Kevin DeYoung's Blog, page 82

When Jesus Had Compassion on the Crowds

[image error]Most of the crowds in the Gospel of Mark are amazed at Jesus. They don’t necessarily have saving faith, but they constantly marvel at him. They find him fascinating and intriguing.

But not in Nazareth.

Mark 6:3 says the people “took offense at him.” They were scandalized by Jesus because he was this boy they all knew. They knew his family. He was just one of them. So where does he get off acting so high and mighty, behaving like some kind of Messiah?

And so it says in v. 5: “And he could no mighty work there, except that he laid hands on a few sick people and healed them.”

This has often puzzled Christians. Why couldn’t Jesus do many works there? It wasn’t because their lack of faith robbed Jesus of his miraculous mojo. It was because their unbelief acted counter to his primary purpose. He hadn’t come to Nazareth to put on a show. He wasn’t there to be a one man healing clinic. That’s not why he came out. As much as he had compassion on sufferers, he never went into a town just to relieve suffering. When the crowds wanted Jesus to be useful to them and nothing more, he refused to oblige. He cared for people’s physical pain, but he also cared about, and was even more deeply disturbed by, their unbelief.

When we use the language of “compassion” we almost always think of meeting physical needs, but for Jesus teaching was also compassion ministry.

Consider the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. You have all these people listening to Jesus. It’s probably a nationalistic, maybe Zealot, crowd. They are looking for a military Messiah. That’s why John’s gospel says they tried to make Jesus king by force (John 6:15). They were agitated and looking for a leader.

Mark 6:34 says, “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus is moved with pity because they don’t have a true shepherd to lead them. So what does Jesus do next? What did Christ’s compassion look like in that moment? The verse continues: “And he began to teach them many things.” Do you see the connection? Jesus had compassion on them, so he began to teach. Teaching the crowd was not motivated by something less than compassion.

He came out to preach (Mark 1:38). He left Nazareth when they didn’t want him to preach (Mark 6:1-6). And he taught the crowds when he saw they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a good shepherd. For Jesus, preaching was mercy ministry.

Monday Morning Humor

I know it’s Tuesday, but this MMH is worth seeing again, especially at this time of year. Never gets old. The action starts around the 1 minute mark.

Our National Pastime

I have always been a big sports fan. I got that from my dad, saw it in my grandfathers, and found it in all my friends. Now I’m passing it on to my sons. Chicago-born, I’ve been a lifelong Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks, and Sox fan. The rest of the extended DeYoung clan roots for the Cubs, but my dad had the good sense to switch loyalties with the Go-Go Sox of ’59, and now I’ll be a Sox fan for life. Likely my boys will be too, though they’ve grown up exclusively in Michigan and never lived a day in Illinois. I feel for them, taking the same road I did: living in Michigan and rooting for Chicago. I hated the Bad Boys, and my sons are learning to be righteously annoyed with the Tigers. Enmity is unspiritual in the rest of life, but not in sports. It’s a sign of respect reserved for perennial powerhouses. Nobody hates the Jacksonville Jaguars.

This week marks the beginning of baseball, for 150 years, our national pastime. Football may be the king of revenue and ratings, March Madness may be the most enjoyable three weeks of sports, the NHL may be the obsession north of the border, and the NBA may have bigger star power, but there is still no sport in this country better than baseball. I will never forget the ’85 Bears or MJ and the Bulls during the 90s. It’s been fun to watch the Blackhawks succeed in the last few seasons, and the longer I live in East Lansing the more I bleed green and white. But if I had just one sporting event to watch in person sometime in my life it would be a World Series game with the White Sox. Preferably a Game Seven winner, but I don’t want to be picky.

I know the many knocks on baseball: The games are too slow. The season is too long. The contracts are too big. I know about steroids and strike-shortened seasons. I know the players chew and spit and adjust themselves too much. I know every pitcher except for Mark Buerhle takes too much time in between pitches. I know that purists hate the DH rule and almost everyone hates the Yankees. I understand if baseball is not your thing. You don’t have to like our national pastime.

But you should.

I’ve taken my older kids to basketball games and football games–terrific experiences. But it’s not like your first baseball game: the wide open and immaculately kept spaces of green, the sharp diamond perfectly groomed, the organ bellowing out a kitschy tune. People sing the national anthem louder at baseball games. The hot dogs are better too. At most parks you can find seats cheap enough for families. And when you’re there, you’ll see an old man sitting by himself with a scorecard, just like he’s done for 40 years.

Baseball is unique in the pantheon of professional American sports. It’s the only one where time doesn’t end your game. It’s the only one where offense and defense are totally compartmentalized. And it’s the only sport that actually works on radio. Have you ever tried listening to football on the radio. It’s better than nothing, but you can’t picture the action. You only get updates as the action unfolds. It’s the same with basketball and hockey. There’s a lot of energy, but it’s too much to see in your head. Baseball, on the other hand, is the perfect sport for radio. It’s slow and it’s routine. You can picture a backdoor slider in your head. You know what a sharp single to right looks like. You can see the ball sailing deep into center field in a way you could never see a run up the middle on radio.

I love football, but I love baseball more because it’s football’s complete opposite. It’s pastoral instead of militant. You can get your first chance at 27, instead of being finished at 26.  Every game doesn’t matter. The season stretches across three seasons instead of just one. Its pace is deliberate. The drama is subtle. The celebrations are understated. In football, every play is punctuated with some choreographed gesticulation. In baseball, the players honor the shortstop’s diving catch by throwing the ball to each other.

Baseball is the only sport where the players are not only doing things normal people can’t do nearly as well, they’re doing things normal people can’t do at all. I can make a basket. I can throw and catch a football. I can kick a soccer ball. I can’t hit Verlander’s fast ball (let alone his filthy curve). Baseball is more like real life where you fail more than you succeed. Two made shots a night in basketball means your terrible. Two hits per night in baseball makes you a legend.

Baseball has the best stats, the best trading cards, the best box scores, and the best announcers. Of the four major sports in America it’s the one with the smallest gap between the best teams and the worst teams. It’s the one where the regular season matters most. It’s the one sport that has the best season of the year all to itself. They’re not called the Boys of Summer for nothing.

Baseball lends itself to the best sports writing and the best sports movies. It has the richest history and the most romantic mythology. It’s the only sport that allows the fans the pleasure of seeing the umpires publicly berated. It has the most prestigious hall of fame. It has the most grueling minor leagues, where you can chase your dreams for ten years after school if you are willing to ride the bus. It has the best stadiums, where the dimensions are always different and the speed of the grass and the size of the foul territory determines the type of team you build.

More than any other sport, baseball is a companion. That’s why fans grow to love their announcers. For the past few years, I’ve listened to the majority of Sox games over the summer.  I don’t often listen or watch an entire game, and I certainly can’t catch all 162 of them. But if I’m driving or mowing the lawn , paying the bills, or puttzing around the house, I’ll find a way to tune in. And if they lose, it’s no big deal. It’s not like the BCS is on the line every game. The Sox can lose five in a row or stink up the place for two months and still end up on top. It’s a long season. It’s a slow season. It’s a game of strategy and finely-honed skill more than brute force and raw athleticism. It’s everything fans aren’t supposed to want in their sports anymore.

Which makes it just perfect.

This post appeared last year on opening day. It will probably show up next year too.

Three Final Reflections

I hope you have the patience for a final post on the World Vision controversy. I’ll try to be brief. As you know, World Vision announced yesterday that they were reversing their decision to hire gays and lesbians in legal marriages. Richard Stearns and the board apologized for their mistake, the division they caused, and asked their supporters for renewed trust and forgiveness.

So what can we learn from this mess? Three brief reflections.

First, we should give credit where credit is due. It’s incredibly hard for any of us to admit our mistakes, let alone for a billion dollar organization to publicly admit theirs. While I still have plenty of questions I would ask if I were a World Vision insider (which I’m not), I think it is the better part of charity in this instance to take the humble, heartfelt statement from Stearns and World Vision at face value. They put themselves in an incredibly difficult situation. In reversing their decision they’ve angered a whole different group of people. We should commend them for listening to wise counselors, reconsidering who they are, realizing their mistake, and making it right.

Furthermore, it should not be assumed this was a decision driven by money. Stearns never mentioned money in the original decision and never mentioned money in this reversal. There are liberal Christians with deep pockets too. For all we know, the loss of support from evangelicals could have been made up from foundations and corporations. World Vision made an unpopular decision in announcing the new policy on Monday, and then, seeing their gigantic misstep, they made an unpopular decision in going back to the old policy on Wednesday. Good for them.

Second, this episode shows the need for church leaders, organizational presidents, and institutional board members who are theologically robust. Especially in today’s cultural climate, the evangelical world needs leaders who are biblically rooted and doctrinally discerning. I can think of a number of evangelical institutions in recent years which started to run aground because they went away, not so much from a specific doctrine, but from a doctrinal-informed and doctrinally-driven leadership altogether. A true living and breathing theology cannot be peripheral to our decision making. Biblical thinking and Christian conviction must define our mission not be subordinate to it.

Third, we should be prepared for these issues to surface again. Try as we might–or even if we hide away and wait for the unicorn of consensus to gallop across the evangelical landscape–the pain and confusion and controversy surrounding homosexuality is not going away.  Sadly, we can expect key leaders, church, institutions, and organizations, to blow with the cultural winds on this issue. Realignment and reassessment are sure to come. Our call, therefore, is to be faithful, be biblical, be bold, be wise, be winsome, be loving, and beat the rhythms of worship and prayer until we find ourselves happy and holy in Jesus.

Why Is This Issue Different?

I don’t relish writing about the same thing over and over (especially in light of World Vision’s stunning and humble reversal of their two day-old hiring policy). Believe me, if there were never the need to talk about homosexuality again, no one would cheer louder than me. But that’s not the world we live in. So here’s one more post.

I received an email yesterday afternoon to this effect: Could someone please give a short, simple explanation as to why the issue of homosexuality is not like Christians differing on baptism or the millennium? Many Christians are willing to say homosexuality is wrong, but they’d rather not argue about it. Why not broker an “agree to disagree” compromise? Why can’t we be “together for the gospel” despite our differing views on gay marriage? Why is this issue any different?

1. Approving of homosexual behavior violates the catholicity of the church. Sure, many in the West are arguing for the legitimacy of same-sex relationships, but for 99.9% of our history the church has considered homosexual behavior to be sinful. (And before anyone mentions slavery at this point I would encourage him to read Rodney Stark’s book For the Glory of God where he debunks the myth that the church was pro-slavery for 1800 years.) No one had to write a confession about homosexuality, because it was an implied status confessionis issue. No church would have tolerated a difference of opinion, let alone a deviant practice.

True, church tradition is not infallible. But when we make a decision (accepting homosexuality or tolerating those who do) that virtually every single Christian who has ever lived would consider unthinkable, we ought to pause and wonder if we’ve drunk too much from the spirit of the age. We would be wiser to listen to the testimony of our brothers and sisters in the two-thirds world who know that homosexuality is not an agree-to-disagree kind of issue.

2. Homosexual behavior is so repeatedly and clearly forbidden in Scripture that to encourage homosexuality calls into question the role of Scripture in the life of the denomination that accepts such blatantly unbiblical teaching. The order of creation informs us that God’s plan for sexuality is one woman and one man (Genesis 2). This order is reaffirmed by Jesus (Matthew 19) and Paul (Ephesians 5). The Old Testament law forbade homosexual behavior (Leviticus 18, 20). Paul reiterates this prohibition by using the same Greek construction in 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1. Paul condemns same sex behavior (among many other sins) in Romans 1. Jude in his epistle links sexual immorality and the “unnatural desire” present in Sodom and Gomorrah.

The evidence is so overwhelming that Luke Timothy Johnson, New Testament scholar and advocate of legitimizing homosexual behavior, argues rather candidly: “I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.” At its root, support for homosexual behavior is not simply a different interpretation of Scripture; it is a rejection of Scripture itself.

3. Far from treating sexual deviance as a lesser “ethical issue”, the New Testament sees it as a matter for discipline (1 Corinthians 5), separation (2 Corinthians 6:12-20), and an example of perverse compromise (Jude 3-16).

4. Most importantly, commending homosexuality involves the core of the gospel because it urges us to celebrate a behavior of which the Bible calls us to repent. According to 1 Corinthians 6 unrepentant homosexuals (along with unrepentant thieves, drunkards, idolaters, adulterers, revilers, swindlers, and money-lovers) will not inherit the kingdom of God. Heaven and hell literally hang in the balance.

Of course, homosexuality isn’t the only sin in the world. But I know of no Christian leader or Christian community promoting theft or championing idolatry as a special blessing from God. It is not an overstatement to say solemnizing same-sex intercourse is in danger of leading people to hell. The same is not true when it comes to sorting out the millennium.  In tolerating the doctrine which affirms homosexual behavior, we are tolerating a doctrine which leads people farther from God, not closer. This is not the mission Jesus gave us when he told us to teach the nations all that he has commanded.

In short, those who pervert the grace of God into a license for sensuality are false teachers who do not preach the gospel rightly (Jude 4; Titus 2:11-15). A true church does not encourage people in deliberate sin when it ought to call them to repentance.

Two More Thoughts on the World Vision Controversy

I’ve already written at length on why I think World Vision’s new hiring policy is a profound mistake. I won’t rehash those arguments here. But I want to briefly respond to a couple of points that keep surfacing–points that can appear more persuasive than they really are.

Poor Argument #1: How can you let children starve just because you don’t agree with gay marriage?!

This line of reasoning packs an emotional punch. Who wants to be the Levite who refuses to cross the road to help the  sick and dying just because a gay couple wants to help the battered man too? Ouch. Sounds terrible. But the argument is much less than meets the eye.

It assumes that sending money to or through World Vision is the only way to help the poor. The situation is not analogous to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Or if it is, it’s like the Samaritan hears about people in Spain suffering from famine and there are seven different ships sailing to Spain to deliver relief and he has to decide on which ship to place his grain.

The argument assumes that as long as a person or organization aims to help the needy every other consideration is irrelevant and inappropriate. But what if Samaritan’s Purse had announced on Monday that it was now was open to hiring polygamists or racists or sex offenders or members from Westboro Baptist, do we really think the progressive wing of the church would be as strictly utilitarian then?

The argument assumes that the critics of World Vision are themselves indifferent to the suffering of others. To be sure, not everyone reduces the argument to this ad hominen level. But some do, as if people like Justin Taylor, Russell Moore, and Trevin Wax have never done anything for orphans in their lives. Meet their families. Read their bios.

The argument assumes too much. If the needs of hungry children justify the acceptance of homosexual behavior as consistent with Christian witness, why disallow adulterers from being hired? Why insist on Trinitarian Christianity? Are we so overcome with Mormonophobia that we wouldn’t help the bloody man on the Jericho Road just because Mormons want to help him too? World Vision is a Christian organization which insists on certain Christian beliefs and Christian behaviors in its employees. If we are all utilitarians in the strictest sense, we ought to have been outraged with World Vision a long time ago.

The argument assumes that maintaining its Christian identity is ancillary to the real mission of World Vision. If gay marriage is good, let it be said so. Then what we are really arguing about will be clear. But if a Christian believes same-sex intercourse is not fitting behavior for the holy ones of the Holy One, then it makes sense that he would see the tacit support of gay marriage to be deeply subversive to the Christian identity of World Vision, so much so that he may choose to support another organization which more fully embraces Christian principles.

Poor Argument #2: Isn’t it best not to take sides since the church has not reached consensus on the issue of homosexuality?

This train of thought contains a kernel of truth. On some issues it is the better part of wisdom to draw a line in the sand at refusing to draw lines in the sand. Sometimes when faced with committing to the run or committing the pass, we punt instead. But as a general principle the “we can’t decide what is biblical without consensus” argument is absolutely disastrous.

On what point of theology do professing Christians everywhere in the world agree? You can find churches, scholars, and pastors who support abortion and others who oppose abortion, some who believe the prosperity gospel is good and others who believe it is wicked, those who believe the bodily resurrection of Christ is essential to the faith and others who believe the resurrection is only a powerful spiritual metaphor. There is not one point of World Vision’s statement of core values or behavioral hiring policy that some Christian and some church would not dispute.

Okay, you say, but those are extreme examples. Obviously, we aren’t talking about anything goes. We must walk in the way of the Great Tradition. That’s what really matters–the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, Chalcedon, that sort of stuff.

And what sort of consensus was there at time of Nicea? Arius was a sincere person. Arius had Bible verses. Arius had a following. We are happy to use the Nicene Creed as a means of stating our consensus, but the creed was first necessary because there was not complete consensus. Every creed and confession in the Great Tradition arose out of some controversy. If the church must steadfastly refuse to take sides every time professing Christians read their Bibles differently, then shame on Augustine for combating Pelagianism, shame on Chalcedon for getting hung up on definitions, shame on Athanasius for wasting his life contra mundum for a diphthong.

Of course, it may be argued that homosexuality is not nearly so important as those issues. But given 2,000 years of pretty darn near unanimous consensus on the sinfulness of same-sex intercourse, this is a point that must be proven, not merely sidestepped because that consensus has been fractured in the West. Everything in the New Testament–from Paul’s farewell to Ephesian elders to the pastoral epistles to Jesus’ letters to the seven churches in Asia Minor–suggests that within the church there will always be those who oppose the truth.

Always.

In the church.

As in, no universal consensus among those who profess to be Christians.

The task, then, of the Scripture-saturated, Spirit-filled, heaven-smelling, holiness-pursuing, righteousness-loving, grace-offering church is to discern the truth, rightly handle the word of truth, and stand as a pillar and buttress of the truth, so that the sheep are protected, the wolves are warned, and the darkness is exposed by the light. On issues of eternal significance–the kind the devil loves to confuse–to wait for consensus is not compassion; it is capitulation.

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

J. Gresham Machen:

Again, we are told that our theological differences will disappear is we will just get down on our knees together in prayer. Well, I can only say about that kind of prayer, which is indifferent to the question whether the gospel is true or false, that it is not Christian prayer; it is bowing down in the house of Rimmon. God save us from it!

Instead may God lead us to the kind of prayer in which, recognizing the dreadful condition of the visible church, recognizing the unbelief and the sin which dominate it today, we who are opposed to the current of the age both in the world and in the church, facing the facts as they are, lay those facts before God, as Hezekiah laid before him the threatening letter of the Assyrian enemy, and humbly ask him to give the answer.

Again, many say that instead of engaging in controversy in the church, we ought to pray to God for a revival; instead of polemics, we ought to have evangelism. Well, what kind of revival do you think that will be? What sort of evangelism is it that is indifferent to the question what evangel is it that is to be preached? Not a revival in the New Testament sense, not the evangelism that Paul meant when he said, “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel.”

No, my friends, there can be no true evangelism which makes common cause with the enemies of the cross of Christ. Souls will hardly be saved unless the evangelists can say with Paul: “If we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel than that which we preached unto you, let him be accursed!”

Every true revival is born in controversy, and leads to more controversy. That has been true ever since our Lord said that he came not to bring peace upon the earth but a sword.

And do you know what I think will happen when God sends a new reformation upon the church? We cannot tell when that blessed day will come. But when the blessed day does come, I think we can say at least one result that it will bring. We shall hear nothing on that day about the evils of controversy in the church. All that will be swept away as with a mighty flood. A man who is on fire with a message never talks in that wretched, feeble way, but proclaims the truth joyously and fearlessly, in the presence of every high thing that is lifted up against the gospel of Christ. (J. Gresham Machen, Selected Shorter Writings, 147-148)

The Worldliness in World Vision’s New Hiring Policy

World Vision, one of America’s largest Christian charities, is now open to hiring gays and lesbians. In yesterday’s surprise announcement, first reported by Christianity Today in an exclusive interview with World Vision U.S. president Richard Stearns, the Christian humanitarian organization explained that it will no longer prohibit its more than 1,100 American employees from homosexual activity, provided same-sex intercourse happens in the context of a legal marriage (as is sanctioned by the state of Washington where World Vision is headquartered).

According to Stearns, the move amounts to nothing more than a “very narrow policy change” which was not motivated by any outside pressure, only a desire to foster Christian unity. For Stearns and World Vision, the issue of homosexuality is something good Christians disagree on, just like they disagree on whether to dunk or sprinkle in baptism. “I think you have to be neutral on hundreds of doctrinal issues that could divide an organization like World Vision,” Stearns explained.

“Denominations disagree on many, many things: on divorce and remarriage, modes of baptism, women in leadership roles in the church, beliefs on evolution, etc.,” he said. “So our practice has always been to defer to the authority and autonomy of local churches and denominational bodies on matters of doctrine that go beyond the Apostles’ Creed and our statement of faith. We unite around our [Trinitarian beliefs], and we have always deferred to the local church on these other matters.”

The reason the prohibition existed in the first place? “It’s kind of a historical issue,” said Stearns. “Same-sex marriage has only been a huge issue in the church in the last decade or so. There used to be much more unity among churches on this issue, and that’s changed.”

And the change has been painful to watch. “It’s been heartbreaking to watch this issue rip through the church,” he said. “It’s tearing churches apart, tearing denominations apart, tearing Christian colleges apart, and even tearing families apart. Our board felt we cannot jump into the fight on one side or another on this issue. We’ve got to focus on our mission. We are determined to find unity in our diversity.”

The about face in World Vision’s hiring policy deserves comment both because their reasons for the switch will become terribly common and because the reasons themselves are so terrifically thin. Serving in a mainline denomination I’ve heard all the assurances and euphemisms before: “We still affirm traditional marriage. We aren’t taking sides. This is only a narrow change. We are trying to find common ground. This is about unity. It’s all about staying on mission.” But of course, there is nothing neutral about the policy at all. The new policy makes no sense if World Vision thinks homosexual behavior is a sin, which is, after all, how it views fornication and adultery. There are no allowances for their employees to solemnize other transgressions of the law of God.

To be sure, like many evangelical parachurch organizations, World Vision allows for diversity in millennial views, sacramental views, soteriological views, and any numbers of doctrinal issues which distinguish denomination from denomination. Stearns would have us believe that homosexuality is just another one of these issues, no different from determining whether the water in baptism can be measured by liters or milliliters. But the analogy does not work. Unlike the differences concerning the mode of baptism, there is no long historical record of the church debating whether men can marry men. In fact, there is no record of the church debating anything of the sort until the last forty or fifty years. And more to the point, there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that getting the mode of baptism wrong puts your eternal soul in jeopardy, when there are plenty of verses to suggest that living in unrepentant sexual sin will do just that (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Jude 5-7).

We are entering the days and the decade of a great shifting and sifting of evangelicalism. The capitulation will not happen all at once. The camel of compromise will poke its nose into the tent little by little. We will hear about the unity of the church, as if Christ in John 17 were interested in a unity indifferent to the truth (John 17:17). We will hear about the reputation of the church, as if Christ promised that everyone would love us as long as we meant well (John 15:18-19). We will hear urgent pleas to stay on mission and not be distracted by controversy, as if Christ’s gospel of the kingdom had little to do with actually repenting and believing in the gospel (Mark 1:15). We will hear—in a hundred ways from a thousand voices in a million devilish disguises—the siren song that beckons the church to change or die, as if we could rescue Christianity by saving it from itself.

The issues surrounding World Vision’s new hiring policy will be debated and dissected for the next days and weeks. There is much we could comment on. We could talk about the assertion that World Vision is only an operational arm of the church and doesn’t try to make theological judgments (when their statement of Core Values already draws a number of doctrinal boundaries). We could talk about the folly in surrendering an issue every time Christian thinking is not uniform (when, in fact, every major doctrine is disputed). We could talk about the urgent pleas which are sure to come that we should not put our theological niceties above serving the poor (when there is no reason to think the pool of evangelical Christians wanting to do social justice work is so shallow that World Vision had to broaden their hiring policy). Like I said, there is plenty that can and will be said.

But the overriding issue is this: World Vision has decided that to be a practicing homosexual and a practicing Christian is no contradiction in terms. Despite the claims of neutrality, Richard Stearns and World Vision are not neutral. They believe what the Bible calls an abomination is not a big deal, not a serious issue like adultery, not a life threatening concern like malnutrition, not something that the Bible addresses clearly or warns against urgently. Before we get embroiled in a throw down about whether Jesus would love to take coffee breaks with World Vision employees, before we allow the issue to be reframed as “Jesus was nice; the Pharisees were mean; you are mean and not nice; so you are a Pharisee and not like Jesus,” before we accept that calling someone a bigot is the same as making an argument, before we write off every opponent of this policy as a Calvinist fundie inhabiting a hermetically sealed little house on a Christian prairie somewhere in flyover country, let us establish if the following is true:

Jesus Christ is coming again to judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:31; Rev. 19:11-21). Those who repent of their sins and believe in Christ (Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38; 17:30) and those who overcome (Rev. 21:7) will live forever in eternal bliss with God in his holy heaven (Rev. 21:1-27) through the atoning work of Christ on the cross (Mark 10:45; Rom. 5:1-21; Cor. 5:21). Those who are not born again (John 3:5), do not believe in Christ (John 3:18), and continue to make practice of sinning (1 John 3:4-10) will face eternal punishment and the just wrath of God in hell (John 3:36; 5:29). Among those who will face the second death in the lake that burns with fire are the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, the murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars (Rev. 21:8), and among the sins included in the category of sexual immorality is unrepentant sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Jude 5-7).

I realize a paragraph like this has become highly controversial, even offensive, perhaps someday criminal. But the question for the Christian is whether the Bible teaches it. If the Bible does not teach these things, or if we no longer have the courage to believe them, let us say so openly and make the case why the whole history of the Christian church has been so wrong for so long. But if the Bible does teach the paragraph above, how can we be casual about such a serious matter or think that Jesus would be so indifferent to the celebration of the same?

The good news of the gospel is that the sin of exchanging natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, like every other sin, can be forgiven, and that homosexual offenders, like every other kind of sinner, of which I am profoundly one, can receive grace, mercy, and peace in the name of Jesus Christ and be justified, sanctified and glorified by the power of God. To treat these straightforward truths as beyond the ability of confident hermeneutical inquiry or altogether as a thing indifferent is not to unify Christians in the gospel but to sacrifice the gospel for a togetherness that will not hold and a shortsighted vision that is sure to fail.

Monday Morning Humor

Missions, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God

So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:11).

We do not know when God’s purposes will be accomplished. We do not always know whether the divine plan is to harden the heart or to soften it. We do not know the outcome of our work. But we should know that our work in the word is never in vain. No sermon from the word, no bible study, no time of prayer in the word with your children, no memorizing of scripture, none of it is wasted.

If there is time spent in the word, God promises it is working.

Working something. The same sun which melts the snow hardens the clay.

Why should missionaries continue to labor in the hardest parts of the world with limited success, or no success at all? Because they are confident that God will have a people for himself from every tribe and language and tongue and nation. And so they stay.

John Newton once wrote a letter to Reverend Thomas Jones stating, “If I were not a Calvinist, I think I should have no more hope of success in preaching to men than in preaching to horses or cows.” Which is not much different than Paul saying he endured everything for the sake of the elect (2 Tim. 2:10).

One of the most common objections to the doctrine of election is that people do not see the point of sharing the good news and working hard for the gospel if God has already chosen who will believe. But human logic sometimes runs in the opposite of biblical logic. The world says “Why speak if God has chosen.” The Bible would have us ask, “If God has not chosen some to believe, why bother speaking?” Paul remained in Corinth because God told him there were many people in that city (Acts 18:10). This is precisely the reason to keep on speaking—because God has chosen some; because God is sovereign; because God has elected; because some will believe.

And if they don’t? God has a plan for our good and his glory in that too.

God’s sovereignty is fuel for our faithfulness–not a deterrent to hard work and sacrifice but the best motivation for it.