Anyone who reads the New Testament is bound to come across passages that talk about the cost involved in being a Christian. It’s a paradox because in one way it costs nothing, and in another sense it costs all we have. The ‘amazing grace’ we sing about is the free gift of God’s love in Christ. It cost Jesus everything when he died to save us; we simply receive it from him in humility and gratitude. God’s wonderfully free love will lead us into a life of thankfulness and love in return, a life that could involve suffering or even dying for his sake.

Jesus was clear about this: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it’ (Mark 8:34, 35 NIV).

To us, with all our comforts, our easy-going type of Christianity and our churches that make few demands on us, Christ’s words may seem far-removed from our lives. We are not facing persecution in Canada these days. Some people are hostile to our beliefs and morals, but Christians are not routinely going to prison because of their faith.

Things could change. If they ever do, how many of us would stand firm and refuse to deny our Lord? Are our convictions deep enough? Is our faith strong enough? If we are spared outright persecution, are we committed enough to Jesus Christ to practise our faith openly, to speak up for our Saviour, and to swim against the current by upholding Christian morals and values in the public square?

Maybe we need to be reminded that some of our sisters and brothers in other parts of the world have paid a high price for their faithfulness. Some still do.

When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned in the Gulag during the 1950s, he met Anatoly Vasilyevich Silin. While in a German prisoner-of-war camp in the Second World War, Silin had found some Christian books that started him on the path of faith and discipleship. Though he had little formal education and almost no resources, Silin composed poetry about God in his head and recited it to Solzhenitsyn. Before the war Silin had studied literature at a teachers’ college, and his ambition was to one day after his release be a teacher. Yet it seemed improbable that an ex-prisoner like him would ever be allowed into schools. Solzhenitsyn asked him what would happen if the authorities did allow him to teach someday. Anatoly Vasilyevich Silin’s reply was, ‘ “I won’t put lies into children’s heads! I shall tell the children the truth about God and the life of the Spirit.” “But they’ll take you away after the first lesson.” Silin lowered his head and answered quietly: “Let them.”‘

That is the sort of faith and courage that kept Christianity alive under brutal Communist regimes. Historian Mark Noll comments that when the story of the survival of Christianity in those countries is finally told, ‘It will include Polish Catholic determination, Russian Orthodox resilience, Baptist perseverance in Romania, Ukraine, and Russia, and everywhere the bearing up under grief and the shedding of blood. It will also somehow show how the number of Christians in China grew from less than one million Protestants and 3 million Catholics in 1949, when the Western missionaries were expelled and Mao unleashed his campaign against the churches, to the tens of millions that exist today (estimates range for Catholics from 6-12 million and for Protestants from 10 -40 million).’

May God grant us grace to remain faithful in our time and place, living lives of holiness and love, and bearing witness to our Lord. May we, too, have a life-changing influence on those around us.

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