same-sex marriage and christian reactions

Same-sex marriage is high on the cultural agenda these days.  As Christians, it is important that our thinking on this issue is biblically informed and guided and not simply visceral.   It is also important that we are able to present our understanding as clearly as possible both to other Christians and to non-Christians.  Below are some links that will help to educate us on the issues.  I do not necessarily agree with all that they say but they present a good launching pad for reflection.  It is also worth reading the comments on some as they often present the opposing case inviting us to clearer engagement.

Let me say, it is absolutely clear to me same-sex marriage has no biblical support and for a Christian it is completely forbidden.  It is clear to me too that churches which promote or condone same-sex marriage among their members are apostate in nature and should be avoided.  Bible teachers who so teach should be disciplined by the church as false teachers.  The harder question to answer for me is how far Christians should oppose same-sex marriage being made legal by society.

The bigger question here of course is the role that God expects of his people in society.  Or, to frame this question in contemporary jargon – what is the mission of the church?  Some questions in the mix include: is the church called to be a moral policeman in society; is the church mission to ‘redeem culture’; if we have an obligation to oppose society’s evils then where do we start and where do we stop; where do we find this moral imperative upon the church to attempt to change culture in Scripture?

On the other side many will ask, when faced with injustice and the ability to do something about it, should Christians pass by on the other side?

See, here,  here,  here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

what is the mission of the church?

Kevin De Young and Greg Gilbert have written a book called ‘What is the Mission of the Church?’.  It has touched a raw nerve in the younger American evangelical scene.   Some have written fairly critical reviews of it (see here for an inventory of these).  De Young and Gilbert have responded here.

The debate is important for it affects what we understand to be our responsibility to society as Christians.  It is well worth taking the time to read the online discussion at the very least.  I have not read De Young’s book but I know my overall position is nearer to De Young and Gilbert than to those in the ‘missional’ camp (followers more of Christopher Wright and N T Wright).  The problem with the more ‘missional’ or ‘transformational’ paradigm, to my mind, is the biblical meta-narrative assumed.   Its advocates believe the story of the Bible starts with creation and see God’s mission as restoring creation.   They are, in my view, wrong in both counts.

• While the biblical narrative begins with creation, creation is not the beginning of the story.  The ‘true’ beginning is only revealed as the plot unfolds.  The real beginning is God’s plan in eternity.   God’s plan is Christ and all who find their election in him, information not available in the story’s first chapter (Eph 1).  In other words, God’s goal was never Adam and the first creation but Christ and the new creation.  The End does not complete the Beginning; the Beginning is simply a prologue for the End.  Adam was only the type, Christ is the antitype.  Or, if you like, the Second Man was always the First.
  

• If ‘transformationalists’ get the beginning of the story wrong, they also get the end wrong too.  The dénouement is not a return to the beginning but a new beginning that eclipses all that has gone before.  New creation is not creation restored or regained, it is creation radically reconfigured.   The missional perspective builds too much on continuity and does not give nearly enough credit to discontinuity.  They do not credit new creation with being just that, ‘new’.

The result of a misread plot is a skewed understanding of the act in the drama where we find ourselves now.  The task of the church is not to transform society but to bear witness to society of God’s new creation by proclaiming the gospel in word and life.  Of course, with the life of Christ in our hearts we will seek to do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith’ (for that is what Christ did) but that is somewhat different from seeing our mission as ‘the flourishing of creation’.  We will of course respect creation as good stewards of it but what we wish primarily to see flourishing is not creation, but new creation, which in my view is a very different thing.

reacting to the sermon on the mount – a spiritual health check

Over the centuries the Sermon on the Mount has been subjected to many interpretations. —the older Catholic interpreters referred to,“two tiers of Christians,” the Lutherans viewed it as  “law to prepare for the Gospel,”the Calvinist as a “mandate for the state,” the nineteenth–century liberals conceived it as “social optimism”, an ethic for socially creating the Kingdom of God,  Schweitzer saw it as an  apocalyptic “interim ethic,” others, more hostile, a pitiful  ethic that negates the core of what it is to be human, and old–line dispensationalism placed it in the end-time tribulation or the Millennium — most today understand it as part of Jesus’ “already but not yet” ethic for the Kingdom of God.

The ‘interpretation’ we impose on the sermon tends to colour how we react to it and how we react says a lot about where we are spiritually.  Below are four reactions.  Which best describes yours?

you despise it

This is the most grave of all reactions to the sermon.  It reveals a heart deeply antagonistic to God.  This reaction was that of the C19 German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.  Nietzsche despised Christianity and its values.  He considered them weak and demeaning.  Far from dying to self, in poverty of spirit and meekness, man must be assertive.  He must seek power, glory and greatness.  ‘Be what you are’ was his motto, and, as a motto for man in sin, this is massively self-deifying and destructive.  Man is god.  Man is supreme.  Man must dominate.   In personal strength and not weakness is man’s destiny.   The values of the Sermon on the Mount are to be despised as a ‘slave morality’.  Nietzsche’s philosophy met with a fair degree of resistance in his (more Christian) time but it has become the prevailing view of many in the West today.  It is the brazen bold assertiveness of Adam in the garden without pretence or hypocrisy.  Nietzsche is the philosopher whose hubris declared the death of God.  In time of course it was Neitzsche who died, as defiant in death as in life.  His friend, Gast, gave his funeral oration, proclaiming: “Holy be your name to all future generations!”  Adam had come of age.

you admire it

For many over the centuries, however, the Sermon on the Mount has been admired and lauded.  Many moralists of society pointed to the Sermon on the Mount as a blueprint for society.  Gandhi, a Hindu teacher said of it,

‘Of all the things I have read what remained with me forever was that Jesus came almost to give a new law – not an eye for an eye but to receive two blows when only one was given, and to go two miles when they were asked to go one. I came to see that the Sermon on the Mount was the whole of Christianity for him who wanted to live a Christian life. It is that sermon that has endeared Jesus to me.”   

For Gandhi, the sermon presented the ideal virtues of non-resistance and pacificism. Gandhi was influenced by Leo Tolstoy who believed the pacificism of the sermon was a model for society.  The Kingdom of God arrrived as men embraced these values.  In the final analysis, it appears for both, and for many others, the Kingdom of God was not much more than aspiring to the life of the Sermon on the Mount.  Some grasped more than others the impossibly high standard of righteousness the sermon required (Tolstoy renounced all his wealth and became an ascetic in pursuit of its righteousness)  but few grasped that to enter the Kingdom and live this life to any degree one had to be ‘born again’ (Jn 3); the Kingdom is not firstly a life to be lived but a Lord to be trusted.   Death to self and the life of the sermon comes through the death and resurrection of another before it becomes our own.

In the final analysis, the belief of old-time liberals that moral living will bring the kingdom of God perishes on the rock of human nature.  It fails to recognise that the sermon is not compatible with fallen human nature.  Nietzsche had complete clarity in this point; his view of the sermon is more true to human nature as it is however desperate it may be.  Any unregenerate human heart who has an inkling of the thrust of the sermon does not find it is a message to admire but one to fear and hate.  The sermon crushes fallen human nature and leaves it dead.

you are  crushed by it

For many, the sermon is a message of despair.  They read the sermon and they recognise its impossibility.  They feel their powerlessness before it.  It leaves them, as Roms 5 says, knowing they are ‘without strength’.    The sermon acts, for them, upon conscience like ‘law’, that is, it makes them conscious of their sin.  In fact, its very commands incite rebellion in the heart.  They resent it.  Thy are condemned by it.  It makes them fear and resent God.  Lutherans tend to view the sermon this way, or at least many modern Lutherans do.

Now in many ways this is a good thing.  The Spirit of God often uses the sermon to convict of sin just like he uses the Mosaic Law, or our innate values.  Moreover, conviction of sin and a sense of our malaise is a healthy and necessary prerequisite to salvation.  It is far more promising than moral smugness.  Those who believe themselves well have no need of a doctor, only the sick:  the righteous (or those who think they are righteous) have no need of a Saviour, but Christ came to call ‘sinners’ to repentance (Lk 5:32).

But let me make a point in passing.  While the sermon or ‘law’ makes us conscious of sin it does not provide a Saviour or hope of forgiveness.  Indeed, law never does.  Law can only condemn.  It cannot lead us to repentance.  It doesn’t make us hate our sin, only know it and its consequences.  It doesn’t offer mercy or forgiveness (I speak of law, in principle as God’s demands apart from sacrifice).  Only the gospel can do this.  It is the kindness of God that leads to repentance (Roms 2).   It is the assurance of grace that makes repentance even a possibility.  Repeatedly this point is made in Scripture (Ps 78:34,35; Isa 55:7; Joel 2:13; Acts 2:38). Pure law provides only death; only grace shows the way of life.

For the unbeliever therefore, perhaps the first step towards faith, may be to be convicted of sin by this sermon.   For the careless who presume upon God’s grace and treat it ‘cheaply’ the sermon warns of houses built on sand and shakes false assurance.  But what of the ‘believer’?  Should a believer approach the sermon in fear and trepidation?  Should he/she be afraid to read it because it condemns?    Should the heart of faith read this sermon and be crushed by it?  Although many answer yes, I cannot agree.  Christ’s words are never intended to crush his people as they seek to follow him.  They may and should crush the flesh, but not the believer.

you delight in it

The believer rejoices in the sermon.   Like the psalmist in the OT he ‘delights in the law of the Lord’.   His ear is opened morning by morning to hear as one instructed (Ps 50:4).  He does not approach the sermon as a word of law to condemn rather, he comes as one who stands consciously in grace (Roms 5:1).  He rejoices in the fact that his iniquities are forgiven and his sin is covered (Roms 4).  By faith he grasps that he is seated with Christ in heavenly places, holy and accepted and before God in a place of love (Eph 1).  For him there is no accusation (Roms 8:1).  God is for him and who or what can be against him.  He stands secure in the knowledge that nothing can separate him from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus his Lord.

In this security he reads the sermon and his holy soul – the life he has in the Spirit – rejoices in it.  What the sermon teaches his spirit affirms.   This is the life of Christ that pulsates within.   Yes, his flesh rebels against it, but it is this very flesh he wishes, by the Spirit, to put to death.  If his eye offends he desires to pluck it out.  The divine nature of which he is a partaker delights in poverty of spirit and meekness.   It envies godliness.  It lusts after Christlikeness.  It yearns to know Christ and the power of his resurrection expressed in fellowship with his sufferings.  This is the life of faith, the life of a ‘believer’.

Yes, there will be failure.  But, in failure, faith finds confidence that we have an intercessor in the heavens, Jesus Christ the Righteous who restores us.  We know that when we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  Thus, we do not constantly look back in regret, or inwardly in defeat, but we look up in faith, and forward in anticipation as we seek to lay hold of that for which God has laid hold of us.  Faith denies condemnation, accusation, impossibility, and defeat any voice.  It does not doubt or despair or stand condemned but is strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

We live in confidence that what the sermon exhorts us to hear and do God works in us as he enables us to will and do for his own good pleasure.  Thus for the ‘believer’ who lives in gospel faith the sermon is nothing less than ‘the good, acceptable and perfect will of God’ which is his daily meat.

How do you react to the sermon on the Mount?  Do you despise it, admire it, fear it, or delight in it?

creation and new creation

I like have not yet read VanDruren’s book ‘Living in God’s Two Kingdoms’ but I do like a distinction that he apparently makes in it.  He says, according to Bobbie Jamieson’s review, that redemption is not ‘creation regained’ but ‘re-creation gained’ (Pg 26).   This I believe is absolutely right and puts the emphasis firmly where the Bible does.

‘Creation regained’ argues that redemption simply takes us back to the original creation.  This in turn opens the door to the view that the ‘mission’ of the Chrurch is to ‘redeem culture’.  However, neither view is correct.  It is not God’s plan to take us back to first creation, neither is it his purpose to redeem culture.

Taking the second first.  ‘Culture’ is simply a contemporary word for ‘the world’, the human order as it now is in opposition to God.  The Bible reveals no plans to  ‘redeem’ this culture or world.  Indeed we are explicitly told the world is condemned and under judgement (Jn 16:8; 1 Cor 11:32); it is ‘passing away’ (1 Cor 7:32; 1 John 2:17).  Thus Jesus does not pray for the world but those God has given him out of the world (Jn 17:6).  Christians should show the grace and kindness of God to those in society in all the ways they can but they should have no illusions about Christianizing culture.  The gospel redeems people not structures; it saves them, in union with their risen Lord, ‘out of the world’ (Jn 13:1;15:19;17:6).

VanDrunen is right, God’s intention is ‘re-creation’ or ‘new creation‘.  And new creation is much more than Eden restored.  It is a new world born out of death.  It is entered now through death with Christ and will be realized fully at Christ’s Second Coming when the whole of the old creation will go through the convolution of death and resurrection.   In the language of Hebrews,

Heb 1:10-12 (ESV)
And, “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands;  ​​​​​​​​they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment,  ​​​​​​​​like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.”

and 2 Peter

2Pet 3:10-13 (ESV)
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.  Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

New creation metamorphs the initial creation.  There is, for example, no marriage in the final new creation.  Nor will there be any possibility of death; Adam could die, in the new age death is not possible.  It is a creation energized not simply by ‘flesh’ (although it will be physical) but by ‘the Holy Spirit’.    New creation in the final analysis is glorification.  Let’s avoid losing the gospel in mistaken notions that ‘missional’ means redeeming and transforming culture.   I intend to read VanDrunen’s book.  I hope you do too.

too many rules

An extract from an article by Mike Horton on the church’s call in the world.

‘Pastors aren’t authorized to create their own blueprint for transformation, but are servants of the Word. Where Scripture has clearly spoken, he must speak. Where it is silent, he must keep his personal opinions and perhaps even learned conclusions to himself. Of course, pastors are called to preach the whole council of God… That’s enough to occupy our prayerful action in the world, without piling up commands that God never gave. We’re never called to transform the world (or even our neighborhood). We’re never called even to bring millions to Jesus Christ. We’re called to be faithful in our vocations at work, at home, in our neighborhoods and in our witness to those individuals whom God brings across our path in ordinary ways every day.’

Amen!

the gospel and a transformed world

I recommend you read Owen Strachan’s blog on the gospel and social transformation.  He seems to me to get it just right.  In fact, I couldn’t have said it better myself.  In fact, if truth be told, I couldn’t have said it half so well.  This is a subject about which I feel quite strongly for if we get our theology wrong here we get drawn into unbiblical extremes either of involvement or withdrawal and in both extremes the gospel suffers and may get lost.

c s lewis quotations

Interesting quote from C S Lewis on social justice on Justin Taylor’s blog.  Another interesting quote from Lewis on intellectual conceit and church fellowship at Ray Ortlund’s blog.