“Consider Him Who Endured…” – The Tragic Death of Charlie Kirk

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
Hebrews 12:3

Like most people my age, I remember exactly where I was on September 11, 2001. I especially remember walking to my car, preparing to leave for work, when I ran into one of my neighbors. We’d never spoken before, but that morning we looked at each other, and without speaking, we both knew we were thinking the same thing. After a few moments, he said, "I'm not sure what to do. Do I go to work? What do I do?"

National events like these are jarring in the most fundamental ways. The death of Charlie Kirk this week has been much the same. Many of us are looking at each other, wondering “What's going to happen next?” “What should we do?” There's been so much anxiety, pain, and sorrow, not the least of which is over a widow and two young children who lost their dad. But this passage speaks to us in these moments: when everything falls apart, we are to “consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself that we may not grow weary or fainthearted.”

The Greek word for "consider" means to calculate carefully, to think through thoroughly. The world hated Christ, so they murdered him. So, it should not surprise us that they hate those who are willing to speak up for Christ and to murder them as well.

The passage warns against two specific dangers: growing weary and becoming fainthearted. Weariness is a kind of spiritual exhaustion, the kind that makes us want to quit the race altogether. Faintheartedness refers to losing courage, allowing fear to paralyze us. Both are natural responses to tragedy, which is why the author of Hebrews points us to “Him who endured such hostility against himself,” to give us heart for the work before us. The tragic death of Charlie Kirk is a reminder that there is still much work to do.

As we grieve, as we wrestle with questions that may not have answers this side of eternity, let us fix our eyes on Jesus. Let us consider Him deeply, thoroughly, repeatedly. In doing so, we'll find the strength to continue running the race set before us, knowing that our labor in the Lord is never in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).