Love Wins and Jesus

The Christian Mommy Blogger is back in the news again. Glennon Doyle Melton isn’t making the current headlines because her husband cheated on her, she divorced him, or because she then began to date former Olympic female soccer player Abby Wambach. No. This time, she’s causing a stir in Christian communities because she married Abby Wambach.

Though these actions are becoming more and more common in today’s moral climate, biblically speaking, they are not normal. They are not the way God intended for us to interact with each other.

Melton, however sees things differently.

She wrote in a 2013 post, “I know my Jesus, I love Him, and I think if he needed me to believe that homosexuality was a sin, He would have mentioned it. … And even the Gospels… well, even though they are gospel to me, I accept that they are also interpretations of what Jesus said and did and meant -we don’t have a single written word directly from Jesus. He could have left us something – he could have left another list of rights and wrongs when He came to Earth, but he chose not to.”

Notice a couple of things about these statements. First, in these words we see humanity’s propensity to fashion a god in our own image. Melton’s Jesus is obviously okay with homosexuality because, to Melton, her Jesus must explicitly state the things he is for or against. And, according to that stance, Melton’s Jesus must be okay with the rape of minors because her Jesus doesn’t explicitly say, “Thou shalt not rape minors.”

Next, Melton’s view of the Scriptures is not surprising. She claims that the simple words of Christ are not even His words; they are only interpretations of Jesus’ actual words made by His disciples. Following her train of logic, we would then be free to appeal to the authority of our feelings when interpreting these supposed interpretations of Jesus, which Melton has a clear propensity to do.

However, the words of Jesus in the New Testament are not merely the interpretations of His disciples, and Jesus absolutely spoke out against all sexual sin, including homosexuality.

For instance, in Matthew 5, Jesus said He didn’t come to abolish the Torah but to fulfill it. In other words, Jesus meant that He came to interpret the Law correctly so that it can be lived correctly. And, in the gospels we see Him both affirm and amplify the sexual morals of the Torah.

Second, in Matthew 15, Jesus expressly declared that all sexual acts committed outside of marriage defile human beings. The term He uses is porneia, which is a general reference to the sexually forbidden behaviors listed in Leviticus 18.

Paul fuses together two words from the Greek translation of Leviticus 18:22, also known as the Septuagint, to coin the term homosexual in his first letter to the Corinthians. Arsenokoitai is actually a combination of the two words, Arsenos and Koiten, which roughly translate as man-bedder. Here in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul echoes Jesus’ words in both Matthew 15 and Revelation 21:8 saying that no arsenokoitai, or anyone who unrepentantly commits any form of porneia, will enter the kingdom of God.

Finally, in Matthew 19 Jesus quotes the Torah again by saying that marriage as God created it is the union of one man and one woman for life. There is not a single positive example of homosexual conduct in the Bible or place it is blessed. And, every single time homosexuality is mentioned in Scripture, it is expressly spoken against.

The early Church clearly spoke out against homosexuality. They also made distinctions between what we would think of as common homosexual practices and more deviant forms such as pederasty and sex cults. These are all unchanging facts that we have to deal with.

This, however, is more than a blog about homosexuality, this is a blog about love.

I realize that some folks may believe that what I have written reads more like hate speech than love. But please, please hang with me a little longer before writing me off as a hate and fearmongerer.

On May 15, Melton wrote her Instagram followers, "My beloveds – please never give up on love. Life could surprise the [expletive] out of you. Trust me – you might just wake up one morning and find yourself smack dab in the middle of heaven. I love my wife. LOVE WINS." 

Just as there is a culture war being waged over sexuality, there is a war being fought over the definition of the word love. So, what does it actually mean to love God? Let’s look at a couple of passages.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days. – Deuteronomy 30:19-20

What you just read is basically a summary statement of the entire book of Deuteronomy. This message is repeated over and over: If we love God, we keep His commands. But surely Jesus, who embodied love would see things differently, right?

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me. – John 14:23-24

John 14 is just one of an overwhelming number of places that Jesus identifies Himself with the Lord God of the Old Testament. He and the Father are one. If we love Jesus, we will obey His commands.

How many of Jesus’ commands are we called to obey? He made that crystal clear in His parting words. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:19-20).”

Last week I wrote that God’s love language is obedience to the commands of Christ. Based on the Great Commission, if we love Jesus and others, we will teach people the truth about what He said, and then help them to follow Him. And I am confident that you can demonstrate the same obedient love toward Him as the early Christians did because the same Holy Spirit that empowered them empowers followers of Jesus today.

Jesus loved us enough to deny Himself and carry His cross. The early Christians willingly laid down their lives out of devotion to Jesus' commands. May we love Him enough do the same. 

Let him who has love in Christ keep the commandments of Christ. Who can describe the [blessed] bond of the love of God? What man is able to tell the excellence of its beauty, as it ought to be told? The height to which love exalts is unspeakable. Love unites us to God. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love bears all things, is long-suffering in all things. There is nothing base, nothing arrogant in love … without love nothing is well-pleasing to God. In love has the Lord taken us to Himself. On account of the Love he bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God; His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our souls. … Blessed are we, beloved, if we keep the commandments of God in the harmony of love; that so through love our sins may be forgiven us. – Clement of Rome 95CE, ANF Volume 1, p. 36-37 [CD-ROM]

The Five “We Wills”

Early in my childhood, my parents took our family to the circus. I had a great time, but the thing that impressed me the most was seeing performers stand on the seats of moving bicycles.

Of course, the next day I pulled out my trusty BMX and gave it a shot. Peddling up some momentum, in a crouched position I cautiously put one foot on the seat, and then the other. Surprised I had made it that far, I decided to stand up and shout, “I’m the king of the world!”

Face… meet concrete. Thank goodness the dentist was able to fit me into his schedule and give me a new front tooth.

Whenever I tell that story, people always quote the same Bible verse to me, “Pride goes before a fall.” It’s true, though. Pride does serve as a forerunner to destruction because the Bible says that God Himself opposes the proud.

“God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” … Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. – James 4:6, 13-16

The word ‘opposed’ is an ancient military term, which pictures an army assuming a specific battle-array position to attack an enemy force. James says that God is not messing around about pride. When He sees it, He gets ready to throw down, and God never loses a fight.

A classic example of this God versus pride dynamic is found in Isaiah 14, a passage known as the five ‘I wills’ of Lucifer.

Take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, and say … “How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, to the recesses of the pit.” – Isaiah 14:12-15

In Isaiah 14, the king of Babylon is described as being analogous to the devil. And just as the divine rebel was cast down and humiliated because of his treacherous pride, Isaiah declares that the same fate will befall the pompous king of Babylon.

When the President of the United States of America ended his inauguration speech, he did so in an eerily similar fashion as the king of Babylon’s boast against God. President Trump, however, used five ‘we wills’. Some have argued that the use of the word ‘we’ is a clear mark of humility, but the mere usage of a first person plural pronoun means nothing. What matters is what he said ‘we’ can and will do.

Please read his closing remarks from the speech:

When America is united, America is totally unstoppable. … No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. … We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow. A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions. … Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. Together, We Will Make America Strong Again. We Will Make America Wealthy Again. We Will Make America Proud Again. We Will Make America Safe Again. And, Yes, together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless America.

The spirit of America? The Bible tells us to not readily accept every spirit, but rather to test them since not every spirit comes from God. And before you totally write me off, claiming that it’s absurd to insinuate that there is an actual spirit of America, pause with me and reflect on what the Scriptures might have to say on the matter.

Knowing that the book of Daniel says there were angelic principalities called the Prince of Persia and the Prince of Greece, I wonder what it was that drove thousands of Ephesians to shout in unison for two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” If it’s possible that there was a territorial angelic spirit over the area of Ephesus that led people to be hostile to the simple words of Christ, isn’t it possible the same dynamic is happening here?

So, let’s briefly test this spirit of America using the words we just read from President Trump’s speech.

Is America truly unstoppable and all-powerful? Is America what ushers in the New Millennium? Is America able to rid the world all disease forever? Who or what does the spirit of America tell us to put our confidence in? Does the spirit of America glorify the Lord God Jesus Christ, or the god of us?

We Will. We Will. We Will. We Will. We Will.

What ever happened to God’s will? There’s not much room left for God when we’re so full of ourselves.

Beating our chests with shouts of our grandiosity won’t open the floodgates of heaven, but it will lead to spectacularly painful face-plants. God doesn’t bless pride; He never has and never will. God blesses humility.

We need to rediscover our roots. We need to go back to a time when Christianity was truly great… when it couldn’t care less about the affairs of the State, but would relinquish anything for the kingdom of God. We need to get on our knees in repentance of our pride, and plead not for America to be great again (whatever that means), but for the glory of God to be great in the Church again.

Let us do all those things which pertain to holiness, avoiding all evil-speaking, all abominable and impure embraces, together with all drunkenness ... all abominable lusts, detestable adultery, and repulsive pride. “For God,” says [the Scripture], “resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” … Let our praise be in God and not of ourselves; for God hates those that commend themselves. Let testimony to our good deeds be borne by others. … Arrogance, and audacity belong to those that are accursed of God; but moderation, humility, and meekness to such as are blessed by Him. – Clement of Rome 95CE, Volume 1, p. 25-26 [CD-ROM]

The Unlikely Apostle Pt. 6: “All Scripture Is Inspired By God”

As a young child, why did I try to punch my doctor when he attempted to give me a penicillin shot? Then in seventh grade, why did I shoot a paper taco at my History teacher’s head on the last day of school? Why did I lie to the policeman who pulled me over for speeding during my first month of having my license?

Why do kids rebel against the authorities in their lives? Well, after being a parent for two-and-a-half years now, I think the answer is that they choose to obey the authority of their feelings. As simple as it sounds, “I wanted to,” is usually the most honest response a child will give for his or her disobedience.

What about us? What about the Church? What is the authority that guides our values, policies, services and daily decisions?

A typical church doctrinal statement will usually contain something like this:

“The Scriptures: We believe and accept fully the writings of the Old and New Testaments as inspired by God, wholly without error as originally given, altogether sufficient as our infallible and authoritative rule of faith and practice.”

And what is the reason for such a strong statement for the Bible being the authoritative rule of faith and practice of the church? Generally, a church will reference 2 Timothy 3.

You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:14-17

Unlike many in our culture, Paul takes a high view of the Scriptures. The early Christians did so as well, holding fast to the belief in the inspiration and authority of our sacred text.

Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit. Observe that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written in them. … Take up the epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul. What did he write to you at the time when the Gospel first began to be preached? Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit, he wrote to you. – Clement of Rome 95CE, Volume 1, p. 33, 35 [CD-ROM]

The Scriptures which we believe are valid from their omnipotent authority. – Clement of Alexandria 195CE, Volume 2, p. 671, [CD-ROM]

Life is full of moments where we have to make important decisions.

Should I marry this person? How do I make amends? Should I take this job? Should I leave this job? What should I do with my money? Where should I serve the Church?

In those kinds of times, it’s natural to start and end with our feelings. It’s natural to dwell on what we think will make us happy. But as Christians, our ultimate authority should be the Holy Spirit guiding us through the whole of the God-breathed Scriptures.

Do you have a critical decision to make? Are you facing a moral dilemma? What does the whole counsel of the Scriptures have to say about it?

The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them Your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not rule over me; then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. – Psalm 19:7-14