and that if we do not take immediate action to defend both the Church and the gospel, they may die out or fade away in our part of the world, if not the world as a whole.

Now, hear me out and please read to the end, because I am about to make a nuanced point.

The gospel doesn’t need you to defend it. The Church doesn’t need you to defend it.

It may be tempting to read these statements as, “We shouldn’t defend the gospel or the Church,” but that would be a mistaken interpretation of my meaning. Scripture calls us to proclaim the gospel, uphold sound doctrine, and safeguard the integrity of the Church to the best of our ability. What it never says is that the fate of the gospel and the Church depends on us. Therefore, I could just as easily highlight those two sentences as follows.

The gospel doesn’t need you to defend it. The Church doesn’t need you to defend it.

Our individual and even collective actions are not needed to ensure that the gospel and the Church survive. Why? Because Christ Himself will defend His Church. He has given His solemn promise to this effect: “the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” (Matthew 16:18) And the Apostle Paul testifies to us, “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.” (Colossians 1:17-18)

Most Christians would surely confess that God does not depend upon their individual actions to preserve that which He has sworn to protect. They would admit that we are instruments in the hands of our Creator, who chooses simply in His kindness to allow us to participate in His sovereign intent of building up a Church from every nation, tribe, and tongue. But how easy it is to forget that in our daily lives! Perhaps on some subconscious level, we begin to think the following thoughts.

“I have to defend myself, my congregation, my organization, because the success of the gospel depends on it. If this organization ends, if my congregation disperses, if I myself am no longer able to minister, how will souls be saved? How will the Church survive? Who will save the sheep from the wolves if I am gone? Who will defend the truth of the gospel against liars?”

We began with good motivations. We began by wanting to proclaim the gospel and make a positive difference in the world: to ensure that the truths of Scripture are handed down to our children and our children’s children. But before we knew it, we became like the lone sheriff riding riding high on his horse, brandishing a pistol against the Wild West of secularization, the evil bandits who seek to steal and destroy. The shiny badge that reads “Gospel Defender” gleams brightly in the midday sun, and we are proud to wear it. We take our identity from it. We rest content in the knowledge of our own righteousness. We are not troubled by doubt or fear, except the fear that if we were ever to lose our place at the forefront of the charge, the whole war would be lost.

There is something rather addicting about the high that comes from standing alone against the world, promoting the correct belief against a host of angry challengers, doubling and tripling down on our original statement of what is surely fact and not opinion. As each new enemy rises, we become more certain that our position is correct, and if ever the debate subsides and we return to normal life, we find ourselves on some level anxious to re-enter the fight: to feel once again the rush of pleasure that comes from taking on the world and living to tell the tale. Amy contra mundi.

This is the danger of such thinking. While it is righteous to desire that the gospel receives a fair hearing and is proclaimed to every person on earth, it is all too easy to fall into a pattern of pride, arrogance, and self-righteousness. There is a danger that we will begin to see even the faithful wounds of our friends as the dagger strikes of the enemy—that we will flail wildly, striking at anyone and anything that doesn’t fully support our narrative. This is, at its heart, a failure to trust in God to defend His Church. Were we properly humble, we would realize that even as the glory belongs to God and not to us, so the great task of saving the world belongs to Christ alone.

The work of safeguarding the Church and preaching the gospel should therefore be characterized by humility and not pride. Where one person is no longer able to do this work, another will be raised in their place, followed by another and another. Even if the gospel seems to die out in one region, it will catch fire in another. The sovereign design of our God will ensure that all of His sheep are gathered in and His Church of all generations is completed. Secularism is a challenge, but it will not kill the Church. Neither will anything else kill the Church.

It is only by placing our trust in the promises of God that we can be properly confident in our work of defense. A confidence that is placed in our own abilities is no real confidence at all, but a false hope bound to disappoint. We must remember what Christ said: that the first shall be last, and the meek shall inherit the earth. If our gospel defenders are not characterized by humility, see meekness as weakness, have no patience to listen to alternative views, and chase after fights to fuel their own egos, then it may be they and not any secular government who are the greatest threats to the Church.

Hear me correctly: I cannot know the hearts of those who are strangers, nor can I fully assess those I know well. God is the judge and not I. He will determine who is faithful and who is not. But I do feel a need to offer this corrective against a kind of thinking that is not only prideful, but ultimately likely to lead to defeat. We cannot save the Church. We cannot preserve the gospel. Two thousand of years of history have proven this fact: that it is only the Spirit of God working in us that accomplishes anything good at all, and that the Savior who bled and died for this Church will preserve it to the end.

All scripture quotations are from the 1995 New American Standard Bible, copyright The Lockman Foundation.