HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 18, 2025 – Jesus was a spiritual vigilante and a badass, and we’re only now starting to appreciate just how badass he was. He single-handedly took on the entire establishment of “God’s chosen” (who, by that point, had already lost their claim to the title) as well as their Roman overlords, and he came out victorious in the end without so much as plucking a hair from any of their heads. It was a total hands-off victory that relied entirely on the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Nothing before or since has come close to the level of Jesus’ victory, and he did so not by the use of arms and violence but by trusting fully in God and doing God’s will.

Jesus’ greatest badass achievement? Turning evil into good. We, his born-again followers, are called to do the same.

I don’t know about you, but the last thing I’d call myself is badass. A spiritual vigilante, yes, I’m a born (and born-again) vigilante, but I’m working on the badass part and still have a ways to go. By “badass”, I mean performing righteous acts entirely without fear and confident in the outcome. Being badass starts with having total faith and trust in God, but it also needs to be put through its paces. Jesus wasn’t a badass when he was a carpenter in Nazareth. You can’t be badass only on paper, even if that paper is scripture. You need to walk it out and work into it over time.

Moses was badass. David was badass. Elijah and Elisha were badass, too. Paul grew into his badassery (shaking the poisonous snake off his arm like a harmless bug showed that he achieved it), as did a whole litany of martyrs, beginning with Stephen.

If you, like me, have not yet ascended the badass dais, don’t worry about it. You’ll get there if you stay the course. You’re not born a badass; it comes with faith, time, and circumstance. All of Jesus’ loyal first-generation disciples eventually became badasses, including the women. If we have the requisite faith (and we should, if we’re genuinely born-again), we’re already latent badasses just waiting for the right occasion—the right trigger— to burst free.

Oh, glorious day when that happens!

Scripture tells of a time when God’s people will do “exploits” on the level of the holy angels. All of God’s holy angels are badass. I’ve met a few in person, and the one characteristic they shared was unearthly calmness and total unwavering confidence in the intended outcome. In our interactions, they calmly and matter-of-factly stated that something would occur even though people around me were telling me it was impossible. But the angels didn’t just tell me it would occur; they showed me what I had to do to make it happen. It was a telling before the showing, but it was more importantly prophecy in action or what could rightly be called applied prophecy. I had my part to play, my role to perform. If I hadn’t done what I was shown to do, there wouldn’t have been any miracles.

Jesus was king of applied prophecy during his ministry years. Over and over again, he did what he did not only because scripture dictated what the Messiah should do but because God and God’s holy angels directly told Jesus what to do. They told him, showed him, and then empowered him to walk it out. His entire ministry was based on that model. Jesus was an exemplary badass because his faith was so strong, as was his desire to do God’s will and God’s will only. This formed the basis for Jesus’ unparalled badassery, and his ministry was the trigger that unleashed it.

If you pray for nothing else today, my brothers and sisters, get down on your hands and knees—better still, get down on your face—and pray that you and all born-again believers become badass like Jesus.

Amen!