Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 10

Anti-White Hatred, the Jews, and Eisenhower Prune Juice

Introduction
So I posted on X yesterday: “Remember: anti-white rhetoric is actually anti-Christian. Don’t take the bait. If white people are Marxists they are allies. If you’re a black Christian, you’ve been colonized. This conflict is not about skin color. It’s about religion and culture. That’s why they also hate Jews.”

And then all the puppies came out to play. I should say many of them were very based puppies, but it has been a little yappy in my mentions over the last 24 hours. At the same time, several reasonable folks asked very reasonable questions, and I’ve been trying to answer them here and there, but it seemed to me to deserve a more thorough response. 

Judeo-Christian Peaceniks
First, my friend Joel Webbon commented that he was following me until the last sentence. How does hatred of Jews figure into hatred of Christ and Christianity? Jews aren’t Christians, and we’re not collapsing important differences between us, are we? 

And of course the answer is “no.” I don’t have any interest in the liberal project of blending monotheistic religions together into some kind of Eisenhower prune juice. That clearly hasn’t worked; it’s just given Western Civilization a bad case of the secular runs. “Judeo-Christian” has often seemed to want to soften differences, and pretend that Jews and Christians are just another version of Baptists and Presbyterians. So, no, count me out of the Judeo-Christian peacenik movement. 

But there is something peculiar about the Jewish people, and that peculiarity is well-attested in Scripture, and succinctly summarized by the apostle as: They are enemies as regards the gospel, but beloved for the sake of the patriarchs (Rom. 11:28). And we really do need to hold these things together. In so far as they have rejected Jesus the Messiah, they are more culpable and will receive a greater judgment because they have the Old Testament, which is all about Jesus Christ. And precisely because this is so, God has also determined by His good and holy counsel to keep His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not only in His fulfillment of those promises in the salvation of the Gentiles, but also in the salvation of the ethnic Jewish people. Like a wayward, prodigal and disinherited son blowing his inheritance on hookers and meth, there is much to be condemned and plenty of fodder for Hell. And yet, he is still a son and so much loved. Both of these things can be true and are. 

Closely related is the fact that next to Christians, Jews have been and continue to be some of the most highly functioning people in the history of the world. They often excel at higher rates than other cultures, and let us hasten to add, including excelling in both evil and good. So, you can give 15 examples of foul and heinous Jews, and I can flip it around and give you 15 more examples of Nobel Peace Prize winners, cancer research doctors, scientists, and relatively faithful husbands and fathers. And I would argue that this comes with the spiritual territory of that severed covenant status: enemies of the gospel, beloved for the sake of the fathers. They cannot shake that historic covenant reality. And to the extent that many still read and hear the Torah read, they above many other cultures, are constantly being exposed to the glory of Christ. Paul says that every time the Old Testament is read, the glory of Christ is shining on them, but their minds have been blinded and there is a veil over their faces so that they cannot and will not see Jesus (2 Cor. 3). Nevertheless, there is more common grace available to those who are exposed to the Old Testament than for other cultures. I think this is a massive reality. A monotheistic culture that has some reverence for the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament, warts, perversions, blindness, and all, is a culture that has more light than others, light that will result in more heinous evil in some cases and more astonishing good in others. This will result in hatred for the evil certainly and hatred and envy for all the good.   

So back to my original point: why do Leftists hate Jews? Well, what do Marixists hate? They hate private property, marriage, private education, free markets, children, and the natural hierarchies that accompany these things embedded in the created order by our Creator. Why do Leftists hate Jews? Because to the extent that Jews pattern their lives off of Old Testament norms, they are embracing the goodness of those creational norms that Marxists hate. In other words, Leftists hate God, and the way He made the world, that has been reestablished for all time in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can call the first major iteration of this new world Western Culture or Christendom, if you like, and for the last two thousand years, despite serious differences between us and periodic animosity, Jews have often been included in the outskirts of that project, economically, politically, educationally, and culturally. Despite their rejection of Christ, the Old Testament is still full of the aroma of His ways. And Leftists hate that, and yes, a bunch of Leftists are angry Jews.

Pastoring People through Anti-Whiteness
This was also related to my point about skin color. And we really do need to keep this straight in our minds. The hatred of “whiteness” is not really, fundamentally about the skin color. Yes, I am well aware that many are openly saying they hate whites, and I’m sure a great deal of animosity has come to fixate on that superficial feature – just as it has in the history of our country from whites toward blacks. I’m not denying that, but I am denying that we should simply take what people say at face value. For example, why do men sodomize one another? Ask them, and they will tell you because they are attracted to men, they love men, they are gay, etc. But the Bible says that the real reason they do that to one another is because they have rejected God and refused to give Him thanks (Rom. 1:21). There is a theological and spiritual reality driving it all. 

One reasonable question came from Josh Daws who wondered if my point was helpful given the fact that people really are being fired or not hired because they won’t meet DEI quotas. Don’t we need to address this white-hatred head on, and help pastor people through it? And yes, absolutely, and that’s exactly why I wrote what I did. The Bible teaches us to think this way. I’ve already cited Romans 1: Why are people full of malice, envy, murder, covenant breakers, and without natural affections (Rom. 1:29-31)? Because they refuse to glorify God and give Him thanks, and their foolish hearts were darkened – professing themselves to be experts in colonization and white fragility, they became drooling academic fools (Rom. 1:21-22). Pastoring people through this dark and cataclysmic moment in our nation’s history means teaching this point. Why do people fornicate and hate? Because they hate God, His Christ, His people, and the cultures we build. The hatred may fixate on the cultural artifacts, but like Amnon coming to hate his half-sister, the reason for the disgust in her physical features had everything to do with his sin and guilt, not merely because he suddenly came to prefer blondes to brunettes, even if he always did after that. 

Elsewhere, Paul teaches pastors to do the same: “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will” (2 Tim. 2:24-26). Why do people fight the truth? Because they have willfully suppressed truth in unrighteousness and been ensnared by the devil. Some of those very enemies opposing Paul and Timothy were unbelieving Jews. This is why we must oppose such enemies with firmness and compassion. But it’s important to underline these spiritual and theological realities because if we allow our collisions with unbelief to be reduced to physical features and materialism, we are being seduced into Nietzschean mud wrestling. This is no pietistic retreatism, this is simply full-orbed Christian masculinity. There is a time for peace and a time for war. There is a time for sharp words, and there is a time for soft words. There is a time for appeals to Caesar, and there are times to ignore the warrant out for our arrest and go into hiding. But our struggle is not fundamentally against flesh and blood.  

Everything to Do With Christianity
One final, question came from my friend Andrew Isker. Part of his objection I’ve already answered above, and I don’t have any problem agreeing that “white” is often being used synonymously for Christian. I would just hasten to add that as pastors, we must keep pressing our people, discipling our Christian followers to see through the racial façade. Nevertheless, Andrew brought up the current Gaza campus protests and says they have nothing to do with Christianity. I understand that many of the protestors may themselves be Jewish, and yes, many see the modern nation-state of Israel as more European colonialism that has displaced brown people. Yes, I get that, and no doubt that is what many would say. But it is a significant pastoral mistake to then conclude and agree with them (despite their claims to the contrary) that this has nothing to do with Christianity.  

Despite all the humanistic hubris that has crept into modern European nation-states, and I think we would agree, it is of obscene Jabba-the-Hutt proportions, the roots of the European nations were laid by the Protestant Reformation. It was the magisterial Reformers, Calvin and Luther, Cranmer and Knox who poured their lives out not only for theological reformation and spiritual renewal but for the political ramifications of those glorious theological truths. Their writings are repeatedly directed to the kings and princes of Europe. Whatever one’s appraisal of the establishment of the modern Israeli state, the ancient Christian instincts of Christendom and the crusades were certainly part of that move. And in the same way that ancient Israel became a whore with all the gods of the nations, modern Israel and America have been busy doing the same. But the overarching order is still recognizably the bombed out remains of a Christian cathedral. Muslims hate Jews and Christians with equal vehemence because to them, we are equally problematic in our rejection of Muhammad’s wet dreams. And we can say this, while recognizing that we have many Palestinian Christian brothers and many Israeli enemies.    

Conclusion: Equal Weights and Measures
At the heart of my concern is actually true justice. Lady Justice is blind. Because I’m a Christian Nationalist, I’m committed to equal weights and measures. This is a thoroughly biblical principle, rooted in Old Testament law, reaffirmed emphatically by our Lord. With the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And what do I mean? 

If you allow skin color to become the center of the problem, you are insisting on injustice. If someone tells you a crowd of people broke into a building, and then asks you, what should justice do? If you need to know what color the mob’s skin was, you’ve joined the mob. If you need to know what the religion was of those who own the building, you’ve joined the mob. Which incidentally, is why it was glorious for Rory Wilson to stand against the mob. Justice for all means blind justice for all. The same measure that you measure others with, will be measured back to you. As Christians, we are required to insist that the same measure be used for white supremacists, Big Eva Christians, kinists, Jews, sodomites, based brothers, BLM, and Gaza protestors (but I repeat myself). This is true for judicial proceedings, but this is also true for our personal interactions. 

Our enemies want everything to be reduced to physical characteristics and materialism because that gives them a feeling of power and control. They can manipulate, at least a little, their physical circumstances. It also gives them feelings of inevitability and fatalism. But these are the weapons they try to use to fend off the truth, and the truth of the gospel in particular. They want to explain their sin in terms of inevitability and victimhood. I couldn’t help it, white people are oppressors. I couldn’t help it, black people are lazy. I couldn’t help it, Jews are sharks. 

But the gospel cuts through all of this. The gospel offers in the first instance the dignity of guilt. No, you are a human being made in God’s image with the power of moral choice whatever your circumstances, and you have sinned against your Maker and your fellow image bearers. Whatever the physical and material factors (and there can be many), none of them set aside our fundamental moral culpability. And it is that spiritual reality that Christ came to deal with. Christ died for sin. But if the problem is genes and blood and skin pigmentation, there is at least a plausible deniability structure. And what we need for that kind of problem is vaccines, surgeries, lockdowns, and ultimately, some kind of gulags. So our job as Christians is to continually bat away those excuses, and press home the point. No, the reason you hate white people is because you hate God, His Christ, and every cultural artifact that reminds you of Him.  

The reason we insist on this is because Jesus is Lord. This is not some kind of reversion to a post-World War II secular consensus. This is one of the great foundation stones of Christendom. 

Photo by Rami Gzon on Unsplash

Chester & Esther

“There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid” (Prov. 30:18-19).

In Hebrew, the word “wonderful” is the word “phale,” and it can also mean miraculous. In Genesis 18, when God promises to give Sarah a child in her old age and she is doubtful, He asks, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Is anything too miraculous? The same word is used to describe the plagues that God sent on Egypt: “And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go” (Ex. 3:20). “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Ex. 15:11)

And the Psalmist sings: “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well” (Ps. 139:14). Wonder is a sense of amazement and fear, awe and curiosity – something that seems impossible, something that carries with it some secret, some magic. And often wonder is a sort of collision of unexpected realities. An eagle in the air. A serpent on a rock. A ship in the midst of the sea. A man and a maiden. Moses saw a bush on fire. Jacob wrestled with an angel. Job talked with God in a storm. Jesus walked on water and rose from the dead. Wonder makes you ask, “What is this? How is this possible? Who is this? How do you do that?”

It’s commonplace in our modern culture to insist that you must be true to yourself, and that of course means that you must know yourself. And so popular films often exhort heroes to look deep inside, to follow your heart. 

But the Bible consistently tells us something very different. It’s actually in looking outside of yourself that you find out who are and what you are for. It wasn’t until Moses met God in the burning bush that He knew what his mission was. Job didn’t understand what was going on in his life until He met God in the whirlwind, and then realized that it was all too wonderful for him to fully grasp. Isaiah was commissioned after being granted a vision of God high and lifted up, where even the angels veil their faces because God is too wonderful. When the angel appeared to Manoah and his wife, Manoah asked, what his name was – and the angel of the Lord said, it was Wonderful. It was a secret, something they couldn’t fully understand. 

Our problem is not that we don’t know ourselves. Our fundamental problem is that we don’t know God. And we can’t really know ourselves unless or until we know God. In His Light, we see light. John Calvin famously said that one true glance at ourselves, and we are immediately turned to God. The gifts of life and thought and beauty ought to immediately strike us as, well, gifts, glories, wonders, streams that must have some magical source. And even our faults and sins point us to God, since we realize there is something wrong with us. And to say that there is something wrong, assumes that there is something right in this universe, an ultimate standard, ultimate virtue, goodness, and harmony. 

So wonder comes in the collisions of different, unexpected realities. Wonder springs from a realization of gift and grace and glory, of the impossibility of existence, lungs that breathe, hearts that beat, eyes that see, mouths that taste and talk, lips that kiss – all of creation radiating glory, beauty, and we have eyes to see it, mouths to taste it, and a Holy God giving it, filling it with His Wonder. And at the center of it all, is the God-Man Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, and the prophet said, He will be called Wonderful. He was fearfully and wonderfully knit together, fully God and fully man, filled with the Spirit, come for His wayward Bride. He is the eagle in the air, come to crush the serpent on the rock, riding the ship of the world through the seas of sin and death. 

Chester, my charge to you today is to love and lead your wife in this Wonder. You must do this by being continually amazed at the wonder of Christ, His death and resurrection and His world. But one particular piece of His grace to you is Esther, and so cultivate a deep wonder in her glory and beauty and wisdom. But like all wonderful things, there is a particular glory in the juxtaposition, and her glory really shines as you lead her in obedience to Christ. Our world wants an individualistic, autonomous glory, but that really doesn’t exist. You can’t peer deep down inside and find yourself. Glory reflects. Glory shines. And God is giving Esther to be your glory, your crown. And this really is wonderful. 

Esther, my charge to you is to likewise seek this wonder, but you are to do it in your respect and submission to Chester. The world is constantly trying to convince you to find your own glory all by yourself, but that is lie. There is no solo-glory for any creature. There is only reflected glory, and that is what makes us stop and stare. You already reflect the glory of your Maker, but today, you are also being assigned the task of crowning your husband. Delight in his delight in you. Let him lead you, and as you do, this will be a wonderful gift to you. And together you will be a real wonder to the watching world, like a city coming down out of Heaven, the wonder of God with His people and all things made new. 

In the Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.  

Photo by Pete Nuij on Unsplash

Paedocommunion Mashed Potatoes & the CREC

Introduction
Well, there’s been a little bruhaha on the interwebs concerning my denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and our common practice of paedocommunion – welcoming young, baptized children to the Lord’s Supper.

The impetus for this I think is two fold, and they are actually related. The first reason is simply the fact that God is blessing the CREC. We are a small denomination punching far above our weight class. I think we are currently around 130 congregations, including 10-15 international churches, and we are having an outsized impact on our culture through classical Christian education, Psalm singing and biblical worship, a growing literature and media presence, and political and cultural engagement. For example, Canon Press published The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe, and one of the founders of our denomination, Douglas Wilson, was interviewed by Tucker Carlson recently, and word is getting out that there is an association of evangelical churches that almost universally stood up against the COVID mandates and continues to stand up against the woke, DEI zeitgeist.

And in the midst of all of that undeserved blessing, we have had more folks joining us and with this growth, some of our commitments and practices have needed clarification. One of those is our widespread practice of communing young, baptized children. Traditional presbyterian and Reformed churches have baptized infants of at least one believing parent, but the majority have argued that communion should only be received by those who have demonstrated evangelical faith and repentance after being examined by the elders of a local church. This practice of “credocommunion” has widely varied, with some elders admitting very young professions of faith (3-5 years old), while others have insisted on older teenagers, with the majority probably averaging somewhere in the 9-12 year old range. 

What the CREC?
Something you should know about the origins of the CREC is that it was started by three independent churches who had been coming to Reformed/Calvinistic convictions, with some elders embracing infant baptism (sometimes referred to as “presbyterian”) and others remaining credobaptist (waiting until someone professes faith before baptism). The elders of these three churches determined not to divide over that difference on baptism, and therefore found themselves a poor fit for any existing denominations. The traditional presbyterians wouldn’t take them because they had baptist elders, and the Reformed baptists wouldn’t take them because they had presbyterian elders. So in an effort to pursue unity, the three independent churches united to form the CREC, with a sacramental cooperation agreement, and our constitution for many years read thusly: 

“All members in good standing in a local CREC congregation must be received by any other CREC church regardless of confessional differences between the churches. All CREC churches will handle problems arising from differences in how membership is reckoned from church to church (e.g. individual vs. household) with all charity and good faith, seeking to include one another’s members.

In the transfer of members from one CREC church to another, differences arising from issues such as membership, paedo-baptism, and paedo-communion, must be handled with pastoral sensitivity. Receiving churches do not have to adopt or practice such variations, but they should do all within their power to accommodate them.”

Thus, for many years (25 in fact), the CREC has allowed for local churches to teach and practice their confessional commitments with this strong language of accommodating transfers and receiving one another’s members regardless of differences. The cash value of this has been a strong consensus to receive one another’s members with their baptismal and communicant status intact. So, you can be a Reformed Baptist in the CREC and teach the necessity of credobaptism, but if you join the CREC, you are committed to receiving a transfer of membership of a presbyterian family and accept any infant baptisms that have been previously performed. Likewise, a credocommunion church would be free to teach and ordinarily practice their confessional convictions, but in joining the CREC, they agreed to receive transfer members from other churches that may have admitted younger children to the table than they ordinarily would. On the flip side, paedobaptist, paedocommunion churches agreed to receive Baptist and credocommunion families into membership and allow them to ask for baptism and admission to the table according to their conscience. 

While on the surface, it can feel like the baptists and credocommunion churches have to flex more, the fact is elders convinced of paedobaptism and paedocommunion are still flexing by welcoming families into membership with different convictions as well. And in some ways, the Reformed baptists and paedocommunionists understand one another better since we all believe that baptism and communion basically go together; we just disagree on timing. 

Now, the reason for the hubbub is that some questions were raised over the exact details of this arrangement, and so at our triennial council last Fall 2023, some of the language was revised to make explicit that by “receiving members in good standing,” our expectation was that this would include the governmental actions of fellow CREC churches, specifically with regard to baptism and communion. 

There really is a tight rope walk here of honoring the authority and responsibility of local churches to fence and admit to the table, but by the same token, and for the same reason, honoring the authority and responsibility of other churches in the same denomination doing the same. It is not true that the CREC is seeking to undermine the authority of local elders. We believe that the keys of the kingdom are given to the elders of the local church, and what they bind on earth is bound in heaven. It is elders who admit members into the visible church through baptism, and it is elders who admit to the table, not fathers, not mothers, not personal vibes or feelings. This is a great and terrible responsibility that Christ has entrusted to elders. But for that very reason, if what one local body of elders binds on earth, by baptizing or communing or excommunicating, is bound in heaven, what sense does it make for another body of elders to reject that, except on very serious grounds? To reverse or ignore the decision of another duly ordained body of elders seems to us to be a very serious matter. Our sense is that we must do all in our power to honor those governmental actions that Christ Himself has said that He will honor in Heaven. Otherwise, are we not dishonoring Christ by dismissing the true authority He has granted to other elders in His Church?

A Closing Note on Including the Kids
Welcoming very young covenant/baptized children to the Lord’s table who are able to otherwise participate in worship has been admittedly a minority position in the history of the Protestant church. For this reason, I believe those of us convinced by Scripture that we ought to practice it ought to be extremely patient and accommodating with those who are unconvinced. This includes cheerfully submitting to elders who request that our children profess faith before communing. And if one of my people were thinking about visiting or transferring to a church that did not practice paedocommunion, that would be (and has been) my counsel. There’s nothing quite so unbecoming as being divisive about communion. And it really doesn’t help your case to say that they started it first. 

We do not believe that the grace of the sacraments is a magical juice, but rather the same Spirit who feeds us through the meal, feeds us the same Christ through the Word and prayers and fellowship. This doesn’t mean communion doesn’t matter; it just means it isn’t the most important thing. There is a grave danger in what might be called sacramentalism, thinking that the grace of the sacraments is so unique that children who are not communed until five or six years old are described as being “starved” or something. Children, who are otherwise received as full participants in the church, are being fed Christ in the Word and prayers and fellowship. They are not being spiritually starved. It’s more like they’re getting steak and salad, but no mashed potatoes.

Nevertheless, there are two things that remain a great mystery to me biblically speaking: First, given the scriptural warnings about prayers and worship offered in hypocrisy or ignorance and God’s fierce warnings that He will judge and destroy those who do not pray in faith and with understanding (e.g. Is. 1, 1 Cor. 14), why are young children so often allowed (required?) to join us in the rest of the worship service, listening to sermons, praying, and singing to God? The concern among most credocommunionists is to honor 1 Cor. 11, and the requirement that those who participate in the Lord’s Supper be able to examine themselves and discern the Lord’s Body. I fully affirm this requirement, but I also think that it should be understood in the same vein as many other requirements in Scripture for coming to the Lord. As is often the case, the primary audience is adults (e.g. repent and believe, don’t get drunk at the Lord’s Supper, no going to prostitutes, etc.), but this does not exclude young children learning faith and obedience according to their maturity and capacity. 

If we teach young, baptized children to pray and sing to God (who do not fully understand what they are doing and do not have a mature faith), why do we not welcome them to the table? In other words, if there is not some super-special grace in the sacrament, but the same Christ is communicated by the Holy Spirit in the Word and in the prayers, and all must participate by faith and receive those blessings by faith, why not welcome young baptized children to the same Christ in the Lord’s Supper? Won’t God hold your little ones to account for any “Amen” they didn’t fully understand? He will not hold guiltless those who take His name in vain. But of course, I believe that young children should be taught to pray and say “Amen,” believing, as I do, that Christ receives little ones according to their capacity and maturity to know Him and believe in Him. 

Finally, one of the key texts for demonstrating the continuity of the covenants is 1 Cor. 10, in which Paul argues that all of Israel was baptized in the cloud and in the sea and all ate spiritual food and drink, and the Rock that was with them was Christ, but they were destroyed in the wilderness because of unbelief. The apostle says that those things were written for us in the New Covenant, that we might not sin like them but believe. Notice that at the very least, old covenant Israel practiced paedocommunion. All of Israel, young and old, ate spiritual food and drink. All of Israel, young and old, partook of Christ in the wilderness. And Paul says that what they had, we have in the New Covenant. All of Israel was baptized, just like us, and all of Israel ate a communion meal in the wilderness, just like us. But the point he presses is not: “so some of you really ought to stop taking communion,” but rather, the warning is to not continue in any hard-hearted unbelief, pride, idolatry, or sexual sin. 

“Let him who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). The exhortation is not to keep anyone from baptism or communion until they make some kind of public ritual profession of faith or pass an exam. The exhortation is to repent of all sin, from the youngest to the oldest. And if you can discipline your young child, then you believe they are capable of repenting. And if they are capable of repenting then they are capable of believing. And if they are capable of believing, then they are worthy partakers of Christ.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Three Cheers for Purity Culture

Introduction
One of our increasingly pagan culture’s new favorite punching bags is so-called “purity culture.” Apparently some folks believe that before Joshua Harris published his book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” that evangelicals believed in impurity. And weren’t those the golden days of yore? But tthe thing to keep front and center is simply the point that Christianity is the target with these attacks. Christianity is a purity culture: Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). It’s one of the beatitudes. And Hebrews makes much the same point: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). 

Sexual Fraud
Jesus taught specifically that part of what He meant by purity was sexual purity: “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and notthat thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” (Mt. 5:27-30). Adultery begins in the heart with lust, and it would be better to take drastic measures to fight it there before it destroys your life and drags you down to Hell. 

A quick search on X brought up one so-called “sexual educator,” who boasts of being the creator of the “purity dropout program,” who wrote recently, “I’m going to go ahead and say it bc so many people raised in purity culture worry about this: I personally don’t think it’s disrespectful to have private sexual fantasies about people you know. As long as they remain your private thoughts, they are no one else’s business.” Thank you very much for speaking so plainly, ma’am, but Jesus would beg to differ. Jesus says that the end of that road is Hell.  

Likewise, Paul famously wrote, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). And elsewhere: “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor; not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness” (1 Thess. 4:3-7). 

So this is purity and holiness: abstaining from all fornication, every form of sexual immorality. And the reason given is that sexual immorality is a form of fraud that God will judge. Sexual sin is a form of theft. This is why the Bible also admonishes husbands and wives not to deprive one another sexually, calling that another form of fraud (1 Cor. 7:5). You can steal from your brother by taking what is not rightfully yours, and you can steal from your brother by withholding what is rightfully owed. 

The Center of Biblical Purity Culture
Now a quick skim of some of what is called purity culture includes, apparently, things like purity rings, purity vows, and purity balls, none of which I know much about. And these seem to me to be traditions of men that may or may not do any good. If they’ve helped you, I do not object, but there’s nothing about them specifically in the Bible, so certainly not required. But to the extent that human traditions often tend to get in the way of the simplicity of God’s word, I would insist that we already have all that we need. Christ has given us His mark of our purity, His sign of our allegiance to Him, and the basis for our Christian fellowship: baptism. In some ways, I would generally discourage these extrabiblical traditions for a similar reason to why I discourage tattoos: you are already permanently marked with the name of Christ in your baptism. 

“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22). Take note: the efficacy of baptism is not merely in having gone through the ceremony. The ceremony is objective before God and makes claims on you (whether or not you meant it at the time). But what it objectively means calls you to subjectively, internally embrace and believe, similar to the objectivity of a wedding ceremony and the exchange of rings. You must internally embrace what has objectively been declared. So in baptism, We are not saved by merely having our bodies cleansed by water, but rather, we are saved by having a clean conscience toward God which is only possible by evangelical faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus (1 Pet. 3:21). And that is what your baptism proclaims.

So Christian baptism is the center of true, biblical purity culture. It is the sign and the seal of our purity in Christ. This purity is both accomplished and final through the gifts of regeneration and justification, and it is an ongoing work of the Spirit in the process of sanctification. Because Christ died for all who believe, all who believe in Him are fully and completely cleansed of all their sins, past, present, and future. Full stop. Faith receives this absolute absolution, and there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1). Did you catch that? There is not a single charge that can be brought against God’s elect (Rom. 8:33). It is God who justifies, and if God justifies, there is not a single hint of impurity that can condemn (Rom. 8:34). This is because Christ Himself intercedes for His people. He stands before the Father for every single one of His people. And who can separate us from His love? This is the center of Christian purity culture. We are pure and holy because Christ is pure and holy. We are accepted because Christ is accepted. We are justified because Jesus is risen from the dead. 

Yet Scripture also teaches that this justification, this definitive sanctification is the necessary beginning of truly becoming holy. God declares sinners righteous. God doesn’t declare good people righteous. Christ came for prostitutes and tax collectors. Christ came for pimps and abortion doctors and sodomites and the trans-confused. Christ came for church kids getting handsy in the backseat of the car. Christ came for elders with porn problems. But He didn’t merely come to forgive them. He came to deliver them. He came to cleanse them and to give them His Spirit so that they would walk out of the jail cells of their sins and the sins of their fathers and walk in the Light as He is in the Light. By His death, we are enabled to die to our sin, and by His resurrection, we are raised to newness of life. 

Grace and Law 
With all obedience in the Christian life, there is always the temptation to take what is meant to be grace and turn it into a law-work. This is what Paul came righteously unglued about in Galatians. Beginning by grace, will you now continue by the law? Paul asked, and he answered his own question by saying, Hell no. But the point isn’t that Christians therefore stop caring about obedience and holiness. No, the point is that everything depends upon the engine driving the action. Christians are supposed to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, but only because God is at work in them willing and doing according to His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13). We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, for good works, which He prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10). 

So with all Christian holiness, from working hard to support our families to serving the poor to evangelism and sexual purity, there is a way of turning the grace of obedience into a whip that really is satanic. But the problem is not the obedience; the problem is human hearts. Having grown up in the Christian church, I’ve witnessed a number of instances of children growing up in Christian homes who cannot wait to leave the church when they turn 18. But it wasn’t “purity culture” that drove them away, it was fear and harshness and hypocrisy.  

“There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness” (Prov. 30:12). Pharisees are people who cleanse the outside of the cup but on the inside its full of mold and bits of sewage. And in that state, Pharisees often travel land and sea, from homeschool conventions to courtship conferences, to make their kids twice the sons of Hell than themselves. But the problem in those cases was impurity in the heart and hypocrisy in the home. You cannot give what you do not have. And some parents have tried to hoist purity on their kids with impure hearts. The solution is not to give up on purity. The solution is to actually get clean. But you cannot get this by law. You cannot get this by merely trying harder or coming up with new rules. You cannot make up for your failures. You can only get true obedience by grace. But if these parents who have unclean hearts would simply confess their sins and be truly cleansed on the inside, they would be forgiven and then the work of teaching purity would become a complete relief rather than such a burden. 

In other cases, as with Joshua Harris, the problem doesn’t seem to have been hypocrisy and harshness so much as a failure to protect from pride. There are particular warnings about ordaining a man who is too young, lest he be puffed up with pride and fall into the condemnation of the devil (1 Tim. 3:6), as well as not ordaining too hastily, and the warning is tied to purity: “Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure” (1 Tim. 5:22). And the same thing applies generally to families and churches that are actually walking in true purity. The central motif in that community needs to be gratitude. Purity is a glorious gift of God, and there is no room for boasting. What do you have that you did not receive? God puts down the proud but lifts up the humble.

Conclusion
The last thing to note is that sinners sin. And this is about as profound as saying that politicians lie. But what I mean is that you can find in every Christian community real failures. You can find pastors and elders who have sinned grievously, you can find fathers and mothers who have sinned grievously, and you can find sons and daughters who have sinned grievously. That isn’t really a shock. We are Christians. We believe in original sin, and we believe in the enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But those who hate Christ want to weaponize these real failures against the Church and against God’s people. They say, “See?! That’s what your purity culture gets you! Tone it down. Drop all that abstinence before marriage business. A little bit of lust is normal.” 

Those who hate Christ want His people to quiet down and stop talking about purity, blaming our love and celebration of purity for the heartbreaking failures of some. But this is fundamentally because they hate purity. And they hate purity because they hate Christ. They know their own sins, their own uncleanness, their own filth, and they hate the light of Christ that exposes their works of darkness. And in their pride they refuse His grace. They refuse His purity. And ironically, many of the fiercest modern critics of purity culture launch their attacks in the name of protecting women, in the name of fighting sexual abuse. But all they are doing is encouraging more grooming. 

So we will not stop. We will not stop because Christ is our purity. Christ is our holiness. We have no purity or holiness apart from Christ, but we have Christ, and we have been made whole. We love chastity, and we love the marriage bed because it points to the perfect and faithful love of Christ for His Bride the Church, whom Christ is cleansing from every spot and wrinkle. So sure, maybe a little less on the purity rings, and a little more on the gift of baptism. Maybe a little less on purity balls and a little more on the glory of Christian weddings and the potency of building faithful families. 

So three cheers for purity culture. Three cheers for the purity of Christ. And three cheers for the purity of Christ’s bride. For the few instances of real horrific failure and sin (and there are some gnarly ones), there are many millions of Christians who grew up in faithful Christian families and churches – not perfect families or churches – but communities honestly trusting in Christ, confessing sins, forgiving one another, holding one another accountable, and honoring the marriage bed. I think God is at work, and I think the lines are being drawn, and the modern attacks on purity are driven by a great fear that the resistance is actually quite formidable.  

Photo by mrjn Photography on Unsplash

What Grace Looks Like

Acts 15:13-35

Introduction
The decision of the Jerusalem Council illustrates a principle that Christians have always struggled with: grace has a backbone. True grace really is radically free, and precisely because it is so free, it is potent and transformative. And this principle aims in two directions in particular: it aims outward toward the world and others and it aims inward at every one of us. Grace welcomes and instructs. Grace rests and works. There is a grace that truly loves enemies and desires repentance. There is a grace that rests in Christ and serves gladly. Grace is not cheap. But neither is grace a new whip. 

The Text: “And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles…” (Acts 15:13-35)

Summary of the Text
After Peter, Barnabas, and Paul had given their testimonies, James speaks as the leader of the council and affirms Peter’s account (Acts 15:13-14). James says that this agrees with the prophecy of Amos that the tabernacle of David will be rebuilt so that the Gentiles may worship the Lord with the Jews – which was God’s plan from the beginning (Acts 15:15-18). 

So James proposes that a letter be written to the Gentiles in Antioch not to be troubled with obligation to the whole Mosaic law but only be asked to abstain from idols, fornication, and from strangled meat and blood (Acts 15:19-21). This decision was pleasing to the whole council, two men were chosen to accompany Paul and Barnabas and the letter back to Antioch, and the letter clarified that the Jerusalem church had not sent the men who had stirred up the trouble (Acts 15:22-29). They returned to Antioch, read the letter, and everything was explained, and it was all very encouraging to everyone (Acts 15:30-35).  

The Tabernacle of David
James appeals to the “prophets” (plural) but cites Amos who foretold the restoration of David’s tabernacle (Amos 9:11-12). Remember, this was the temporary tent that David erected where the ark was kept on Mount Zion (1 Chron. 15:1, cf. 11:5). Later, Solomon moved the ark from that tent to the temple (2 Chron. 5:2). So why does David’s tabernacle become the symbol of the salvation of the Gentiles? 

First, David’s tent was particularly marked by an explosion of musical instruments and choirs, and they were described like sacrifices and priestly service (1 Chron. 16:5-6, 23:5ff, 25:1ff). In the New Covenant, bloody sacrifice that in part pointed to the division of Jews and Gentiles, was replaced by sacrifices of praise for all the nations. 

Second, David’s tent had an unusual number of Gentiles associated with it: the ark had resided for about a hundred years in Abinadab’s house (who was most likely a Gentile) and then in Obed-Edom’s house (another Gentile) who was likely adopted into the Levites to minister before the Lord in David’s tent (cf. 1 Chron. 13:7-14, 15:15-24, 16:5). 

Finally, there may be some allusion to the Feast of Tabernacles, an annual Israelite feast in tents commemorating how God brought them out of Egypt through the wilderness in tents (Lev. 23:34-43). And that fear specifically included widows, orphans, and strangers, so that they would remember God’s grace (Dt. 16:12-15). Tents reminded Israel of hospitality. 

The Decree Itself
It might seem strange for Peter and James to emphasize the fact that Gentiles need not keep the Jewish laws to be saved (we saved by pure grace) but then to issue some instructions. This is admittedly a heavily debated passage, but it seems best to see these instructions as helpful training wheels for learning to walk in the liberty of Christ, or learning to ride the bike of Christian liberty. The eternal law of God is not burdensome at all; it is the perfect expression of His love (1 Jn. 5:3). For those who are led by the Spirit, it is as though there is no law (no training wheels) – not because they are lawless, but because the Spirit makes righteousness a perfectly natural joy (Gal. 5:22-23). Remember the preamble of the Ten Commandments is all grace: “I am the Lord your God who bought you out of Egypt…” (Ex. 20:2). 

The basic injunctions are to keep away from all idolatry, sexual immorality, and food offered to idols, and remember, in the ancient world these things tended to be all tangled together (cf. 1 Cor. 6, 8). As Paul says elsewhere, idols are not real and the food offered to them is not inherently unclean, but people who fear them are weak and should be protected (1 Cor. 8) and those still enslaved to them should not be encouraged in idolatry (1 Cor. 10:27-28). In that fear, it’s possible to have fellowship with demons (1 Cor. 10:20). Putting all of this together, the idolatry and sexual immorality are permanent instructions aimed at the particular temptations of Gentiles, while the food instructions are particular applications aimed at the practical challenges of practicing hospitality in mixed (Jew/Gentile) churches. This is not permanently forbidding rare steaks or blood pudding, but it is prohibiting every hint of idolatry and worldliness. In modern context, a letter like this might say, “keep yourself from idolatry and sexual immorality, avoiding pink hair, government programs, and every form of antisemitism.”

Applications
The gospel is an open invitation to all men to come and worship the Lord Jesus. He is the Son of David, and He was crucified for our sins and rose from the dead and ascended the heavenly Mt. Zion, where His grace is available to all who believe: homosexuals, transvestites, abortion doctors, pedophiles, liars, cheaters, adulterers, porn makers and porn users, and every kind of self-righteous conservative or religious type. But the invitation is to come and bow down; come and surrender.  

As the nations come, we want to hold both of these things together: all is grace and grace loves holiness – the holiness of God, the holiness of Christ. He died and rose again, and He is worthy. And grace loves holiness with grace and not with a snarl.

One way we can illustrate this is the distinction we sometimes make between refugees from the world and evangelists for the world. The former are most welcome, the latter are not. Unbelievers are most welcome to come hungry for grace, complete with pink hair and tattoos and Biden bumper stickers. But we don’t want them coming as evangelists for their paganism. And the same thing goes for the folks who think Trump is Jesus.  

Grace wants to walk in the light. Grace is not apathetic. Grace wants to obey. But grace wants to obey because God is good. Grace wants to walk in the light because it loves the light. Grace wants to help others grow in grace. But it pursues with kindness and goodness. Grace is wise. Grace starts in the heart but doesn’t stop there. This is what grace looks like. 

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

Covenant Nations & Christian Ones

Introduction
An old family friend on social media recently objected to the notion of America being a Christian nation. While he claimed it was historically inaccurate, his primary objection was that a nation can’t simply choose to be God’s covenant people. God decides who His covenant people are. God chose Israel in the Old Covenant, and He chose the Church in the New Covenant. So even if the founders of America had wanted to make a “Christian America” they couldn’t have because God does the choosing and He didn’t choose America.

While I profoundly disagree with the historical claims, I want to address the biblical-theological objection here. 

Other Covenants Before God
It’s of course true that God’s Covenant of Grace was made with Israel in the Old Covenant and came into its fullness with Jesus in the Church in the New Covenant. But it’s simply not true that God only recognizes that central, saving covenant. Yes, God is the absolute Lord of salvation, and no man may saunter up to the God of the universe and offer terms of engagement for salvation. Nevertheless, there are other covenant arrangements that men may make that God recognizes because He established them in the very nature of creation. They are natural or common grace covenants. 

For example, every real marriage is a covenant before God and witnesses. God makes two into one, even non-Christians. Likewise, every nation is a covenant, even if the constitution is non-Christian. God appoints magistrates, and there is no true authority except by His terms and conditions. This national covenant is a covenant in so far as God recognizes the entity of “nation,” and the leaders and members of that entity have various responsibilities and obligations before God and toward one another. Furthermore, a covenant ordinarily also involves blessing for faithfulness to those responsibilities and obligations as well as cursing for unfaithfulness. 

Now to anticipate one line of objections, let me hasten to add that these covenant blessings and curses are not inherently salvific or damning. At the natural/creational level, we simply mean that God personally governs the world in such a way as to make certain actions better or worse (e.g. sending rain on the just and the unjust). National covenants and marriage covenants are in the realm of what theologians call “common grace.” So a non-Christian married couple really is in a covenant of marriage before God, whether or not they acknowledge Him or His existence or the obligations they have to one another. But even in a non-Christian marriage, where the husband generally loves and leads his wife, and the wife generally respects and follows her husband, God will bless them more than if they didn’t. It generally goes better for them, if only for the fact that they will generally like each other more and get along better. And this is simply because God makes water run downhill. In other words, this is the way God made and governs the world. You generally reap what you sow, and God made the world such that if you generally go with the flow of creation, things will go better for you. But if you fight reality, which is to say, if you fight God, like say by giving hormone suppressors to kids, things will not go so well. 

At the same time, while a Christian marriage is not a sacrament, as the Roman Catholics teach, it certainly does have a massively sanctifying influence where Christ is openly acknowledged and humbly obeyed. There is a significant difference between fumbling in the dark and walking in the light. But the thing to underline is the fact that we’re all living in the same world. It’s not like you become a Christian and it turns out the pagans really were living in a different world. There is one world, God’s world, and those walking in unbelieving darkness are stumbling around in God’s world. By God’s common grace, a couple of pagans may eek out a semi-happy marriage by the force of custom or tradition, but it really is a great blessing to know the saving grace of Christ crucified for sinners, especially the married kind. Just as you might occasionally stumble into the solution to how to fix your car without any help or guidance, the gift of youtube and auto mechanic manuals really is like the gift of the Bible for our lives. Special revelation and saving grace take the gift of covenant marriage and put it into high gear. They turn the lights on.

Other Christian Covenants
Now follow this closely: if two Christians enter into a marriage covenant, isn’t it fair to call that a “Christian marriage?” And of course by that, nobody thinks we’re saying that marriage replaces the Church. Marriage is not a sacrament. Marriage is not salvific. But marriage is a kind of covenant that people can choose to enter that God recognizes. And if two Christians do so, we can refer to that covenant as a “Christian” covenant, a “Christian marriage.”

And if that’s possible in marriage, why would it not be possible for a nation? In fact, the word “covenant” is used to describe multiple political treaties in the Old Testament: Jonathan and David made a covenant of friendship that certainly had massive political implications (1 Sam. 23). David made a covenant with Abner to deliver the northern tribes into David’s rule (2 Sam. 3), and even though that initially failed, the northern tribes eventually did make a covenant with David to recognize him as their king (2 Sam. 5). Solomon and Hiram made a covenant of peace (1 Kgs. 5). King Ahab made a covenant with Ben Hadad of Syria (1 Kgs. 20). Jehoida led the rulers of Judah to make a covenant with the child king Joash (2 Kgs. 11). And of course good King Josiah made a covenant with the people of Judah to serve the Lord (2 Kgs. 23).  

So quite apart from whether the founders of America were Christian (they were) or intended to establish a Christian nation (they did), the Bible is absolutely clear that it is possible to make a political, national, albeit common grace, covenant before God. And if a nation was led by Christians, who self-consciously desired to order their nation according to biblical principles (like say King Alfred in the 9th century or Scotland in the 16thcentury), wouldn’t it be fair to call that nation a “Christian nation?”

So What?
But this isn’t just a theoretical exercise. This has massive practical implications, particularly for how Christians should think about their current obligations to their nations. What obligations do politicians, magistrates, and citizens have today? Broadly speaking, there have been three answers to that question. King James (of Authorized Bible fame) and his son Charles argued for the Divine Right of Kings, claiming that God directly appoints magistrates and while there may be some room for input from the people, magistrates basically are the highest authority in the land. Any disobedience or rebellion is immoral. Thomas Hobbes argued that Christianity is a myth, and that people are basically selfish savages and civil governments are the monstrous “Leviathan” powers that keep the baser instincts in check, primarily through fear. But in his view there is no inherent shape or structure to nations. There are no rules. There is just power and fear checking selfishness. Finally, you can understand nations as natural covenants before God and subject to His law — this was the magisterial Protestant view, most explicitly asserted by the Scottish covenanters, but also more generally by men like Samuel Rutherford in Lex Rex. This view says that while nations may sometimes be led by tyrants, just like abusive husbands, there is a fundamental structure to a nation that God established at creation, and therefore laws and obligations which are natural to it, and that structure is a covenant. 

Why does this matter? Well it matters because there are certain obligations and responsibilities, a certain inherent order to the whole setup. Now, ever since Jesus rose from the dead, every civil magistrate on earth is under obligation to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the God of Heaven. That’s what Psalm 2 says, and the apostles explicitly taught us that it was a prophecy of the death and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 4:25-26). All men everywhere are summonsed to repent and believe in Jesus because a day is coming in which He will judge the world (Acts 17:31). All men includes kings, presidents, supreme court justices, prime ministers, parliaments, dictators, sheiks, imams, and caliphs.  But regardless of whether they do or not, they only have authority from Christ, and the justice they are responsible to administer is derived from Him and defined by Him. 

This justice is also revealed in nature and in the image of God, and therefore, to the extent that even pagan magistrates administer true justice with equity, they are fulfilling their obligations to some extent, even if unwittingly. And it will generally go better for that nation. Likewise, the citizens of every nation are under obligation to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to acknowledge that their civil magistrates are appointed as ministers of justice by Him and honor that office and order. But whether they do or not, it will generally go better for them if they are righteous and obey God’s law. It’s all in Romans 13, man.

A Covenantal Nature
Just as a woman ought to obey her own husband in all things in the Lord, so too, citizens ought to obey their magistrates in the Lord. Yet, “in the Lord” really is a magnificent qualifier. It endorses all authority exercised in obedience to Christ and the way He ordered the world. It reassures those called to submit to that authority when exercised under the blessing of Christ. But it also limits all authority to those things which Christ has commanded or clearly allows. This too is part of the covenantal nature of marriage and nations.

So if your pagan neighbor lady shows up at the door with a black eye and confesses that her husband hit her because the dinner was burned, you don’t turn her away and say that you wish you could help but since her marriage isn’t “Christian” there’s nothing you can do. If they are generic secular pagans, it doesn’t matter if the husband shows up and admits that he hit her but also explains that he isn’t a Christian and therefore our rules don’t apply to him. God’s rules absolutely do apply to him, whether he acknowledges it or not because he is living in God’s world and has entered into a particular kind relationship, a marriage covenant. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if her husband shows up and proudly admits that he did hit her and that since they are Muslims, their marriage is a “Muslim Marriage.” And in Islam husbands are welcome to strike their wives. 

And the same principle I’m illustrating here applies to nations. There is an inherent covenantal structure to nations because there is no authority except from God (Rom. 13), just as there is no marriage apart from God. This is why certain arrangements (like two dudes and their three pet poodles) are not married, no matter how many times they claim to be so and whether or not the Supreme Court orders it so. Likewise, there are certain terrorist organizations, mobs, thugs, and gangs that are not nations. But where there is some semblance of law and order, some semblance of agreement between rulers and the ruled, whether customary or constitutional, there are transcendent rules that government those arrangements. Stalin and Hitler cannot defend their genocides by saying that their nations are just following different rules. American cannot defend the murder of millions of babies by pointing to the laws of the land. A “nation” is not whatever you decide you want it to be, and it cannot do whatever it demands to do, any more than a man or a woman or a marriage can be whatever you want it to be. 

Conclusion
Conservative Christians rightly lampooned the new supreme court justice for refusing to answer the question, “What is a woman?” claiming she couldn’t answer because she’s not a biologist. Everybody sensed the red dot of tranny rage hovering on her forehead if she didn’t fall in line with modern sexual orthodoxy. But that same red dot seems to be hovering on the foreheads of our current establishment theologians, even the so-called “Reformed” ones. What is a nation? How would I know, I’m not a political scientist. Didn’t your Risen Messiah commission you to disciple the nations? Uh, yeah, but that’s the word ethne. Right. So we have gay mirage and tranny confusion in our streets in part because we refuse to acknowledge that the public square is not neutral and not infinitely malleable. A nation is a covenant before God with obligations to administer true justice. 

And for those very reasons, citizens have the right and at certain points, an obligation to object to capricious, arbitrary, and wicked laws and rulers. There is no authority apart from Christ, and if the civil authority praises the righteous and punishes evildoers, things will go well in that land. We’re not claiming that a “Christian nation” is salvific, any more than a Christian marriage is salvific. But we are claiming that a Christian nation is possible, and that a Christian nation is highly sanctifying to its citizens, in an analogous way to how a Christian marriage is sanctifying to a family. It grants more gospel light in so far as Scripture is the ultimate standard, and in so far as many involved are honestly seeking the Lord and walking before him in humility. 

This is why the founders of America could rightly appeal to the God of Heaven and His laws for the justice of their cause when they declared independence from England. They were not appealing to some special, saving covenant. And they were not just venting fleshly spleen. They were appealing to the natural covenantal rights of nations based on natural and common law, affirmed and clarified in Scripture. It is that covenantal reality established by the Creator that grants all men certain unalienable rights and grants them the right and duty to alter or abolish forms of government that abuse and usurp those basic covenant rights and duties. 

The kings of the nations will bring their treasures into the Heavenly Kingdom. There have been Christian nations in the past, and there will be Christian nations again in the future. Only the Christian Church is God’s special, holy nation in the New Covenant era, just as Christ has only one bride, the Christian Church, and that is the only marriage that will last forever. But between the great advents of Christ, we are still bound together in families and nations by covenants that reflect that eternal covenant, and they are covenants that God recognizes. 

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Parenting with Joy

Introduction
1 John 1 says that it was written so that our joy could be full, and it describes that joy as being bound up with fellowship with God and one another. We have this fullness of joy when we walk in the light with God and one another. This is true for all of life, and therefore it is especially true for parenting. The joy of parenting is parenting in fellowship with God and our family. Parenting with joy means parenting in the light. 

Confession & Forgiveness
But we are sinners, and all sin is darkness. Therefore, our sinful darkness interrupts the light and the joy in our families and in our parenting. This is why the only way to walk in the light is by the blood of Jesus cleansing us from all sin: “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7). We apply the blood of Jesus by confessing our sins: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9). This is how we get back into the light, back into the fellowship, and back into the joy.

There are numerous challenges that every family faces, but unconfessed sin makes everything worse and forgiveness makes everything more bearable. In Psalm 32, it is David’s refusal to confess his sins that makes his bones ache all day long; it turns everything into the drought of summer (Ps. 32). And Psalm 32 says that it is God’s hand that is heavy upon His saints when they refuse to confess their sins. On top of all of that, unconfessed sin means the devil has hooks in you: the power of the Devil is in the fear of death and the wages of sin is death (Heb. 2). But if you belong to Christ, He will not let you have any joy until you get clean (Ps. 32, 51). Sometimes this happens with overt sins (e.g. lies, cheating, adultery, porn, etc.); but sometimes this is related to low-grade fever attitudes: envy, greed, bitterness, discontent — which are just as sinful and just as joy-destroying.

So the way back into the joy of the Lord, the way back into fellowship, back into the light is through confession of our sins, both to God and to those we have sinned against. The rule of thumb is that our confession should generally be as public as the sin. If you only sinned in your heart, you should confess to God and repent in your heart, but if that bad attitude or snarl came out in any way, you should confess to God and anyone you sinned against. If you sinned on the internet, your confession should be on the internet. If you sinned at the dinner table, your confession should be at the dinner table, or at least to everyone who was at the dinner table.

If you are on the receiving end of an apology, remember that forgiveness is a promise, not a feeling. God requires that we forgive others as He has forgiven us, which is freely and 70×7. How much have you have been forgiven for? You can’t count that high. So forgive like that. At the same time, forgiveness is not the same as trust. When sin has occurred, sometimes trust must be rebuilt over time. Forgiveness means you do not hold it against them. No grudges. No bitterness. You can come to the Lord’s Table in true Christian fellowship.

Conclusion
In general, whatever you have in your marriage is what is multiplied with children. Children are multipliers. If you have sweet fellowship with your spouse, you are likely to see that multiplied with your children. If there is static or resentment, that will be multiplied. So if things are pretty bumpy with the kids, start by checking on your relationship with your spouse. 

Keep short accounts in every direction. Don’t allow any backlog of sin to build up in your marriage or your family. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Either deal with sin in love or cover the sin in love, but don’t allow sin to fester in your heart. 

The difference between a clean house and a messy house is that in one house they pick up. You can have two houses that are exactly the same footprint, with the same size family living in them, same number of kids, and one can look like a bomb went off and the other can look neat and tidy. The difference is that in the tidy house, they pick up. They do the dishes. They take our the garbage.

Don’t be shocked by messes. We are Christians. We know what to do about sin. Take the garbage out. Get good at cleaning up. Get good at making things right. We are Christians. We have the blood of Christ, and it cleanses us from all unrighteousness as we confess our sins. And that is how you can parent with great joy.

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Andrew Klavan, Me, and the Jews

Introduction
So Andrew Klavan recently kicked up a bit of dust addressing Candace Owens leaving the Daily Wire over what he and others believed were antisemitic dog-whistling remarks. This was part of the whole “Christ is King” trend on Twitter and elsewhere. Apparently, some red pilled Muslims and Christian firebrand zealot types have been using that glorious phrase as a sort of mocking insult to Jews. In the course, of Klavan’s comments, he said he wasn’t really worried about the salvation of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. He affirmed that Christ is in fact King, and that Christ is the only way of salvation, but he said he thought Peterson and Shapiro were in some way just fine. Klavan also condemned views that say God is done with the Jews, that there are no promises that remain for them. 

So we reached out to Andrew, and he was kind enough to come on CrossPolitic to talk about it. As these things tend to go, you never seem to have enough time to get through everything, but we did have a good conversation which has received some attention and some pushback and questions, including from Candace Owens. Some folks seemed to infer that the whole conversation was about the salvation of the Jews and whether Jews need to become Christians in order to be saved. But in reality, the conversation consisted of three parts: First, we gave Klavan an opportunity to explain his biblical/theological foundational assumptions about who can be saved. Second, we talked specifically about his comments regarding his colleagues Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, and finally, we talked for just a bit about his position on the Jewish people.  

Klavan & Lewis
As I understand him, Andrew holds to a view that is very similar to C.S. Lewis, which is illustrated in The Last Battle with the inclusion of Emeth, devout worshiper of Tash, in Aslan’s Country. In Mere Christianity, Lewis says, “But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.” Douglas Wilson has helpfully distinguished Lewis’s view (which is not a vanilla Reformed evangelical view) from warmed-over liberalism, and based on everything Klavan has said, I assume he holds the same view: “In other words, it is liberalism to say that faithful Muslims, or Buddhists, or Hindus, each following the tenets of their own religion sincerely, can be saved for being good people. This is pernicious and false. It is quite a separate question to ask whether God in His sovereignty can reach down into a filthy religion, like the worship of Tash, and do an extraordinary thing by saving someone from all of that. In such a case, that person is not saved by means of his religion, whatever he conceives it to be, but rather is saved from that religion, by grace through faith (emphasis his)” (The Light From Behind the Sun, 35).

Andrew Klavan has said repeatedly that Christ is the only way to God, but he pointed to several texts in the New Testament that suggest that some people may be saved who worshiped Christ without fully knowing it. Klavan pointed to the parable of the sheep and the goats in which the sheep ask, “When did we clothe you, feed you, or visit you?” And the Lord says that when they did it unto the least of His brethren, they did it unto Him. This seems to be what Lewis has in mind when Emeth meets Aslan, “Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he may not know it, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted” (Last Battle, 189).  

Likewise, Klavan pointed to the Samaritan woman, where Jesus told her that the Samaritans worshipped what they did not know, but the Jews worshiped what they knew, for salvation is of the Jews (Jn. 4:22). And finally, Klavan pointed to the fact that Jesus made the Good Samaritan the hero of his story about true neighbor love and inheriting eternal life (Lk. 10:25-37). And remember, the Samaritans were like Old Covenant Mormons (cf. 2 Kgs. 17:29-41). In response to this, Gabe Rench pressed Klavan to make it clear that there is no other salvation except by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Which Klavan warmly affirmed. He merely wanted to emphasize that some who are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ may not know it. 

Children Dying in Infancy & Real Urgency
In response to all of this, I pointed out that the salvation of children dying in infancy is at least one other biblical example of extraordinary salvation. I certainly believe that there is no other way to the Father except by grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, and therefore, if any infants are saved, they are saved by that means, but clearly, in some extraordinary way. They are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ but they do not fully know it at the time. My doctrinal statement is the Westminster Confession which says this: “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word” (10.3). I brought up this point not to say that all the Jews are saved in the same manner as children dying in infancy, as some claimed in follow up comments. Rather, it was simply to affirm that there is a biblical category of extraordinary salvation through Christ (and Christ alone). 

Immediately following my comments regarding children dying in infancy, I turned the conversation toward the holiness of God and the preciousness of the blood of Christ, driving the point that apart from the blood of Christ, we may ordinarily have no comfort before a holy God for our sins. There is to be fear and trembling and deep shame before God for our sins and our life outside of Christ, even if we can look back in gratitude at all the ways God was truly at work, drawing us to Himself. But for those who are outside of Christ, we ought to have deep concern for them. I cited the blood of the Passover as the sign of safety from the Angel of Death, and apart from being under the blood of Christ, we really cannot have true security. Klavan responded by saying that he was generally more inclined to live at peace because he is convinced that God is going to work everything out perfectly. Which is of course true, but this is where I pointed out that Paul is the same one who wrote that he could rejoice always and be content in every situation and at the same time was greatly grieved for his fellow kinsmen the Jews who did not accept Christ. And I pressed Andrew particularly on the verse where Paul says that he would be willing to be cursed for the sake of the Jews, if he might save some (Rom. 9:3). 

I think it was here that Klavan said the most problematic thing in this whole conversation and that was his point about Paul sometimes saying things in the Bible that are not the Word of God, specifically citing Paul’s vehement denunciation of the Judiazers, suggesting that they go all the way and castrate themselves. Andrew said that was clearly an example of a true saint of God losing his temper. We pushed back on this briefly, but by that point, we were nearly out of time. Chocolate Knox helpfully finished off the show pressing the point that Jesus also makes in the gospels about those who refuse to profess Him before men: He will likewise refuse to profess them before His Father, but we didn’t get much further than that. 

Two Final Points
Without turning this article into a book, let me make two final points. First, I think it is clear that Klavan has a more optimistic view about many folks presently than I do, but I don’t think it is fair to call his view full blown liberalism or heresy. However, and more specifically, given Ben Shapiro’s repeated public rejections of Jesus as the Messiah, I really don’t see how he could be secretly serving Christ while openly denying Him. I simply disagree with Klavan’s take on Shapiro. When CrossPolitic interviewed Ben Shapiro several years ago, we asked him specifically why he didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah, and he said that the Messiah is a political deliverer and that’s not what Jesus did (!). Which, I can’t remember if I said this out loud or only thought it at the moment, is exactly why many of the Jews rejected Jesus in the first century. With regard to Jordan Peterson, I’m a bit more agnostic, since I’ve seen some clips of him talking about Jesus that seem to indicate a measure of true seeking and yet I also know he has some psychological categories doing funky things in the background. But to be very plain: I certainly believe that there is no ordinary hope of salvation outside the church, by which I mean, hearing the gospel and responding in evangelical faith and open profession of faith. Apart from Christ, no one can come to the Father, including conservative Jews and very smart Gentiles.

Second, Klavan is not crazy to cite these passages about the Samaritans, and there are more: remember, in the Old Covenant, there were many Gentile worshipers of the true God: Jethro, wicked Balaam was apparently a true prophet, Naaman the Syrian (assisting his master in the pagan temple of Rimmon), Cornelius the Centurion, and Solomon specifically asked God to hear the prayers of the Gentiles (1 Kgs. 8:41-43). When Paul preached in Athens, he said that the altar to the unknown God was actually an altar to the Living Creator God who raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 17). And in the midst of that message, he said that God had overlooked (“winked at”) the times of ignorance of the pagans, but was now calling everyone everywhere to repent and trust in Jesus (Acts 17:30). Putting all of this together, it seems reasonable that in the Old Covenant there were certainly Gentile pagans who knew very little about the true and living God and yet He overlooked various aspects of their ignorance, and they were saved (through faith in a barely known coming Christ). Somehow the pagan Magi were looking for Him when His star appeared. 

Conclusion
Finally, and now coming to the current state of the Jews, I would reiterate the point I made with Andrew on the show: Paul is clearly very distraught over the state of his unsaved kinsmen (Rom. 9:3, 10:1-3), and in the same place and in the midst of addressing that very problem, he clearly insists that salvation comes through believing in Jesus Christ and confessing that God raised Him from the dead (Rom. 10:9). And at the same time, he also believes that God has not completely cast away His original covenant people (Rom. 11). Paul’s most succinct summary of his position is found in Rom. 11:28-29: “As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes, but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”

I will end here. But we really do need to hold all of these things together. No one comes to the Father except through Jesus. Jews are beloved by God for the sake of the fathers, but in so far as they reject Jesus the Messiah, they are enemies on account of the gospel. And I take this to mean that they are therefore enemies of God and cannot inherit the Kingdom in that state. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as extraordinary salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, sometimes with very little or no knowledge. If it was possible for God to reach down into the hearts of pagans with virtually no knowledge of the true God, then how much more likely may it be that God occasionally does that with people who have half of His Word read to them every Sabbath? A devout Jew can only be saved through Christ crucified and risen, but a devout Jew (and by this I mean one who is particularly concerned to study and live his life according to the Old Covenant scriptures) — that man is in a different position than a devout Muslim or Hindu. That man still needs the veil over his heart removed, but he is a natural branch that has been removed from the true vine and how much easier does a natural branch go back on the vine (Rom. 11:24)? 

While God has given them a spirit of slumber and blindness so that many have died in unbelief, they are still beloved for the sake of the fathers. Standing with the majority of the Protestant Reformers, God is not done with the Jewish people. When the fullness of the Gentiles has come into the Kingdom then the fullness of the Jews will come into the Kingdom as well, and so all of Israel will be saved (Rom. 11:14-26). While I’m not perhaps as optimistic as Klavan is about the current state of folks, I’m certainly optimistic about the future. The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Empathy, Multiculturalism, and the Triumph of the Geldings

Empathy. Excuse me. Please remove your shoes. This is holy ground. Thank you. Now let’s try this again. 

Empathy. There, now that’s better. 

My friend Joe Rigney has been taking his sledge hammer to this golden calf for the last few years, and there have been no shortage of Israelites in their skivvies protesting Joe’s so-called harsh treatment of their brazen fetish. Many of us started noticing the dangers of empathy perhaps in the aftermath of the #metoo rash, but it turns out that empathy has been doing quite a bit of pagan heavy lifting in the background of our cultural demise for longer than many of us have perhaps realized.

Untethered Empathy
Of course Joe has been quick to make all kinds of clarifications. The word has been weaponized, and as happens with words that are weaponized, there are often virtuous versions of the word. So this is not a blanket condemnation of all empathy in every form everywhere, forever and ever, amen. And to make that clarification as clear as possible, he has even taken to modifying what he is talking about. The golden calf proper is “untethered empathy.” You know, empathy that is determined to leap off the cliff with the loved one because otherwise, how will you truly understand what they are going through unless you are also hurtling to the ground with them? 

Tethered empathy, on the other hand, would allow you to leap off the cliff and actually save your friend because, having tethered yourself to an anchored point above the cliff, you would be in a position to catch and rescue your friend. Tethered empathy truly loves those who are hurting because it has a plan for restraining the ultimate end of all untethered empathy: death and Hell. This is the necessary end of untethered empathy because the deification of feelings is an idol, and all idols are black holes of inconsolable pain. And of course that is part of their deification. All idols must have a veneer of the infinite. And therefore, you must empathize with that pain forever. The ultimate, consistent end of thinking/feeling pain forever is death (and Hell). 

This reminds me of the time (back in 2018) we had the Reformed Historian Dr. Sean Lucas on CrossPolitic to talk about the little-known legacy of black presbyterians in America and some of the appalling ways we treated our black brothers and sisters – which really was appalling. But when it came time to discuss moving forward one of us asked him: “At what point do we say, OK, repentance has occurred, forgiveness has been extended: when can we all move on?” And Dr. Lucas’s answer still haunts me. He said we should keep asking forgiveness until *they* (whoever they may be) say it’s enough.

Notice that: The standard is not God’s Word, God’s justice, or any other objective standard outside of anyone’s feelings. The standard is the hurt feelings of the aggrieved (presumably). But where empathy is metastasizing, the aggrieved feelings are multiplying. Not only do you have the original aggrieved, but in an untethered empathetic culture, you have all the other virtually aggrieved, those who have bound their emotional identities and well-being to the emotional state of others. Again, this creates a living Hell on earth where repentance and forgiveness are impossible. Because when can you ever be sure, you’ve suffered enough? 

The Abolition of Truth
In Peter Hitchen’s work The Abolition of Britain, he chronicles the precipitous decline of English culture from 1965 to 1997. Riffing generally off of C.S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man, Hitchens points out in an early chapter that it was an intentional revolution in the English education system that led the way, moving away from the traditional classical tradition that focused on achievements and heroism and mastering a body of knowledge of truth and facts and instead began to focus on suffering and inequality and experience. Specifically, Hitchens notes that one of the key goals of the modern education movement in Britain was, you guessed it, empathy. For example, Hitchens cites the testimony of one history teacher who recounts how he noticed the history curriculum in particular began changing in the early 1970s from an emphasis on knowledge to an emphasis on skills: “They also felt that one of the key skills was the ability to empathise. They wanted to assess the child’s ability to empathize. But there was a problem. They had to find the material which would allow these things to be taught. They decided it didn’t matter what content you taught. What you were emphasizing were skills and themes.”

And why this change? Hitchens summarizes: “many teachers supported the new history because they thought they were aiding the creation of a multicultural society.” Less emphasis on receiving established truths, and more emphasis on “inquiry into the evidence” says Denis Shemilt in his 1984 book (notice the title!) Empathy and History in the Classroom – there’s that word again. Hitchens again summarizes the overall trends in English history curriculae as “focused upon suffering and deprivation rather than upon achievement or herorism.” Apparently suffering is a more universal experience? A more multicultural uniter of peoples?

The idea seems to be one that was broadly shared by many, what Rusty Reno calls in his book The Return of the Strong Gods – the “postwar consensus,” a broad consensus among many in the western nations that the causes of the World Wars had been too much emphasis on tribe and race, strength and power, military might and nationalistic patriotism. And in place of these emphases, the consensus determined to focus on more so-called universal human values. Enter the focus on multiculturalism, diversity, and our sacred cow, empathy. The “gospel” of this postwar consensus appears to have been that if we can just get everyone to see and feel how similar we all are – that we are all different in our own ways, and perhaps most importantly – all hurting and suffering in our own ways – then we will all empathize with one another and not fight each other as rivals. We will feel bad for one another, understanding that all people tend to act out when they have been hurt, and perhaps then we will not invade one another’s countries, refrain from holocausts and genocides, and avoid world-wide wars in the future. 

This postwar consensus and empathetic commitment has reached religious levels of devotion in our day as can be seen by how far this faith has been allowed into the public square and public policy decisions. What was perhaps initially meant to extend to various nationalities and cultures – and this, I take it, is the most charitable read on the apparently superstitious determination of many on the left to continue an almost mind-numbingly insane open borders policy – has now been extended to Drag Queen strip shows and story hours in public libraries and liberal churches and the necessity of offering children the option of permanent sex-change operations and life-altering hormone therapies. If you connect all of those dots, you can squint and barely make out why there’s such intensity of fervor for those things: If you do not empathize with the feelings of the Drag Queens and confused sexual identities of young children, you are basically asking for World War 3 and another holocaust, you racist, antisemitic bigot. But thankfully, it is at this point that a bunch of normal Americans who just want to grill their burgers and watch football on the weekends said, “wut.”

In Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis famously closed his opening salvo on these first stirrings of the empathy movement with this: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” In other words, true and biblical empathy is a byproduct of truth and virtue, but if you jettison the truth and virtue, all you get is the kind of empathy that leaps off of cliffs. Virtue is the chain that tethers all faithful empathy to the rock of Truth. 

I doubt that Lewis could have quite imagined the literal fulfillment of his warnings – although That Hideous Strength indicates that his prescience saw an awful lot. We have indeed begun to breed geldings (I mean literally, castrating our children and confused adults) and we are apparently expecting oodles and oodles of multicultural empathetic harmony to be breaking out in our streets. And instead, for some reason, we keep getting riots and school shootings. Apparently, we are not empathizing hard enough. Maybe more therapy and drugs will do the trick. It’s probably Joe Rigney’s fault.

Conclusion
But the thing that Lewis pointed out is that you cannot get the function (virtue) without the organ of reason grasping hold of objective truth (virtue chained to truth). Untethered empathy means the deification of feelings and rejection of objective truth. The deification of feelings is not only ultimately suicidal, it is ultimately selfishly militant. Everyone else’s feelings become competition for your feelings. Everyone else’s hurt, suffering, and oppression becomes an attempt to steal attention and empathy from you or your best friend or your pet cause. Turns out “intersectionality” and “DEI” and “affirmative action” are plenty of fodder for the envious human heart. And now it’s a race to the bottom of the barrel, competing for empathy, competing for most pain and suffering. 

The postwar consensus rightly recognized that human beings are naturally sinful, naturally competitive, and naturally envious, and just like St. James said, envy ultimately leads to conflict and war if left unchecked. But what the overly humanistic postwar consensus missed was that these natural sinful tendencies cannot be eradicated merely by taking away strength, power, heroes, historical facts, and truth. Turns out sinful human beings will do this with pain, suffering, and oppression too. The sinful human heart can turn anything into an envious war. And while we’ve been programmed to think that the rich and influential are the most greedy and pugilistic, sometimes the most envious and hateful are those with the least. Children will fight over the shoddiest toy because it is the prized the toy. Even beggars will kill for crumbs.

If the unchecked strong gods created wars over which race and nation and military were more mighty, the weak gods have slain their ten thousands by gutting nuclear families in the sexual revolution, butchering 65 million babies by abortion, and now maiming thousands of children in the name of empathizing with confusion, pain, and every sense of abandonment. And we seem to have plenty of conflict and war brewing, all while we’ve had decades of empathy. 

The answer is a High Priest who can actually sympathize with us in our weakness, all while refusing to enter in to our sin. He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. The Cross of Christ is where all envy and covetousness goes to die. And therefore, it is where all the enmity and wars and conflict go to die.

The demand for untethered empathy is a species of envy packaged up in a satanic gift wrap of compassion. It demands attention, sympathy, dedication without limits because it is based on rejecting the organ that God has given us that teaches us where the limits are, that there are limits. The organ of reason, governed by the Holy Spirit, teaches us to receive the truth, through historical facts, beginning with this glorious gospel. Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem almost 2000 years ago, and three days later, having paid the just wages due for sins we committed and sins committed against us and all against a holy God, He was exonerated and rose from the dead. Notice there we have true suffering, true empathy, and a true Hellish agony for sin, and yet it does not go on and on forever. It is finished, it is enough, and Christ is risen. This is the fundamental truth that must anchor all our empathy. And this really is holy ground. 

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Sabbath for Your Wife

When I was examined by presbytery for ordination back in 2007, one of the pastors asked me how I gave my wife Sabbath rest. I gave some kind of answer, and the exam moved on, but afterwards, the same pastor came up to me and told me that my answer wasn’t very good. He strongly urged me to take my wife out for a date regularly and to try to go away overnight more often than she would want to. I remember him saying, she will initially not want to because of how much it will cost or how much trouble it is to find babysitters or pack, but that I needed to do it anyway, and she would thank me for it later. And by God’s grace, we’ve aimed for that over the years and its been a great blessing.

We still make tweaks to our rhythms and routines, but I want to give the same exhortation to the men in the congregation: make sure you are giving your wife Sabbath rest. Sometimes this means having a plan for helping with dishes and cleanup after Sabbath dinner. Some of us try to have our big meal on Saturday night in order to minimize meal prep and cleanup on Sunday. Sometimes this means giving mom some free time on a Saturday to shop quietly or see a friend. Sometimes this means insisting on a regular date night and occasional nights away. Central to the Sabbath command is not only taking rest for yourself, but those in authority making sure that everyone under your care gets rest as well. Part of that rest is making sure your family gets here for worship regularly. And even though church (especially with little ones) can feel like a lot of work, it’s the kind of work that actually gives you rest in the long run. Many of you men make a point to do as much as you can to help during the worship services. And it’s real delight that so many visiting folks have commented over the years on how cool it is to see all the dads bouncing the babies at the back of church.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mk. 2:27). The point is that there are ways of keeping Sabbath that aren’t actually restful or a blessing to your family. Just as Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath and He used the Sabbath to heal and feed and bless, you want to do everything you can to do the same for your people. And that is what Jesus is doing for all of us here.

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Seemi Samuel on Unsplash