Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 11

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.

Photo by lauren lulu taylor on Unsplash

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. 

Photo by Jeremy Lapak on Unsplash

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

Christian Virtues Weaponized

In a broadly Christian world, Christian virtues tend to get weaponized. We have seen this with concepts like justice and love and empathy, or the condemnation of being judgmental. Only a broadly Christian world says that being judgmental is wrong or that justice or love or empathy are good. But of course everything depends on definitions. When a judge vindicates the innocent and condemns the guilty, he is being judgmental in a good way. When someone finds a lost wallet and decides not to return it to its owner because the owner is an enemy, that’s unrighteous judgment. The Bible requires God’s people to be judgmental, but we are to judge with the standard of God’s word and remember that the measure we use to judge others will be used to measure us. 

We are required to love everyone, but love is treating others lawfully from the heart. Love is not going along with what anyone says makes them happy or caving or compromising simply because they say what you’re doing makes them feel bad. Likewise, justice is not making everyone happy. Justice is enforcing God’s law, which primarily consists of punishing evildoers. And while God does require us to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn, we must also practice self-control, which means that we are not to be ruled by our feelings or the feelings of others but by God’s Word.

In one sense, the fact that everyone, even those who hate God, keep appealing to these Christian virtues tells you that we are not yet as far from our Christian roots as some would have you believe. Pure paganism doesn’t care about justice, love, or empathy. But of course, if we continue down this current dark path, apart from the grace of God, we will end up in a paganism that ceases to care about any virtue.

But all of this is why worship on the Lord’s Day is at the center of all that we do. In worship we renew covenant with our Lord. Romans 12:1 says that we accomplish this reasonable service as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices. And in the next verse, it says that we are not to be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds. As we renew covenant in worship, God renews our minds, correcting, teaching, training, and changing us from glory to glory. 

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Reformed Politics

What is Reformed Anyway? Part 6

Introduction 
One of the marks of the Reformed faith was a great political reformation. This is why it is sometimes called the “Magisterial Reformation.” The Pope and Roman church had slowly claimed political power, but the Reformers insisted that Scripture clearly taught that all power was given to Jesus Christ and therefore, He is the One who directly delegates it to magistrates, pastors, and parents for particular tasks by Him. Nations, churches, and families receive their authority directly from Christ, not any other earthly authority. 

The Text: “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world’” (Mt. 28:18-20).

Summary of the Text
This text at the end of Matthew’s gospel is called the Great Commission because it was the final charge that Jesus gave the disciples before ascending into heaven. There is an indicative statement of fact which drives the command, followed by a final promise. The indicative statement is “all authority/power is given” to Jesus in heaven and on earth (Mt. 28:18). The same word for “power/authority” is used in Romans 13:1-2 to refer to political rulers and magistrates and again in Titus 3:1. His disciples are to “therefore” go (Mt. 28:19). The disciples of Christ are to go and disciple the “nations” because Christ has been given all authority in heaven and earth.

Some point out that “nations” (ethne) can simply refer to Gentiles/non-Jews and therefore dispute the political ramifications of this Great Commission, but the same word certainly also refers to specific nations (e.g. Acts 2:5, 10:35, 13:19, 17:26). When the apostles were persecuted by the Jewish authorities, they quoted Psalm 2 which describes the nations and their kings gathered against the Lord and His Christ, and they refer to Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel (Acts 4:25-27). The disciples were commanded to go and disciple those nations by two means: baptizing in the triune name and teaching everything Jesus has commanded (Mt. 28:20). And the promise is that Jesus will be with us until the whole mission is done.

The Regulative Principle of Power & Limited Government
Since all authority has been given to Jesus Christ, all earthly authority is delegated authority from Jesus Christ. This is why wherever Christians are urged to submit to and obey earthly authorities, it is always “in the Lord” or “as to Christ” (Eph. 5:22, 6:1, 6:6-9, 1 Pet. 2:13, Heb. 13:17). No earthly authority is absolute (e.g. Acts 5:29, Dan. 3, 6). This means that all righteous government is limited by God’s Word, which is the foundational argument for Lex Rex (“the law is king”). 

Since the primary task God has given to the civil magistrate is a ministry of violence: the sword of justice to punish evildoers (Rom. 13:4), it is especially important that civil government be limited. Political rulers who reject the limits of God’s Word are arrogant and act like beasts and monsters (Dan. 4, 7). This is what happens when civil governments begin meddling for example in markets, healthcare, and education. Just outside the hospital, he looks like a nicely dressed man who just wants to help, but as soon as the magistrate disobeys and enters, he grows fangs and turns into a monster. You can’t disobey God and not turn into a monster — we let the magistrate run our schools and now children are having healthy body parts cut off (the same is true of the other governments: disobedient pastors turn into wolves, etc.). A righteous ruler really is like rain coming down upon mown grass and delivers the poor and needy, but he does this by establishing equal weights and measures and punishing true criminals (Ps. 72). 

Covenant Theology and Civil Government
The Reformers noticed that in addition to the great Covenants of Grace, there were also political covenants in Scripture: Abraham made a “covenant” with Abimelech (Gen. 21:27), Isaac did the same (Gen. 26:28), and Jacob made a covenant with Laban (Gen. 31:44). Later, Jonathan and David made a covenant (1 Sam. 20:16, 23:18), as did Ben-Hadad and King Ahab (1 Kgs. 20:34). Therefore, the Reformers reasoned that nations exist as covenant entities before God, established on particular constitutions or customs between rulers and people. It was on this basis that Christians generally teach submission and honor to civil authorities, and at the same time, as may occasionally happen in a marriage covenant, certain high-handed abuses may warrant the people dissolving the covenant and forming a new one.

The rudimentary elements of this system of government were worked out in the feudal arrangements of the Middle Ages, with increasing formality, as seen in the signing of the Magna Charta in 1215 and the Scottish Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, claiming independence from England. The Scottish Presbyterians under John Knox worked this covenant theology out in the 16th and 17th centuries to the point of being called “covenanters.” It was many of these Scots-Irish who colonized America, and took issue with King George breaking his covenant-charters with the colonies, resulting in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution of 1789.  

Conclusions
America was founded as a distinctly Protestant Christian Republic. When the War for Independence broke out, King George referred to it as the “presbyterian revolt.” The prime minister of England, Horace Walpole said in Parliament that “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson,” apparently referring to John Witherspoon, presbyterian minister, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of the presbyterian college Princeton. 

A republic is a representative form of government with constitutional checks and balances – or what you might call a civil form of presbyterianism. This goes back to the nation of Israel which chose rulers over 1000s, 100s, 50s, and 10s (Ex. 18:21), and when the early Americans read the political theorists of Greece and Rome attempting various forms of “mixed government,” they saw the same thing in presbyterian polity: seeking to balance the tendency to veer between anarchy and tyranny. 

Our mission remains the same as when Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven: disciple all of the nations, teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded. While we have fallen a long way from the broad Protestant consensus of early America, and we might wish for a more explicit acknowledgment of the Lordship of Jesus in our land, our Constitution is not as “godless” as many claim, since it does acknowledge Sunday as the Christian Sabbath and the birth of Jesus Christ, the “Lord” of these United States and all nations. 

Jesus died and rose from the dead, and all authority was given to Him. Psalm 2 says: ask of me and I will give the nations as your inheritance, the ends of the earth as your possession. Christ did ask, and all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Him. And we therefore go. 

Porn, Marriage, & Politics

Logos Assembly March 2024

Introduction
Porneias is the Greek word for sexual immorality. Pornography is any writing or images intended to encourage or stir up sexual immorality. Pornography can be found in books and stories, magazines and images, shows and movies. Fornication is the general name for the sin of sexual immorality, and can refer to sex prior to or outside of marriage. Not all nakedness or references to sex are pornographic. A doctor may help bring healing without sexual immorality, and the Song of Songs is a book of the Bible that describes sexual intimacy without any immorality. But you must still be on your guard. 

In the beginning God created man and woman in His image, and the Bible says that they were naked and not ashamed. But after Adam and Eve sinned they knew they were naked and attempted to sew fig leaves together to cover themselves and tried to hide in the bushes from the Lord. Because of sin, we feel shame about our bodies and sexuality. But in marriage, a man and woman have a taste of that original goodness. The marriage bed is honorable and undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers, God will judge (Heb. 13:4). Sexual union in marriage is good and holy and blessed, but God will judge those who mess with marriage.

Sex & Marriage as a Nuclear Reactor
We live in a world that hates God and how He has created the world, and so it is actively at war with marriage and God’s blessing of the marriage bed. This is because God made marriage and family to be a nuclear reactor. In sexual intimacy, God gave the potential to create new human life, new human beings that bear God’s image. There is nothing in all of creation as powerful as the image of God in men and women. Human beings are immortal souls that will live forever. If one of your neighbors told you they bought some uranium off the internet and they were planning to play with it in their basement, you would rightly object. And you wouldn’t care if they protested that you shouldn’t care what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home. But that’s exactly what people have been doing with sex. We are living in the nuclear fallout of the sexual revolution. 

Pornography and all sexual immorality is playing with the nuclear family. When we obey God and honor his design, there is great power and blessing, but when we try to re-wire the reactor ourselves, there is only misery and pain.

God made the woman from the man, and the woman was created to be the glory of man (1 Cor. 11). This means that part of the glory of being made a woman is being made beautiful. A woman’s glory is her beauty. It is no sin to notice this. But when a man sins, he tends to lust after a woman’s beauty, and when a woman sins she tends to try to provoke that lust. A woman sins by trying to get the wrong kind of attention, and a man sins by giving the wrong kind of attention. This can begin as immodesty in speech, immodesty in dress, but like many sins, it can have a way of wearing down your guard. Taylor Swift can gyrate half naked on a stage in front of thousands, and piles of Christians go along with it since she’s still wearing *some* clothes. But a generation or two before us would have called that pornographic. While many girls and women do not intend it, they are being groomed by fashion designers not to feel shame in spandex and underwear. And many Christians make a very weird exception when there’s water within 50 yards. Pornography has deadened the senses of many. 

The Lies of Porn & Lust
“For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword” (Prov. 5:3-4). This means that prostitution (and pornography is often just electronic/virtual prostitution) is presented full of lies. The magazine cover looks attractive like honey or oil, but what it is actually advertising is death and destruction. But the lies multiply. To a woman, the lie is that you have to look at least a little bit sexually alluring in order to look pretty. You have to look a little bit like the celebrity prostitutes or else you’ll like a frumpy toad. But that’s a lie. God created woman to be the glory of man, and that in part means you should desire to be beautiful. But you should not allow the sexually immoral world teach you what true beauty is. Don’t take fashion tips from porn stars.

Another lie is that you are missing out, that everyone else is having fun, and if you don’t act now, you’ll never have any fun either. If you don’t watch that show, that movie, read those books, you’ll soon be an old dud with no friends. But those who look at pornography or seek out sexual immorality are not really having fun. They might have a brief taste of honey, but the end is bitter. The end is regrets, shame, hurt, pain, plus sometimes diseases, pregnancy, abortion, adultery, divorce, and broken families. 

Forgiveness
One of the other most significant lies of the Devil is that sexual sin is the unforgivable sin. Satan says, it’s too late. Nothing can be done. But Scripture says, “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-10). 

There is no sin that is so foul that you cannot be forgiven. Jesus was stripped naked and crucified in great shame because our sin has been very shameful. But everyone who confesses their sins will be washed clean by the blood of Jesus. Have you looked at sexually immoral images or read stories that have stirred up lust? Confess your sin to God and tell your parents. Get clean and get accountability. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn. 1:9).

Conclusions: The Politics of Marriage versus the Politics of Pornography
What kind of world are you seeking to build? Honoring Christian marriage and the marriage bed is building a particular kind of world. Honoring Christian marriage is practicing a politics of freedom. This is because the blessings of freedom are enjoyed by those with self-control and self-government, those who keep their promises and build strong, loyal families. But pornography and all sexual immorality produce a politics of slavery. This is because a people governed by their lusts and appetites cannot be trusted to keep their promises or tell the truth and must therefore be governed by outside forces. 

Photo by Luis Tosta on Unsplash

Covenant Force Multiplier

The covenant is a force multiplier. The covenant multiplies blessing or cursing. The covenant is a greenhouse, and whatever you’re growing grows faster and stronger. If you’re growing healthy vegetables and fruit, the covenant multiplies the fruitfulness. If you’re growing mold and mildew, the covenant will multiply that as well.

Of course no one in the covenant is perfect. Only Christ is perfect. But the covenant is a covenant of grace, a covenant for sinners who know they are dependent on God’s grace. And God has always made provision for humble sinners. He covered Adam and Eve in the skins of animals. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Abraham was reckoned righteous because he believed the promises of God. And God brought Israel out of Egypt by His grace and gave them the sacrifices so that they could dwell in His presence. And even though David’s house was not at all perfect, God graciously promised to build him a house that would stand forever. And all of those types and shadows point to the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus. 

Faithful covenant keeping is simply trusting the Word of God and humbly obeying. Jesus said, this is the good work that God requires: believing in the One God sent (Jn. 6:29). And so that is the charge and the promise. Jesus said, do this in remembrance of Me, or do this as My memorial. And that simply means, when you come to His table, come believing that Jesus is the Son of God given for your sins so that you might walk in newness of life, so that His grace might multiply your humble efforts. And therefore, do not hide any sins, do not lie about any sins. Jesus is here, and He will multiply whatever you bring: if you come in pride and arrogance, He will resist you. And let me assure you that cannot win. But if you come in humility, determining to repent and obey by His grace, He will lift you up. So come believing, come in faith, and come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

Photo by paolo candelo on Unsplash