Coral  Ridge  Ministries - February 2003    
America's
First Hero


“First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen”
 
By D. James Kennedy
 
It has been said that we live in a time when there is a dearth of real heroes. A survey some years ago showed that the heroes of American youth included in the top ten such “notable and noble” examples as Madonna, Prince, and Eddie Murphy. Surely, there is a need for some godly heroes in our day, and George Washington fills the bill in a remarkable way.
     “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” said Major General Henry Lee about Washington, after his death. Surely, he was that. He led our troops to victory in the Revolutionary War; he superintended the writing of the Constitution; he was elected first President of the United States. 
     But what made him so great? Was he a great general? A great political philosopher? An administrator? A great tactician or strategist? The truth is that he was none of these. He lived in the day of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon, both of whom far outshone him as military geniuses. He made some rather tragic blunders on the battlefield, but somehow 
managed to bring our troops to victory through that long and painful war.

Great Because Good
     What then was his secret? Cyrus R. Edmonds said of Washington, “The elements of his greatness are chiefly to be discovered in the moral features of his character.” It was said that the character of George Washington was the wonder of the world in his own day. When Washington died, the Duke of Wellington (a British statesman, general, and enemy during the War for Independence) said of him: “the purest and noblest character of modern time—possibly of all time.” An enemy said that about him!
     It is interesting that even during the Revolutionary War there was never found in England the least aspersion or denigration of the character of George Washington by his most implacable foes. Rather, it waited for over two hundred years for television to discover his “imperfections.” In a miniseries presented by one of the networks a few years ago, we were led to believe that Washington was, indeed, not too different from many today, in that it was implied that he had had an adulterous affair. There is not the least shred of historical evidence for that intimation.
     Washington was the purest and noblest character of his time, a character which was the wonder of the world. That is what made him great. It didn’t matter where he was in life. As a young soldier, a colonel, supervising the Constitution, or President of the United States, it was his sterling character, the unimpeachable qualities of his goodness, the pure morality and integrity of 
 
Great because good: George Washington's greatness stems not from military or political skill, but from a "sterling" character formed and nourished by the Bible and prayer.

the man that made him stand head and shoulders above all the rest. By the way, physically he stood at six feet two and weighed two hundred pounds—he was a giant in a day when the average man was five feet seven. 

                            

 
What Contemporaries Said
     Abigail Adams, who spoke her mind very clearly about most everything, said: 

     He was ... possessed of power, possessed of an extensive influence, but he never used it but for the benefit of his country.... If we look through the whole tenor of his life, history will not produce to us a parallel.

    Thomas Jefferson, who knew him well, said this was a phenomenal character: 

     His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known. No motives ... of friendship or hatred being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man. It may truly be said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance.

What gave rise to that amazing character, which was the wonder of the world? If we trace the river back to its source, we find on both sides a long lineage of godliness in Washington’s family. His parents were dedicated Christians. He was raised in a godly home. His father spent much time and took great pains to teach George to be unselfish, to inspire him with a love for the truth, and to teach him to know and worship God.
     His father, Augustine Washington, unfortunately died when George was but eleven years old, and his religious instruction was turned over to his mother. She was a remarkable woman. She taught George the Bible. She taught him to pray. She taught him from the prayer book of the Anglican Church, of which they were faithful members. She also taught him from various devout and godly books, such as the famous book entitled Contemplations: Moral and Divine, by Sir Matthew Hale, a leading jurist in England. Washington kept that book all of his life. The volume, copiously underlined, was found in the library at Mount Vernon after his death. He had used it during his long and useful life.
     It is without question that, as a result of this training, Washington came to a living faith in the Divine Savior. He came to trust in the shed blood of Christ, the perfect life 


 of Jesus Christ, in which he was robed and in which he stood before God.

Not a Deist
     There are those who say, “Well, he may have been virtuous, he may even have been religious, but he was not even a Christian. He was a deist.” Tragically that lie is repeated over and over again. Unfortunately, the people who make that statement wouldn’t know the difference between a deist and a Zoroastrian if they tripped over one, or else they know next to nothing about George Washington. 
_____________________________

It is without question that, as a result of his childhood spiritual training, George Washington came to a living faith in the Divine Savior. 
_________________________________

     On April 21-23, 1891, there was sold at auction in Philadelphia a remarkable collection of the personal possessions of Washington, which had been in the hands of his heirs for several generations. Among them was found a little manuscript book. This precious gem contained 24 pages of prayers that were carefully written in Washington’s own hand, when he was about twenty years of age. They are filled with beautiful, fervent, and evangelical language. They profess and confess more clearly than anything else could what the object of his faith was and the reality of his religious beliefs. 
     Ask yourself if these are the views of a Christian or a deist. A deist, by the way, believes in a watchmaker God—a God who created the world, established natural law, and hasn’t been heard from since. In short, a God who never intermeddles in the affairs of this world.  
     Washington’s prayers underscore his fervent evangelical faith. In one, Washington confesses his “heinous” sins: 

     O most Glorious God, in Jesus Christ my merciful and loving father, I acknowledge and confess my guilt, in the weak and imperfect performance of the duties of this day. I have called on thee for pardon and forgiveness of sins, but so coldly and carelessly, that my prayers are become my sin and stand in need of pardon.... 
     His sin was what he perceived to be a lack of fervency in his own prayers.
     Or note this prayer: 

    I have sinned against heaven and before thee, in thought, word, & deed; ... I humbly beseech thee to be merciful to me in the free pardon of my sins, for the sake of thy dear Son, my only Saviour, J.C. [Jesus Christ], who came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

How much more evangelical could any prayer be?

Follow His Example
     My friend, do you think you are a moral individual? A pious individual? Compared to George Washington, you may be a virtual heathen. Washington never trusted one moment in that character which was the wonder of the world; he trusted in Jesus Christ, who was the only perfect Person that ever lived. He prayed that the blood of Christ would cleanse him from all of his sins, that he might be accepted because of the merits, the perfect character of Jesus Christ, and not himself. 
     If you are a Christian, I urge you to be challenged and convicted by the faithful constancy of the devotional life of this man. And if you have vainly trusted in some supposed goodness of your own, my prayer is that, with Washington, you will say: “I have sinned and done very wickedly; be merciful to me, O God, and pardon me for Jesus Christ’s sake.”

     Adapted from What They Believed: The Faith of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, by D. James Kennedy, Ph.D. 
What They Believed
Discover more about the faith of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln by requesting Dr. Kennedy’s new book, What They Believed