The e-teaching that follows, which I originally wrote after Hurricane Katrina bombarded New Orleans in 2005, seems appropriate to re-publish now. For the first time in recorded history, two Category 4 or higher hurricanes have struck the U.S. mainland in the same year. “That is extraordinary by itself,” according to AccuWeather founder Dr. Joel N. Myers, but “also unprecedented is that this particular storm, Irma, has sustained intensity for the longest period of time of any hurricane or typhoon in any ocean of the world since the satellite era began.” Might there be a divine message hidden in these recent hurricanes? Keep reading! – David

Over the past few months in my e-teachings we’ve been taking a look at who God really is—as He has revealed Himself in Scripture—which is quite different than how He is often revealed in modern Christendom. We’ve not only considered His amazing love and mercy, but also His “holy hatred.” That holy hatred is often referred to using other phrases, such as “God’s righteous wrath,” or “His holy indignation,” but all refer to the same aspect of God’s character. And as we’ve seen, God’s Word does indeed speak of His hatred, using the very word hate (for proof, click here to read last month’s e-teaching). There is no escaping this.

It seems that some professing Christians would prefer to adjust the Bible rather than adjust their conception of God, because they don’t want to acknowledge that particular aspect of God’s character. They only want to acknowledge His love and mercy. The truth, however, is that God can be neither loving nor merciful unless He is also wrathful. This is easily understood. If you have two children whom you love and one wrongfully harms the other, you must administer justice. You must punish the offender. If you don’t, you will be rightfully accused of not loving the victim. Love “does not rejoice in unrighteousness” (1 Cor. 13:6). If God is love, He must also be righteous and wrathful.

Likewise, if God is merciful, He must also be wrathful, otherwise there is no need for Him to be merciful. His mercy presupposes His wrath. It is only His mercy that restrains His wrath.

Believing that God is loving and merciful while denying that He is wrathful is akin to believing in Jesus but not Christ. So not only is the common “all-love-no-wrath” portrayal of God completely unscriptural, it is also completely illogical to the point of nonsense.

Moreover, to deny God’s holy wrath is to deny the Bible, which is full of thousands of references to that aspect of His character. To deny God’s wrath is to deny the very thing from which Scripture says we have been saved (see Rom. 5:9). To deny God’s wrath is to make meaningless Christ’s death on the cross, where He became the “propitiation for our sins” (see Rom. 3:25, Heb. 2:17, 1 John 2:2, 4:10). To propitiate means to appease someone’s wrath, which is what Jesus did through His suffering—He appeased God’s wrath. Thus the wrath of God is foundational to the gospel. Without it, there is no gospel.

Some years ago during a question and answer session at a large pastors’ conference hosted at a Texas mega-church, I asked the successful senior pastor this simple question: “Is it ever appropriate for a pastor to preach about the holiness, wrath or judgment of God?” He laughed as he tossed my written question into the trash can and said, “God called me to preach the good news.” He sent a clear message to the hundreds of pastors present: If you hope to be successful like me, stick with positive sermons. The holiness, wrath and judgment of God don’t fit into the category of “good news.”

His response sounded logical, but was it biblical?

The fact is, if God is not holy and wrathful, then there is no good news to tell because there is no hell, no one is in any danger, no one needs to be saved, and no one needs to repent and believe in Jesus. God’s wrath is foundational to the gospel, as Paul makes ever so clear in his defense of the gospel in the first three chapters of Romans. Verse after verse in that passage is devoted to establishing the fact that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Rom. 1:18). There Paul wrote, “According to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus” (Rom. 2:16, emphasis added). God’s judgment was part of Paul’s gospel.

Scripture also says that John the Baptist preached the good news of the gospel (using the very word “gospel”; see Luke 3:18), yet his message was all about God’s judgment and the need for repentance (see Luke 3:1-18).

Jesus preached what the Bible calls the gospel (see Mark 1:14-15; Luke 4:18), yet He regularly warned sinners of God’s wrath and called them to repentance (see, for example, Matt. 4:17; 5:22, 29-30, 8:11-12; 10:28; 11:20-23; 13:41-42, 49-50; 18:19; 22:13; 23:33; 24:50-51; 25:30).

As the early apostles obeyed Jesus and went everywhere preaching the gospel, they, like Jesus, often warned of God’s judgment and called sinners to repentance, which by itself certainly implies the idea of God’s wrath. Paul, for example, declared in Athens,“God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31, emphasis added).

All of this being so, it is a grave error to say that preaching the good news prohibits the mentioning of God’s judgment. Yet the successor of that pastor who laughed at my question has followed the guidance of his predecessor (his father) and has now built the largest congregation in the United States. (His city just suffered the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.) He recently said on a nationally-televised secular interview that he never uses the word “sinner,” would never condemn people who visit his church by using that term, and certainly does not preach any sermons that mention God’s wrath. There are tens of thousands of other pastors just like him.

How sad it is when so many preachers attempt to tone down the idea of God’s wrath, apparently embarrassed about it, and so they use many softening expressions to hide the actual truth. Hell, for example, is rarely mentioned, and when it is, it is often only spoken of as “a place where you will be eternally separated from God” (which might actually sound quite appealing to people who have spent all of their lives trying to keep themselves separated from God).

Masking the solemn truth regarding more temporal manifestations of God’s wrath, some explain the suffering of sinners as being only the result of “God removing His hand of protection.” Thus, rebels aren’t suffering because of God’s active wrath or anger, but because of some other unidentified hurtful force. Some go one step further and name Satan as the bad guy who does those terrible things that a loving God would never do. Hurricane Katrina has certainly fallen into this category, now being called demonic by some.

But what does the Bible say regarding the source of hurricanes?

And the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea (Jonah 1:4, emphasis added).

Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; the Lord of hosts is His name (Jer. 31:35, emphasis added).

Therefore, thus says the Lord God, “I will make a violent wind break out in My wrath. There will also be in My anger a flooding rain and hailstones to consume it in wrath” (Ezek. 13:13, emphasis added).

“I smote you and every work of your hands with blasting wind, mildew, and hail; yet you did not come back to Me,” declares the Lord (Hag. 2:17, emphasis added).

Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do business on great waters; they have seen the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. For He spoke and raised up a stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They rose up to the heavens, they went down to the depths; their soul melted away in their misery….Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distresses. He caused the storm to be still, so that the waves of the sea were hushed (Ps. 107:23-29, emphasis added).

Some point out the fact that, because Jesus once rebuked the wind and the waves on the Sea of Galilee, such storms must be demonic, as Jesus would never rebuke something that God caused. We just read a verse, however, that clearly declared that God spoke and caused a stormy sea, and then He stopped the same storm that He started. It could well have been the same case that stormy day on the Sea of Galilee. Moreover, Jesus didn’t rebuke God; He rebuked the wind and waves.

Regardless, Jesus’ calming of the violent storm on the Sea of Galilee should be proof enough that God can stop a hurricane if He desires. It would seem logical to think that the One who created the wind and the sea could keep them from getting out of control. So even if God did not send Hurricane Katrina, He must not have wanted to stop it. (For other scriptures that prove God’s control over the wind, see Gen. 8:1; Ex. 10:13, 19; 14:21; 15:10; Num. 11:31; Ps. 48:7; 78:26; 135:7; 147:18; 148:8; Jer. 4:11-12; 10:13; 51:16; Amos 4:9, 13; Jon. 4:8; Hag. 2:17; Rev. 7:1. Only once in Scripture is Satan given credit for a destructive wind, and in that case Scripture makes it emphatically clear that he first had to obtain permission from God; see Job 1:12, 19).

What could have possibly motivated God to send (or refuse to stop) such a devastating wind on the scale of Katrina to the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, doing incalculable damage, and causing almost unimaginable human suffering? The only logical and biblical possibility is that God was motivated by anger. His anger, of course, is not senseless, but always justified by people’s rebellion against His commandments.

Understanding this truth, many Christians have attempted to show specific reasons why New Orleans, rather than other cities, was apparently targeted for divine displeasure. I must confess that I am tempted to agree with them. The reports I’ve read from believers who travel each year to proclaim the gospel during the New Orleans Mardi Gras are sickening. One friend wrote:

I have been to the French Quarter of New Orleans during Mardi Gras. I have been to the homosexual district and seen people “carousing in broad daylight.” I have seen people parading naked down the streets walking in their filth and sin. I preached the gospel the night before Fat Tuesday earlier this year as hundreds of Roman Catholics made excuses for their sin and immorality before a holy God and justified their sin by telling me that they could sin all they wanted as long as they “went to confession” on Ash Wednesday and somehow it was all better in God’s sight!….New Orleans is the Voodoo capital of the U.S.A. I have seen hundreds of fortune tellers on the streets, and many of them would rail curses at me after I handed them a gospel tract (one in particular spitting on it, pronouncing curses and cursing “my Jesus”). I saw thousands and thousands of idols and things which pertain to witchcraft and satanism.

Yikes!

Perhaps you’ve heard that since 1972, New Orleans has been the host city of the annual “Southern Decadence Day,” which would have been held this very weekend, as it has every Labor Day weekend for the past thirty-three years. It is touted as “one of the gay world’s major parties,” and a “gay Mardi Gras” when tens of thousands of gay men and lesbians descend on the French Quarter for unrestrained public lewdness and drunkenness. In 2003 it pumped $95 million into the local economy, which is why city leaders refused to shut it down in spite of protests by more decent people. Is it possible that after thirty-three years God had enough and decided to shut it down?

New Orleans has also seen an incredible amount of looting, arson, rape, murders, gang violence, and general lawlessness after Katrina, something that was not seen in the countries hit by last December’s tsunami. One Sri Lankan observed, “I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami, our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering. Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world’s population is.” (Ouch!)

Reports such as these certainly tempt us to assume New Orleans was more deserving of devastation than other U.S. cities. Yet we should keep in mind Jesus’ cautions about making such judgments (see Luke 13:1-5). What other American city or town can claim exemption from deserving God’s judgment? If God is sending a message to New Orleans, He is also sending a message to everyone in this country. Katrina is affecting us all, taking a bite out of each of our wallets. Gas stations here in Pennsylvania certainly aren’t offering any discounts. Once again, God has clearly displayed His temporal wrath to the United States, and He wants all of us to know that, as Jesus said, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5).

What about the righteous folks in New Orleans, the true followers of Christ? Is God punishing them?

That can’t be the case, of course. But God is obviously testing them. I suppose He is also testing the rest of us who profess to be Christ’s followers and have means to help our suffering brothers and sisters.

“In Wrath Remember Mercy” (Hab. 3:2)

Finally, not only can we see God’s wrath displayed in the recent hurricane, but we also can just as easily see His incredible mercy. How so?

First, because we know that God is “slow to anger,” when we finally do see His anger manifested (which even then is still restrained), we know that His mercy has been restraining His mounting wrath for a long time. Instead of asking “Why?,” we should be asking, “Why not years earlier?” The answer is, “God is merciful.”

Second, the storm could have been worse, much worse. Katrina could have killed millions. (The people of Sodom and Gomorrah would gladly have traded cities with New Orleans.) God has warned the unrepentant who have survived Katrina in hopes that they will repent and escape what will be much worse than Katrina. That warning is another evident display of God’s mercy. Instead of asking “Why so much devastation and suffering?” we should be asking, “Why not more devastation and suffering?” The answer is, “God is merciful.”

All of this being so, we might be more correct in saying that New Orleans was specifically targeted for God’s mercy rather than His wrath. If I was on the sure road to hell right now, it would be better for me to be living in New Orleans than perhaps any other place in the U.S. (as long as I survived Katrina, that is). I would have a firsthand view of God’s temporal wrath, and there might now be instilled in me some fear of God—which is the beginning of wisdom (see Prov. 9:10). I would rather be repenting amidst the rubble of my house in New Orleans than continuing in my rebellion as I sit in my jacuzzi in Wichita.”Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20).

Again and most importantly, God has mercifully sent yet another warning to us all. Will we heed His message this time? If not, there are certainly worse judgments to come, greater manifestations of God’s temporal wrath, as He mercifully hopes to motivate us to repent and escape eternal death.

Finally, will the pastors, preachers and prophets in America rise to the occasion to courageously proclaim the truth? Or will they actually work against Christ and assist Satan in what he specializes in—spreading lies about himself and God? God has just roared at America one more time. Will His spokespersons now remain silent? Or worse, will they say that God has not roared? Who will proclaim what the Bible repeatedly declares from cover to cover? Who will love people enough tell them the truth? Who will seek the approval of God rather than the approval of men? Who will be truly Seeker-sensitive, that is, sensitive to the One who came to seek and save the lost, and who died in His passion to save them from hell? Who will cry out, like Isaiah of old,

Alas, sinful nation, people weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who act corruptly! You have abandoned the Lord, you have despised the Holy One of Israel, you have turned away from Him. Where will you be stricken again, as you continue in your rebellion? (Is. 1:4-5, emphasis added).

To read Part 2 of this teaching, in which David answers objections, click here.

The post Hurricane Jesus, Part 1 appeared first on David Servant.

One week after my Pentecostal experience, I began my freshman year at Penn State University with the intention of majoring in forestry. I soon became involved in a campus ministry called Lamb Fellowship. It was led by a group of young men who had all been influenced by the Charismatic Renewal Movement—begun in 1960 when Episcopalian priest Dennis Bennet announced to his California congregation that he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and had spoken in tongues. By the mid-1970s, the Charismatic Renewal was sweeping through traditional denominations across the U.S. and around the world. Those were amazing years.

Lamb Fellowship was fully in the charismatic flow, and it was at one of their weekly Friday evening gatherings that I witnessed my first healing miracle—a nearsighted young woman who had worn thick glasses most of her life instantly experienced corrected vision during worship, making her glasses unnecessary.

The Call

It was during my first semester at Penn State that I felt a call to vocational ministry. My calling was very compelling, and ever since I received it, I’ve never felt like I’ve had a choice concerning my profession. As much as I loved the outdoors (my reason for planning for a career in forestry), I knew that I could never be satisfied doing anything else but serving in some kind of ministry full-time.

My parents encouraged me to finish four years at Penn State and then continue on to seminary, but I was sure Jesus would be returning soon. I didn’t want Him to come back to find me studying history, psychology and philosophy!

A guidance counselor told me a quicker route to ministry was via a two-year program at a Bible School, and so I wrote to many of the more well-known Bible Colleges in the U.S. to request their catalogs and applications. To my chagrin, all of their replies contained negative statements regarding the growing Charismatic Renewal in general and regarding speaking in tongues specifically. I was not welcome! That was my first of many strange experiences of being rejected by professing Christians because I believed the Bible or had a biblical experience.

The Search

So I began a search for a Bible School that believed the Bible. Looking back, I don’t know why I never investigated if the Assemblies of God denomination had any Bible Schools. But one of the leaders at Lamb Fellowship told me about a Bible School that had recently been founded by an influential Pentecostal/Charismatic teacher named Kenneth Hagin, whom I had never heard of. When I received the catalog and application from Hagin’s Rhema Bible Training Center, I was relieved to discover that, not only were they not opposed to speaking in tongues, but that they hoped their students did speak in tongues! I applied and was accepted. And that is my fourth confession, something that I generally don’t reveal: I graduated from Kenneth Hagin’s Bible School.

And I’ll add a fifth confession: I’m glad for it (although with some caveats).

Perhaps you’ve heard of Kenneth Hagin. He eventually became known as the founder of the “Word of Faith Movement” and has subsequently been widely lauded and vilified. He died at age 86 in 2003. I sat under his teaching at Rhema for two years, so I feel like I can offer a fair appraisal. Let me tell you some things that you may or may not know about him. Rather than focus on negatives as is so often done, let me highlight some positives.

The Man

Kenneth Hagin started out as a Southern Baptist, but as he would humorously say, he “received the left foot of fellowship” from them when he received the same Pentecostal experience as me. He then gravitated to the Assemblies of God, and he eventually pastored five different Assembly of God churches in Texas over a period of 12 years. I mention these things only to affirm that Hagin preached the same gospel preached by Southern Baptist and Assembly of God ministers. He was completely orthodox on the fundamentals of the gospel.

Hagin’s teaching ministry covered a range of topics, but he emphasized faith, healing and spiritual gifts. He felt he was specifically called to teach on those subjects, and he was very qualified to teach on all three, having survived a premature birth in 1917 at which he weighed less than two pounds, only to live his childhood with a deformed heart and a blood disease that ultimately left him bed-ridden and at death’s door. (Hagin’s grandmother almost buried him in her backyard after his birth, but she noticed a spark of life, so she began feeding him baby formula through an eye dropper.) Eventually as a teenager, through simple faith in Jesus’ promise in Mark 11:23-24, Hagin experienced a healing miracle. He was not a theorist when it came to divine healing.

Because of his own protracted illnesses, he had an enormous amount of compassion for those who were suffering sickness, and because of his healing experience, he naturally wanted to share his discovery of healing through faith with as many people as he could. He made great sacrifices to that end throughout his decades of ministry. It was, however, his strong emphasis on faith and healing that caused so many to speak against him, which is tragic, in light of the many times that Jesus told people whom He healed, “Your faith has made you well.” Jesus was indisputably a “faith healer,” and so I think we should be careful when we use that term derisively.

Regarding spiritual gifts (listed in 1 Cor. 12:8-10), in my four decades of being a Christian, I’ve known of no one who had more experience in supernatural manifestations. (I will tell you shortly of one that greatly impacted my life.)

The Corrections

Hagin frequently attempted to correct the excesses that were constantly springing up among “Word of Faith” teachers and preachers, but he did it graciously, not naming names. Sadly, very few of the more popular Word of Faith teachers heeded his correction. Many seemed to be competing with each other to gain popularity among the biblically ignorant by sharing their newest “revelation,” revelations that were often derived from isolating Bible verses or alleged spiritual experiences. Many were attempts to outshine Kenneth Hagin’s teaching, attempts that were way out of scriptural bounds.

As the Word of Faith movement gravitated more and more towards “prosperity teaching,” Hagin made a robust effort to correct much of the error that was being propagated, and it cost him his relationship with many popular Word of Faith teachers who rejected his correction. Hagin defined biblical prosperity as “having a sufficient supply to accomplish God’s will,” which has always seemed balanced to me.

When I attended Rhema, I was still so young in my knowledge of the Bible that I was not equipped to be very discerning. Looking back, I have no doubt in my mind that Hagin himself taught a number of things that cannot be supported by Scripture. One in particular was his theory that God gave Adam a lease to the earth, making him the original “god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), a lease that Satan usurped at the Fall of Man, thus giving him legal authority to operate ever since as “god of this world,” unrestrained, even by God. This theory is often still used in Word of Faith circles to explain all the suffering in the world. Satan is to blame, they say, and God would like to stop him, but He can’t, because Satan has legal authority. (I have disproven this theory from Scripture in great detail here.

Yet much of Kenneth Hagin’s teaching was biblically sound, and when I hear him being demonized by those who focus on his scriptural aberrations, I know they are focusing on only a small part of his teaching. I actually count myself blessed to have sat under his teaching during those two years at Rhema. At that time, Hagin had been working in vocational ministry for five decades, and what he shared from his wealth of experience as a pastor and traveling teacher was invaluable. He always admonished his students to judge everything by the Word of God and taught them to “rightly divide the Word” by taking every verse within its context of the entire Bible. He cautioned them against being led by alleged prophecies and visions that contradicted what God revealed in Scripture. He encouraged them to build their ministries on the teaching and preaching of the Word, and not on spiritual gifts.

Perhaps least understood by those who have only studied Hagin’s flaws is that he practiced and preached holiness. There is no one who has put the fear of God into me more than Kenneth Hagin, and in a very healthy way. Hagin preached that there was a hell to shun and a heaven to gain. He did not subscribe to the popular doctrine of unconditional eternal security. He taught about the “kindness and severity of God” (Rom. 11:22), and he warned the wayward of God’s discipline. He taught against “head conversions” that did not result in a spiritual rebirth and a devoted life.

As I promised earlier, let me tell you about a supernatural incident through Hagin’s ministry that I personally witnessed while at Rhema, one that will help you understand why I say that no one has put the fear of God into me more than him.

A Strange Incident

It was the first day of classes during my second year at Rhema. The entire student body, consisting of perhaps 800 students, was gathered in the main auditorium for Kenneth Hagin’s first class of the year.

A few minutes into his teaching, Hagin suddenly stuttered and seemed uncomposed, just for a few seconds. It was strange. Then he pointed at me and said, “Please stand up.” I practically fainted, but managed to stand. To my relief, Hagin said, “No, not you, but the gentleman one row right behind you.” I gratefully sat down while the man behind me, who looked like he was in his 50s, stood.

Hagin said to him, “As I was looking at the people in your section of the auditorium, the Lord allowed me to see into the spiritual realm, and I saw an evil spirit attach itself to your body.” (Sounds weird, I know, but stay with me.) Most of the students had previously heard Hagin relate occasional instances when he had been granted “the gift of discerning of spirits” (1 Cor. 12:19), which he defined as “a sudden God-given ability to see into the spiritual realm, where one might see angels, demons, or even Jesus, if God wills.” So we assumed we had just witnessed that phenomenon happening to him again.

Hagin invited the man to the front of the auditorium, and when he came forward, we all prayed for him in typical Pentecostal fashion, with everyone praying out loud together. Hagin verbally “cast out” the evil spirit that he claimed to have seen attach itself to the man’s body. Once the prayers subsided, Hagin said to the man, “There are a few things that the Lord wants me to tell you, but in private, so please come and talk with me after class today.”

And that was it. The man walked back to his seat, and Hagin resumed teaching. I didn’t think much about it until one week later, when it was announced that the man we had all prayed for was unconscious and on life support at a local hospital. It was also announced that there would be a special prayer meeting for him that evening, led by Hagin himself.

Many students attended that prayer meeting, which lasted at least an hour. It ended with a few prophecies from students in which it was declared that God had heard our prayers and the man would live. But I had learned by then to observe Hagin’s reactions to such prophecies, as he would enthusiastically affirm what he believed was from the Lord, saying things like “Amen” and “Yes, that’s right.” But after each of the prophecies that night, he somewhat unenthusiastically just said “Praise the Lord.” I could tell he was being polite, and he did not believe any of the prophecies were inspired by the Holy Spirit.

A Confusing Conclusion

To shorten the story somewhat, within a week, the man whom we had all prayed for to be healed had died, and the student body was confused. First, Rhema students aren’t supposed to die of anything but old age, because we all strongly believed in divine healing! Second, we had witnessed what seemed to be a divine revelation to Kenneth Hagin regarding a demonic attack against the man, and Hagin had cast out the evil spirit in front of the entire student body when the man was called forward for prayer that day in class. Beyond that, there had been several special prayer meetings held on his behalf that ended with very encouraging prophecies. And so after the funeral and some time had passed, Hagin spent several weeks trying to help us all understand. And this is where it gets interesting.

We learned that the deceased man had been a pastor himself for many years, but that he had taken a year off from pastoring to attend Rhema along with his wife and adult son. We also learned that, although Hagin had told the man that there were a few things the Lord had revealed to him that he needed to share with him privately, the man never went back after class to speak to Hagin. In fact, several students had asked him if he had ever approached Hagin as requested, and he had replied that he had not and didn’t intend to. Hagin himself confessed that he had just forgotten about it, being consumed with so many distractions.

Naturally, we all wondered what the Lord had told Hagin to tell the man privately, but out of respect for the deceased, his wife and son, Hagin never did give us the details. He did, however, reveal that the Lord had told him to tell the man that God had allowed an evil spirit to attack him as a means of attempting to get his attention, and unless the man made some adjustments in his life, he would suffer dire consequences. That is, he needed to repent of something.

Some Clarity

After that, Hagin spent several weeks during his classes telling us of how he himself had come close to death on several occasions because of getting out of God’s will in his ministry, but how his life was saved by repenting. Hagin spoke of an incident decades earlier when, at the Lord’s clear direction, he left his final pastorate to launch a ministry as a traveling teacher. After several months of suffering the hardship of being frequently separated from his wife and children, he decided to quit and return to pastoring. He cancelled all the meetings that were on his schedule. Shortly thereafter, while sitting in an adult Sunday School class on the topic of Moses’ disobedience, his heart stopped and he fell to the floor. He began praying, and the Holy Spirit revealed that it was because of his disobedience. Hagin repented, and his life was spared by seconds. And he went back on the road.

Another time Hagin had slipped while walking out of a church where he was ministering, and he had badly shattered his elbow. He claimed that Jesus actually appeared to him while he was sitting in a hospital room. And Jesus told him that He had allowed the accident in order to get Hagin’s attention because he was making the error of focusing on his teaching ministry while neglecting his prophetic ministry. Hagin claimed that Jesus told him, “If I had not have arrested your attention and you would have continued on the same path, you would not have lived past the age of 50, because you would have only been in My permissive will, and not My perfect will.”

Hagin also told us of many other ministers, some who were very well known and some who were used of God in authentic healing ministries in the 1950s, who had died prematurely—all because they got out of God’s will in their ministries. These weren’t cases of Hagin passing judgment on a few ministers who had died. Rather, they were cases when the impending deaths of certain ministers had been foretold to him by the Holy Spirit, and in some cases he had even warned those ministers that they were going to die unless they got back on track.

It was fascinating to say the least, and also quite frightening. You can read about some of these things in Hagin’s book titled, I Believe in Visions.

Hagin also expounded on 1 Corinthians 1:30-32:

For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number asleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.

Clearly, according to Paul, Christians can suffer God’s judgment, manifested in weakness, sickness and even premature death if they don’t judge themselves; that is, live obediently, and if they sin, acknowledge it and repent. Kenneth Hagin believed that divine health was contingent on obedience, a concept for which there is plenty of scriptural support.

May I say that it is never our place to pass judgment on other people in this regard. Obviously, there can be other reasons that Christians are sick. But I can tell you that if I became seriously ill, I’d certainly be seeking the Lord. And I’ve learned how foolish it is to always lay the blame for my sufferings on Satan or “God’s sovereignty.” Anyone who does just a cursory reading of the Bible will quickly learn that it is our lack of faith, as well as our sin, that may well be the reason that things don’t go better for us. It is so obvious that only a theologian could miss it!

In any case, as I’ve already said, no one put the fear of God into me more than Kenneth Hagin, and I’m thankful that I spent two years in the late 1970s in his Bible School. But I might add, as a sixth confession, that the knowledge I gained at Bible School filled me with pride. For the first few years of my ministry I identified entirely with the Word of Faith Movement, and many of us in that group looked at ourselves as possessing superior knowledge over those who were outside our circle.

Thankfully, as I continued to read the Bible for myself, and as the Word of Faith Movement drifted further and further away from biblical revelation and integrity, I came to realize that some of what I’d been taught—and was teaching—was erroneous. And as I began teaching what I believed (and still believe) to be more biblically accurate, I was rejected by most of my friends in the Word of Faith Movement. They said I was “no longer teaching the Word.” To them, “teaching the Word” meant parroting what the most popular Word of Faith teachers were teaching. Many of them are still stuck in that same rut, trapped in a “time warp.” I feel so sorry for them.

If there has been one experience that has dominated my Christian life more than any other over the past four decades, it has been this: rejection by professing Christians for doctrinal reasons. And that is a sad commentary indeed. But it is one reason that the cartoon below has become one of my favorites:

I’m glad for the entire body of Christ, which consists of everyone whose true Lord is Jesus Christ. Jesus wants us to love one another, in spite of our differences.

Finally, I always appreciate any and all feedback that I receive to my monthly e-teachings. That being said, there is no need to barrage me with links to articles that expose all the aberrations of Word of Faith teachers. I am very knowledgable of those aberrations, many of which I have addressed over the years in my own teaching. The purpose of this e-teaching was to reveal a few things that most folks don’t know about my own background, and to add a few positive things that many folks don’t know about Kenneth Hagin.

Next month—more confessions. — David

The post The Confessions of a Nonprofit Director, Part 2 appeared first on David Servant.

Some of the good folks who subscribe to absolute nonresistance are persuaded that in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus called His followers to a higher standard than what was expected of those under the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses clearly allowed for self-defense, defense of others, lawsuits, and wars, whereas Jesus, they point out, always expected His followers to “turn the other cheek.”

So, in last month’s e-teaching, we began considering the basic premise that Jesus introduced moral standards for His followers that were superior to what God expected of those under the Law of Moses. That premise is usually based on Jesus’ six “You have heard…but I say to you” statements in His Sermon on the Mount. Last month we considered three of those statements, and it was clear that none introduced a moral or ethical standard beyond what was already stipulated in the Mosaic Law. In each case, Jesus simply exposed and corrected the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees, while at the same time affirming what was taught in the Mosaic Law.

Incidentally, within Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, there is other evidence affirming that He was primarily correcting the false teaching and practices of Israel’s leaders. I won’t take the space to discuss the references here, but you can read Matthew 5:20; 6:1-2, 16; 7:15-23, 28-29.

This month, I want to first consider the remaining three of Jesus’ “You have heard…but I say to you” statements. Then I intend to show how the idea of absolute nonresistance is incompatible with other words of Jesus. Finally, I want to discuss how we can determine when Jesus does and does not expect us to resist evil people.

4.) OK to Lie Under the Mosaic Law?

Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, “You shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord.” But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, “Yes, yes” or “No, no”; and anything beyond these is of evil (Matt. 5:33-37).

If you’ve ever read Jesus’ lengthy denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees recorded in Matthew 23, you know they had concocted an elaborate set of rules regarding swearing oaths that effectually legalized lying:

Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is obligated.” You fools and blind men! Which is more important, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold? And, “Whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering on it, he is obligated.” You blind men, which is more important, the offering, or the altar that sanctifies the offering? Therefore, whoever swears by the altar, swears both by the altar and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple, swears both by the temple and by Him who dwells within it. And whoever swears by heaven, swears both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it (Matt. 23:16-22).

So it is undeniable that the scribes and Pharisees taught that one was required to keep his word only if he swore by the temple gold or the offering on the altar, but one was not required to keep his word if he swore by the temple itself, or the altar itself. It reminds me of children who are convinced that they are exempt from any requirement to tell the truth if they’ve got their fingers crossed behind their backs.

Jesus was not, of course, condemning or forbidding making vows or promises. Jesus obviously affirmed making vows or promises when He told His followers, “Let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no.'” Those are words of promises. Marriage begins with promises. So does salvation. Many good things in human experience begin with promises. We all know that God makes promises.

Rather, Jesus was condemning the practice of the scribes and Pharisees, who apparently were such liars that the only way they could hope to convince anyone that they were telling the truth was to add a swearing oath like, “I swear by the temple gold that I’ll do what I’m promising!” Worse, they had even invented ways to swear with such oaths and still lawfully, in their own minds, lie!

Of course most of us know that anyone who has to resort to swearing oaths is admitting he is a liar who generally can’t be trusted. People who always tell the truth have no need to resort to swearing oaths.

But back to our primary question regarding the belief that Jesus was raising the bar for His followers above the moral standard of the Mosaic Law. Was that the case this time? Was it acceptable in God’s eyes to be a liar under the Law of Moses? Was it acceptable in God’s eyes prior to the Sermon on the Mount to make a vow, swearing by the temple or the temple altar, and have no intention whatsoever of keeping your vow? Here are a few verses from the Law of Moses that should help us answer those questions:

You shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the name of your God; I am the Lord (Lev. 19:12).

If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth (Num. 30:2).

You shall be careful to perform what goes out from your lips, just as you have voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God, what you have promised (Deut. 23:23).

Clearly, once again, Jesus was not raising the moral bar for His followers to some standard above the Mosaic Law. Neither was He forbidding making vows, pledges or promises to God or man (Paul, for example, made and kept a vow in Acts 18:18). Rather, He was, once again, correcting the false teaching, and in this case the deceitful practices, of the scribes and Pharisees. Please allow me to paraphrase Matthew 23:33-37:

You have also heard in the synagogues from your teachers, the scribes and Pharisees, that your ancestors were told, “You shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord.” Had your synagogue teachers only told you that, there would be nothing for Me to correct. But as you know, the scribes and Pharisees have added their own rules and traditions that have nullified God’s clear commandments about keeping promises. The scribes and Pharisees are such consistent liars that, when they make promises, no one believes them, so they have to swear by something to convince others that this time they can be trusted. Worse, they’ve invented elaborate rules that at times exempt them from keeping their promises even when they do swear by something else!

That is not the example I want you to follow. As is clearly revealed in your consciences and in the Law of Moses, God wants you to always be truth tellers. So I’m reminding you once again what you all know in your hearts. When you make a promise, you don’t need to swear by anything or say anything beyond “yes” and “no.” If you do, it shows something evil is going on.

#5 OK to Divorce Under the Mosaic Law?

The fifth of Jesus’ six “You have heard…but I say” statements is another one that makes it ever so clear that, once again, Jesus was correcting the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees. It begins with Him citing a quotation that is not found anywhere in the Law of Moses:

And it was said, “Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce”; but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Matt. 5:31-32).

There is nothing in the Law of Moses that resembles the words, “Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” Jesus was not quoting from the Law of Moses. So who was He quoting?

He was quoting the scribes and Pharisees, who had twisted Deuteronomy 24:1, turning a commandment that forbade twice-divorced or divorced-then-widowed women from remarrying their original husbands—and which mentions “divorce certificates” in passing—into a commandment to give your wife a divorce certificate when you divorced her for any cause at all. (For additional proof of this, see Matthew 19:7 and Mark 10:4).

The large majority of the scribes and Pharisees believed that they could divorce their wives for any cause at all, as revealed by their once questioning Jesus about that very thing (see Matt. 19:3-9). Historical Jewish writings reveal that most Jewish leaders in Jesus’ day believed that a wife’s “indecency,” mentioned by Moses in Deuteronomy 24:1 as a reason a husband might divorce his wife, was just about anything that might displease him, from her not cooking a meal to his satisfaction to her being less attractive than some other woman. According to the popular teaching of the time, the husband’s only obligation to his wife, if he divorced her, was to give her a certificate of divorce. That is what Jesus was referencing when He said, “And it was said, ‘Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce.'”

So clearly, Jesus was not accurately quoting or even paraphrasing the Mosaic Law so that He could then raise the Law’s moral standard for His followers. Under the Old Covenant, God did not give men the right to divorce for any reason as long as they gave their spouses a certificate. Under the Old Covenant, God declared, “I hate divorce” (Mal. 2:16). God has been opposed to divorce from the time of Adam, as is so clearly revealed by Jesus’ later words to some questioning Pharisees:

Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate (Matt. 19:4-6).

God’s view of divorce has remained consistent from the time of humanity’s creation—as we would expect, since He is God.

A Concession

But here’s an important question: Although it is clear that God has always been opposed to divorce since Adam and Eve, has there ever been a legitimate reason for divorce in God’s eyes?

The answer is obviously, yes.

As we just read in Matthew 5:31-32, Jesus unquestionably permitted divorce for the cause of “unchastity” (Greek: porneia) that is, sexual sin prior to or during marriage. If Jesus permitted divorce for a cause that was previously not a legitimate cause, then it can only be said that Jesus lowered the moral standard. Thus it is safe to conclude that God must have allowed divorce for the cause of unchastity since the time of Adam and Eve.

And it would also seem safe to conclude that the discovery of sexual sin committed prior to or during marriage must have been the “indecency” that the Mosaic Law mentioned could be reason for a man to divorce his wife. (That conclusion is also supported by Numbers 5:11-31 and Deuteronomy 22:13-21, passages that both underscore the serious offense of adultery and its potential destructiveness to marriage.)

But what about Jesus’ words found later in Matthew’s Gospel: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives” (19:8)? Aren’t those words a lamentation that Moses apparently lowered the bar and an indication that Jesus was raising the bar to where it had been prior to Moses?

At first glance that might seem to be the case. But let’s take a closer look.

First, some point out that Jesus said, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives,” which they interpret to mean, “It was Moses, not God, who permitted you to divorce your wives.” But did Jesus mean that Moses permitted something that God would have preferred he forbade? Are there parts of the Law of Moses that are not divinely inspired?

No. At other times Jesus referred to words found in the Law of Moses that were unquestionably from the mouth of God by saying, “Moses said,” or “Moses commanded.” In no case was Jesus trying to communicate that Moses was speaking independently of God. For example, Mark recorded Jesus as once saying, “For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother'” (Mark 7:10; see also Matt. 8:4). In that case, Moses’ words were obviously God’s words.

And thus, when Jesus said, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives,” it was the same as if He had said, “God, in the Law of Moses, permitted you to divorce your wives.” If Jesus was lamenting, He was lamenting that God had lowered the bar! (Which would be equivalent to lamenting that He Himself had lowered the bar.)

Let’s probe a little further with another question: Why did God permit men under the Mosaic Law to divorce their wives? Jesus gave the answer: “Because of the hardness of your hearts.”

But don’t read that, “Because of the hardness of your hearts God permitted you to divorce your wives for any cause at all.” No, because of the hardness of their hearts, God permitted them to divorce their wives for the cause of sexual immorality. Soft-hearted husbands don’t need such a concession, as they, imitating God, forgive the pre- and post-wedding promiscuity of wives who repent. (Of course, adulterous wives who are unrepentant and continue in adultery are in a different category, as such wives are not interested in being forgiven by, or reconciled to, their husbands.)

Jesus Continues His Concession

Here is what is important to see: Jesus made the identical concession regarding divorce as God did in the Law of Moses, because Jesus said, “Whoever divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity….” So Jesus was neither raising nor lowering the Mosaic moral law concerning legitimate grounds for divorce. He was making the same concession as found in the Law of Moses, which shouldn’t surprise us, since He was the author of the Law of Moses. Jesus permits divorce for adultery.

Most importantly, note that immediately after Jesus revealed why the Mosaic Law contained a concession for divorce, He quickly reminded His audience, “but from the beginning it has not been this way” (Matt. 19:8). That is, from the time long before the Mosaic Law was given, from the time of the first marriage, divorce was never God’s intention. All marriages are supposed to last until death of one of the covenant partners.

Of course, it was also God’s intention from the beginning that all spouses be sexually faithful to each other, but sadly, such is not always the case. So God has made a concession for divorce in those cases. Unrepentant sexual immorality justifies divorce in God’s eyes—prior to the Mosaic Law, during the Mosaic Law, and under the Law of Christ. However, repentance of sexual immorality calls for forgiveness, and it always has. Softhearted husbands won’t, upon discovery of sexual immorality, divorce wives who repent.

A few years ago, the wife of a dear Christian friend of mine had an affair. In light of her sin, no one would have found fault with him if he would have divorced her. I wouldn’t have. I was amazed and blessed, however, at his mercy as he tried to lead her to repentance and restore their broken marriage. Sadly, she could not be persuaded, and she ultimately divorced him to marry her lover, who also divorced his wife to marry her. My friend, although admitting times of anger at his wife, found within himself the love of Christ for both her and her illicit lover—whom he even once visited in the hospital and endeavored to lead to Christ! To say my friend is “softhearted” is an understatement. He did not need to take advantage of the concession that both the Mosaic Law and Jesus (who gave the Mosaic Law) made for offended husbands.

Naturally, if the Law of Moses allowed a man to divorce his wife over adultery, it permitted him in such cases to remarry, which is exactly what Jesus permitted. He said, “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery” (Matt. 19:9). So a man who remarries commits adultery only if he divorced his wife for some reason other than unchastity. If he divorces legitimately (for adultery), he is not guilty of committing adultery if he remarries.

Jesus’ similar declarations in the Sermon on the Mount about remarriage (“Everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” [Matt. 5:32]), were also not a new standard that superseded the previous standard in the Mosaic Law. Jesus was only drawing an obvious parallel between illegitimate divorce/remarriage and adultery that has been true since the time of Adam and Eve.

Think about it: Jewish leaders in Jesus’ day were divorcing for illegitimate reasons and remarrying. And Jesus was simply pointing out what is obvious to any thinking person, that such a practice is no different than adultery. In both adultery and illegitimate divorce/remarriage, people who made marriage covenants have sex with other people. Jesus wasn’t altering the Mosaic Law or raising the moral bar at all. And He was once again correcting the false teaching and practices of the scribes and Pharisees.

All the Other Questions…

Of course, much of the debate on this topic within Christendom involves what is lawful after divorce or after divorce/remarriage. That is beyond the scope of this e-teaching. But let me at least say that, if you are a true Christian married to a true Christian, you have no divorce option—unless your spouse commits adultery. Even then, God wants you to work towards reconciliation predicated upon repentance. (I know there are other questions that could be asked and addressed, but again, they are all beyond the scope of this teaching.)

Incidentally, if a true Christian does commit adultery, his or her conscience would be screaming before, during and after, which would certainly lend itself to the hope of repentance. And if there is no repentance in such cases, that is a sure sign that the one guilty of adultery is not a heaven-bound believer in the Lord Jesus (see 1 Cor. 6:9-10).

In summary, allow me to paraphrase Matthew 5:31-32:

You’ve heard your teachers, the scribes and Pharisees, teach that a man can divorce his wife for any cause, and that Moses taught that when a man does divorce his wife, he only needs to give her a divorce certificate. That, however, is an outrageous twisting of what is actually taught in the the Law of Moses, of which, by the way, I’m the author. God never intended, from the time of Adam and Eve, that any marriage end in divorce. The Law of Moses only permitted divorce in cases of adultery, and I’m affirming that same standard to My followers. But please don’t be so hardhearted that, if your spouse does commit adultery, you don’t work for reconciliation predicated upon repentance.

And your teachers, the scribes and Pharisees, who are so frequently divorcing and remarrying while at the same time condemning adultery and wanting to stone adulterers, are incredible hypocrites, as what they are doing is no different than adultery. They, just like adulterers, are having sexual relations outside their covenant of marriage. Worse, by their divorces they are multiplying what also amounts to adultery, as their divorced spouses remarry. So don’t fool yourselves as those hypocrites are fooling themselves. Marriage is a lifetime covenant. That is why you promise, “Till death do us part.”

Five down, now just one to go. And may I point out that, in all of the first five examples of Jesus’ “You have heard…but I say to you” statements, He did not raise the moral standard above what was expected under the Law of Moses. Rather, He simply affirmed the original, untwisted standards of the Law of Moses.

#6 OK to Seek Personal Revenge Under the Mosaic Law?

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist him who is evil; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone wants to sue you, and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. And whoever shall force you to go one mile, go with him two (Matt. 5:38-41).

In my e-teaching two months ago, I did a thorough job of showing how Jesus’ words about nonresistance, just like all of His other “You have heard…but I say” statements, were not an accurate portrayal of what the Mosaic Law taught followed by a raising of the moral bar. Rather, they were an obvious portrayal of the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees and a correction of that. If you haven’t read that e-teaching, you can by clicking here.

By way of quick review, there are no instructions in the Law of Moses for the people of Israel to seek revenge by exacting “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Those words are only found in the Law’s instructions to Israel’s judges, requiring them to administrate justice. The people of Israel were forbidden to take their own revenge, which is one reason why God gave them a means to seek justice through a court system. So Jesus was not contrasting God’s law with His own reversal of God’s law (which would have, by the way, proven to everyone that He was not sent by God). We can only conclude that the scribes and Pharisees were twisting God’s word exclusively given to Israel’s judges, using their twisting as an excuse for taking personal revenge for petty offenses. Jesus wants His followers to do better, as was already revealed in the Law of Moses.

Now please allow me to follow up on that e-teaching from two months ago.

A Few Revealing Questions

If Jesus was actually advocating absolute nonresistance in His words about turning the other cheek, we would have to wonder why He contradicted Himself by what He said at other times.

For example, when Jesus gave instructions regarding church discipline in Matthew 18, why did He outline steps that begin with confrontation and that might lead to a relationship severance and excommunication? Jesus’ instructions do not harmonize with “turning the other cheek” as interpreted by those who subscribe to absolute nonresistance. So either Jesus was confused, giving contradictory commandments, or His words regarding nonresistance have a specific application that does not include when a fellow believer sins against another believer. Thus it is safe to conclude that Jesus’ words about nonresistance do not have universal application to every situation.

Paul reiterated this same concept when he lamented that the Corinthian believers were suing each other in secular courts before unbelievers, bringing reproach to Jesus’ church. He asked, “Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren…?” (1 Cor. 6:5). Had Paul believed in absolute nonresistance, he would never have posed such a question, but rather would have told those who had been wronged to “turn the other cheek,” that is, simply accept the offense and offer a welcome opportunity for additional harm to be done.

Here’s another revealing question: Why did Jesus instruct His followers to flee when they were persecuted? Doesn’t He always want us to “turn the other cheek” in any and every encounter with evil people? If so, then we shouldn’t flee when we’re persecuted. Rather, we should willingly accept any abuse our antagonists wish. And beyond that, if we are going to obey Jesus, we should offer our persecutors a welcome opportunity to do us more harm than they intended, “offering them the other cheek,” because that is what Jesus said to do. Fleeing persecution is contrary to remaining to accept abuse and welcoming more abuse. You can’t do both. This again shows that Jesus’ words about nonresistance do not have universal application to every situation.

In regard to persecution, why did Paul, when arrested in Jerusalem, appeal to his Roman citizenship to prevent being flogged? If he had “turned the other cheek,” he would have kept quiet about his Roman citizenship and requested double the lashes. But he did something to attempt to prevent the harm that was about to be inflicted upon him. Not only did he not encourage a second slap; he did something to prevent a first slap! Paul did not believe in absolute nonresistance.

Another question: Of whom was Jesus speaking when He said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13)? How does one literally lay down his life for his friends unless he is trying to resist some evil perpetrated against his friends?

These questions all reveal how unwise it is to interpret Jesus’ words regarding “turning the other cheek” without attempting to harmonize them with the rest of scripture in order to arrive at a balanced understanding of what God expects.

Those who adhere to absolute nonresistance often qualify Jesus’ commandment to not resist evil people, saying that it is OK to resist evil people verbally (as so many New Testament characters did), but not physically. Jesus, however, made no such qualification. Yet they correct folks like me who also make qualifications that are based on biblical truth, reminding me that “We should not add anything to Jesus’ plain teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.” I disagree. We should add everything else that Jesus said to His plain teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Never forget: Textual isolation breeds false interpretation!

Along these lines, one author who advocates absolute nonresistance claims that Jesus spoke out against evil, but He never used physical force against it. I wondered if that author ever read this incident mentioned in three of the Gospels:

And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables (John 2:15).

In order to make Jesus’ words about nonresistance fit their theology and logic, adherents of absolute nonresistance must read Matthew 5:38-39 as if it said this:

You know that under the Law of Moses, God instructed all Israelites to always get their own revenge, making sure that they personally poked out the eye of anyone who poked out one of their eyes and making sure that they personally knocked out the tooth any anyone who knocked out one of their teeth. But now I am completely reversing God’s fundamental moral rule. I am abolishing part of the Law that I declared just seconds ago that I would not abolish. From now on, I expect that you will not resist any evil person under any circumstances. If anyone pokes out one of your eyes, give him the welcome opportunity to poke out your other eye. If anyone punches you and knocks out one of your teeth, invite him to punch you again until another tooth falls out. If anyone wants to rape your wife, give him your daughter to rape also.

But that is not at all what Jesus said!

Questions About the Fundamental Premise

There are also more questions that reveal the fundamental flaws of the premise that Jesus introduced a radically higher moral standard to what was found in the Mosaic Law.

If, in His Sermon in the Mount, Jesus introduced a radically higher moral standard that the world had never before heard, then we must believe that one could love God with all his heart, mind, soul and strength and love his neighbor as himself—keeping the two greatest commandments that summarized the moral standard God expected under the Old Covenant—and still not live up to the alleged “higher ethic.” Those who adhere to absolute nonresistance must admit that keeping the two greatest commandments is simply not enough.

Moreover, if we take Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount seriously so that we actually believe that the standards of holiness He outlines are truly required of us to escape hell and inherit eternal life (as He makes so clear), and if the Sermon on the Mount does in fact introduce a much higher ethic than what is found in the Law of Moses, then it must be true that Jesus has made it more difficult for those who lived after His Sermon than those who lived before it to inherit eternal life. That makes God unjust. We should question any interpretation of Scripture that impugns one of God’s fundamental attributes.

Here’s another difficult question for those who hold to absolute nonresistance: Where in the New Testament epistles is it taught by Paul, Peter, James, Jude or John that Jesus gave His followers a superior ethic that surpasses the ethic of the Mosaic Law?

The reason that question is so difficult to answer is because such a teaching can’t be found anywhere in the epistles. And that should not surprise us, as Jesus declared that the two greatest commandments are commandments found in the Law of Moses.

The second greatest commandment is quoted by New Testament authors as if they believed it was relevant and binding upon their New Covenant readers. Of that commandment, Paul wrote:

For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:14).

The second greatest commandment sums up the entire moral teaching of the Law of Moses. Are we to believe that it would be possible to differentiate between a person who loves his neighbor as himself and one who follows Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount?

James wrote:

If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law, according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well (Jas. 2:8).

James unquestionably believed one could “do well” as a follower of Christ if he loved his neighbor as himself, that is, kept an Old Covenant law! Where is James’ reference to a higher law or ethic under the New Covenant that supersedes the ethic of the Old Covenant?

Here is another difficult question for those who hold to absolute nonresistance: The Old Covenant law required believers to love their neighbors as themselves, but that same law allowed them to strike a thief who broke into their house. Do those two things contradict each other? Was God confused when He gave Israel the Law of Moses?

No, under the Old Covenant, loving one’s neighbor as oneself clearly did not preclude resisting a thief. So does that same commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself, still the second greatest commandment under the New Covenant, somehow now prohibit resisting a thief? Has that commandment intrinsically changed? How could it?

Moreover, if someone breaks into my house, does the commandment to love my neighbor as myself have any bearing on what I should do in regard to defending my family? If I love my wife and children, will I not defend them? I would do my best, because I love them, to defend them against a fire, flood, tornado, wild animal or a poisonous spider. How could it be said that I love them as God has commanded me if I do nothing to resist an evil person who intends to harm them?

In such a case, the one who adheres to absolute nonresistance must decide which of Jesus’ commandments to obey, either His alleged commandment to do nothing (“Do not resist an evil person”), or His commandment that undeniably requires some action (“Love your neighbor as yourself”). He finds himself in a quandary: Do I love the thief or do I love my family?

But those who know that God’s commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself allows for the striking of a thief have no such quandary.

Finally, most of us know that Jesus expects His followers to love Him even more than we love our loved ones (see Matt. 10:37, Luke 14:26). Strangely, however, those who subscribe to absolute nonresistance give to thieves what Jesus alone deserves—a greater love than what they show to their own families!

When Should We Resist or Not Resist?

So what does Jesus require of us in regard to nonresistance? It is not that complicated. We only need to read what Jesus said:

But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two (Matt. 5:39-41).

Jesus listed three examples that each illustrate the kind of nonresistance He expects. Note that all are relatively small offenses: a cheek slap, a small claim in court, a forced one-mile walk. All entail minor, temporary suffering, and once completed, life goes on the same. The only difference is that one’s cheeks have been made red for a few minutes, one owns one less coat, or one has benefitted from some good exercise. Those are the kinds of offenses that Jesus does not want us to resist.

Another means to determine if our circumstance calls for nonresistance is to simply ask, Is it reasonable to actively seek a doubling of the offense? Because that is what Jesus instructed: turn the other cheek, give a second article of clothing, and go the second mile. Again, take note that Jesus did not say, “Whoever pokes out your eye, give him your other eye to poke out, and whoever knocks out one of your teeth, encourage him to knock out another one of your teeth.” That would be a little unreasonable, don’t you think?

I’ve noticed that those who hold to absolute nonresistance generally ignore the second part of Jesus’ instructions. When presented with “What if” situations, such as, “What if someone broke into your house intending to murder your family,” they can’t explain how they would offer a welcome opportunity for the intruder to do more harm than he intended—as Jesus commanded.

Moreover, while claiming that they would not resist, they admit that they would call the police, or stand between the intruder and their family, or rebuke him in the name of Jesus, all of which are forms of resistance, as they are trying to prevent the harm intended, in spite of the fact that Jesus commanded us to offer our antagonists a welcome opportunity to do more harm than they intended. This, too, shows the flaw in absolute nonresistance.

Another way to determine if our circumstance calls for nonresistance is to ask: By not resisting, will I be violating the second greatest commandment, namely, to love my neighbor as myself? Clearly, love dictates that I resist evil people in order to protect others from harm. I’m so glad that God’s angels haven’t embraced absolute nonresistance! I’m so glad God hasn’t either! His protection is an indication of His love.

Under certain circumstances, love dictates that I resist evil people to protect myself from harm. A cheek slap, a tiny lawsuit, or a forced 2-mile walk won’t make my wife a widow or my children orphans. But in situations that would, loving my family demands that I resist personal harm.

Can Christians serve in government? In law enforcement?

Finally, since Jesus told His followers not to resist evil people, is it wrong for Christians to serve in vocations that require the resistance of evil people?

Obviously, any job that requires one to transgress God’s commandments is incompatible with following Christ. So, if a government job requires me to offer incense to Caesar and declare that he is God, I can’t work for that government.

That being said, Paul wrote:

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing (Rom. 13:1-6).

If governmental authorities are “servants of God,” obviously, serving in government or law enforcement is not intrinsically incompatible with following Christ (who said “The greatest among you shall be your servant”). I wish every person in government was a follower of Jesus. Some day, when Jesus rules the earth, that will be the case.

Jesus’ words about nonresistance have no greater application to government workers and law enforcement officers than they do to anyone else. When Christian government workers and law enforcement officials encounter minor personal offenses, they should turn the other cheek. Their God-given responsibility, however, includes resisting evil people for the sake of law and order. Thank God for them.

Incidentally, Joseph and Daniel seemed to do fairly well working in secular governments, and I seem to recall that God had something to do with their promotions.

In Conclusion…

It is good and right to obey Jesus’ commandments and teach others the same. Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). Jesus also said, “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:19).

Let us not, however, make the “narrow way” so narrow that only a few narrow-minded people can squeeze through. Let’s not be guilty of “weighing men down with burdens hard to bear” (Luke 11:46), encumbering Jesus’ disciples with more than His easy yoke (see Matt. 11:30). And let’s “be diligent to present ourselves approved to God as workmen who do not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2Tim. 2:15).

As always, I appreciate your feedback and read all of it. — David

The post Another Look at Nonresistance, Part 2 appeared first on David Servant.

Let me say from the start how deeply I respect those within the Anabaptist tradition, which includes Mennonites, the Amish, Hutterites, Brethren and various modern “true church” adherents. I respect anyone who is endeavoring to do the will of God. But may I also add that, sometimes, the most zealous God-loving people are the most susceptible to the kind of teaching that places a greater yoke upon them than Jesus’ easy yoke (see Matt. 11:30). Longing to prove their sincere love for God, pure-hearted people are often drawn to scriptures that seem to call them to make unusual sacrifices, scriptures which they then fail to interpret in the light of everything else God has said. To a degree, they end up “cutting off their hands and gouging out their eyes,” all “in obedience to what Christ clearly taught.”

The good folks I’m describing fall into a trap against which Solomon warned: “Do not be excessively righteous” (Ecc. 7:16). It would seem that the only way one could become “excessively righteous” in a negative way is if one went beyond what God actually expects or requires. In my humble opinion, I think that is what has happened to some who hold to certain distinct views regarding nonresistance. And for lack of a better term, in this article I will refer to that viewpoint as “absolute nonresistance.”

I didn’t intend to write further on the subject of nonresistance, but I seem to be compelled to do so. I’ve been contacted numerous times in the past from readers who wanted to know where I stood on the subject, and I had nothing I’d written at that time to which I could direct them, so this will also serve as a reference in the future.

Nonresistance is Certainly Biblical

Obviously, when Jesus told His followers to “turn the other cheek,” He was advocating some degree of nonresistance. But to what degree? Does Jesus require that Christians never, under any circumstances, defend themselves or others against those who would harm them? That Christians never serve in any field of government or law enforcement lest they “resist those who are evil”? What about serving in the armed forces and going to war? These are all important questions.

The basic premise for absolute nonresistance is that Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, introduced a higher ethical and moral standard than what is found in the Law of Moses. He allegedly called His followers to do what God never expected of those who had lived prior to the Sermon on the Mount. Thus, anything in the Law of Moses that seems to contradict Jesus’ teaching on nonresistance, such as the lawfulness of striking a thief who is breaking into your house, can just be ignored.

Adherents to this view often point out that, six times in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said something like, “You have heard it was said,” after which He referenced some words from the Law of Moses, followed by a contrasting view that began with, “but I say to you.” In all six statements, it is claimed, Jesus raised the moral standard expected of His followers to a standard above what was expected of those under the Law of Moses.

So let’s consider that fundamental premise. If it is true, we would (1) expect that in every case Jesus would first accurately convey the old standard of the Law of Moses (as He certainly was an authority on it, being the author), and (2) we would expect that Jesus would convey a higher standard, one that was not expected of those under the Law of Moses. Let’s take a look at all six of Jesus’ “You have heard…but I say” statements, three this month and the other three next month. We’ll begin with His statement about adultery and lust.

1.) OK to Lust Under the Mosaic Law?

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart (Matt. 7:27-28).

Jesus certainly accurately conveyed what was prohibited under the Law of Moses regarding adultery, quoting the 7th Commandment verbatim. But did He raise the moral bar for His followers? If we answer yes, then we must also conclude that lust was not prohibited for those under the Law of Moses. We must conclude that, although adultery was a sin in God’s eyes for those under the Old Covenant, what universally precedes adultery was not a sin for them.

Here are a few questions to help us determine the truth about lust under the Law of Moses:

1.) Would it have been morally acceptable behavior in the eyes of God for Moses, Aaron, David, Jeremiah, Isaiah, as well as any and all other men living under the Law of Moses to mentally undress women who were not their wives and imagine having sex with them?

2.) When an old covenant man prayed, like David, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord,” did his prayer have no application to lust? Were lustful mediations acceptable to God?

3.) If an old covenant man’s God-given conscience bothered him for lusting, was his guilt unfounded?

4.) When David confessed his sin of adultery with Bathsheba, was he only confessing what occurred from the time he and Bathsheba started to disrobe? Was David thinking to himself that, had he only lustfully gazed at another man’s wife and not had sex with her, that would have been OK in God’s eyes, needing no confession?

5.) Were old covenant women not offended if they caught their husbands peeking over walls to watch their neighbors’ wives bathe? Is it likely that old covenant husbands defended themselves against their wives’ anger at such times by saying, “You have no right to be upset with me! I’ve done nothing wrong! It’s not like I was planning to commit adultery!”?

6.) Was the sin of lust, which Jesus soberly warned can result in one’s damnation (see Matt. 5:29-30), of no consequence under the Old Covenant? Is God thus making it more difficult for people living after the time of Christ to gain eternal life than for those living before the time of Christ, a time when lust carried no threat of damnation?

I’d be willing to bet that you answered “no” to every one of those questions.

I could rest my case, but there’s more convincing proof that lust was a sin under the Law of Moses. We only need to keep reading a few sentences past the 7th Commandment to discover that God forbade the coveting of another man’s wife in the 10th Commandment. Most men don’t covet their neighbor’s wife for her cooking skills. The 10th Commandment includes a prohibition against lust.

And what about this passage in the Old Testament? Does it have anything to say about lust?

For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light;
And reproofs for discipline are the way of life
To keep you from the evil woman,
From the smooth tongue of the adulteress.
Do not desire her beauty in your heart,
       Nor let her capture you with her eyelids.
For on account of a harlot one is reduced to a loaf of bread,
And an adulteress hunts for the precious life (Prov. 6:23-26, emphasis added).

Clearly, lust was forbidden under the Law of Moses. So Jesus was not raising the moral bar for His followers. He was simply condemning what everyone since Adam has known in their God-given consciences and what the Law of Moses confirmed for 1,300 years: Lust is a sin in God’s eyes.

It is also quite possible that Jesus, who had told His audience seconds earlier that their righteousness had to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees if they wanted to enter heaven (see Matt. 5:2), was condemning those men’s lustful lifestyles that made divorce and remarriage so common among them, something Jesus equated with adultery, and a topic He introduced about two seconds later.

Allow me to paraphrase Matthew 7:27-28:

You have heard from your synagogue teachers, the scribes and the Pharisees, “You shall not commit adultery.” They have done well to teach you the 7th Commandment. They have failed, however, to teach you the 10th Commandment, which includes a prohibition against lust, a sin which they practice, and a sin that always precedes adultery. God expects His people to be guiltless regarding both adultery and what always precedes adultery, namely, lust.

One down, five to go.

2.) OK to Hate Your Enemies Under the Mosaic Law?

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt. 5:43-45).

Was Jesus raising the moral bar for His followers with those words? If He was, then we must conclude that God commanded the people of Israel to hate their enemies rather than love them, because that is what Jesus said: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.'”

The problem is, there is nothing in the Law of Moses that states, “You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.” That is why in so many Bible translations, the first five words of that quotation are capitalized, indicating that they are found in the Old Testament, and the last four words are not capitalized, indicating that they are not found in the Old Testament. Jesus wasn’t quoting God. So who was He quoting?

He could only have been quoting the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees, the master Scripture twisters. Take note, Jesus did not say, “God said,” but rather, “You have heard that it was said.”

Not only did the Law of Moses not instruct the people of Israel to hate their enemies, it actually instructed them to love their enemies:

If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him, you shall surely release it with him (Deut. 23:4-5).

That was a law that was binding on the people of Israel from the time of Moses, from 1,300 years before Christ.

And let us not be so foolish as to think that the application of that law was so narrow that it only applied to the oxen or donkeys of one’s enemy! (“I just saw one of my enemy’s goats wandering away…so glad it wasn’t one of his oxen or donkeys, or God would expect me to do something!”) No! That commandment was just a way of saying, “Love your enemies.”

Yes, everyone knows that God commanded a certain generation of Israelites to annihilate the wicked inhabitants of Canaan who were having sex with animals and throwing their babies into fires. But that was a unique and temporary assignment that God gave to one generation, when God used Israel as a tool of His wrath upon deserving sinners. And what God commanded in Deuteronomy 23:4-5 about loving their enemies (quoted above) obviously did not have application to their enemies in war. In regard to daily matters of life with their neighbors, however, God undeniably commanded the people of Israel to return good for evil.

It could also be convincingly argued that God’s Old Covenant law to love one’s neighbor as oneself—which Jesus declared to be the second greatest commandment—would, in its application, result in deeds of kindness towards one’s enemies. Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan, which began and ended with a reference to the second greatest commandment, was a story about a Samaritan man being kind to a traditional enemy. Undeniably, Jesus’ story was an illustration of two people who didn’t obey the second greatest commandment (the priest and Levite) and one who did (the Samaritan), by loving his enemy (see Luke 10:25-37).

Here is yet another Old Testament passage that proves that God expected Old Covenant believers to love their enemies:

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink;
For you will heap burning coals on his head,
And the Lord will reward you (Prov. 25:21-22).

Interestingly and significantly, the Apostle Paul quoted those very same Old Covenant verses as he reminded his New Covenant readers of the moral ethic that God expected of them:

If your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink, for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:20-21).

Now please read slowly so you don’t miss this undeniable fact: To Paul, the New Covenant ethic regarding the treatment of one’s enemies was identical to the Old Covenant ethic. Nothing had changed.

So how can it be rightly said that the New Covenant ethic regarding the treatment of one’s enemies is superior to the Old Covenant ethic? How can it be rightly said that Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, raised the moral bar above what was stipulated in the Mosaic Law in regard to the treatment of one’s enemies? The fact is, it can’t be rightly said. It can only be wrongly said.

Allow me to ask one further question: For what length of time has God been doing what Jesus said sets an example of loving one’s enemies, namely, causing “His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sending rain on the righteous and the unrighteous”? Only since the time of Christ? Not during the time of the Law of Moses? I rest my case.

Clearly, Jesus was not raising the moral bar for His followers regarding the treatment of their enemies. Rather, He was restating God’s original ethic as revealed in the Mosaic Law (and in every sunrise and rainfall since the time of Adam), while at the same time He was exposing the false teaching and practice of the scribes and Pharisees, the master Scripture twisters.

Allow me to paraphrase Matthew 5:43-45:

You have heard from your synagogue teachers, the scribes and Pharisees, “Love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.” That second clause is another example of your teachers adding to God’s Word and thus nullifying it. God never commanded you to hate your enemies. He has always expected His people to be merciful and gracious, not taking their own revenge, not returning evil for evil, but returning good for evil. He’s demonstrated that ethic by His own example since the time of Adam, as everyone can see that God returns good for evil. He causes His crop-growing sun to rise on evil and good people, and He sends crop-growing rain on the righteous and unrighteous.

Two down, four to go.

3.) OK to Hate Your Brothers Under the Mosaic Law?

You have heard that the ancients were told, “You shall not commit murder” and “Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.” But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever shall say to his brother, “Raca,” shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever shall say, “You fool,” shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. If therefore you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering (Matt. 5:21-24).

Most Bible translations capitalize Jesus’ words, “You shall not commit murder,” indicating it is a genuine quote from the Old Testament, but leave “Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court” uncapitalized, indicating that it is not an Old Testament quote. This is just like the previous example we considered. Jesus essentially quoted the 6th Commandment and then included what the scribes and Pharisees added. The scribes and Pharisees apparently condemned murder, but had nothing to say about the sins of the heart that always precede murder (sins of which they themselves were guilty in light of their hatred for, and eventual murder of, Jesus).

So was Jesus raising the moral bar above the Old Testament’s prohibition of murder? If we answer yes, we must conclude that under the Old Covenant, God disapproved of murder but approved the heart attitudes and sins that universally precede murder. Could that be?

Anyone who claims that Jesus was raising the moral bar for His followers must maintain that hate-filled anger and spiteful words were not sins in God’s eyes under the Law of Moses. They must maintain that, during the time of the Old Covenant, God was unconcerned when His people brought offerings to the temple after engaging in bitter unresolved conflicts with their spiritual family members.

But are those claims true? How could they be true if God commanded Israel to love their neighbors as themselves? Love precludes hatred. And how could they be true if God explicitly forbade in the Law of Moses the very same sinful heart attitudes that Jesus addressed in the Sermon on the Mount? For example, we read in the Law of Moses:

You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord (Lev. 19:17-18, emphasis added).

How could it rightly be said that Jesus raised the moral bar above what God expected of His Old Covenant people in regard to one’s relationships with his brothers when the Law of Moses forbade the same hatred that Jesus forbade?

Moreover, it is undeniable that the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself was not only binding on Old Covenant believers, but also New Covenant believers. In fact, the second greatest commandment is found only once in the Old Testament, but seven times in the New (see Lev. 19:18; Matt. 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; Jas. 2:8).

That being so, has the second greatest commandment somehow intrinsically changed? Under the Old Covenant, did loving my neighbor as myself allow for spewing angry, hate-filled words upon my neighbor, while under the New Covenant, loving my neighbor as myself forbids such things?

The answers to those questions are obvious.

Again we see that Jesus was not raising the moral bar above the standard found in the Law of Moses. Rather, He was restating God’s original standard and exposing the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees.

Allow me to paraphrase Matt. 5:21-24:

You have heard from your synagogue teachers that your ancestors were told, “You shall not commit murder” and “Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.” Murder is indeed a sin. But so is the hatred and anger that leads to murder and the hate-filled words that are always spoken prior to murder. So while the scribes and Pharisees have been warning you of the courtroom consequences for those who commit murder, let Me tell you about God’s heavenly courtroom, where you will all one day be on trial. It won’t just be murderers who are sentenced to hell there. It will be all those whose lives were filled with hatred, all those who ignored My great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, and the evidence of one’s hate-filled heart are his hate-filled words. At your trial in heaven’s court, your words will justify or condemn you (see Matt. 12:37).

So don’t be like the Pharisees who major in the minors, focusing on religious rituals while neglecting what is most important, namely, obeying the second greatest commandment. If you are in the middle of a religious ritual and remember that your relationship with a brother is not right, stop what you are doing. Take care of what is most important first. Go and strive to be reconciled with your brother. Once you’ve taken care of what is most important to God, then you can focus on lesser things.

Next month we’ll consider Jesus’ other three “You have heard…but I say to you” statements. Take note that, in all of the first three examples, Jesus indisputably did not raise the moral standard above what was expected under the Law of Moses.

As always, I appreciate your feedback and read all of it. — David

The post Another Look at Nonresistance, Part 1 appeared first on David Servant.

In the former case, I need to stop and ask myself why I’m sending a mixed message. Am I confused? Have I lied? Have I changed my position on the subject?

In the latter case, I need to do a better job of communicating, or my listener needs to do a better job listening.

I hope that you will agree with me that God never sends mixed messages. He is never confused; He never lies; and most importantly, He never changes, at least concerning His inherent nature, His character, and fundamental moral issues (see Mal. 3:6; Heb. 13:8; Jas. 1:17). Thus if it appears that God is sending a mixed message, the problem is with our understanding. He is not sending any mixed messages. We need to listen better.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” (Matt. 5:38-39). From these two verses an entire theology of pacifism has been crafted to which many Christians sincerely subscribe. Yet within the other 31,100 verses of the Bible, it seems that God might be sending a mixed message. For example, God said in His Law given through Moses:

If the thief is caught while breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there will be no bloodguiltiness on his account” (Ex. 22:2).

Clearly, God did not expect His people under the Old Covenant to “turn the other cheek” when thieves were breaking into their houses. Rather, if you were living under the Old Covenant, and you struck a thief who was breaking into your house, and that thief died from the injury you inflicted, you would not be guilty of any sin. You would not have to ask God for forgiveness. It was lawful in God’s eyes to defend your family and possessions by harming those who gave clear indication of their intention to steal from you.

So, again, it seems that God might be sending a mixed message. Something that was not morally wrong in God’s eyes for 1,300 years (from the giving of the Mosaic Law), suddenly, in the space of a few seconds (during Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount), became morally wrong. If you had killed a thief who was breaking into your house the morning before Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, you would not have incurred guilt. But if you had simply slapped a thief who was breaking into your house in the evening after Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, you would have sinned.

And if “turning the other cheek” means “don’t do anything that might hurt or offend someone who hurts or offends you,” then Jesus’ words seem to contradict major portions of the Law of Moses, in which God established a system of justice whereby those harmed could obtain justice. For example:

If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he shall pay five oxen for the ox and four sheep for the sheep (Ex. 22:1).

Obviously, a man who “turns the other cheek” would not be taking a thief to court to ultimately make that thief five oxen poorer and himself five oxen richer. In fact, a man who “turns the other cheek” would not be taking anyone to court, period.

All of this is to say that Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek, as they are so often interpreted, stand in opposition to the entire system of justice that God established for at least 1,300 years for Israel. So is God sending a mixed message? Of course not. The fault lies in our understanding of what He is communicating. So we need to listen better.

So how can we harmonize these two apparently contradictory messages from God?

A Common Answer

It is often claimed that Jesus was “raising the bar” on the moral behavior expected of His followers. What was OK for Jews was not OK for Christians. Jews could strike and even kill thieves breaking into their houses. Christians, however, should not even call the police or take to court those who steal from them. Rather, they should offer thieves more than they intend to steal, “turning the other cheek” (like the Catholic priest did for thief Jean Valjean in Les Miserables). By that interpretation, Jesus was of course undeniably changing the Law of Moses. What once was morally right in God’s eyes became morally wrong.

But is that what Jesus was really trying to communciate? Was He “raising the bar” and changing the Law of Moses? Was He invalidating the system of justice established by God 1,300 years earlier? (That question could be rightfully rephrased, “Was Jesus invalidating the system of justice that He Himself established 1,300 years earlier?”)

If He was, one would have to wonder why He, just a few seconds before His words about “turning the other cheek,” said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt. 5:17). If Jesus did not come to abolish the Mosaic Law, but then abolished a major moral part of the Mosaic Law, that is a contradiction. That creates another “mixed message” from God. So it can’t be true.

“But,” some counter, “clearly Jesus did change the Law of Moses during His Sermon on the Mount, because He directly quoted from the Mosaic Law’s stipulation of ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,’ and then He said, ‘But I say to you…'”

Is that, however, good listening to what God is trying to communicate? Was Jesus actually saying, “The Law of Moses said one thing, but I am about to say something that contradicts it, and I expect you to follow, not what the Law of Moses said, but what I am about to say?”

Some Provocative Questions

A few other questions will help answer those questions.

Under the Old Covenant, did God require the individual people of Israel to blind the eyes of anyone who blinded one of their eyes? Did He require them to knock out the tooth of anyone who knocked out one of their teeth? Did He require them to always get personal revenge for every offense?

And is that what Jesus was referring to when He said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for any eye, and a tooth for a tooth'”? Was He saying, “You know that up until now, God has always expected you to get just revenge, one eye for one eye, one tooth for one tooth”?

And when Jesus continued, saying, “But I say to you…,” was He communicating, “From this point onward, however, I’m not requiring you to get revenge as God required of you for the past 1,300 years. In fact, I’m reversing that law entirely. From now on, I’m requiring you to turn the other cheek”?

The answers to those questions are fairly obvious.

Of course, the Law of Moses certainly did not require Jews to blind the eyes and knock out the teeth of those who had done the same to them. Rather, the Law of Moses forbade any Jew from taking personal revenge:

You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord (Lev. 19:18).

So clearly, when Jesus quoted the Law’s words about “an eye for an eye” and then continued with, “But I say to you…”, He was not disparagingly correcting or direspectfully changing what His Father had said 1,300 years earlier. Nor was He abolishing Israel’s God-given system of justice. Rather, He was correcting the false teaching and example set by the scribes and Pharisees who used God’s words about “an eye for an eye” to justify taking personal revenge for petty offenses. Allow me to explain.

Judges Only, Please

Again, the Mosaic Law’s words regarding “an eye for an eye” were not requirements for Israelites to take personal revenge. Rather, they were instructions for judges whom God expected to dispense pure justice:

If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise (Ex. 21:22-25, emphasis added).

If a malicious witness rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing, then both the men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who will be in office in those days. The judges shall investigate thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness and he has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you. The rest will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such an evil thing among you. Thus you shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot (Deut. 19:16-21).

The reason God established a court system in Israel was to promote justice and prevent personal vengeance—which is often unjust and perpetuates a cycle of revenge. The scribes and Pharisees, however, twisted what was applicable only to Israel’s judges. Jesus was correcting their teaching in His Sermon on the Mount, not His Father’s moral law! If Jesus was correcting His Father, He’s sending us another mixed message, because He claimed that whoever had seen Him had seen the Father (John 14:9), an obvious indication that Jesus would never contradict or correct His Father.

So What Was Jesus Saying?

So what was Jesus trying to communicate when He quoted the Law’s words about “an eye for an eye” and then told His followers to “turn the other cheek”?

Jesus was communicating that He did not want His followers to imitate the example of the scribes and Pharisees, concerning whom He said just seconds earlier, “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). Jesus was communicating that He did not want His followers to take personal revenge for petty offenses, such as being slapped on the cheek. Rather, He wanted them to be long-suffering, merciful and gracious.

Jesus was not communicating that His followers should never defend themselves, their families, their property, or other defenseless people against those who mean them serious harm, or that they should never press charges against criminals.

Think about it: If I “turn the other cheek” and do nothing to stop a thief from stealing from me, and if I do not press charges against him in court, what good does that accomplish? Some may claim, “By showing him love, it will make him feel guilty and drive him to repentance.” Perhaps. But more likely, it will encourage him to continue stealing since he’s faced no consequences for his sin. By “turning the other cheek,” we reinforce sin and reward sinners.

And would what I have just described be what love would dictate? If I really love the one stealing from me, I will want to motivate him to stop stealing, since Scripture declares that no thief will inherit God’s kingdom (see 1 Cor. 6:9-10). If I truly love a thief, I will want him to face the consequences of earthly justice in hopes that it might help him escape eternal justice.

Moreover, if I do nothing that might prevent him from continuing to steal, am I “loving my neighbor as myself?” If a thief was caught stealing from my neighbor, would I appreciate that neighbor “turning the other cheek” by letting the thief go without pressing charges, thus enabling that thief to steal from me?

The answer to these questions are obvious. Under the Old Covenant, God commanded His people to love their neighbors as themselves, and He also established a system of justice so that thieves could be prosecuted and punished. God was not sending a mixed message. God wants us to love people and prosecute thieves. And by prosecuting thieves, we actually love them…and the people they might potentially harm had we not prosecuted them.

God’s Government Employees

Some take Jesus’ words, “Do not resist him who is evil,” to incredible extremes, claiming that no follower of Christ should serve as a lawmaker, judge, or policeman. If that is what Jesus meant, then God is certainly sending us a mixed message, because He inspired the apostle Paul to write that government authorities like police and judges are both “established by God,” and “servants of God, avengers who bring God’s wrath on those who practice evil” (see Rom. 13:1-6).

If such extremists would be consistent, they should not lock their doors lest they “resist him who is evil.” Nor should they keep their eye on their children, lest some evil person want to abduct and abuse them. They should oppose all laws, all police, all judges, as they all exist to “resist those who are evil.” They should protest at prisons, because those are places that “resist those who are evil.” And when they witness a brutal attack by a mugger on a pedestrian, they should do nothing, not even call the police, lest they “resist him who is evil.”

So what does Jesus expect of us? Let me paraphrase Matthew 5:38-41 so that it harmonizes with the rest of what God said:

You have heard from the teachers in your synagogues that God said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” God did say that, but your teachers, the scribes and Pharisees, have twisted the application of what God said, and are using those verses, written as instructions for judges, to justify taking personal revenge for petty offenses.

As I just told you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter heaven. So don’t follow their twisted version of what God has said. God wants you to not resist evil people when they commit petty offenses against you, such as slapping you on the cheek, suing you for your shirt, or forcing you to carry their gear for a mile. Shame those people by turning the other cheek, giving them your coat, or walking with them for two miles. Overcome evil with good. Be surprisingly gracious, just as God is.

But regarding serious offenses, such as when someone steals from you, or punches you and you lose your sight or a tooth, I did not come to abolish the pure and righteous Law that My Father established. He has given you in that Law a justice system whereby you can take people to court to obtain justice. In those cases, never take your own revenge. Go to court. And to those court judges I warn, do justice! An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!

And as an addendum, if you are a Christian who has a dispute with another Christian who has grievously sinned against you (like defrauded you of money….not just some petty offense), I am not expecting you to just “turn the other cheek” as some say. You should seek justice and reconciliation. But don’t go to court before unbelievers. First, go to your brother privately. If he does not receive you, get one or two others. Enlist the help of fellow wise believers. And read 1 Corinthians 6:1-10.

I’ve shared just one example of how we sometimes take what appear to be “mixed messages” from God and make a mess of them, favoring just a few verses at the expense of others, and adopting an interpretation that does not harmonize with everything God has said about a certain subject. If I receive enough encouragement, next month I’ll share another popular mess that has been made, primarily by theologians who should know better, regarding another one of God’s “mixed messages.”

As always, I appreciate your feedback and read all of it. — David

The post When God Sends Mixed Messages appeared first on David Servant.

After attempting to persuade us that God’s judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with homosexuality, Vines then turns to two other Old Testament passages that, at face value, appear to condemn homosexuality:

You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination (Lev. 18:22).

If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them (Lev. 20:13).

These passages are straightforward. Under the law of Moses, homosexual sex was punishable by death. God considered it to be a “detestable act” and an “abomination.” Vines agrees, admitting, “In these chapters, male same-sex intercourse is prohibited, and the punishment for violators is death.”

So how does Vines wiggle out of any personal application of these passages to himself and other professing Christians who are homosexuals? The crux of his argument is that both passages are contained in the Law of Moses, a Law that is not binding upon New Covenant believers. Vines writes:

Their context within the Old Testament Law makes them inapplicable to Christians. Much of the New Testament deals with the issue of the place of the Old Law in the emerging Christian church. As Gentiles were being included for the very first time into what was formerly an exclusively Jewish faith, there arose ferocious debates and divisions among the early Jewish Christians about whether Gentile converts should have to follow the Law, with its more than 600 rules. And in Acts 15, we read how this debate was resolved. In the year 49 AD, early church leaders gathered at what came to be called the Council of Jerusalem, and they decided that the Old Law would not be binding on Gentile believers. The most culturally distinctive aspects of the Old Law were the Israelites’ complex dietary code for keeping kosher and the practice of male circumcision. But after the Council of Jerusalem’s ruling, even those central parts of Israelite identity and culture no longer applied to Christians. Although it’s a common argument today, there is no reason to think that these two verses from the Old Law in Leviticus would somehow have remained applicable to Christians even when other, much more central parts of the Law did not.

That is an interesting argument, and it is worth our examination, not only as it relates to the acceptability of homosexuality for Christians, but because the “we’re not under the Law” explanation is so often used within Christendom to justify questionable moral behavior.

It is certainly true that the Mosaic Law was given to a small segment of the human population and for a limited time, namely to the descendants of Israel, and only from the time of the Exodus until Jesus’ sacrificial death. But it is not at all true that the moral and ethical precepts contained in the Mosaic Law had no relevance to (1) all humans who lived prior to and after the Mosaic Law, (2) all non-Jewish people during the period of the Mosaic Law, or (3) all New Covenant believers in Christ. Matthew Vines can’t deny this.

Clearly, Vines does not believe that, because a prohibition against adultery is found in the Law of Moses (see Ex. 20:14), Christians are free to commit adultery with impunity. No, he believes that God’s Old Covenant requirement of fidelity is binding even upon homosexual marriages. In fact, he uses the concept of commitment to fidelity within homosexual marriage, contrasting it with casual homosexual sex and homosexual gang rape, as a central point of his argument designed to persuade us to accept homosexual marriage. So what gives him the right to arbitrarily relegate God’s Old Covenant prohibition against homosexuality to irrelevancy for New Covenant believers?

The fact is, the Mosaic Law’s moral and ethical aspects have an indisputable relevancy to New Covenant believers. Some New Testament authors quote certain commandments found in the Mosaic Law in such a way that is is clear that they believed those commandments were binding upon their readers. The reason, of course, is simply because the moral and ethical requirements of the Mosaic Law predate the Mosaic Law and were already contained in the law written by God in everyone’s conscience. The moral and ethical components of the Mosaic Law only codified already universally-understood morality and ethics.

For example, the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself is found only once in the Old Testament (Lev. 19:18), but it is found three times in the New Testament epistles, quoted once by James and twice by Paul (Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; Jas. 2:8). Interestingly, in both letters in which Paul quoted that particular Old Covenant law, Gentile freedom from the Mosaic Law was a major theme:

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:8-10).

For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another (Gal. 5:13-15).

Paul unmistakably believed that God expected his readers—whom he declared were not under the Law of Moses—to strive to love their neighbors as themselves. Also note that from reading Romans 13:8-10, it is evident that Paul believed that at least four of the Ten Commandments were also relevant to his New Covenant readers. They should not commit adultery, murder, steal or covet.

And from reading Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, it is equally clear that he believed yet another one of the Ten Commandments was relevant to New Covenant believers, as he quotes it verbatim, as well as its promise of blessing to those who obey it:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), “so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:1-3).

Reading through the Gospels, we similarly find Jesus quoting ethical and moral commandments found within the Mosaic Law while speaking to His followers of their obligation to obey them. To those who claim that, because Jesus was ministering to Jews under the Old Covenant, New Covenant Christians have no obligation to obey those commandments, it should be remembered that Jesus told His hand-picked apostles that they should go and make disciples, teaching their disciples to obey all that He had commanded them. Thus everything Jesus taught is relevant to all New Covenant believers. And clearly, Jesus carried over some of the Mosaic Law’s 613 commandments, namely those that were moral and ethical in nature, into the Law of the New Covenant, the Law of Christ.

All of this is to say that Matthew Vines has no warrant to arbitrarily write off any moral requirement found in the Mosaic Law. The fact is, God’s prohibitions against homosexuality in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are both found in chapters filled with prohibitions regarding other forms of sexual perversion, including incest, adultery and bestiality. Why doesn’t Vines claim that none of those things are forbidden for Christians since we are not obligated to keep the Mosaic Law? Can you imagine what the reaction would be if Vines used his same argument to justify incest or sex with animals? Imagine him claiming, “Christians are not obligated to shun sex with animals, because that was only forbidden under the Law of Moses, and Christians are not under that Law”!

Grasping at straws, Vines justifies his arbitrary annulment of the verses under consideration in Leviticus 18 and 20 that prohibit homosexual relations by means of a single verse in Leviticus 18 that prohibits intercourse during a women’s menstrual period. Vines tells us that Christians feel no obligation to keep that particular commandment. So, he claims, it is wrong to arbitrarily select another verse in the same chapter and claim that it is binding upon Christians.

Vines’ logic is skewed in this case on at least two levels. First, he makes the false claim that Christians feel no obligation to keep a commandment that prohibits intercourse during a women’s menstrual period. I would suggest otherwise. I would suggest that most Christian husbands understand that there are indeed times when it would be degrading to their wives and inappropriate to have intercourse with them. I would suggest that many non-Christians know that as well.

Second and even more significant, Vines ignores the fact that Leviticus 18 begins and ends with information that proves beyond any doubt that all the prohibitions found in its verses are applicable to and binding upon Christians. The chapter begins with these words:

You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you; you shall not walk in their statutes (Lev. 18:3).

After those words, God elaborates on all the sexual perversions that were taking place in Egypt and Canaan, namely incest, adultery, homosexuality, and bestiality. Then the chapter concludes with these words:

Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native, nor the alien who sojourns among you (for the men of the land who have been before you have done all these abominations, and the land has become defiled); so that the land will not spew you out, should you defile it, as it has spewed out the nation which has been before you. For whoever does any of these abominations, those persons who do so shall be cut off from among their people. Thus you are to keep My charge, that you do not practice any of the abominable customs which have been practiced before you, so as not to defile yourselves with them; I am the LORD your God (Lev. 18:24-30).

These two passages prove that the commandments in Leviticus 18 regulating sexual practice are not unique commandments that were only relevant to and binding upon the Jews under the Law of Moses. Clearly, God expected the Gentiles in Egypt and Canaan to shun the same sexual perversions even prior to His giving the Mosaic Law to Israel, and because they didn’t, His wrath came upon them.

Because God held the Egyptians and Canaanites accountable to the degree of sexual purity described in Leviticus 18, we can be certain that He had written those identical laws in their hearts. “Where there is no law, there also is no violation,” as Paul wrote in Romans 4:15. Thus, all of the moral imperatives found in Leviticus predate the Mosaic Law, and they have been binding upon all human beings from the beginning. All of the perversions that God delineated in Leviticus 18 as being “abominations”—incest, adultery, bestiality, sacrificing one’s children to an idol, and homosexuality—were just as abominable to Him when committed by anyone prior to the Mosaic Law as they were when committed by a Jew under the Mosaic Law. Thus it would be absurd to think that any of them are not abominable to Him today, or that all are abominations today with the exception of one or two, as Matthew Vines apparently believes.

On to the New Testament…

Of course, even if we grant Vines his twisted argument regarding Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, or even if we find a legitimate justification to annul for Christians what the Mosaic Law says regarding homosexuality, there are still three New Testament passages that all contain the same condemnation:

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error (Rom. 1:26-27).

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10).

Realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God (1 Tim. 1:9-11).

You may be wondering how Vines could possibly wiggle his way out of these three passages that seem to inescapably condemn homosexuality. But wiggle he does, to the point of contortion.

Concerning the passage in Romans 1:26-27, Vines claims that it applies, not to people like himself, who were born with a natural tendency toward same-sex attraction, but rather to people who were born heterosexual, but who abandoned their heterosexuality for homosexuality, which for them is “unnatural.” For people like himself, however, becoming heterosexual would be “unnatural.” Vines writes:

Both the men and the women started with heterosexuality—they were naturally disposed to it…but they rejected their original, natural inclinations for those that were unnatural: for them, same-sex behavior….

Gay people have a natural, permanent orientation toward those of the same sex; it’s not something that they choose, and it’s not something that they can change. They aren’t abandoning or rejecting heterosexuality—that’s never an option for them to begin with. And if applied to gay people, Paul’s argument here should actually work in the other direction: If the point of this passage is to rebuke those who have spurned their true nature, be is religious when it comes to idolatry or sexual, then just as those who are naturally heterosexual should not be with those of the same sex, so, too, those who have a natural orientation toward the same sex should not be with those of the opposite sex. For them, that would be exchanging “the natural for the unnatural” in just the same way. We have different natures when it comes to sexual orientation.

Imagine someone using the same argument to justify any of the other sins that Paul lists in this same passage in Romans, sins committed, according to Paul, by those who reject God, such as greed, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, arrogance, disobedience to parents, untrustworthiness and mercilessness.

Imagine if Vines had written, “There are two kinds of murderers, those who are born with a natural tendency to murder, and those who are not, but who abandon their natural tendency not to murder and who become murderers. Those are the kind of murderers whom Paul is condemning in this passage. The other kind of murderers have a natural, permanent orientation to murder; it’s not something they choose, and it’s not something that they can change. They aren’t abandoning or rejecting not-murdering—that was never an option for them to begin with. In fact, for such murderers to stop murdering, it would actually be spurning their true nature, which Paul says should not be done.”

Take any of the many other sins that Paul lists along with homosexuality in Romans 1:24-32, apply the same arguement that Vines applies to homosexuality, and you come to the same bizarre conclusion. Moreover, facts don’t support Vines’ claim that homosexuality never has any environmental causes, that it never has anything to do with personal choice, and that it is a permanent condition that can’t be changed. In fact, Vines’ own statements regarding Romans 1:24-32 don’t support those claims for at least one of the two categories of homosexuals he describes. If Paul was allegedly writing only about heterosexuals who unnaturally abandoned their heterosexuality for homosexuality, then clearly that category of homosexuals were not born with an innate same-sex attraction, and obviously their personal choice had something to do with their sexual orientation. And if any heterosexual has the potential to abandon his or her heterosexuality (as Vines clearly believes), then it would stand to reason that any homosexual could as well. Vines reveals that he doesn’t believe what he wants all of us to believe.

Finally, Vines’ argument regarding Romans 1:24-32 begs the question, “Where in Scripture is this alleged other category of homosexuals mentioned to which Paul’s condemnation does not apply?”

Vines also attempts to differentiate between the alleged “immoral kind” of homosexuality that Paul condemns in Romans 1:26-27 and the loving, committed relationships of married homosexuals:

And surely it is significant that Paul here speaks only of lustful, casual behavior. He says nothing about the people in question falling in love, making a lifelong commitment to one another, starting a family together. We would never dream of reading a passage in Scripture about heterosexual lust and promiscuity and then, from that, condemning all of the marriage relationships of straight Christians. There is an enormous difference between lust and love when it comes to our sexuality, between casual and committed relationships, between promiscuity and monogamy. That difference has always been held to be central to Christian teaching on sexual ethics for straight Christians. Why should that difference not be held to be as central for gay Christians? How can we take a passage about same-sex lust and promiscuity and then condemn any loving relationships that gay people might come to form? That is a very different standard than the one that we apply to straight people.

The comparison that Vines draws—of heterosexual/homosexual lust and casual sex with heterosexual/homosexual marriage—is an invalid comparison. Scripture condemns heterosexual lust and casual sex, but it condones sex within heterosexual marriage. Scripture condemns, however, all forms of homosexual sex, making absolutely no distinction between homosexual lust/casual sex and sex within “homosexual marriage.” Homosexual marriage is an idea utterly foreign to Scripture.

What would be the reaction if Vines claimed that human lust and casual sex with all of one’s biological children should be shunned, but that sex with just one offspring—within the context of “marriage” to him or her—-should be condoned? What would be the reaction if Vines claimed that human lust and casual sex with animals should be shunned, but that sex with one animal within the context of committed human/animal marriage should be condoned?

The Final Two New Testament Passages

Finally, what about the two other New Testament passages, besides Romans 1:26-27, that straightforwardly name and condemn homosexuality?:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10, emphasis added).

Realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God (1 Tim. 1:9-11, emphasis added).

What does Vines say about these? Somehow he gains a superior ability to translate Greek words over those Greek scholars who have translated practically every modern version of the Bible, and Vines informs us that the Greek word, arsenokoites, translated “homosexuals” in both passages, is a mis-translation.

Vines claims that one should not attempt to determine any accurate meaning for Greek words through considering the root words from which they are derived—even though Greek scholars do it as a matter of practice. Once you know the root words of arsenokoites, it is understandable why Vines would prefer that you ignore them. They are, arsen, which simply means “male” (see, for example, Matt. 19:4) and koite, which literally means “bed” with a strong sexual connotation (from it our English word coitus is derived). Below are three examples of koite as it is used by New Testament authors. In each example, I’ve bolded the English word or words that are translated from the Greek word koite:

And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac (Rom. 9:10).

Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy (Rom. 13:13).

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge (Heb. 13:4).

So it couldn’t be more clear that either “homosexuals” or “men having sex” are both perfectly valid English translations of the Greek word arsenokoites.

What does Vines claim that arsenokoites actually means based on his “research”? He says that it refers to “some kind of economic exploitation, likely through sexual means,” and then further clarifies: “This may have involved forms of same-sex behavior, but coercive and exploitative forms. There is no contextual support for linking this term to loving, faithful relationships.”

Again, of course, the concept of “loving, faithful” homosexual marriage is utterly foreign to Scripture, which would certainly explain why there is no biblical contextual support for linking arsenokoites to “loving, faithful homosexual relationships.” Vines might just as well claim that the Greek word moichos, translated “adulterers” in the same passage in 1 Corinthians, has no contextual support for linking it to loving, faithful adulterous relationships, thus proving that the kind of adultery Paul condemns in the passage is only “lustful, non-loving adultery.” This kind of “explanation” from Vines shows us again what lengths he is willing to go to in order to nullify God’s Word.

Incredibly, Vines wants us to believe that, in a list of specific, well-known, and very grievous sins that will exclude one from inheriting God’s kingdom, there is one sin that is difficult to define and understand, a sin expressed by a word that has left all of Paul’s readers for the past 2,000 years guessing what it might be that could exclude them from inheriting eternal life. Here is how Vines would translate 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor those who are guilty of some kind of economic exploitation, likely through sexual means that may involve forms of same-sex behavior—but only coercive and exploitative forms of same-sex behavior that are not to be confused with loving, faithful same-sex relationships—nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

And Matthew Vines’ translation of 1 Timothy 1:9-11 becomes:

Realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and those who are guilty of some kind of economic exploitation, likely through sexual means that may involve forms of same-sex behavior—but only coercive and exploitative forms of same-sex behavior that are not to be confused with loving, faithful same-sex relationships, and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God (1 Tim. 1:9-11, emphasis added).

In Conclusion

And so Matthew Vines has not, as he claims on his website, proved from the Bible that homosexuality is not a sin. Rather, he has proved from the Bible that he is a sinner. Vines not only needs to repent of promoting what God declares to be grievous sin that will exclude one from inheriting His kingdom, he also needs to repent of twisting God’s Word to accomplish his end, making God say the opposite of what He actually said. Vines is using God’s Word to deceive his readers and potentially rob them of eternal life. What could be more serious? On top of that, now he is earning money by his deception.

Matthew Vines, by his own testimony, believes that those who are born with a heterosexual orientation can become homosexuals. So Matthew Vines clearly believes that sexual orientation can change, even if he denies it.

Homosexuals and their advocates are quick to point out that there are few homosexuals who have made the change to heterosexuality. But that does not mean the potential for them to change does not exist. Most of the world’s unrighteous people never repent, believe in Jesus, and experience forgiveness and new birth. But that does not prove that all of them cannot repent, believe in Jesus, and be forgiven and born again.

The fact is, through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, homosexuals have been delivered from homosexuality. In previous e-teachings, I have listed three public examples. Here are two more: Pastor Michael Cannatello from Lazarus Ministry in Bradenton, Florida (see http://lazarusministry.com/about/), and Matt Moore (see http://ipost.christianpost.com/news/saved-from-homosexuality-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-gay-christian-10039/?redirect).

One thing is certain: American Jesus cannot transform or deliver anyone from anything, because he requires no repentance, and he makes no rightful claims of lordship over the lives of those who allegedly believe in Him. He may, in fact, even condone homosexuality—as does the version of American Jesus in whom Matthew Vines believes.

Bible Jesus, however, is altogether different from American Jesus. He has all authority in heaven and on earth, and so He doesn’t ask His followers to do anything. He commands them. And because they believe in Him and love Him, they keep His commandments. They know that they will stand before Him one day, because God has appointed Him as the Judge of everyone. They know that He will judge them by their works, because what they do reveals what they believe.

American Jesus only asks that you “accept him.” But Bible Jesus doesn’t need anyone’s acceptance. Rather, everyone needs His acceptance. And His acceptance can only be gained by repentance and faith, and faith, not in a few theological facts about Him that every demon believes, but faith in Him. Who is He? He is Lord.

As they pass from this life, all who believe in American Jesus will realize that he was as real as Mickey Mouse. And then they will stand before Bible Jesus in all of His glory—the Jesus who, had they repented when they still were breathing, would have graciously granted them new life and eternal life. But it will be too late then. And all who preferred the nebulous and self-contradictory teaching of Matthew Vines over the clear teaching of Bible Jesus will find themselves weeping and gnashing their teeth. Matthew Vines, what will you say to them then? — David

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The post The New Gay Bible, Part 2 appeared first on David Servant.

Let me begin once more by affirming the need for all sides to grant each other mutual respect. Those of us who believe that God disapproves of homosexuality need to remember that His disapproval is found in lists that include other things that grieve Him, like deceit, envy, greed, theft, gossip, slander, arrogance, mercilessness, untrustworthiness, and lying (see Rom. 1:26-31; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; 1 Tim. 9-10). Homosexuality is not singled out in Scripture to be the sin that grieves God the most. Log-eyed first-stone-throwers, take note.

And those who think that all Bible-believing Christians are bigots need to know that true Christians believe that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have eternal life (John 3:16). We’ve got good news for every style of sinner.

Within the course of the past three month’s e-teachings, some of the feedback I’ve received has revolved around the “pro-gay interpretation” of certain Scripture passages—namely, three in the Old Testament and three in the New—that traditionally have been understood to condemn homosexuality. I cited five of them in my first teaching in this series.

Perhaps the most influential person currently promoting the “pro-gay interpretation” of those scriptures is Matthew Vines, a homosexual and professing Christian, whose videoed message at a Methodist church has received almost 700,000 views on YouTube at the time of this writing. (The video and transcript can be found at Vines’ website: http://www.matthewvines.com.) Random House has just published Vines’ new book, titled, God and the Gay Christian. Vines, at age 21, has never been involved in a hetero- or homosexual relationship, but he hopes to one day be faithfully married to a man and enjoy a family.

In this e-teaching, I’d like to consider Matthew Vines’ interpretations.

“Bad Fruit” Teachers?

Vines begins his lobby against the church’s traditional teaching against homosexuality by questioning the fruit of that teaching. If the fruit is bad, Vines says, then we ought to question the validity of the teaching, because that is allegedly what Jesus taught:

The first problem is this: In Matthew 7, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns against false teachers, and he offers a principle that can be used to test good teaching from bad teaching. By their fruit, you will recognize them, he says. Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Good teachings, according to Jesus, have good consequences. That doesn’t mean that following Christian teaching will or should be easy, and in fact, many of Jesus’s commands are not easy at all—turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, laying down your life for your friends. But those are all profound acts of love that both reflect God’s love for us and that powerfully affirm the dignity and worth of human life and of human beings. Good teachings, even when they are very difficult, are not destructive to human dignity. They don’t lead to emotional and spiritual devastation, and to the loss of self-esteem and self-worth. But those have been the consequences for gay people of the traditional teaching on homosexuality. It has not borne good fruit in their lives, and it’s caused them incalculable pain and suffering. If we’re taking Jesus seriously that bad fruit cannot come from a good tree, then that should cause us to question whether the traditional teaching is correct.

In my humble opinion, Matthew Vines’ application of Jesus’ warning to His followers about how to identify false teachers is an obvious misapplication of what Jesus said on at least two levels.

First, take note that Jesus was warning about false teachers “who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15), teachers who will one day be “cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 7:19), all because of their “bad fruit.” If Vines really believes that the principle Jesus lays down applies to those of us who hold to the traditional view of God’s condemnation of homosexuality, a view that results in “bad fruit in the lives of homosexuals,” then those who have taught of God’s disapproval of homosexuality from the Bible are some of the “ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing” against whom Jesus warned. And because we have caused through our teaching “emotional and spiritual devastation…loss of self-esteem and self-worth” and “incalculable pain and suffering” to homosexuals, we will one day be cast into hell with all false teachers. Is that what Jesus was trying to convey?

Secondly, apart from damning those who hold to the traditional interpretation of the primary six scriptures regarding homosexuality, is Matthew Vines’ depiction of “bad fruit” legitimate? Is teaching that is apparently based on the Bible, but that results in “loss of self-esteem and self-worth” and “destruction of human dignity” teaching that must be false because it produces “bad fruit”? Is that what Jesus had in mind?

Considering the major themes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as well as the immediate context surrounding Matthew 7:15-20, the false teaching about which Jesus warned was that which discounts holiness and detours people from the “narrow gate that leads to life” and puts them on the “broad way of destruction” (Matt. 7:13-14). Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter” (Matt. 7:21). So it doesn’t seem as if the fruit of “human dignity” was on Jesus’ mind when he warned about the fruit of false teachers. Rather, it was on the fruit of obedience to God’s commandments and the eternal consequences of sin.

I’m afraid that Vines has redefined the relentless guilt that is suffered by homosexuals as “destruction of human dignity,” and he seems to believe that the only source of that guilt is the teaching of those who hold to the traditional view of certain passages of Scripture. Of course, everyone who feels guilty for anything could claim that their “human dignity is being destroyed.” In those cases, wise preachers tell such people that their “human dignity” is their entire problem, because it is nothing other than human pride. They actually elevate themselves above God. In their minds, He has no right to judge them, but they have the right to judge Him! “What right does God have to tell me I should not insert my penis into another man’s rectum? How dare He rob me of my human dignity!” That is pride unabashed. (Forgive me for my graphic wording. I’m only trying to point out behavior that homosexuals often try to cover with euphemisms such as “gay” and “mutual love,” just like abortionists attempt to hide the murder of innocent babies with euphemisms such as “a woman’s choice,” “fetus,” and “terminate the pregnancy.”)

Scripture teaches that guilt is good because guilt is from God; it is a loving means He uses to motivate us to turn from our sins and be saved:

For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation” (2 Cor. 7:10).

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you (Jas. 4:8-10).

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (Matt. 5:4).

And are those who teach the traditional interpretation of what the Bible has to say about homosexuality solely responsible for the guilt that practicing homosexuals suffer? No, without need of any human agency, and since the dawn of human history, God has been convicting those who commit homosexual acts—just like He has been convicting those who commit adultery, or who lie, steal, murder and so on. That is universal human experience.

To take Matthew Vines’ application of Matthew 7:15-20 to its full conclusion, we can conclude that God has been robbing people of their human dignity for thousands of years, condemning them for their sins, and so He is a false teacher and a wolf in sheep’s clothing who deserves to be cast into hell. And the majority of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount should be classed as false, because much of its fruit has been the “loss of self-esteem and self-worth” and the “destruction of human dignity” in the lives of millions of guilty sinners for 2,000 years. So Jesus, His Father, and all who use the Bible’s anti-homosexuality passages to condemn homosexuality will be in hell together. Meanwhile, all homosexuals who are Christians will be in heaven. Hmmm. This is a very novel teaching…

Vines’ Next Text

Matthew Vines then turns to where most who teach the traditional biblical view regarding homosexuality begin, to the Genesis account of the creation of Adam and Eve:

In the first two chapters of Genesis, God creates the heavens and the earth, plants, animals, man, and everything in the earth. And He declares everything in creation to be either good or very good—except for one thing. In Genesis 2:18, God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” And yes, the suitable helper or partner that God makes for Adam is Eve, a woman. And a woman is a suitable partner for the vast majority of men—for straight men. But for gay men, that isn’t the case. For them, a woman is not a suitable partner. And in all of the ways that a woman is a suitable partner for straight men—for gay men, it’s another gay man who is a suitable partner. And the same is true for lesbian women. For them, it is another lesbian woman who is a suitable partner. But the necessary consequence of the traditional teaching on homosexuality is that, even though gay people have suitable partners, they must reject them, and they must live alone for their whole lives, without a spouse or a family of their own. We are now declaring good the very first thing in Scripture that God declared not good: for the man to be forced to be alone. And the fruit that this teaching has borne has been deeply wounding and destructive.

This is a major problem. By holding to the traditional interpretation, we are now contradicting the Bible’s own teachings: the Bible teaches that it is not good for the man to be forced to be alone, and yet now, we are teaching that it is.

Matthew grants that Eve was a suitable partner for Adam, and that women are suitable partners for the vast majority of men. But for gay men, he says, women are not suitable partners. Rather, the only suitable partners for them are other gay men, because of their mutual attraction. And it is similar for lesbian women. Men are not suitable partners. Only other lesbian women are.

But on what authority are these statements made? Certainly not the Bible. They are purely the opinions of Vines and anyone who agrees with him, based only on their homosexual attractions. Incidentally, there is absolutely nothing in Scripture that affirms homosexual marriage like Scripture affirms heterosexual marriage.

Where in the Bible did Jesus, who taught about and mentioned heterosexual marriage (Matt. 5:31-32, 19:3-11; 22:24-29, etc…), teach about homosexual marriage being suitable for some, or even mention homosexual marriage in any way that might be perceived as approving it? Homosexual advocates often point out the fact that Jesus never condemned homosexuality. But it works both ways. Jesus never advocated what homosexuals advocate today. (Incidentally, Jesus never condemned bestiality. Does that mean it is OK in God’s eyes to have sex with an animal?)

Where in the Bible did Paul or Peter, who both taught about heterosexual marriage (Eph. 5:22-28; Col. 3:18-19; 1 Tim. 3:12, Titus 2:4-5, 1 Pet 3:1-7), teach about homosexual marriage being the only suitable arrangement for some? Where did any Old or New Testament writer even mention homosexual marriage? Where are the examples of God-pleasing homosexual couples in the Bible? They don’t exist. Homosexual marriage is nothing more than an attempt to sanitize a sexual perversion by adding the element of lifelong fidelity between two homosexuals. It is akin to claiming that adultery is OK as long as both adulterers really love each other.

And when did people’s desires become the determining factor of what is suitable for them in God’s eyes? From reading the Bible and observing the human race throughout history, it would seem that people’s desires would be a better way to determine what is not suitable in God’s eyes.

What if someone claims that, for him, neither men nor women are perfectly suitable partners, because he has a desire for sex with both males and females? Does that make his marriages to and sexual relationships with both a man and a woman acceptable? What if someone claims that, for her, lifelong marriage is not suitable, because she has a desire for short-term sexual relationships? Do her desires or her opinion legitimatize fornication? What if someone claims that, for him, one lifelong committed marriage plus many short-term relationships is the only thing that is suitable, because that is what he desires. Does that make adultery OK?

Clearly, the litmus test for morality is not human opinion, but God’s opinion.

It seems incredible to me that Vines writes, “In all of the ways that a woman is a suitable partner for straight men—for gay men, it’s another gay man who is a suitable partner.” Really? In all of the ways? Among other things, I’m wondering how two married homosexual men will be at breast-feeding the baby they can’t produce.

Vines does his best to gain our sympathies and thus soften us to accept homosexual marriage by telling us that traditional Christian teaching, which again is “deeply wounding and destructive,” requires homosexual men to do something that God said is not good for men to do, namely to “live alone for their whole lives, without a spouse or a family of their own.”

That, however, is a stretch of the truth on at least three levels.

First, Vines acts as if there are only two possible alternatives for homosexual men, either marriage to another homosexual, or “living alone for their whole lives, without a spouse or a family of their own.” Vines leaves out the possibility of homosexuals experiencing a change in their sexual orientation. Some have, in fact, like former homosexual Dennis Jernigan, who has been heterosexually married for 29 years with 9 biological children. (Read his testimony here: http://www.dennisjernigan.com/needhelp.) In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul indisputably indicates that there were, in the church in Corinth, those who were formerly homosexual (see 1 Cor. 6:9-11). Sexual transformation is possible, but it doesn’t start by twisting scriptures to justify homosexual practices.

Second, there is nothing to prohibit homosexuals from enjoying close friendships, relationships and companionships with friends and family. They are certainly not consigned to a lonely life. When Vines writes that traditional teaching requires homosexual men to do something that God said is not good for men to do, namely to “live alone for their whole lives, without a spouse or a family of their own,” he really means that traditional teaching requires men to abstain from having sex with men, and women from having sex with women.

And third, God never said anywhere in the Bible that “it is not good for a man to be alone.” Rather, He said of Adam, “it is not good for the man to be alone.” At the time, Adam was the sole member of the human race. So God gave him a wife, a female, a woman who would fill their world with lots of other people, men and women. No man since Adam has been in Adam’s position, entirely alone on the earth.

Moreover, we have biblical examples of men of whom it can be confidently stated that it was indeed good, in God’s estimation, that they be matrimonially alone, people like the apostle Paul, who recommended celibacy, and Jeremiah. Jesus Himself endorsed celibacy for some (see Matt. 19:12). Thus, using what God specifically said about Adam and applying it to all men is a misapplication of Scripture. And using what God specifically said about Adam as a justification for same-sex marriage is a clear misapplication of Scripture.

Again, same-sex marriage is nothing more than an attempt to sanitize a sexual perversion by adding the element of lifelong fidelity between two homosexuals. And let us be honest. According to the facts, homosexuals don’t generally enjoy the benefits of life-long companionship among themselves. In Pollak’s study of male homosexuality titled, Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, he writes, “Few homosexual relationships last longer than two years, with many men reporting hundreds of lifetime partners.”

In another study, published in the Journal of Sex Research involving 2,583 older homosexuals, Paul Van de Ven and his colleagues discovered that only 2.7 percent of homosexuals claimed to have had sex with only one partner. In another study, it was found that 24 percent of gay men had over 100 partners, 43 percent of those studied had over 500 partners, and 28 percent of gay men had over 1,000 partners. Unlike Vines, it doesn’t seem as if the average homosexual is seeking a committed lifelong relationship.

Vines Visits Sodom

The first of the Bible’s six primary passages that directly address homosexuality is the story of God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Vines next visits that passage found in Genesis 19.

We are told six chapters earlier in Genesis that “the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the Lord” (Gen. 13:13), but we are not told what specific sins had earned them such a negative divine appraisal. It is not until more than a decade later when God sends two angels in human form to Sodom to visit Abraham’s nephew, Lot, that we learn more specifics about Sodom’s evil. It is shocking. We read:

Before they [Lot and the two angels whom he offered lodging for a night in his house] lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; and they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them” [literally, “know them” an unmistakable biblical reference to sex; see Gen. 4:1 for example] (Gen. 19:4-5).

Lot comes out of his house and implores them, “Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly” (Gen. 19:6). He then strangely offers them his two virgin daughters “to do to them whatever you like” (Gen. 19:7), but the many men who surround his house are not interested in his daughters. So they threaten to sodomize Lot, who is subsequently pulled back inside his house by the two angels. Soon afterwards, once Lot and his daughters have escaped Sodom, God destroys both it and a neighboring city, Gomorrah, killing everyone by raining fire and brimstone down upon them. Nothing in the narrative reveals anything about other sins of which the Sodomites may have been guilty.

What are we to learn from this story? You may have thought it was a lesson concerning God’s view of homosexuality. But Vines explains:

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was not originally thought to have anything to do with sexuality at all, even if there is a sexual component to the passage we just read. But starting in the Middle Ages, it began to be widely believed that the sin of Sodom, the reason that Sodom was destroyed, was homosexuality in particular. This later interpretation held sway for centuries, giving rise to the English term “sodomy,” which technically refers to any form of non-procreative sexual behavior, but at various points in history, has referred primarily to male same-sex relations. But this is no longer the prevailing interpretation of this passage, and simply because later societies associated it with homosexuality doesn’t mean that’s what the Bible itself teaches. In the passage, the men of Sodom threaten to gang rape Lot’s angel visitors, who have come in the form of men, and so this behavior would at least ostensibly be same-sex. But that is the only connection that can be drawn between this passage and homosexuality in general, and there is a world of difference between violent and coercive practices like gang rape and consensual, monogamous, and loving relationships. No one in the church or anywhere else is arguing for the acceptance of gang rape; that is vastly different from what we’re talking about.

Vines’ interpretation of the story tells us more about the interpreter than the story. According to him, God would have been quite OK with the men of Sodom had they been married to one another and engaged in consensual, monogamous, loving relationships that included regularly inserting their penises into the rectums of their same-sex spouses. God was only displeased because they all wanted to forcibly insert their penises into the rectums of unwilling men to whom they were not married. That was stepping over the line. (Again, forgive my graphic wording; I’m only trying to remind all of us what homosexuality actually is, because there is absolutely nothing wrong about men having strong, bonding friendships with other men [see 1 Sam. 18:1, 3, 20:17]; homosexual advocates often emphasize this in order to cover their sexual perversion.)

Vines continues to explain:

But the men of Sodom wanted to rape other men, so that must mean that they were gay, some will argue. And it was their same-sex desires, and not just their threatened rape, that God was punishing. But gang rape of men by men was used as a common tactic of humiliation and aggression in warfare and other hostile contexts in ancient times. It had nothing to do with sexual orientation or attraction; the point was to shame and to conquer. That is the appropriate background for reading this passage in Genesis 19, which, notably, is contrasted with two accounts of generous welcome and hospitality—that of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18 and Lot’s own display of hospitality in Genesis 19. The actions of the men of Sodom are intended to underscore their cruel treatment of outsiders, not to somehow tell us that they were gay.

Amazingly, Vines wants us to believe that the men of Sodom were likely heterosexual. But they wanted to humiliate Lot’s two visitors for some reason (which Vine fails to explain), and their plan was to do something that was allegedly common in times of war and hostility back in those days, namely, figure out a way to sexually arouse themselves so that they could systematically and publicly insert their penises into the rectums of two strangers. Boy, that would sure have sent the message, “Your kind aren’t welcome in these here parts!” And afterwards, once they had finished humiliating the two strangers by publicly ejaculating into their rectums, they could all pull up their pants and strut home to their proud wives (or perhaps with their homosexual partners to whom they were married) to boast of how successful they were in humiliating the day’s visitors. Vines not only rewrites history, he also spins a tale that only the most gullible could possibly swallow.

I’ll bet you’ve never in your life heard or thought of such an interpretation of the story of God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Again, Vines wants us to believe that the homosexual aggression of the Sodomites had nothing to do with their sexual orientation or their desire for homosexual sex, but that they were motivated by a desire to humiliate—by an utterly bizarre means and for no reason—two non-threatening foreign visitors who had just wandered into their town.

If there is any redeeming aspect of Lot’s strange offering of his two virgin daughters to the Sodomite aggressors, it is that it exposes Vines’ interpretation as the implausible theory that it is. Did Lot, citizen of Sodom, believe that the Sodomites’ aggression was unrelated to sexual desire, but solely based on a desire to humiliate his two visitors? If yes, then why did he offer his two virgin daughters for them to rape instead? Clearly, without dispute, Lot knew the Sodomite men were motivated by sex, and he learned what he probably already knew—that they were not interested in heterosexual sex. They wanted to have homosexual sex with his two guests.

In spite of all this, Matthew Vines believes the divine lesson of Genesis 19 is that there is an acceptable and an unacceptable way to extend hospitality, the former exemplified by Abraham, Sarah and Lot, and the latter exemplified by the Sodomites. Vines might as well try to convince us that the real sin of the woman caught in the act of adultery was that she wasn’t paying her tithes.

But there is more. Vines is determined to persuade us that God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with homosexuality, and so he begins to grasp at straws:

And indeed, Sodom and Gomorrah are referred to 20 times throughout the subsequent books of the Bible, sometimes with detailed commentary on what their sins were, but homosexuality is never mentioned or connected to them. In Ezekiel 16:49, the prophet quotes God as saying, “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” So God Himself in Ezekiel declares the sin of Sodom to be arrogance and apathy toward the poor. In Matthew 10 and Luke 10, Jesus associates the sin of Sodom with inhospitable treatment of his disciples. Of all the 20 references to Sodom and Gomorrah throughout the rest of Scripture, only one connects their sins to sexual transgressions in general. The New Testament book of Jude, verse 7, states that Sodom and Gomorrah “gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion.” But there are many forms of sexual immorality and perversion, and even if Jude 7 is taken as specifically referring to the threatened gang rape from Genesis 19:5, that still has nothing to do with the kinds of relationships that we’re talking about.

It’s now widely conceded by scholars on both sides of this debate that Sodom and Gomorrah do not offer biblical evidence to support the belief that homosexuality is a sin.

This section of Vines’ reinterpretation of the Sodom story is so full of misleading statements it is difficult to know where to begin.

Indeed, after Genesis 19—the shocking, unprecedented, and unforgettable account of Sodom’s men surrounding Lot’s house to rape two non-threatening visitors, preferring that over raping Lot’s daughters, followed almost immediately by Sodom’s subsequent destruction—Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned again in the Bible, many times. In the large majority of those references, no mention is made of any specific sins of which the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty. But according to Vines’ logic, since the majority of those references don’t mention homosexuality, homosexuality must not have been the reason God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Following Vine’s logic, we should conclude that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for no reason, since there are so many references that mention Sodom and Gomorrah without mentioning any specific sins. Moreover, if Vines is going to be consistent, since there are so many references that mention Sodom and Gomorrah without mentioning inhospitality or gang rape, that should also nullify his theory that those two things attracted God’s wrath.

Vine’s does, however, admit that twice in the Bible’s latter references to Sodom and Gomorrah, specific sins are mentioned. He references the first half of one of those references, found in Ezekiel 16:49, but for some reason he fails to include the second half found in the next verse:

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it (Ezek. 16:49-50).

So the Lord revealed three things that grieved Him about Sodom: (1) they were arrogant and haughty, (2) they did not care for the poor and needy, and (3) they “committed abominations.” Could those “abominations” have anything to do with the homosexual advances of the men of Sodom revealed by their preference to rape Lot’s two male visitors over his two daughters?

And as Vines admits, Sodom and Gomorrah are later mentioned in the New Testament in a reference in which specific sins are named:

Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire (Jude 7).

Jude directly connects the consequence of an unprecedented judgment with the cause: “gross immorality and going after strange flesh.” Vines wants us to believe that, since there are many kinds of sexual immorality, Jude could well have been making reference to, for example, adultery or fornication. The only obstacle that stands in the way of that theory is the biblical account in Genesis 19, a story of a city of men who wanted to have sex with two angels whom they thought were men, a city that only survived a few more hours after that example of “gross immorality and going after strange flesh.”

Further grasping at straws to bolster his theory that God judged Sodom for inhospitality, Vines writes, “In Matthew 10 and Luke 10, Jesus associates the sin of Sodom with inhospitable treatment of his disciples.” No, in Matthew 10:14-15 and Luke 10:1-12 Jesus simply stated that it will be more tolerable for the Sodomites on the day of judgment than it will be for those cities that reject the gospel that was brought to them by the Twelve and the Seventy in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ words have nothing to do with inhospitality. Jesus mentions no specific sins of Sodom and Gomorrah in those two passages as being the reason they were destroyed. He simply reveals that the sin of rejecting His gospel is even more grievous to God than the gross immorality of Sodom (a sobering thought, by the way).

To sum it all up, there are only three passages in the Bible that provide specific details of what sin attracted God’s wrath upon Sodom and Gomorrah: Genesis 19, Ezekiel 16:49-50, and Jude 7. The preponderance of the evidence points to gross sexual perversion perpetrated by the male citizens of Sodom who desired to have sex with two angels whom they thought were men, and secondarily, pride and neglect of the poor. There is no mention in any of those three passages of inhospitality or attempted gang rape.

Vines’ final statement, “It’s now widely conceded by scholars on both sides of this debate that Sodom and Gomorrah do not offer biblical evidence to support the belief that homosexuality is a sin,” is utter nonsense.

In Conclusion…

Next month I hope to conclude by considering Matthew Vines’ exposition of the five remaining biblical passages that have traditionally been used to prove God’s disapproval of homosexuality. May I say in closing, however, that we really don’t need the Bible to instruct us that homosexuality is a perversion of God’s intention for human sexuality. God has revealed many things through natural revelation:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse (Rom. 1:18-20).

For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus (Rom. 2:14-16).

As far as we know from the Bible, God gave no vocal or written commandments regarding human sexuality until He gave the Law of Moses. For the thousands of years prior to the Law of Moses, He only gave people the law that He has written in everyone’s conscience, which obviously was sufficient in God’s mind. For thousands of years before God wrote in stone tablets, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” everyone knew that adultery was wrong, and the Bible indicates that (see Gen. 20:1-18).

Natural revelation teaches us that men are not designed to have sex with men, nor women with women. Their parts don’t fit. It doesn’t make any difference if they are married or not. And everyone knows that rectums are where excreta comes out, as that is what it was designed for, and nothing else. And for those homosexuals who eschew “anal sex” (what a strange term that is), whatever else one might do that is sexual in nature with someone of the same sex is no more natural.

Why am I refuting Matthew Vines’ interpretation of these passages of Scripture? Because by reinterpreting the Bible, Vines sanctions something that God warned will prevent one from inheriting eternal life. Vines is deceiving himself and others like himself, removing any motivation for repentance. That is a very weighty thing. Love speaks the truth. — David

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So death spread to all men, because all sinned—for until the Law [of Moses] sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses (Rom. 5:12b-14a).

Death is an indication of God’s displeasure and judgment. Thus, because people died prior to the Law of Moses, we know God must have been displeased, which means that He must have revealed His Law to everyone prior to Moses, because “sin is not imputed when there is no law” (Rom. 5:13). Because He is righteous, God would never punish people for sin if He hadn’t revealed to them His Law.

That pre-Mosaic Law of the conscience is also a post-Mosaic Law. It has been engraved by God on the heart of every person, Jew and Gentile, from the time of Adam until this present moment. Paul wrote that the Gentiles reveal “the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them” (Rom. 2:15).

There is, of course, plenty of additional evidence that God’s Law was written on everyone’s heart prior to His giving the Mosaic Law. We can read in Genesis of people who lived long before the giving of the Ten Commandments who knew right from wrong. The Egyptian Pharaoh of Abraham’s day, for example, knew it was wrong for a man to take another man’s wife (see Gen. 14-20). So did Abimelech, a Philistine king (see Gen. 20:1-18, 26:6-11). Jacob knew that deception was wrong (see Gen. 27:12), yet he deceived his father in order to steal from his brother (see Gen. 27:1-45). Judah knew that adultery was wrong (see Gen. 38:24), yet he committed adultery. Joseph also knew that adultery was a sin, but unlike Judah, resisted the temptation (see Gen. 39:7-9). All of these people lived before God gave the Law of Moses. All bear testimony of God’s Law written on their hearts, conveyed to them by their consciences.

But did the people who lived before the Mosaic Law know anything more of what God expected than just His prohibition of adultery or lying? Certainly. An inscription on an Egyptian tomb belonging to Harkhuf of Elephantine, a gentleman who lived at least 800 years before God gave the Law of Moses, reads (in part):

“I gave bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, I ferried him who had no boat….I was one saying good things and repeating what was loved. Never did I say aught evil to a powerful one against anybody. I desired that it might be well with me in the Great God’s presence.”

Although Harkhuf may not win high marks for humility, the inscription on his tomb reveals that the Law God inscribed on his heart could be summarized, “Love your neighbor as yourself” or, “Treat others as you want to be treated” (Matt. 22:39; Luke 6:31). By listening to his conscience, Harkhuf knew that God expected him to care for the hungry and naked, something that is not even on the spiritual radar of many professing Christians.

As much as two hundred years before Harkhuf, a grand vizier of Egypt named Ptahhotep, who served under Pharaoh Isesi, authored a collection of thirty-seven moral maxims in his old age that were addressed to his son. At least 1,000 years before God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel, Ptahhotep warned his son against both lust and greed. Here are maxims 18 and 19:

If you want friendship to endure
In the house you enter
As master, brother, or friend,
In whatever place you enter,
Beware of approaching the women!
Unhappy is the place where it is done,
Unwelcome is he who intrudes on them.
A thousand men are undone for the enjoyment of a brief moment like a dream,
Then death comes for having known them…
When one goes to do it the heart rejects it. [Note this line!]
He who fails through lust of them,
No affair of his can prosper.

If you want a perfect conduct,
To be free from every evil,
Guard against the vice of greed:
A grievous sickness without cure,
There is no treatment for it.
It embroils fathers, mothers,
And the brothers of the mother,
It parts wife from husband;
It is a compound of all evils,
A bundle of all hateful things.
That man endures whose rule is rightness,
Who walks a straight line;
He will make a will by it,
The greedy has no tomb.

Seared and Sincere Consciences

All people, past and present, regardless of their ethnicity or religion, yield to their consciences to some degree. All have a “line in the sand” that they, at least currently, won’t cross over.

The worst scoundrels of human history were those who repeatedly suppressed the inward voice until their consciences became, as Paul wrote, “seared” (1 Timothy 4:12). If you drink hot coffee often enough, eventually it doesn’t hurt going down. Likewise, no one begins as a serial murderer or rapist. The downward spiral of such people began by their allowing just a little hatred or lust into their hearts, all at the protest of their consciences.

Entire societies, like ours, are degraded when the people collectively and increasingly allow their consciences to become seared. Their inward thoughts accuse them of wrongdoing, but they justify it with the excuse, “Everyone else is doing it.” That is why abortion, for example, the barbaric murder of one’s own child, has become commonplace (126,000 abortions every day worldwide, and forty-six million annually). Everyone knows it is morally wrong, but it is legal, so it must be OK. That is also why modern professing Christians can regularly entertain themselves viewing filth on television that self-respecting nonbelievers a few decades ago wouldn’t have been caught dead viewing, considering it obscene. The ever-sinking standard of false Christians remains only slightly higher than the ever-sinking standard of nonChristians.

Similarly, the admired heros of history are those who followed their consciences to a higher degree than their peers. Great moralists like Ghandi come to mind, who said, “Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.”

Ghandi was right about that. By following his own conscience, Ghandi aroused the conscience of the entire British Empire, and at times he was able to arouse the consciences of everyone in India, stopping Muslims and Hindus from slaughtering each other. Ghandi never became a Christian, but he lived by Christian principles more than many professing Christians, a testimony to the amazing moral potential of an unregenerate person who yields to his conscience. (Keep in mind that it was the British “Christians” who exploited and oppressed the poor Hindus and Muslims of India, which is why Ghandi is also famous for saying, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”)

What is most tragic is that so many professing Christians believe that they can continually ignore their consciences and still go to heaven, just as long as they once prayed a prayer to “accept Jesus.” Meanwhile, they also believe that people like Ghandi, whose lives are like shining lights in the darkness in comparison to theirs, will be cast into hell simply because they didn’t pray the same little prayer at some point in their lives.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had conversations in other countries with people of other faiths who have higher moral principles, and who are listening more closely to their consciences, than many professing Christians. Neither can I tell you how many nonChristian countries I’ve visited that in some ways are much more moral than the “Christian” countries. The last time I visited Vietnam, for example, the immigration form that everyone on the airplane was given informed us that Vietnam forbids the importation of pornography. In contrast, one-third of all American pastors who responded to a Christianity Today poll admitted to being addicted to internet pornography. Many of the women in their congregations, if they dressed in Vietnam like they dress in church in America, would be assumed to be prostitutes. And we are going to heaven and they are going to hell because we once prayed a little prayer that they haven’t prayed?

Please, I beg, don’t misquote me. I am not saying that Ghandi went to heaven or that anyone can save himself by his moral effort. I’m only pointing out the absurdity of thinking that one can gain eternal life apart from a real righteousness that is born of repentance and genuine faith. If that is not the case (the Bible, of course, says it is), then God is about as unrighteous as one could be. Imagine God casting Ghandi into hell, while allowing a person who was 1/100th as righteous into heaven only because that person once prayed a prayer to accept Jesus. If such a thing actually happened, we could conclude that God, the giver of our consciences, has no conscience of His own. As I have written so many times before, the grace that God is offering the world through His Son is not a license to sin. Rather, it is a temporary opportunity to repent of sin, be born again, live righteously, and be saved from God’s holy wrath.

All of this is to say that true Christians, those who are truly on the narrow road that leads to eternal life, are those who have believed and therefore repented, and from that point onward follow their consciences. When they fail, they repent again in order to clear their consciences. As Paul so plainly wrote,

There shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. In view of this, I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men (Acts 24:15-16, emphasis added).

Stimulating and Dulling the Conscience

The closest thing to the Law that God has written in our hearts is the Law He has recorded in His written Word. Thus the wisest thing one could do to stimulate his sensitivity to his conscience is to read God’s Word. It is like a two-edged sword, cutting to the spirit and soul, “able to judge the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12), just like the conscience.

When God’s Word is read or proclaimed, every God-given conscience resonates with it, and it instantly and universally creates conviction. But let me tell you of one of the saddest things I’ve observed: A preacher who begins his sermon by reading a passage of Scripture that immediately creates conviction across his congregation, but who then follows it with a sermon that serves no other purpose than to free everyone from that conviction—as he explains to them what the Word of God “really means.” His sermon is not designed to make his hearers holy, but to make himself a hero—of everyone who wants to continue in his self-deception.

Let me give you a more specific example: A pastor dares to read to his congregation the story of the rich, young ruler. As he reads Jesus’ shocking words, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven,” conviction naturally grips the hearts of everyone. The rich ruler wanted eternal life. Jesus required him to liquidate possessions and give to the poor. As he walked away sadly, Jesus made His famous statement about the camel and the needle, driving His point home, making it unmistakable. Tension builds as people’s consciences begin to accuse them of their own greed and lack of concern for the poor. If their pastor, however, has proven himself in the past to be skilled at nullifying the Word of God, the real suspense revolves around just how he will do it this time. Jesus’ words seem so straightforward. How can they possibly mean anything other than what He plainly said?

Yet within the space of thirty minutes, by breaking rules of logic, ignoring biblical context, dredging up some modern myths, adding a dash of cheap humor, and skillfully twisting obvious truth, he is able to pacify everyone who hopes that Jesus’ words have no application to them. Once again a blind man has led the blind. The goats smile. The sheep weep. The inward voice has been drowned in a delusion.

But the sad ending of this story is just a precursor to a more tragic conclusion, because everyone must one day stand before the One who wrote His Law on their hearts and give an account. Did I obey God’s Law or not? Paul warned, “It is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified” (Rom. 2:13). He learned that from Jesus: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).

The voice of the conscience is itself a gospel from God, as logic would dictate that if God is convicting me for what I’m doing and not immediately punishing me for it, then He must be offering me a window of opportunity to repent and receive a pardon. How foolish it would be to conclude that God, the giver of my conscience, will grant me a pardon apart from my repentance. My God-given conscience tells me otherwise. That is why the gospel of Scripture is a call to repentance. And that is why the gospel proclaimed without a call to holiness is a grand delusion.

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Allow me to begin by rephrasing that question to, “How does what Jesus said to the rich young ruler harmonize with the doctrine of salvation by grace and not works?” I didn’t write the Bible, and it wasn’t me who had a conversation with that rich ruler 2,000 years ago. All I did last month is take Jesus at His word, something that consequently exposes the myths so commonly believed relative to His conversation with the rich ruler.

This is to say that it is every Christian’s burden, not just mine, to reconcile what Jesus said to the rich ruler with what apparently seems to contradict what Scripture teaches about salvation by grace. The fact is, it is because of that apparent contradiction that Jesus’ words to the rich ruler are so often twisted. Twisting Jesus’ words, however, is the job of the devil.

If you read last month’s e-teaching, you know how I reconciled that apparent contradiction. The reconciliation I offered doesn’t require that we completely ignore entire passages of Scripture that make it irrefutably clear that “works” are essential for salvation. Moreover, the reconciliation I offered stems from an understanding of grace that harmonizes with every verse in the Bible, rather than just a few.

In a nutshell, the grace that God is offering in salvation is conditional, not unconditional. It is not a license to sin, but a temporary opportunity to repent and believe so that one can be forgiven, born again, and walk the narrow road that leads to eternal life. The Bible itself describes God’s grace in this way:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds (Titus 2:11-14).

It couldn’t be more clear, could it? God’s grace is anything but a license to sin, as it instructs us to live righteously. Any other portrayal of God’s grace is a perversion, against which the Bible also warns:

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ (Jude 4, emphasis added).

Thus, when God’s grace is portrayed as eliminating the necessity of our holiness, it is an incorrect portrayal.

The idea that, if something is offered by grace, there can be no conditions attached to the offer, simply is not true. If a judge were to graciously forgive and set free a convicted murderer, but at the same time warn him that, if he continues to murder people, he will receive the justice he deserves, who would claim that the murderer was “saved by his works”? It could only be said that the murderer was saved by grace, but not a grace that allowed him to continue murdering others. The judge’s continued grace would be dependent upon the murderer’s continued behavior.

Here is an indisputable fact: Grace need not be unconditional. God has never offered anyone an unconditional saving grace. Never has He said to anyone, “I extend to you My grace, so you can continue sinning without worry.”

Jesus did not say, for example, to the woman caught in adultery, “I don’t condemn you for what you’ve done, and neither will I condemn you for anything you might do in the future.” Quite the contrary. He said, “Neither do I condemn you; go your way. From now on sin no more” (John 8:11, emphasis added). That is salvation by conditional grace. Had she not repented of her adultery, Jesus would have ultimately condemned her with all adulterers (see 1 Cor 6:9-10). When modern preachers proclaim, “Jesus died for all your sins, past, present and future, so there is nothing you can do to remove yourself from God’s grace,” that is a gross perversion of God’s grace, and those who preach such a perverse gospel should be branded as heretics.

Here’s another example of conditional grace: Remember Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant (see Matt. 18:21-35)? His master forgave him of a mountain of debt. That was grace in action. But that forgiven servant refused to forgive his fellow servant. When his master learned of his unforgiveness, he reinstated his servant’s formerly-forgiven debt and handed him over to the torturers until he would repay what he could never repay. Clearly, the master’s grace was conditional. Jesus concluded that parable with a promise that most professing Christians do not believe: “So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart” (Matt. 18:35).

Who would argue that God’s forgiveness does not stem from grace? Yet His forgiveness is conditional:

If you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions (Matt. 6:15).

The only kind of saving grace that God has ever offered anyone is conditional. Consider the following familiar passage from Isaiah. Does it convey conditional or unconditional grace?:

Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
And let him return to the Lord,
And He will have compassion on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon (Is. 55:7).

Jesus similarly declared that “repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations” (Luke 24:47). That is conditional forgiveness. Peter obeyed, preaching, “God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him” (Acts 10:34-35). That is conditional acceptance. God “resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Jas. 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5, emphasis added). That is conditional grace. Conditional grace is still grace.

Think about it: If God was extending “unconditional grace” to everyone, then everyone would be automatically destined for heaven. There would be no requirement to repent and believe. Everyone, including the most perverse, wicked and unrepentant among the human race, would be guaranteed eternal life. No one would perish.

Grace Versus Works

Some, by quoting scriptures out of their context, try to pit grace against works, hoping to prove that the two are always mutually exclusive and that there is no such thing as conditional grace. Paul’s words found in Romans 11:6 are often used to that end:

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.

If that were the only sentence in the Bible, we might conclude that grace and works are mutually exclusive. However, Paul also wrote:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10).

Clearly, Paul believed that the salvation God offers on the basis of grace does not nullify the necessity of some degree of holiness.

So how do we reconcile what Paul wrote in Romans 11:6 with what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10?

Note that in Romans 11:6, Paul was specifically writing about grace, rather than works, being the basis of salvation. Of course, the basis for salvation cannot be anything but grace, because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). If sinners are going to be saved, it will have to be by grace.

The reason Paul contrasted grace with works in Romans 11:6 is clear to anyone who reads that verse in the context of his letter to the Romans. It was because of a Jewish objection to the gospel that he preached, and particularly that his gospel offered salvation to sinful Gentiles. Of course, if the basis of salvation is works, as was so commonly believed by the Jews in Paul’s day, no dirty Gentile had hope of salvation. But Paul argues that the basis of salvation is grace. In fact, Paul argues, if the basis of salvation is not grace, then not only can no Gentile be saved, but neither can any Jew, because they, too, are sinful like Gentiles. Moreover, if the basis of salvation is works, there was no need for Christ to die (see Gal. 2:21).

Paul accuses Jews of attempting to “establish a righteousness of their own” (Rom. 10:3) by their feeble attempts to keep a few minor requirements of the Law. And he argues that there cannot be true righteousness in people without God’s grace as the foundation, a grace that forgives and transforms sinners, both Jew and Gentile.

Paul makes this same point in his letter to the Ephesians:

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast (Eph. 2:8-9).

Clearly, God does not save us based on our merits. Contrary to what so many Jews in his day believed, salvation is a gift, and no saved person can boast that it was his works that saved him. But God’s grace offers more than forgiveness of sin. It provides deliverance from sin and transformation. Which is why, in the very next verse, Paul writes:

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (Eph. 2:10).

God’s grace makes us new creations, children of God who are spiritually reborn, who long to please our Heavenly Father.

Paul certainly did not believe that God’s grace was unconditional or that it furnished a license to sin. In this very same epistle in which he declared that salvation is a gift from grace, he also wrote:

But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience (Eph. 5:3-6).

In Conclusion

Once we grasp the simple principle of conditional grace, we understand how easy it is to harmonize what the Bible teaches about salvation by grace with what Jesus required of the rich ruler if he was to inherit eternal life. Not only that, but we also understand how easy it is to harmonize what the Bible teaches about salvation by grace with so many other scriptures that so plainly reveal that some degree of holiness is required of those who would inherit eternal life (see, for example, Matt. 7:21, 25:41-43, 1 Cor. 6:9-10, Gal. 5:19-21, Eph. 5:3-6, Rev. 21:8).

It is no exaggeration to say that, if the concept of conditional grace were rightly understood by all professing Christians, it would result in a repentance and revival worldwide within the church that would alter the eternal destiny of millions and change the course of history. However, as long as preachers and teachers continue to propagate the unbiblical idea of unconditional grace, they pervert the gospel itself, reducing it to a deceptive promise and a license to sin. Those preachers become unwitting agents of the “father of lies,” as they broadcast what is perhaps his most damning deception. May God help us to turn the tide.

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Last month I answered the question, “How can we reconcile what Jesus required of the rich young ruler if he was to inherit eternal life with what the Bible teaches about salvation by grace and not works?” If you have not yet read that e-teaching titled, The True Grace of God, please do. You must understand that God’s grace is not unconditional, as is so commonly thought, but rather, conditional, in order to grasp what follows below.

I also did my best last month to prove from Scripture that salvation by grace does not invalidate the necessity of holiness. “Works” are part of the salvation equation.

If the truth be known, every professing Christian believes that works are essential for salvation, even those who say they don’t believe it. If you find yourself debating such a person, just ask him the following question: “What happens at death to a man who has believed in Jesus but who, every day for the final five years of his life, abducted, molested and murdered children?”

The most ardent adherents of “unconditional grace” will reveal their true belief by their answer. None will affirm that such a man will inherit eternal life. And when you ask them why not, they will say one of two things, either, (1) “God would never permit such a wicked person into heaven,” which is an admission that God is not offering unconditional grace and that He requires some standard of holiness of those who would be saved or, (2) “True believers could never do such evil, so the man you describe was not a true believer,” which is an admission that true faith results in some degree of validating proof, or that God’s grace in salvation results in some degree of transformation.

So again, all professing Christians believe that there is some minimum standard of holiness required of those who would inherit eternal life, and that God’s grace does not nullify that standard.

That being the case, the most important question we need to ask is this: Is the standard that I believe God has set, which either indicates true saving faith or the minimum working of God’s grace, actually the standard God has set?

So what is God’s standard? Is it higher than what I have described in my example above? If a professing Christian abducts, molests and murders a child, not every day, but only once a month, does he “make the grade”?

In Scripture’s story of the rich ruler, as well as many other passages in the Bible, we find our answer to such questions. The young ruler inquired about God’s standard, and he learned that he was falling short. Even though he was not a murderer, liar, adulterer, or thief, he was guilty of greed, keeping for himself what God expected him to share with the poor. “One thing you lack” Jesus told him. It is that simple. Jesus wasn’t lying to him.

And that is precisely why I’ve been writing the past few e-teachings. I am deeply burdened because many professing Christians, “good people” like the rich ruler, also lack the same thing he did. Yet, unlike him, they are unconcerned, because they’ve been deceived into trusting in a false grace, an “unconditional” grace, a grace that God has never offered. Or they’ve embraced a standard of holiness that falls short of God’s true standard. Believing that Jesus’ conversation with the rich ruler has no real relevance to them, they blithely live their lives as if they will never stand at the judgment of the sheep and goats. But they will.

One Small, but Frequent, Objection

Objecting to my claim (actually, the Bible’s clear claim) that there is a minimum standard of holiness required of those who would inherit eternal life, some respond with a common Christian cliché: “All sin is the same in God’s eyes.” Therefore, they argue, it is hypocritical to set any specific standard of holiness for salvation; otherwise we are guilty of “grading sins,” something God allegedly does not do, and we end up “pointing out the speck in a brother’s eye while we have a log in our own.”

Actually, Jesus’ speck-and-log illustration is one of many scriptures that reveals to us that not all sin is the same in God’s eyes. Logs are much bigger than specks. All sin is grievous to God, but some sins are more grievous than other sins. Who would argue, for example, that under the Old Covenant it was equally grievous to God to “trim the edges of your beard,” a prohibition found in Leveticus 19:27, as it was to murder someone? Remember that Jesus criticized the Pharisees who tithed their garden herbs yet “neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23, emphasis added). Some commandments are more weighty than others, thus the neglect of some commandments is more grievous than the neglect of others.

When Jesus replied to the rich ruler’s question regarding which commandments he needed to keep to inherit eternal life, Jesus potentially could have listed any or all of the 600 or so commandments found in the Law of Moses, but He listed just six. Obviously, those six are “biggies.” Breaking those commandments would be more grievous sins to God than breaking other commandments. Just by way of reminder, they were prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft and lying, and a duty to honor one’s parents and love one’s neighbor as oneself. Take note that five of those “biggies” are found in the Ten Commandments, which were obviously all “biggies.”

Concerning the final commandment among the six Jesus listed for the rich ruler (Love your neighbor as yourself), take note that He once declared that commandment to be the second greatest (see Matt. 22:39), certainly making it a “biggie” as well. And He once associated that second greatest commandment with caring for the less fortunate (in the Parable of the Good Samaritan; see Luke 10:29-37). Neglecting the poor, a manifestation of greed, greatly grieves God. Scripture equates greed with idolatry (see Matt. 6:24; Eph. 5:5), certainly a serious sin and one of the “biggies” found in the Ten Commandments. It was greed that the rich ruler was guilty of, making him an idolater, and it was grievous enough to God to keep him from inheriting eternal life.

Five of the six commandments that Jesus listed in His reply to the rich ruler can be found in other biblical “biggie” lists (listed as sins rather than as commandments), where they are affirmed once again as being so important to God that one’s eternal destiny hinges on one’s obedience to them. Their inclusion in those lists underscores the fact that committing those particular sins (as well as any others contained in those lists) is even more grievous to God than committing sins that are not found in those lists. Here are five of those lists:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous [also translated greedy], nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10, emphasis added).

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:19-21, emphasis added).

But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous [also translated greedy] man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience (Eph. 5:3-6, emphasis added).

But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death (Rev. 21:8, emphasis added).

Then He will also say to those on His left, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me” (Matt. 25:41-43, emphasis added).

You won’t find sleeping during sermons or skipping church included in the above lists (to the chagrin of pastors). Neither will you find unthankfulness, prayerlessness, impatience, or laziness, as grievous as any of those things might be to God.

All of this is to say that, when people object to the teaching that a standard of holiness is required of those who will inherit God’s kingdom, or when they claim that “all sins are the same in God’s eyes,” they have not considered the five biblical lists I’ve just quoted, or many other similar texts.

In Conclusion

Again, all Christians believe that “works” are essential for salvation. Tragically, however, they don’t all subscribe to what the Bible clearly reveals as God’s minimum standard of “works” that always accompanies genuine faith or gives evidence to God’s transforming grace.

On one extreme, some have created long, unbiblical lists as their salvation standard of holiness. If you want to go to heaven, they insist that you must agree with their unique doctrines, subscribe to their dress code, be baptized according to their special formula, or join their church full of Pharisees.

On the other extreme are those whose standard is so low that anyone who ever prayed a prayer to “accept Jesus” at any time in his life is unconditionally guaranteed eternal life regardless of how he has lived his life. You often hear them say of the deceased something like, “I know that so-and-so wasn’t living for the Lord, but thank God he accepted Jesus when he was seven, so we know he’s in heaven now.”

Those same folks often accuse those who have a biblical salvation-standard of holiness of being “legalists,” or even “heretics who believe in salvation by works.” Oh how that must break God’s heart! They unwittingly accuse Him of being a legalist and heretic, because He has, without dispute, set specific standards of holiness for those who wish to inherit eternal life.

One of those standards revolves around stewardship. God has plainly revealed in His Word that those who are greedy, who do little or nothing to serve the “least of these” (Matt. 25:31-46), are as grievous to Him as murderers, adulterers, thieves, liars and idolaters, as they transgress the second greatest commandment and reveal their love of money.

When will this be shouted from the rooftops? Or at least proclaimed from a single pulpit?

Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14).

And the Lord said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave” (Gen. 18:20, emphasis added).

Behold, this was the guilt of…Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it (Ezek. 16:49-50).

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