Justin Taylor's Blog, page 36

What Happens When Two Moral Philosophers Deconstruct a Gotcha Pro-Choice Twitter Meme

Written by: Justin Taylor

Science fiction writer Patrick Tomlinson recently proffered what he took to be a drop-the-mic thought experiment, revealing that while pro-lifers say ”life begins at conception” they don’t really believe this is true.

His argument begins as follows:

It's a simple scenario with two outcomes. No one ever wants to pick one, because the correct answer destroys their argument. And there IS a correct answer, which is why the pro-life crowd hates the question. 2/

— Patrick S. Tomlinson (@stealthygeek) October 17, 2017

Here’s the basic idea:

If pro-lifers really believed that life begins at conception, then forced to choose in the event of a fire at a fertility clinic, they would logically save one thousand embryos over one 5-year-old child.
In reality, most pro-lifers would choose to save the one 5-year-old child.
Therefore, pro-lifers do not really believe that an embryo and a human life are of equal value, thus revealing that they do not truly believe that life begins at conception.

A few years ago, Robert P. George (McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University) and Christopher O. Tollefsen (College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina) co-authored a clear and powerful work of moral and scientific reasoning entitled Embryo: A Defense of Human Life.

The book includes a response to this common argument, and they have adapted and updated the response in a new post at The Public Discourse.

If Mr. Tomlinson’s tweetstorm is the sort of thing you would have trouble answering, or if you find it difficult to spot the incorrect logical inferences, then you will find their piece helpful.

Here is the conclusion:

In consequence, we think it entirely unreasonable to infer, as Mr. Tomlinson does, from the choice to save the five-year-old girl, that “No one believes life begins at conception. No one believes embryos are babies, or children. Those who claim to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women.”

As we have noted, it is the standard teaching of every developmental biology textbook we have found that not simply life, but the life of a human being begins at conception. And, while embryos are not “babies,” they are, as a matter of sheer biological fact, living members of the species homo sapiens—human beings in the earliest stage of their natural development.

Unless denied or deprived of a suitable environment, or killed by violence or disease, they will develop by an internally directed process from the embryonic stage into the fetal infant child, and adolescent stages, and into adulthood with their determinateness, unity, and identity fully intact.

That is what each of us did who is now an adult. Each of us is the same person—the same living member of the human species—who earlier in his or her life was an adolescent, a child, a toddler, a newborn infant, a fetus, and, at the very beginning, a newly conceived embryo.

By contrast, none of us was ever an ovum or a spermatozoon. Those were (both functionally and genetically) parts of other persons, namely, our parents, whose uniting brought us into being precisely as embryonic human beings.

No plausible reason has been given, we think, why some living human beings should be treated as deserving full moral respect and immunity from intentional killing, while other living human beings, differing from the first only in size, developmental stage, and location, should be treated as not deserving such respect.

The pro-life view is thus deeply motivated by the principle of the fundamental equality in dignity of all human beings, and certainly not by a desire to manipulate and control. And that conviction is founded on undeniable biological facts, and on a firm commitment to the principle of the equal dignity of each and every member of the human family.

What Happens When Two Moral Philosophers Deconstruct a Gotcha Pro-Choice Twitter Meme

Science fiction writer Patrick Tomlinson recently proffered what he took to be a drop-the-mic thought experiment, revealing that while pro-lifers say “life begins at conception” they don’t really believe this is true.

His argument begins as follows:

It's a simple scenario with two outcomes. No one ever wants to pick one, because the correct answer destroys their argument. And there IS a correct answer, which is why the pro-life crowd hates the question. 2/

— Patrick S. Tomlinson (@stealthygeek) October 17, 2017

Here’s the basic idea:

If pro-lifers really believed that life begins at conception, then forced to choose in the event of a fire at a fertility clinic, they would logically save one thousand embryos over one 5-year-old child.
In reality, most pro-lifers would choose to save the one 5-year-old child.
Therefore, pro-lifers do not really believe that an embryo and a human life are of equal value, thus revealing that they do not truly believe that life begins at conception.

A few years ago, Robert P. George (McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University) and Christopher O. Tollefsen (College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina) co-authored a clear and powerful work of moral and scientific reasoning entitled Embryo: A Defense of Human Life.

The book includes a response to this common argument, and they have adapted and updated the response in a new post at The Public Discourse.

If Mr. Tomlinson’s tweetstorm is the sort of thing you would have trouble answering, or if you find it difficult to spot the incorrect logical inferences, then you will find their piece helpful.

Here is the conclusion:

In consequence, we think it entirely unreasonable to infer, as Mr. Tomlinson does, from the choice to save the five-year-old girl, that “No one believes life begins at conception. No one believes embryos are babies, or children. Those who claim to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women.”

As we have noted, it is the standard teaching of every developmental biology textbook we have found that not simply life, but the life of a human being begins at conception. And, while embryos are not “babies,” they are, as a matter of sheer biological fact, living members of the species homo sapiens—human beings in the earliest stage of their natural development.

Unless denied or deprived of a suitable environment, or killed by violence or disease, they will develop by an internally directed process from the embryonic stage into the fetal infant child, and adolescent stages, and into adulthood with their determinateness, unity, and identity fully intact.

That is what each of us did who is now an adult. Each of us is the same person—the same living member of the human species—who earlier in his or her life was an adolescent, a child, a toddler, a newborn infant, a fetus, and, at the very beginning, a newly conceived embryo.

By contrast, none of us was ever an ovum or a spermatozoon. Those were (both functionally and genetically) parts of other persons, namely, our parents, whose uniting brought us into being precisely as embryonic human beings.

No plausible reason has been given, we think, why some living human beings should be treated as deserving full moral respect and immunity from intentional killing, while other living human beings, differing from the first only in size, developmental stage, and location, should be treated as not deserving such respect.

The pro-life view is thus deeply motivated by the principle of the fundamental equality in dignity of all human beings, and certainly not by a desire to manipulate and control. And that conviction is founded on undeniable biological facts, and on a firm commitment to the principle of the equal dignity of each and every member of the human family.

The post What Happens When Two Moral Philosophers Deconstruct a Gotcha Pro-Choice Twitter Meme appeared first on The Gospel Coalition.

Why Does Scripture Say that “God Is Light”?

This talk by Fred Sanders—on the theology of the Trinity in 1 John—reminds me of what a thoughtful and creative pedagogue he is.

Sanders, professor of theology in the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, is the author of The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (2nd ed. with study guide) and The Triune God, in the New Studies in Dogmatics series.

The post Why Does Scripture Say that “God Is Light”? appeared first on The Gospel Coalition.

Why Does Scripture Say that “God Is Light”?

Written by: Justin Taylor

This talk by Fred Sanders—on the theology of the Trinity in 1 John—reminds me of what a thoughtful and creative pedagogue he is.

Sanders, professor of theology in the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, is the author of The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (2nd ed. with study guide) and The Triune God, in the New Studies in Dogmatics series.

7 Ways that Pastors Can Help Their Congregations Grow in Ethnic Diversity

Written by: Justin Taylor

I’ve recently blogged about why God is magnified through ethnic diversity, along with why diversity is both more important and less important than you might have thought (and why diversity in the local church is more, if not less, than ethnic diversity).

Over at Desiring God, Greg Morse has an excellent post on how all of us—those in the pew, and those from the pulpit—can grow in this area and see lasting fruit.

Here is his section for pastors in particular.

1. Don’t dismiss social justice as “not a gospel issue.”

Many minorities have not had the luxury of ignoring social issues. Injustice has been the lion’s share of African-American history. From slavery, to Jim Crow, to fighting for civil rights and economic equality, ethical implications of the Christian gospel have never been mere abstractions.

The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. represent many more minorities than majority culture might assume,

In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with,” and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction between bodies and souls, the sacred and the secular.

In an effort to preserve the pure gospel against liberal theologies, many Bible-believing churches abdicated gospel-love for their neighbor’s social needs by standing against the Civil Rights movement — and lost many blacks as a result.

Social justice is not the gospel — but it is a result of the true gospel, and can be instrumental in directing souls to the true gospel. Jesus did not speak the second great commandment in vain. Paul did not draw in gospel ethics as a peripheral matter. Christians care about all suffering — including societal suffering. Especially when addressing societal suffering opens a doorway to share the only message that can prevent eternal suffering.

2. Diversify the liturgy.

I love hymns now — but I surely didn’t before I was saved.

What did thou even mean? Why were words not finish’d? Did Shakespeare write some of these? The use of archaic language made evangelical churches to me — in my unregenerate state — seem extra-white.

Every Sunday, I went from living in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air to stepping inside four walls of Downton Abbey. The transition was jarring. But they had the words of eternal life, they preached Christ crucified — where else could I go?

Now, it would be a crime to scrap the hymns. But just know that these precious songs use a strange tongue that can alienate the foreigner to the congregation. Diversify the music and explain some of the old hymns. I’m sure most will be helped by an explanation of what I’m actually raising when I raise mine Ebenezer. And furthermore, what an Ebenezer actually is.

Add some songs that might tempt even the Swedish Baptist to sway and clap.

3. Diversify leadership.

Qualified diversity in leadership lends itself to a healthy diverse church.

Although none of the elder qualifications have to do with skin color (for or against), having shepherds who all share the same mission — while contributing different backgrounds, perspectives, and culture — strengthens the church and casts heaven’s shadow upon earth.

This may not be possible for you in your setting, but as far as it is, seek it.

4. Tell stories and quote the preaching of saints from other cultures.

The church has been greatly benefitted by European theologians, but white faces have almost exclusively dominated what we consider authoritative and helpful. Even Augustine (who was African) is paper-white on the front of my copy of Confessions. That the vast majority of evangelical Christians do not even know the names of orthodox pastors like Daniel Payne, Jupiter Hammon, Lemuel Haynes, and many others is unfortunate, to say the least.

Intentionally read works from other ethnicities and cultures, and sprinkle them throughout your preaching ministry to remind people that God has revealed himself to non-white thinkers, writers, and preachers.

5. Preach the ethnicity-filled text.

Pastors don’t need to make up original ideas to mention ethnicity. To preach from the Bible, you would have to go out of your way to never mention it.

The Bible is a book featuring what Western civilization would label as “minorities.” No one in the Bible was Caucasian. Nobody looked American. None remained untouched by a crayon.

According to Daniel Hays, in his excellent biblical theology, From Every People and Nation, the closest people to Caucasians were Indo-Europeans, who included groups like the Philistines — although they looked more like modern-day Greeks or Turks than Americans or Europeans. Identifying that the non-European figures in the Bible were, in fact, non-European, helps undermine the myth that Christianity is only for whites.

6. Preach the gospel intelligibly.

If the preaching is unintelligible to those without a college degree, it is not good preaching. The complexity of language should not be the barrier to heaven; a God-hating heart should be. The offensive person of Jesus Christ should be what the rebel dismisses, not a preacher who gets lost in abstractions.

Putting one’s preaching on the top shelf will ensure that only those who are already tall will be fed, while those dead in their sins will keep descending, uninterrupted, into hell. The plea is not for shallow preaching, but rather for piercing, substantive, winsome preaching that challenges, convicts, and comforts normal people.

7. Strive to make the local church local.

Aspire and pray that the demographics of your church might generally reflect the neighborhood it belongs to. Barring extreme cases, the local church should be made up of, well, local people. If you pastor a rural church in Iowa, you may be hard-pressed for much diversity — although diversity should still be a conviction the church embraces (and diversity is never merely racial).

The temptations for an inner-city church of commuters is that it can rally around one cultural expression of worship — not feeling any need to contextualize for the people in that area, and feeling little investment in the community where it gathers because no one actually lives there.

You can read the whole thing here.

7 Ways that Pastors Can Help Their Congregations Grow in Ethnic Diversity

I’ve recently blogged about why God is magnified through ethnic diversity, along with why diversity is both more important and less important than you might have thought (and why diversity in the local church is more, if not less, than ethnic diversity).

Over at Desiring God, Greg Morse has an excellent post on how all of us—those in the pew, and those from the pulpit—can grow in this area and see lasting fruit.

Here is his section for pastors in particular.

1. Don’t dismiss social justice as “not a gospel issue.”

Many minorities have not had the luxury of ignoring social issues. Injustice has been the lion’s share of African-American history. From slavery, to Jim Crow, to fighting for civil rights and economic equality, ethical implications of the Christian gospel have never been mere abstractions.

The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. represent many more minorities than majority culture might assume,

In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with,” and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction between bodies and souls, the sacred and the secular.

In an effort to preserve the pure gospel against liberal theologies, many Bible-believing churches abdicated gospel-love for their neighbor’s social needs by standing against the Civil Rights movement — and lost many blacks as a result.

Social justice is not the gospel — but it is a result of the true gospel, and can be instrumental in directing souls to the true gospel. Jesus did not speak the second great commandment in vain. Paul did not draw in gospel ethics as a peripheral matter. Christians care about all suffering — including societal suffering. Especially when addressing societal suffering opens a doorway to share the only message that can prevent eternal suffering.

2. Diversify the liturgy.

I love hymns now — but I surely didn’t before I was saved.

What did thou even mean? Why were words not finish’d? Did Shakespeare write some of these? The use of archaic language made evangelical churches to me — in my unregenerate state — seem extra-white.

Every Sunday, I went from living in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air to stepping inside four walls of Downton Abbey. The transition was jarring. But they had the words of eternal life, they preached Christ crucified — where else could I go?

Now, it would be a crime to scrap the hymns. But just know that these precious songs use a strange tongue that can alienate the foreigner to the congregation. Diversify the music and explain some of the old hymns. I’m sure most will be helped by an explanation of what I’m actually raising when I raise mine Ebenezer. And furthermore, what an Ebenezer actually is.

Add some songs that might tempt even the Swedish Baptist to sway and clap.

3. Diversify leadership.

Qualified diversity in leadership lends itself to a healthy diverse church.

Although none of the elder qualifications have to do with skin color (for or against), having shepherds who all share the same mission — while contributing different backgrounds, perspectives, and culture — strengthens the church and casts heaven’s shadow upon earth.

This may not be possible for you in your setting, but as far as it is, seek it.

4. Tell stories and quote the preaching of saints from other cultures.

The church has been greatly benefitted by European theologians, but white faces have almost exclusively dominated what we consider authoritative and helpful. Even Augustine (who was African) is paper-white on the front of my copy of Confessions. That the vast majority of evangelical Christians do not even know the names of orthodox pastors like Daniel Payne, Jupiter Hammon, Lemuel Haynes, and many others is unfortunate, to say the least.

Intentionally read works from other ethnicities and cultures, and sprinkle them throughout your preaching ministry to remind people that God has revealed himself to non-white thinkers, writers, and preachers.

5. Preach the ethnicity-filled text.

Pastors don’t need to make up original ideas to mention ethnicity. To preach from the Bible, you would have to go out of your way to never mention it.

The Bible is a book featuring what Western civilization would label as “minorities.” No one in the Bible was Caucasian. Nobody looked American. None remained untouched by a crayon.

According to Daniel Hays, in his excellent biblical theology, From Every People and Nation, the closest people to Caucasians were Indo-Europeans, who included groups like the Philistines — although they looked more like modern-day Greeks or Turks than Americans or Europeans. Identifying that the non-European figures in the Bible were, in fact, non-European, helps undermine the myth that Christianity is only for whites.

6. Preach the gospel intelligibly.

If the preaching is unintelligible to those without a college degree, it is not good preaching. The complexity of language should not be the barrier to heaven; a God-hating heart should be. The offensive person of Jesus Christ should be what the rebel dismisses, not a preacher who gets lost in abstractions.

Putting one’s preaching on the top shelf will ensure that only those who are already tall will be fed, while those dead in their sins will keep descending, uninterrupted, into hell. The plea is not for shallow preaching, but rather for piercing, substantive, winsome preaching that challenges, convicts, and comforts normal people.

7. Strive to make the local church local.

Aspire and pray that the demographics of your church might generally reflect the neighborhood it belongs to. Barring extreme cases, the local church should be made up of, well, local people. If you pastor a rural church in Iowa, you may be hard-pressed for much diversity — although diversity should still be a conviction the church embraces (and diversity is never merely racial).

The temptations for an inner-city church of commuters is that it can rally around one cultural expression of worship — not feeling any need to contextualize for the people in that area, and feeling little investment in the community where it gathers because no one actually lives there.

You can read the whole thing here.

The post 7 Ways that Pastors Can Help Their Congregations Grow in Ethnic Diversity appeared first on The Gospel Coalition.

Why Gospel Diversity Means More—Though Not Less!—Than Ethnic Diversity

Written by: Justin Taylor

Ethnic diversity is at the heart of God’s eternal design. As John Piper argues, God gets greater glory and we get greater joy from seeing a multiplicity of peoples won to worship.

In The Compelling Community, Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop have a chapter tucked in there about diversity that is well worth reading.

Working through Ephesians 3:8-11, they ask:

What is it about unity in God’s family that makes even the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” take notice?

They answer:

It is the degree of separation between them before Christ—a separation that Paul in 2:14 calls a “dividing wall of hostility.”

It’s not simply

that these two groups were of different ethnicity (though they were), or
that they were culturally distinct (though they were), or
that for theological reasons they were kept apart (though they were).

It is that all of this separation was openly hostile.

And yet in one moment, as Christ utters his last breath and the curtain separating man from God tears from top to bottom, he destroys the barrier dividing Jew from Gentile.

Because of the extremity of their prior separation, God gets glory in their unity.

They make that point that for most readers, it is likely that diversity is both more important than they’ve considered and simultaneously less important than they have considered.

It’s more important because . . .

It is the grand witness to the truth of the gospel (Eph. 3:10).

Far from “nice to have,” diversity should be one of the most obviously supernatural characteristics of a local church. The visible bond of our unity shows off the power of an invisible gospel.

It’s less important because . . .

It is not an end in itself.

Diversity is the effect, not the substance. The thermometer, so to speak, not the thermostat. It informs us of the spiritual temperature of our congregation, but has little ability to inflect maturity. Diversity in a local church matters very little in and of itself. It matters enormously to the extent that it advertises a deeper reality of gospel unity.

They go on to define “diversity” as “any multiplicity of backgrounds where unity is possible only through the gospel.”

I found their reminders helpful—not as a way of downplaying or distracting from an emphasis on ethnic diversity, but as a way to build upon it. In other words, we should pray for more diversity, not less.

Here are some non-exhaustive categories they highlight.

1. Boundaries of Age

“Multi-generational” has become a buzz word among evangelicals for good reason: it’s not something we often see in the world. This was perhaps the first kind of diversity that attracted me to my own church, as the generation who joined in the 1940s was infiltrated in the 1990s by a generation recently come of age. Amazingly, they functioned as a single community! Young men spent their Friday nights in nursing homes. Octogenarians vacationed in Cancun with twenty-somethings.

2. Boundaries of Economics

Our world is familiar with rich people doing kind things for poor people. But then those rich people retreat to the comfort of other rich people—or at least those with a similar educational pedigree.

Not so in the church. That’s why James castigates the church’s preferential treatment of the rich in James 2:8-9.

“If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”

3. Boundaries of Politics

The local church must speak strongly on moral issues. But rarely does that moral authority translate cleanly into the details of public policy. As a result, Christians with divergent views on government policy should find unity in the more ultimate reality of God’s kingdom.

Of course, there are groups—such as the Nazi party in 1930s Germany—whose claim of moral authority so stretches credulity that the church must chose political sides. But by God’s grace, we often find ourselves in less extreme situations.

4. Boundaries of Social Ability

Do socially awkward people describe your church as a refuge? Or do they find it as cold and impersonal as the world outside? Social ability is no barrier to true fellowship in the Spirit.

5. Boundaries of Cultural Background

Especially for those who grew up in the church, cultural background carries with it expectations for how a church should feel. As a result, some degree of sacrifice is necessary to have a church composed of Christians from suburban, rural, and urban backgrounds; liturgical, Pentecostal, and African-American religious traditions; and many different countries of origin. That’s just fine. But explain to your congregation that everyone must sacrifice, both in the majority and the minority culture. Unity will often require sacrificing our interests for those of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

If we seek boundary-crossing love that perplexes the world around us, then some types of diversity will often speak louder than others. A church in the lily-white suburbs of Boston comes to mind. Everyone might have similar skin color, but the congregation sits at the intersection of four towns with dramatically different class identities. So when a former addict from Weymouth spends nights and weekends speaking truth into the marriage of a Hingham banking executive, something is happening that perplexes the surrounding world. In my church, on the other hand, located in what has been one of the most ethnically segregated cities in the country, ethnic diversity speaks volumes. To be sure, ethnic diversity can be found in my city—so long as we’re only talking about, for example, young political liberals from Ivy League schools. But the first comments I often hear from visitors is about how the church includes such dramatically different backgrounds—and yet still functions as a single community.

What about for your church? What boundaries has the gospel overrun that society fiercely respects?

Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop, The Compelling Community: Where God’s Power Makes a Church Attractive (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015), 73-75.

Why Gospel Diversity Means More—Though Not Less!—Than Ethnic Diversity

Ethnic diversity is at the heart of God’s eternal design. As John Piper argues, God gets greater glory and we get greater joy from seeing a multiplicity of peoples won to worship.

In The Compelling Community, Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop have a chapter tucked in there about diversity that is well worth reading.

Working through Ephesians 3:8-11, they ask:

What is it about unity in God’s family that makes even the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” take notice?

They answer:

It is the degree of separation between them before Christ—a separation that Paul in 2:14 calls a “dividing wall of hostility.”

It’s not simply

that these two groups were of different ethnicity (though they were), or
that they were culturally distinct (though they were), or
that for theological reasons they were kept apart (though they were).

It is that all of this separation was openly hostile.

And yet in one moment, as Christ utters his last breath and the curtain separating man from God tears from top to bottom, he destroys the barrier dividing Jew from Gentile.

Because of the extremity of their prior separation, God gets glory in their unity.

They make that point that for most readers, it is likely that diversity is both more important than they’ve considered and simultaneously less important than they have considered.

It’s more important because . . .

It is the grand witness to the truth of the gospel (Eph. 3:10).

Far from “nice to have,” diversity should be one of the most obviously supernatural characteristics of a local church. The visible bond of our unity shows off the power of an invisible gospel.

It’s less important because . . .

It is not an end in itself.

Diversity is the effect, not the substance. The thermometer, so to speak, not the thermostat. It informs us of the spiritual temperature of our congregation, but has little ability to inflect maturity. Diversity in a local church matters very little in and of itself. It matters enormously to the extent that it advertises a deeper reality of gospel unity.

They go on to define “diversity” as “any multiplicity of backgrounds where unity is possible only through the gospel.”

I found their reminders helpful—not as a way of downplaying or distracting from an emphasis on ethnic diversity, but as a way to build upon it. In other words, we should pray for more diversity, not less.

Here are some non-exhaustive categories they highlight.

1. Boundaries of Age

“Multi-generational” has become a buzz word among evangelicals for good reason: it’s not something we often see in the world. This was perhaps the first kind of diversity that attracted me to my own church, as the generation who joined in the 1940s was infiltrated in the 1990s by a generation recently come of age. Amazingly, they functioned as a single community! Young men spent their Friday nights in nursing homes. Octogenarians vacationed in Cancun with twenty-somethings.

2. Boundaries of Economics

Our world is familiar with rich people doing kind things for poor people. But then those rich people retreat to the comfort of other rich people—or at least those with a similar educational pedigree.

Not so in the church. That’s why James castigates the church’s preferential treatment of the rich in James 2:8-9.

“If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”

3. Boundaries of Politics

The local church must speak strongly on moral issues. But rarely does that moral authority translate cleanly into the details of public policy. As a result, Christians with divergent views on government policy should find unity in the more ultimate reality of God’s kingdom.

Of course, there are groups—such as the Nazi party in 1930s Germany—whose claim of moral authority so stretches credulity that the church must chose political sides. But by God’s grace, we often find ourselves in less extreme situations.

4. Boundaries of Social Ability

Do socially awkward people describe your church as a refuge? Or do they find it as cold and impersonal as the world outside? Social ability is no barrier to true fellowship in the Spirit.

5. Boundaries of Cultural Background

Especially for those who grew up in the church, cultural background carries with it expectations for how a church should feel. As a result, some degree of sacrifice is necessary to have a church composed of Christians from suburban, rural, and urban backgrounds; liturgical, Pentecostal, and African-American religious traditions; and many different countries of origin. That’s just fine. But explain to your congregation that everyone must sacrifice, both in the majority and the minority culture. Unity will often require sacrificing our interests for those of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

If we seek boundary-crossing love that perplexes the world around us, then some types of diversity will often speak louder than others. A church in the lily-white suburbs of Boston comes to mind. Everyone might have similar skin color, but the congregation sits at the intersection of four towns with dramatically different class identities. So when a former addict from Weymouth spends nights and weekends speaking truth into the marriage of a Hingham banking executive, something is happening that perplexes the surrounding world. In my church, on the other hand, located in what has been one of the most ethnically segregated cities in the country, ethnic diversity speaks volumes. To be sure, ethnic diversity can be found in my city—so long as we’re only talking about, for example, young political liberals from Ivy League schools. But the first comments I often hear from visitors is about how the church includes such dramatically different backgrounds—and yet still functions as a single community.

What about for your church? What boundaries has the gospel overrun that society fiercely respects?

Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop, The Compelling Community: Where God’s Power Makes a Church Attractive (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015), 73-75.

The post Why Gospel Diversity Means More—Though Not Less!—Than Ethnic Diversity appeared first on The Gospel Coalition.

Four Ways that Diversity—More than Uniformity—Magnifies God

Written by: Justin Taylor

One day, in the new heavens and the new earth, God’s diverse redeemed peoples—a great multitude so large it cannot be counted—will sing a new song together in unison:

Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals,

for you were slain,

and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation! (Rev. 5:9; cf. 7:9)

Have you ever asked why God designed it this way? He could have just redeemed one people group. In fact, he could have simply created one solitary group. But diversity was part of his eternal design.

The most compelling answer I have read is found in John Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad! Piper offers four biblical reflections on how God’s focus on the diversity of the peoples advances his purpose to be glorified in creation.

1. There is a beauty and power of praise that comes from unity in diversity that is greater than that which comes from unity alone.

Psalm 96:3-4 connects the evangelizing of the peoples with the quality of praise that God deserves.

“Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvelous works among all the peoples!

For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;

he is to be feared above all gods.”

Notice the word “for.” The extraordinary greatness of the praise that the Lord should receive is the ground and impetus of our mission to the nations.

I infer from this that the beauty and power of praise that will come to the Lord from the diversity of the nations are greater than the beauty and power that would come to him if the chorus of the redeemed were culturally uniform.

The reason for this can be seen in the analogy of a choir. More depth of beauty is felt from a choir that sings in parts than from a choir that sings only in unison. Unity in diversity is more beautiful and more powerful than the unity of uniformity. This carries over to the untold differences that exist between the peoples of the world. When their diversity unites in worship to God, the beauty of their praise will echo the depth and greatness of God’s beauty far more than if the redeemed were from only a few different people groups.

2. The fame and greatness and worth of an object of beauty increases in proportion to the diversity of those who recognize its beauty.

If a work of art is regarded as great among a small and like-minded group of people but not by anyone else, the art is probably not truly great. Its qualities are such that it does not appeal to the deep universals in our hearts but only to provincial biases.

But if a work of art continues to win more and more admirers not only across cultures but also across decades and centuries, then its greatness is irresistibly manifested.

Thus, when Paul says, “Praise the Lord all you nations, and let all the peoples extol him” (Rom. 15:11, author’s translation), he is saying that there is something about God that is so universally praiseworthy and so profoundly beautiful and so comprehensively worthy and so deeply satisfying that God will find passionate admirers in every diverse people group in the world.

His true greatness will be manifest in the breadth of the diversity of those who perceive and cherish his beauty.

His excellence will be shown to be higher and deeper than the parochial preferences that make us happy most of the time.

His appeal will be to the deepest, highest, largest capacities of the human soul.

Thus, the diversity of the source of admiration will testify to his incomparable glory.

3. The strength and wisdom and love of a leader is magnified in proportion to the diversity of people he can inspire to follow him with joy.

If you can lead only a small, uniform group of people, your leadership qualities are not as great as they would be if you could win a following from a large group of very diverse people.

Paul’s understanding of what is happening in his missionary work among the nations is that Christ is demonstrating his greatness in winning obedience from all the peoples of the world:

“I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles [or nations] to obedience (Rom. 15:18).

It is not Paul’s missionary expertise that is being magnified as more and more diverse peoples choose to follow Christ. It is the greatness of Christ. He is showing himself superior to all other leaders. The last phrase of Psalm 96:3-4 shows the leadership competition that is going on in world missions.

“Declare his glory among the nations. . . .

He is to be feared above all gods.”

We should declare the glory of God among the nations because in this way he will show his superiority over all other gods that make pretentious claims to lead the peoples.

The more diverse the people groups who forsake their gods to follow the true God, the more visible is God’s superiority over all his competitors.

4. By focusing on all the people groups of the world, God undercuts ethnocentric pride and throws all peoples back upon his free grace rather than any distinctive of their own.

This is what Paul emphasizes in Acts 17:26 when he says to the proud citizens of Athens,

“[God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.”

F. F. Bruce points out that

“the Athenians . . . pride themselves on being . . . sprung from the soil of their native Attica. . . . They were the only Greeks on the European mainland who had no tradition of their ancestors coming into Greece; they belonged to the earliest wave of Greek immigration.”

Against this boast Paul countered: You and the Barbarians and the Jews and the Romans all came from the same origin. And you came by God’s will, not your own; and the time and place of your existence is in God’s hand.

Every time God expresses his missionary focus for all the nations, he cuts the nerve of ethnocentric pride. It’s a humbling thing to discover that God does not choose our people group because of any distinctives of worth but rather that we might double our joy in him by being a means of bringing all the other groups into the same joy.

John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010), 222-24.

Four Ways that Diversity—More than Uniformity—Magnifies God

One day, in the new heavens and the new earth, God’s diverse redeemed peoples—a great multitude so large it cannot be counted—will sing a new song together in unison:

Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals,

for you were slain,

and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation! (Rev. 5:9; cf. 7:9)

Have you ever asked why God designed it this way? He could have just redeemed one people group. In fact, he could have simply created one solitary group. But diversity was part of his eternal design.

The most compelling answer I have read is found in John Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad! Piper offers four biblical reflections on how God’s focus on the diversity of the peoples advances his purpose to be glorified in creation.

1. There is a beauty and power of praise that comes from unity in diversity that is greater than that which comes from unity alone.

Psalm 96:3-4 connects the evangelizing of the peoples with the quality of praise that God deserves.

“Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvelous works among all the peoples!

For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;

he is to be feared above all gods.”

Notice the word “for.” The extraordinary greatness of the praise that the Lord should receive is the ground and impetus of our mission to the nations.

I infer from this that the beauty and power of praise that will come to the Lord from the diversity of the nations are greater than the beauty and power that would come to him if the chorus of the redeemed were culturally uniform.

The reason for this can be seen in the analogy of a choir. More depth of beauty is felt from a choir that sings in parts than from a choir that sings only in unison. Unity in diversity is more beautiful and more powerful than the unity of uniformity. This carries over to the untold differences that exist between the peoples of the world. When their diversity unites in worship to God, the beauty of their praise will echo the depth and greatness of God’s beauty far more than if the redeemed were from only a few different people groups.

2. The fame and greatness and worth of an object of beauty increases in proportion to the diversity of those who recognize its beauty.

If a work of art is regarded as great among a small and like-minded group of people but not by anyone else, the art is probably not truly great. Its qualities are such that it does not appeal to the deep universals in our hearts but only to provincial biases.

But if a work of art continues to win more and more admirers not only across cultures but also across decades and centuries, then its greatness is irresistibly manifested.

Thus, when Paul says, “Praise the Lord all you nations, and let all the peoples extol him” (Rom. 15:11, author’s translation), he is saying that there is something about God that is so universally praiseworthy and so profoundly beautiful and so comprehensively worthy and so deeply satisfying that God will find passionate admirers in every diverse people group in the world.

His true greatness will be manifest in the breadth of the diversity of those who perceive and cherish his beauty.

His excellence will be shown to be higher and deeper than the parochial preferences that make us happy most of the time.

His appeal will be to the deepest, highest, largest capacities of the human soul.

Thus, the diversity of the source of admiration will testify to his incomparable glory.

3. The strength and wisdom and love of a leader is magnified in proportion to the diversity of people he can inspire to follow him with joy.

If you can lead only a small, uniform group of people, your leadership qualities are not as great as they would be if you could win a following from a large group of very diverse people.

Paul’s understanding of what is happening in his missionary work among the nations is that Christ is demonstrating his greatness in winning obedience from all the peoples of the world:

“I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles [or nations] to obedience (Rom. 15:18).

It is not Paul’s missionary expertise that is being magnified as more and more diverse peoples choose to follow Christ. It is the greatness of Christ. He is showing himself superior to all other leaders. The last phrase of Psalm 96:3-4 shows the leadership competition that is going on in world missions.

“Declare his glory among the nations. . . .

He is to be feared above all gods.”

We should declare the glory of God among the nations because in this way he will show his superiority over all other gods that make pretentious claims to lead the peoples.

The more diverse the people groups who forsake their gods to follow the true God, the more visible is God’s superiority over all his competitors.

4. By focusing on all the people groups of the world, God undercuts ethnocentric pride and throws all peoples back upon his free grace rather than any distinctive of their own.

This is what Paul emphasizes in Acts 17:26 when he says to the proud citizens of Athens,

“[God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.”

F. F. Bruce points out that

“the Athenians . . . pride themselves on being . . . sprung from the soil of their native Attica. . . . They were the only Greeks on the European mainland who had no tradition of their ancestors coming into Greece; they belonged to the earliest wave of Greek immigration.”

Against this boast Paul countered: You and the Barbarians and the Jews and the Romans all came from the same origin. And you came by God’s will, not your own; and the time and place of your existence is in God’s hand.

Every time God expresses his missionary focus for all the nations, he cuts the nerve of ethnocentric pride. It’s a humbling thing to discover that God does not choose our people group because of any distinctives of worth but rather that we might double our joy in him by being a means of bringing all the other groups into the same joy.

John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010), 222-24.

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