I’ve been preaching through 1 Corinthians at my church over the last year, and last week’s message was on 1 Cor. 6:12-20, in which Paul confronts men in the Corinthian church who were not only visiting prostitutes but who were also defending their right to do so as Christians. These men were rationalizing their sin by appealing to Christian freedom and to what they perceived to be the purpose of their physical bodies. Paul confronts their self-justifications with three truths. I. Christian Freedom Has Limits (6:12).II. The Resurrection Has Implications (6:13-18a)III. The Body Has a Purpose (6:18b-20) This passage is a case-study in how we tend to rationalize and excuse…
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Let every heart prepare him room!
How could there possibly be anything more mysterious and wonderful than the incarnation of Jesus Christ? God became a man. God took on mortal human flesh and became subject to all the things that every other mortal is subject to. He sneezed. He coughed. He got headaches and an upset stomach. Every morning he got up, shook the dust out of His hair, and put his hand to the plow in his Father’s field. Jesus Christ was not only subject to sickness, but also to death. The eternal Son of God was die-able. In fact, he did die. And three days later, what was mortal became swallowed up by immortality…
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Is the Pope right about the Lord’s Prayer?
Last week, The New York Times reported that Pope Francis wishes to change the English translation of the Lord’s Prayer. From the article: Pope Francis said the common rendering of one line in the prayer — “lead us not into temptation” — was “not a good translation” from ancient texts. “Do not let us fall into temptation,” he suggested, might be better because God does not lead people into temptation; Satan does. “A father doesn’t do that,” the pope said. “He helps you get up right away. What induces into temptation is Satan.” In essence, the pope said, the prayer, from the Book of Matthew, is asking God, “When Satan…
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Pastors, be ready for questions about abortion and homosexuality
The Federalist ran a story yesterday about a certain pastor’s appearance on The View. One of the hosts asked him what his church teaches about homosexuality and abortion. The pastor dodged the question. Another host, Joy Behar, followed up by asking very specifically whether abortion is a sin. Still, the pastor could not bring himself to say that abortion is a sin. Rather, he said that each person has to “live to their own convictions” and that God would be the judge. A few thoughts on this: 1. His answer is not sufficient. As a pastor, you have a responsibility to speak the truth in love, and it is not…
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Woman who lived as a transgender male for nearly a decade shares conversion to Christ
The Baptist Messenger has posted an interview with Laura Perry, a woman who spent nearly a decade living as a transgender male. She describes years of male hormones and a sex change surgery and how she came to faith in Christ. You can watch above, listen below, or download the audio here.
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Church Clarity ought to be about biblical and theological clarity
@DennyBurk Issuing a call to all #NashvilleStatement signers: Y’all want be advocates for #ChurchClarity? Link here: https://t.co/NTc7A2OfR6 — Church Clarity (@churchclarity) October 18, 2017 On Wednesday, the website ChurchClarity.org appeared online. Its stated mission: to pressure churches to make clear on their websites whether or not they affirm homosexual immorality and transgenderism. The leadership team that runs the website is comprised exclusively of those who affirm homosexual immorality and transgenderism. And they seem to be focused on forcing evangelical megachurch pastors to clarify where their churches stand on the issue. I looked through the website and found a number of problems with it. Here are several of them in no…
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Spurgeon on the “reproach” of believer’s baptism
“If I thought it wrong to be a Baptist, I should give it up, and become what I believed to be right… If we could find infant baptism in the word of God, we should adopt it. It would help us out of a great difficulty, for it would take away from us that reproach which is attached to us,—that we are odd, and do not as other people do. But we have looked well through the Bible, and cannot find it, and do not believe that it is there; nor do we believe that others can find infant baptism in the Scriptures, unless they themselves first put it there.”…
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Book Review of “Single Gay Christian”
I just finished reading Gregory Coles’ moving memoir Single Gay Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity (IVP, 2017). In many ways, there is much to admire about this book. Coles is a great writer and has put together a real page-turner. This is not a boring book. Coles’ honesty and vulnerability come through in just about every page. Coles is telling his own story—warts and all—and he’s gut-wrenchingly honest about his emerging awareness of himself as a same-sex attracted man. Coles’s story is a very human story, and just about anyone (same-sex attracted or not) can resonate with the humor and the pathos that he narrates. By…
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Should intersex infants be subject to “corrective” surgeries?
The Washington Post has published a long-form piece featuring a number of heart-rending stories about intersex persons. For those unfamiliar with intersex, it is term used to describe a variety of conditions which involve some physical disorder of sex development. The Post article focuses on the debate about “corrective” surgeries for intersex infants. An older protocol pioneered by John Money favors such surgeries. Intersex activists are against them. The thing that comes out so very clearly in the article is the emotional turmoil and uncertainty often suffered by intersex persons—especially those who underwent surgeries as infants that permanently impaired them in some way. Our thinking about the intersex experience is…
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Alastair Roberts: “Hugh Hefner, the Logic of Porn, and the Homosexualization of Sex”
Alastair Roberts has written long form piece about an article that Christianity Today reprinted some years ago. The original article included some countercultural salvos against pornography. Roberts says that the CT version seems to have downplayed those details: The striking thing about the CT version is the way in which it reworks the original article in a way that removes much of the bite of Prof. Schuchardt’s thesis on two fronts: carefully downplaying his masculinization of women and feminization of men claims and also his claims about the homosexual character of the culture of porn. Both claims make some appearance in the CT article, but in a form that are…