LIKE A LION
Proverbs 28:1 NKJV
1 The wicked flee when no one pursues,
But the righteous are bold as a lion.
When I was in Bible school, many of my fellow students would quote this verse. I was in my 20s, as were many of the students, and we loved the idea of being as bold as a lion. Lions ain’t scared. But when you stop and think about it, being bold and unafraid is appealing to any age and both genders.
The opposite of being bold as a lion is running when no one is chasing you. And this describes how fear often works. Fear of this kind often deals with the unseen and what has not happened. And that has to be the most tormenting kind of fear. When Joy left a door open and ran from a copperhead snake, I could understand that kind of running. But then we had to deal with the possibility that the snake might have come into the house. So we lived walking very cautiously through the house, and neither of us would put our feet on the floor until the lights came on. No snake was present, but we were fleeing. The possibility of a snake in the house had us walking in fear. And this is how the enemy often works, tormenting with thoughts of what may happen and what about this or that?
So what is the answer to this kind of fear? The key word in this verse is righteousness. Righteousness means to be in the right. This is someone considered to be right because of conformity to a standard. The standard here is God’s standard of what is right, and there are two applications to us today.
The first is the right standing or rightness we have with God through the work of Christ and the new birth. Second Corinthians 5:21 in the NLT “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” Jesus paid the price with His life to make us right with God. We could not do this on our own. If we could be made right with God through our own efforts, then Jesus did not need to come. But we couldn’t, and so He did. We can’t brag about being right with God through Christ, but we sure can be grateful.
The second application is living out what has been done in us through the new birth. In 1 Corinthians 15:34, Paul wrote awake to righteousness and do not sin. So even though we have been made right with God positionally through Christ, we are to live as people who are right. I think this is what many of us missed in Bible school. We were focused on what Jesus did for us and didn’t put enough emphasis on how we were to live in righteousness.
So what does the application of righteousness have to do with living bold as a lion? Great question. When we know we are right with God through Christ and God has accepted us and called us His own, it puts confidence in us. Now, couple that with doing all that we can to live right before God, which kicks condemnation and guilt to the curb, and we can see where our confidence takes a big jump. Confidence and boldness are pretty much the same thing. It’s not a stretch to think of a lion as being confident. Lions ain’t scared, and neither are they bashful and intimidated.
And just a side note. Bold as a lion is not the same thing as arrogant as a jerk. Our boldness is in the face of fear and the sense of spiritual inferiority. Living righteous means treating people within the standards established in scripture. We can’t live right, treating others wrong.
God never wanted His creation dominated by fear. And thankfully, He has made a way for us to walk confidently, knowing we are right with Him.
PRAYER
Thank You, Lord, for giving me Your righteousness and the ability to live right before You. I appreciate the sense of confidence that righteousness brings.