“What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:23)

So begins Paul’s address to the educated crowd at the Areopagus in Athens. He had discovered an altar established for an unknown God within the city, and he used that as an opening to share the good news about Jesus. This Thursday, as we gather with our families to celebrate Thanksgiving, we have a similar opening. For many of our family members, Thanksgiving is a holiday to an unknown god.

Thankful to Whom?

Regardless of religious background, many of us will take turns around the table and sharing what we are grateful for without considering who we are grateful to. The act of giving thanks is a relational gesture, and it implies a giver. Thanksgiving (Gk. eucharistia) is a response to giving (Gk. charis). To say thanks is to say thank you. Paul would recognize this as an open door. An opportunity to ask, could I tell you about the one you thank?

We can tell them about “the God who made the world and everything in it” who “gives to all mankind, life and breath and everything (vs. 24-25). To another crowd, Paul proclaims him as the one “who did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17) and how he has done all of this so that all people, “should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” (Acts 17:27)

We can tell them about how humanity collectively, although deep down they know these things, has failed to honor God, or give him thanks and how rejecting such truths has made us vulnerable to lies and idolatry. (Rom. 1:21-22) For if we do not worship the Creator, worshiping created things is all that is left.

Black Friday

This ungratefulness and idolatry are not hard to illustrate. It can be easily seen in what follows our Thanksgiving celebration: Black Friday. What could make our gratitude more questionable than our actions the next day (and increasingly, Black Friday is encroaching on Thanksgiving Thursday)? Because we can’t be satisfied with the giver and content in his gifts, we fight tooth and nail for the latest and greatest, trying to fill the void. Without true Thanksgiving, the feasting isn’t enough to satisfy … barely enough for a single day.

Of course, we haven’t even gotten to the good news yet: that the God we are introducing is gracious even to the ungrateful (Luke 6:35) and that his greatest gift is the Son he sent to save our selfish world. God’s response to our making gods in our image was, as God, to come in the image of man. His life, death, burial, and resurrection bring freedom where there is slavery and life where there is death. This greatest gift produces the greatest gratitude. That is why when Christians remember what Jesus did for us, we call it the Eucharist (Thanksgiving).

A Life Defined by Thanksgiving

The Christian life, the response to God’s great gift, is defined by thanksgiving. It is the earmark of Christian speech (Eph. 5:4). For we give thanks always and for everything (Eph. 5:20) and in every circumstance (1 Thess. 5:18). Whatever we do, in word or deed, we do in the name of Jesus and with thanksgiving (Col. 3:17). Our very lives are lived as a sacrifice of thanksgiving, responding to God’s great mercy (Rom. 12:1). Even our desire to share with our family about this unknown God flows from a place of thanksgiving. We invite them to turn their “thanks” into “thank you” and join with all who say:

“I will give thanks to you, O LORD,
for though you were angry with me,
your anger turned away,
that you might comfort me.

“Behold, God is my salvation;
I will trust, and will not be afraid;
for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation.

“Give thanks to the LORD,
call upon his name,
make known his deeds among the peoples,
proclaim that his name is exalted.

“Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously;
let this be made known in all the earth.“ (Isaiah 12)

I have had a repeated and deepening experience of God’s grace throughout my time with Calvary Chapel. Although I only met him in passing, I attribute much of that to Pastor Chuck. Chuck, and Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa’s place at the center of the Jesus People Movement no doubt has many causes; very clearly, God was moving mightily by his Spirit. And that move was also fueled by countless social and cultural changes that God orchestrated in his providence. However, Chuck also played a significant part in defining Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa and the movement that stemmed from it, including my own experience. Chuck created a culture of surprising welcome.

It is profound how many of the best practices and theological strategies we speak of today are absent in Pastor Chuck. You couldn’t really call Chuck missional, nor was his approach intentionally cross-cultural; he didn’t become a hippie to reach the hippies. Instead, his approach is best seen as an act of hospitality. Chuck took those who were different, outsiders, and culturally incompatible, and he welcomed them into his church and, through the Gospel, into the very family of God. In his words and in his actions, Chuck mirrored the father in Jesus’ parable, who celebrated and affirmed his wayward son who had returned.

Those who heard Chuck preach and spoke to him discovered that the Gospel was for them. They discovered that they could worship God through their own music. They learned that God could use them right where they were.

Undergirding this hospitality was Pastor Chuck’s understanding of God’s grace. It was clear when he spoke that he was amazed that God could use him and that he came into God’s presence empty-handed and needy, just like everyone else. Because he didn’t see himself as a first-class citizen, he didn’t treat anyone as if they were second-class. His gratitude for God’s grace in his own life bordered on surprise, and that surprise was contagious.

Of course, I wasn’t alive then, and my understanding of those days is secondhand at best, but my own experience validates this interpretation. The culture that Chuck cultivated spread across the globe in hundreds of Calvary Chapels. In the early 2000’s, I chased a girl into one of these in the small town of Yakima, Washington. What I found in that little church was unexpected and radical: an entire group of people with whom I had little in common who welcomed my presence, noticed my absence, and expressed authentic care for me. The experience I had was one of surprising welcome. “Me?” I thought. Coupled with the power of the Gospel and the truth of God’s word faithfully taught verse by verse, chapter by chapter, that church changed the trajectory of my life.

That pointing to myself in awe, “Me?” happened again and again. When a mentor pulled me aside to tell me I had the gift of teaching, “Me?” When the church I was serving at asked me to consider planting in Seattle, “Me?” When I found myself in the prayer meetings that birthed CGN, and now serving as the President of CCBC, each time I was tempted to look over my shoulder for the clearly qualified person they must have in mind. Chuck left behind a grace-shaped movement, leaving room for God to move mightily in unexpected ways through unexpected people.

My experience with other church movements has shown this surprising welcome is not only defining of Calvary Chapel but unique. As a teen in a Baptist church, I remember when an acquaintance showed up in the lobby wearing a t-shirt with a large marijuana leaf. An usher quickly made his way over and guided him out of the building. I was not yet a Christian, but I still had enough sense to think, “Who needs to hear the Gospel more than him?”

Later, when I was a brand-new church planter in downtown Seattle, a large and booming church pastor invited me into his office to get to know me. The church had a reputation for poaching the best and brightest, and our time ran much more like an interview than an introduction. I gave classic Calvary Chapel answers to his questions: No, we don’t have a budget or a written plan. Right now, we are just a prayer meeting in a neighborhood apartment; it was clear that I didn’t measure up. I wasn’t worth poaching. He shook my hand, wished me well, and never reached out again.

Or there was the intersex person who attended my church and was very affirming, emblazoned in rainbows, who asked if we would baptize her. We set up a time to talk about many things, but since I had known her for some years, I asked her the one question I was most curious about: “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve attended the affirming church down the street, why do you want to join our church?” Without missing a beat, she replied, that church loves me because they have to, but your church just loves me.” Although my intersex friend had never heard the name Chuck Smith, in a significant way, she was drawn to the Gospel by the same surprising welcome that I had experienced: the surprising welcome that Chuck extended and modeled for us all.

Chuck Smith famously proclaimed that God does not call the trained; he trains the called. Like many Calvary Pastors, I owe much of my ministry to this insight: if a pastoral calling were only to be found on the other side of a seminary degree, I would have never discovered God’s plan for my life.

However, Pastor Chuck’s statement is sometimes interpreted as anti-seminary, anti-education, and even anti-intellectual. For those who take it this way, the Holy Spirit is sufficient, and pursuing education is a lack of faith or reliance on the minds of men. Frankly, I have a hard time understanding anyone who feels God’s call on their life and does not seek to learn as much as possible by any means necessary.

But my concern here is not to make a biblical case for continuing education but to speak to a corresponding need in our movement. We need scholars. Men and women whose call is to devote themselves to the studious development of theology. Let me be clear: throughout the scriptures, God calls shepherds to be kings and prophets, cowards to be commanders of armies and fishermen as apostles. But he also calls some to be scholars to the benefit of the church and the glory of God.

Throughout its history (and I would argue, by God’s design and providence) the church has been reliant on scholars. Following in the footsteps of Moses, Daniel and Paul are educated men who served as pastor-theologians. Augustine was a world-renowned rhetorician who was prolific in theological works. Martin Luther, before and during the Reformation, was a university professor. In John Calvin’s vision for church leadership, there were not just pastors and deacons but doctors. Thank God in our own time for voices like J.I. Packer, John Stott, Norm Geisler, and many others. Even if you only read Warren Wiersbe and Chuck Smith, they read and were formed by scholars and theologians.

Not recognizing this is like that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep’s fashion mogul character challenges her frumpy assistant (Anne Hathaway) because she thinks that fashion has nothing to do with her. Still, the color of her discount sweater was the byproduct of the fashion industry she ignored. Fashion flows downstream, and so does theology. What is shared across today’s pulpits flows (seen or unseen) from a great cloud of theologians.

It is this fact that everyone relies on scholars, which brings me to voice my prayer for scholars within our movement. The Pentecostals, who are about 50 years ahead of our charismatic movement, have a saying: missions at dawn, missiology at dusk. What happened with Calvary Chapel in the 70s was just that: a happening. God moved mightily, and we rarely slowed down to articulate, define, or develop what God was doing. However, as the Calvary Chapel movement enters its 5th decade, it is time for prayerful and deep thinking. There are a few reasons this is the case.

Because we face, and will continue to face, new contexts and new challenges

Love it or hate it, our world has changed drastically over the course of our lifetime. These new challenges require us to develop our theology to meet new needs. The word develop is essential. The call for scholarship is not a call to forsake our theology but to identify its central tenants and their implications for today. As we do so, we also discover what was essential and timeless and what was incidental and flexible. I am calling for both a truly Calvary Chapel response, while at the same time recognizing we cannot rely on yesterday’s manna.

Because the church at large needs the unique voice of Calvary Chapel today

We are not alone in facing the new challenges of our world; denominations and movements across evangelicalism are seeking to thoughtfully respond to the issues of our day. Calvary Chapel has already had an immeasurable impact on the church at large, and I am convinced that there are challenges today that Calvary is uniquely suited to lead the way on. However we can only do so if we speak, thoughtfully and publicly, from our unique Calvary DNA.

Because if we do not, we will lose our identity and continue to fragment

As I said above, the church is inescapably reliant on scholars. If we do not have them in our midst, we will be solely shaped by those outside. Pretty soon, our common core will be outweighed by our diverse responses and opinions. I am greatly concerned by the growing eclecticism of individual pastoral theologies. Especially among the younger generation of ministers in Calvary Chapel (who read broadly), they often fail to carefully integrate the ideas they find compelling with our heritage. Not every theological trend out there is compatible with our core beliefs, and like an organ transplant, if it does not match our blood type, it will destroy the host.

I also long for unity within Calvary Chapel, but that can only come as Calvary scholars (plural) help us to generate consensus on how God is leading us today. If the loudest and most formative voices are found outside, that will only pull us away from one another and apart as a movement.

Because longevity demands we pass on our roots and not just the outward forms

Fruit cannot be modeled and emulated; a seed must be sown, cultivated, and grow anew. In the same way, nothing less than a theology of Calvary Chapel can sustain the movement. We may be able to create a facsimile in a generation or two, but each generation will just be a copy of the copy before it, and over time the image will degrade until it is not representative at all.

When scholars partner to pass on their legacy and help the next generation to continue what God has done, we call that education.

It is no surprise that many in our movement feel the seminaries outside of Calvary cannot pass on what we see as faithful and vibrant Christianity, but that does not mean we cannot build a better institution. If we were to do so, it no doubt would look different, and I would not have it any other way.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to reiterate what I said earlier: Calvary Chapel needs scholars, plural. What is needed cannot be accomplished by a single voice. And pulpits are not a particularly useful tool for developing consensus. Instead, we need venues and institutions which cultivate creative thinking and invite dialogue. Only this will help us continue to move forward together. Only then can we face new circumstances and say with one voice, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.

At the center of the book of Micah, there’s a promise of a baby who would one day be king.

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

It’s a familiar passage, one we return to every Christmas as we remember the birth of Jesus. But that familiarity can sometimes keep us from heeding the original context, which can be seen in the prior verse:

Marshal your troops now, city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod.

Assyria began by devastating the Northern tribes and has now pushed their campaign up to the gates of Jerusalem, and they have the city surrounded. It’s a siege.

During this siege, with all its fear, Micah gives a prophecy, not of present deliverance but of a baby in the distant future. His audience must have been asking themselves, what does a birth announcement have to do with our current crisis?

What’s true in the circumstances of the initial prophecy is also true of the literary shape of the book of Micah; this prophecy is the very center of the book and the climax of the center section. The rest of the book lies gathered around and focused on it like the little figurines around Jesus in our nativity sets. The book of Micah’s primary theme is injustice (cf. 2:1-2, 3:1-3, 6:8, 10-12, 7:2-3), specifically the injustice of Judah and God’s plan to set things right.^[1] A careful reading that notes the birth prophecy’s prominence prompts a similar question to the one that Jerusalem asked: What does a baby to come have to do with the rampant injustice now?

Like Micah’s original audience, we today have been asking almost the same question without realizing it. What does Christmas have to do with the Civil Rights Movement? What does Jesus have to do with social justice?

Many answers have been given, and in our divisive times, those answers are steeped in history, cultural baggage, and accusations. But Micah demands we keep asking the question. I want to survey some of the prominent answers that I see as deficient and suggest one of my own. Each answer can be summed up in a simple phrase tying the term “gospel” to the term “social justice” with a different conjunction. We’ll look at them in turn.

Gospel OR Social Justice

This group sees two opposing camps, and you can only belong to one. In evangelical circles, the most common version of this sees an emphasis on issues of social justice as being an abandoning of the gospel. There’s a historical precedent for this concern. The liberalization of the mainline denominations at the beginning of the last century coupled a forsaking of core doctrine (virgin birth, inerrancy of scripture, bodily resurrection of Jesus) and a fresh social concern. For these voices, the purpose of the church was to seek social good.

The fundamentalist movement was a response to this mistake, rightly demanding that this wasn’t a new phase of Christianity but a forsaking of it entirely. As the battle became more entrenched, fundamentalists became suspicious of even the trappings of the so-called social gospel, such as activism and concern for the poor. Emphasizing these things was seen as the beginning of a slippery slope to liberalism and thus the OR became defining.

This view, which at its heart pits orthodoxy (right doctrine) against orthopraxy (right living), cannot be reconciled with the Old or New Testament. God cared about injustice in the days of Micah and he cares today.

Gospel AND Social Justice

This group sees the church as having two primary missions: to preach the gospel and to do good in our world. Bible studies AND soup kitchens. Evangelism AND activism. For many, it’s easy to see this approach as rectifying the over-correction of the fundamentalists, and it does have an easier time reading a whole Bible. However, there’re some dangers to this approach. First, there’s the danger of perpetual multiplication. It’s like the old Monty Python sketch with the Spanish Inquisition, where every recitation of our purpose demands another thing that’s also important.

The danger of multiplication is rooted in one that’s even more problematic. To give both these terms equal emphasis inherently de-prioritizes the Gospel. We cannot be gospel-centered AND social justice-centered. This camp tends to lose this priority.

Gospel FOR Social Justice

For this camp, like the AND camp, these terms belong together. There’s a very important relationship between the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and the social issues in our world. God’s entire plan is to bring justice (the kingdom), and he’s accomplishing this by first sending a king and then using the kingdom’s subjects in our world. In this case, the gospel is the means, and justice is the end. Again, I would suggest this is closer to the biblical message than the previous views, but this camp tends to downplay the eschatological hope of the Gospel. Instead of Jesus one day returning to establish his kingdom on earth, the church is establishing it now, and the return of Jesus is the climax of the church’s successful campaign.

This is really to misunderstand part of the good news of the Gospel. The church is not called to build the kingdom but to be a witness of its impending arrival. That witness includes living in the ways of the coming kingdom and the good works we do for our neighbors. But the only way the Kingdom comes is with the king’s return.

Social Justice FOR Gospel

This group values social justice because it creates gospel opportunities and receptiveness. They rightly prioritize the gospel, particularly in prioritizing evangelism, and see social justice pragmatically as a tool in that task. They know, and often recite, the old quip “they don’t care what you know until they know that you care.” This camp’s easy to spot because any good work is only truly good if it includes a gospel presentation. Every free lunch sack needs to include a gospel tract. For this camp, evangelism is like fishing; good works are how you bait the hook.

This approach appears to fall short of the holistic love demanded by Jesus. To rightly love, we must care about our neighbor’s whole selves, not just their souls. Those on the receiving end often feel like they’re only valued as a potential convert, a notch on the belt, instead of an image-bearer worthy of love … and unfortunately, sometimes they’re right. It’s also hard to see how this view can lead to any prophetic confrontation that may be negatively received, but that’s an important aspect of a faithful witness.

This brings us to the view that I’d suggest:

Gospel THEREFORE Social Justice

It’s not that changing the world is the gospel or that the gospel has nothing to do with change in our world. It’s that the gospel has changed us, and that changes the way we relate to our world. The gospel creates communities of mutual concern and sharing (Acts 2:44-47). God has been so generous with us that we’re generous (2 Cor. 8:9). We’re concerned for our neighbor’s soul and their supper because that’s what love does, and we’re loved by Jesus (1 John 3:16-18).

Unlike the Social Justice FOR Gospel view, social justice isn’t the bait of the gospel; it’s the byproduct. Unlike the Gospel for Social Justice view, we don’t bring the kingdom but make it manifest. We aren’t seeking to entirely change our world as much as testify to a different world, but that testimony must be not just in word but in deed and truth.

Final Thoughts

This debate is too long-standing and this presentation too brief for me to assume I’ve convinced every reader, but I hope that these terms will serve both to provide a lay of the land and give helpful language to further discussion.

God sent a baby to address an unjust world. A better answer than mine may exist, but we must keep asking the question: How does Jesus relate to social justice?

Reference

^[1] Interestingly, Isaiah does the exact same thing cf. Isa. 7.

When it comes to theological method, that is, how we connect the truths of God’s word with the problems of human life, neither fundamentalism nor progressivism will do. Please understand me; my point is not about the theological beliefs of these systems but their methods of forming beliefs. Whereas fundamentalism has strong (and proper) convictions that Scripture is the sole authority for faith and practice, it has a stubborn tendency to ignore the world’s questions today. When fundamentalists do speak to those questions, too often they provide pat answers that are merely proof text treatments of the beliefs of their generation, coupled with the self-righteousness of “orthodoxy.” Progressives, on the other hand, are deeply aware of and sympathetic to new questions. Still, they seem determined to find answers anywhere but the Scriptures, and thus often end up just promoting the solutions of the current generation outside the church. Simply put, a proper theological method takes every question in its most profound and challenging form and seeks its answers through fresh and deep study of the Scriptures.

The Fundamental Problem

For those of us who have a fundamentalist predisposition, we need to become reacquainted with our need to continue developing our theology. Our age comes with questions that, at least in their framing, are new and thus require fresh answers. Our current understanding also is not perfect but has hidden cultural baggage. To act otherwise, as if our theology is complete and without error, is to deny the reformation heritage we seek to defend. The reformers called the church to be Semper reformanda, always reforming. Human beings, even those translated into the kingdom of light, are finite, corrupt, and prone to error. To resist the need for theological refinement is to resist the church-purifying work of the Holy Spirit.

Also, when the world calls out the church for the inadequacy of its answers, often with the language of hypocrisy, it does the church a favor. In our defensiveness, we can miss this blessing. If the emperor has no clothes, it is not necessarily evidence that he has nothing to wear, but instead a call back to the wardrobe, and any posturing about being fully dressed denies not only our need but, more importantly, denies our resources. When criticism is deserved, it should send us back to the book of life for what we need. And when the good news is good to us, we can again proclaim it to a desperate world with compassion and conviction. The Gospel, after all, calls only recipients as its messengers.

Progressive Stagnation

The more progressively oriented among us would also benefit from a recalibration. It is not enough to recognize the validity of our generation’s questions, the inadequacy of the church’s current answers, or the hypocrisy of their lives. The need to avoid error also has a propensity to self-righteousness, this time not through defending the status quo but through distancing oneself from it. Running from one mistake does not make one right. Dissociating with those who are wrong is not enough to be righteous.

There is also the obvious danger of throwing out the word of God, and even Jesus himself, in your deconstruction. To some degree, I am sympathetic with how disorienting the stubborn defense of inadequate or even wrong answers from those who were to be our guides in truth can be, but what if there is still truth to be found? I fear many are like the younger brother in Jesus’ parable, mistaking the elder brother’s relationship with the father as all there was and fleeing for the far country. It is possible to avoid becoming an elder brother without becoming a prodigal. Knowing the elder brother has nothing to teach us about the father should send us directly to the father himself. (It is also worth noting that it is the younger brother’s actual experience of the father that makes the elder brother jealous and forces him to confront the reality of his dissatisfaction.) Whether it is our understanding or the understanding of others that have failed us, we must maintain Peter’s conviction, “to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

Lastly, there is the danger of settling for the answers our generation gives to these questions. Firstly, please realize that these answers appeal to you because they come from the culture you swim in. In many instances, this is the exact reason why the “traditional” solutions appeal to the fundamentalist. Both are cultural, just across the generational divide. Second, we must realize that present-tense answers from our culture often seem true not because of their proven track record but because consequence takes time. The last generation’s mistakes have already born thorns and thistles, but our ideas are mere seedlings. What we need is not contemporary errors but timeless truth, and only the word of God produces a harvest of life (Isa. 55:10-11).

The Word for Today

Amid the challenges and culture wars of our day, there is a need for people willing to supplement their predispositions and not settle for a fundamentalist or progressive method.

We need confidence in the word of God and the humility to hear the questions and even criticisms of our world.

We need to develop our theology, neither settling for what is nor supplementing with what is external and untested. We need to honor those who have gone before us, not by sitting down or abandoning them but by pressing on. We must be convinced that although God’s word neither changes nor needs to, we are desperate for it to change us.

This is mission-critical. The church’s witness is at its strongest when it lives on the cutting edge of theological discovery. Not because novelty sells but because transformation validates. God’s word is living and active. It speaks in the present tense. There is manna for today’s hunger, but it must be freshly gathered because yesterday’s manna has a tendency to worm. Only a theological method that completes the entire loop, taking today’s questions to the word of God, has ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church. And only the church that hears has anything to say to our world.

Issues related to homosexuality have become primary in the conversation and witness of the Christian church. Countless books, debates, and even denominational factions have sprung up within the church. To our non-Christian neighbors, our views on homosexuality are seen as both defining and damning. More importantly, how we understand these issues has a tremendous impact on our LGBT neighbors who we invite to follow Jesus as well as the same-sex attracted Christians in our midst. If we are burdening those who follow Jesus with unbearable commands that Jesus doesn’t require and stumbling those who would follow Jesus by condemning them to a life of loneliness, we find ourselves condemned along with the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. When we add to that the seriousness with which the Bible addresses sexual sin, and the fate of those who choose such sin over Jesus, the stakes are high indeed. The church must answer the question, How does the Bible view same-sex marriage?

How Does the Bible View Same-Sex Marriage?

Posing the question in these terms is essential for two reasons. First, it is the question that advocates of a so-called pro-gay theology are seeking to answer. They are not arguing for same-sex sexual activity being universally sanctioned, but that same-sex sexual activity is only permissible, and even blessable, within the loving, committed, exclusive, and permanent context of marriage, just as heterosexual sexual activity is. Second, all of Scripture’s prohibitions against sexual sin flow from the meaning and purpose of marriage. The moral logic that undergirds the entire Christian sexual ethic is built upon God’s good purpose for sexuality in the context of marriage.

It is often posited that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. However, Jesus did speak about marriage, and both what he said and why he said it is significant to our question. In Matthew 19:1-12, Jesus is approached by a group of Pharisees who desire to trap him in his words publicly. Their question touches on what was a hot topic in that day: lawful grounds for divorce. Jesus provides the following answer:

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast 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 not man separate. (Matt. 19:4-6)

What is Marriage?

Of first importance is the way that Jesus answers the question. To begin with, he seeks to ground a biblical view of divorce in a biblical view of marriage. Before we can discuss what is allowed or prohibited, we must first answer What is marriage? Second, he grounds his view of marriage in the creation narrative of Genesis 1 & 2. It is in the creation narrative that we are given the design for male and female, as well as marriage and sexuality.^[1]

The content of Jesus’ answer is also pertinent. He begins by referencing God as the creator of male and female, clearly alluding to Genesis 1:27. Second, he quotes from Genesis 2:24, which occurs directly after Eve is created for Adam and brought to him as helper and wife. More than that, he puts the words of Genesis 2:24 not merely in the mouth of the narrator or author of the book but in the mouth of God himself, the one he defines as “he who created them from the beginning and made them male and female.” For Jesus, the marriage of Adam and Eve is not just descriptive but paradigmatic, built upon a divine “therefore,” which discloses purpose and design. Also, for Jesus, the design of marriage is directly related to the creation and design for male and female. The complementarity of man and woman cannot be separated from God’s design for marriage.

What is it About Marriage That Requires Male-Female Complementarity?

The question that must be asked is, What is it about marriage that requires male-female complementarity? First, we must begin with our role as embodied image bearers. Genesis 1:27 makes a direct correlation between our creation in God’s image and our biology. We were created (physically) male and female (sexual parity) to image God (make his rule manifest on earth). Our bodies matter, and they shape our vocation and relationship with other humans as male and female. Just as we come into families as brothers or sisters, fathers or mothers, we come into marriages not as merely human spouses, but as husbands or wives.

Does this mean that marriage is not possible for two husbands or two wives? To answer this, we must look at what’s entailed in the idea of two becoming one flesh (Gen. 2:24). At a bare minimum, one-flesh union entails the union of bodies, and we find in male and female a biological complementarity which makes that union possible. However, one-flesh union is clearly much more than the sexual act that exists inside marriage; it describes the marriage itself. When God is answering the “not good” of Adam’s isolation in the garden (Gen. 2:18), he sets out to create a “suitable helper” (Gen. 2:18,20). The Hebrew word for suitable is a compound word combining the ideas of both alike and different: complementary. Adam needs not only a human as opposed to an animal, but he also needs a woman and not just another man. Although the creation of woman is much more than just the creation of a wife for Adam, that suitable/complementary aspect is a part of one-flesh union.^[2] One flesh intimacy entails a growing interdependence on one another that stems from the differences between men and women.^[3] The move towards one-flesh intimacy requires trusting someone to do what you cannot in the relationship, in order to collectively be what you could not on your own. The difference is design.

Procreation is also part of the purpose of marriage. With technological advancements, we have been allowed to separate marriage from the bearing of children in a way that was once impossible. However, procreation is clearly a part of God’s design for marriage, as the mechanism by which image bearers fulfill their call to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:27-28). It is, in fact, unique as an expression of biological union, as the organs of two separate people come together for a shared biological purpose.^[4] Just as men and women bring differences to marriage, they also bring differences to parenting, and are the first models and instructors of engendered relationships for their sons and daughters as embodied and engendered image bearers.

So, What’s Wrong with Same-Sex Marriage?

When we put all this together, we can see why Jesus connected the purpose of marriage to the one who created us male and female. Can two women have a loving, committed, exclusive, and permanent sexual relationship? Without a doubt. But that does not mean they have a marriage as Christianity understands it. Thus, their relationship still falls outside of God’s permissible and blessable design for sexual activity.

The prohibitions against homosexual activity flow from this understanding, emphasizing the creation language of male and female (Lev. 18:22) and God’s design in creation (Rom. 1:26-27).^[5][6] Thus homosexual activity is prohibited just like all other unsanctioned sexual activity (fornication, adultery, polygamy) because it falls outside of God’s design which is only expressed within marriage. Therefore, the church must handle issues of homosexuality not as unique (whether uniquely permissible or uniquely sinful), but consistent with its sexual ethics as a whole. This means proclaiming and promoting God’s design with conviction not just of its truth but its goodness, inviting all who are sexually broken (like us) to find forgiveness and wholeness in Jesus, as well as providing grace, patience, and loving support to all who seek to follow Jesus in the ways of holiness.

For Further Reading

Andreades, Sam A. Engendered: God’s Gift of Gender Difference in Relationship. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018.

Fortson, S. Donald, and Rollin Gene Grams. Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and Tradition. Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2016.

Sprinkle, Preston M. People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016.

Wilson, Todd A. Mere Sexuality: Rediscovering the Christian Vision of Sexuality. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017.

References

1. Jesus is not alone in this method of going to the creation narrative for the foundation on matters of sex and gender. Rather, it is broadly true across biblical authors. (cf. Mal. 2:15, 1 Cor. 6:16, 11:7-9, 14:34, Gal. 2:32, 1 Tim. 2:13-14).
2. Adam’s aloneness refers to his inability to image God and fulfill his calling because both male and female are necessary. Also, for him to be fruitful and multiply (and therefore have community) he needs the ability to procreate. It is appropriate to say that Adam’s aloneness is not good because male needs female, husbands need wives, and humans need community (which requires the ability to procreate).
3. What is unique about marital intimacy is not its degree but its kind. Arguably, other human relationships can be more intimate (2 Sam. 1:26, Isa. 49:15) but marriage is the joining of two lives comprehensively into one shared life.
4. Here we see how intertwined the three aspects we have talked about truly are: embodied as male and female, one-flesh union, and procreation function together symbiotically.
5. The same could be said of the cross-tradition consensus of the church throughout its history.
6. Although some argue that each these passages have specific sexual relationships in mind which are condemnable for their other features (cultic prostitution, pederasty, gang rape) and thus don’t prohibit loving, permanent, committed and exclusive relationships, these authors miss the intertextuality of these passages. Leviticus uses the language of Genesis 1:27, not just men with men as a woman, but males with males as a female. Ezekiel describes the sin of Sodom as including (but not limited to) doing an abomination (singular) before me, using the language of Leviticus 18:22. Paul also seems to have coined the term arsenokoitēs from the Septuagint of Leviticus 18:22. There is a consistency of the general prohibition across time and cultural settings.

The current crisis of the evangelical church in America is being called a “massive discipleship failure caused by a massive catechesis failure.”¹ The ideologies of our age have grown more magnetic and are both infiltrating and fragmenting the church. Even where such destruction is avoided, we no longer have sufficient common ground with our neighbors to enjoy the passive formational benefits of a Judeo-Christian culture.

For some time, I have been thinking about what it would have taken to be a church inoculated against 2020, and I am convinced the church must develop a more robust paradigm for Christian education. I have in mind here, not private K-12 schools or colleges, but Christian education in the context of the church: Christian education as discipleship. Although the format for this type of education can and should be diverse, whether sermon series, Sunday School classes, Bible study curriculum, or more likely all the above, we need a framework to set the agenda for the whole education, as well as help us assess where our individual congregations are currently at and what is still required.

The goal is disciples who are equipped to live out a Christian vision of life in the context of our present world. No matter the topic, be it sexuality, social justice, or faith and work, a complete Christian education has four components, which here we will call Theology, Anthropology, Missiology, and Doxology. We will take each of the four in turn.

Theology

A Christian education must begin theologically. This requires more than chapter-and-verse references to a particular topic and more than just expressing the clear commands of scripture. A theological approach is rooted in God’s character, works and plan. Articulating a theology of a topic means that we present not just the what of a Christian ethic but the why. A theological approach to a given topic helps disciples navigate through the lenses of Creation: God’s purpose and design, the Fall: where sin and the curse interfere with and hinder that design, Redemption: how salvation in Jesus Christ remedies what has gone wrong, and Consummation: the hope we have as Christians that sets the trajectory for our life. Altogether, a theological approach provides a worldview which not only presents the Christian life but explains it as well.

Anthropology²

On top of having a biblical and theological view of a topic, our disciples also need to understand the view of the culture around us. The anthropological component in Christian education makes the theological component conversant with the world we live in. It is here where the core beliefs of our culture should be identified, as well as their history traced. In any given culture, we should be able to affirm what the culture gets right, reject what it gets wrong, and redeem its unfulfilled desires, showing how Christianity better meets their longings.

When our disciples are not equipped with an anthropology of their time and place, they will not be able to identify where their own lives are being shaped by the culture they live and breathe … thus they will be conformed to this world. Without an anthropology our disciples will also struggle to communicate the gospel in all its abundant-life-fullness to the world they live in. Failure here leads to ideological compromise in our churches, as well as the fear-fueled label-making which throws around culture war terms without being able to define or discuss them (and ironically leaves them vulnerable to other sub-Christian ideologies).

Missiology

The context for the faithful Christian life is the local church. Disciples are not called to follow Jesus as individuals but as part of his community, fulfilling the “one-anothers” of the New Testament. This means that a Christian education is incomplete without extrapolating the resources and agenda God has given to the church. I will confess, this is an area where many of us are so weak that it makes it difficult to illustrate, but consider the Christian sexual ethic. The church, by design, is a family (Matthew 12:46-50; 1 Tim 5:1-2). Jesus in fact envisions it as the family for those who are rejected by their own (Mark 10:30), or excluded from marriage by their bodies, or their devotion to Jesus (Matthew 19:10-12). It is this loving community that makes a Christian sexual ethic joyful and possible. Without it, we condemn the single and celibate to isolation and are worthy of Jesus’ criticism as those who lay heavy burdens and do not help bear them (Matthew 23:4). Missiology means casting this vision, designing our ministries in ways that include and incorporate single people, and exhorting all Christians to live out their responsibilities to love their Christian brothers and sisters, not just their biological family. When we disciple our congregation in missiology, we form not just disciples but God’s new community, the church, and in doing so accomplish God’s mission.

Doxology

Christian education is never complete until it is lived out. Disciples are not called to merely know Jesus or his will but to follow him. Therefore, our paradigm is incomplete without doxology: worshipping God by growing in his ways. The doxological aspect of Christian education requires a slight shift in posture. Whereas the above components are primarily instructional, doxology requires dialogue. It also requires wisdom and even creativity as we seek to apply God’s word in our specific lives at this specific moment.

Because sanctification is a lifelong process, this part of Christian education is open and ongoing, asking again and again what is the next step in following Jesus. Even where this requires repentance, creativity and support is often necessary to pick up the pieces and pursue obedience. Doxology is also the pinnacle of the growing specificity across the aspects of a Christian education.

Theology is universal and unchanging. Anthropology focuses on the unique culture of a particular church’s time and place. Missiology narrows the field to this local church. And doxology moves to the individual choices and context of each disciple.

As leaders and pastors, we must expand our understanding of discipleship to include the four categories above. Jesus has appointed us to bear fruit (John 15:16). To make fruitful disciples, we must help them lay deep roots in Theology, help them to understand the soil in which they grow through Anthropology, help them see themselves as branches of God’s tree the church in Missiology, and bear the specific fruit for this season in Doxology. Lord willing, doing so will create disciples who live robust and distinctively Christian lives of joyful obedience and present a witness that is winsome and worthy of Jesus and his gospel.

_NOTES:

_{¹ James Ernest quoted in The Atlantic, “The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart.”}

_{² For a great example of this on sexuality see Jonathan Grant’s book Divine Sex. On Social Justice see Timothy Keller’s article, “A Biblical Critique of Secular Justice and Critical Theory.”}

When we think about the effects of pornography, we generally stop once we’ve defined it as morally wrong. We rarely take time to think about how engaging with pornography changes us, and what kind of a person it makes us into. This is not just to say that pornography is bad for you; it is to say that engaging with pornography forms you, or more accurately, deforms you. Pornography is a dangerous liturgy.

Because we are designed as embodied beings, what we do with our bodies doesn’t just flow from what we think, it reinforces and even reconstructs what we believe. Our physical practices shape our desires, and our desires shape everything else. In the church, we have called these practices liturgies. We don’t just think our praises to God; we sing them loudly with our mouths. We don’t just remember what Christ has done on the cross; we eat, and we drink in communion. We don’t just feel love for the body of Christ; we embrace, we kiss, we wash one another’s feet. Again, this doesn’t just express what we believe. Instead, these practices are part of our becoming who God is calling us to be.

However, because this is part of what it means to be human, as James K.A. Smith argues in Desiring the Kingdom, all of life is liturgical, and all our practices are continually shaping us. As he says, “Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies.”¹ This includes a habit of using pornography. This reality is especially heightened when it is tied to the fact that God has designed sex to be a liturgical act in marriage, not merely expressing the marriage covenant but expressing it bodily in a way that shapes the marriage. It says with our body what the marriage is supposed to express in total: I belong to you. Beyond the theological aspect, there is also a biological component that makes pornography especially impacting (and addictive). What this means is that using pornography changes the way we think about (and go about) sexual relationships, and it does so in a way that goes directly against the grain of God’s design.

Pornography trains our sexuality in the wrong direction in very significant ways.

First off, pornography wires us for novelty instead of intimacy. God’s design for sexuality is built into his design for marriage summed up in Genesis 2:24 as “the two shall become one flesh.” Sex is designed to be part of a relationship where two complementary partners devote their lives to becoming one. Sex then is exclusive to that relationship, and our sexual desires are informed by our spouse as they change and age. Pornography, however, presents us with an unending supply of different people available for our pleasure. The user goes from picture to picture, or video to video and is never satisfied with what has been seen in the past. Part of what makes pornography pleasurable is the adventurous process of more and different (and sometimes more extreme). It is easy to see how destructive that is to sex in its designed setting. What should be a lifelong wealth of satisfaction in growing intimacy becomes dissatisfying in its limits and familiarity. Porn use doesn’t just fail to meet God’s design; it moves us away from it.

Second, pornography trains us for selfishness instead of giving.

Pornography is a consumable product that exists solely for our pleasure. We take and give nothing in return. In fact, since God designed our sexuality to be embedded in marriage and coupled not just with the reciprocal act of giving our body, but giving our whole selves (think of the refrain in Song of Songs, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine”), pornography like all sexual immorality is exploitative. Let me be clear here; many outside the church would express concern that some pornography is exploitative: when it involves minors or those caught in sex trafficking, for example. But for us as Christians, there is no way to be a conscientious consumer of pornography. Unlike livestock, it doesn’t matter if those featured are free-range or if the product is cruelty-free. Porn takes and uses another for our pleasure without offering them ourselves. This is not merely about a lack of reciprocity. Sex within marriage isn’t about only taking as much as you give; it is fully and wholly about giving to the other person. Consider Paul’s advice to married couples in 1 Corinthians 7:3-4:

“The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”

Notice that Paul sees sex in terms of what we owe our spouse, not what they owe us. This isn’t about demanding our rights but serving the other. Pornography forms us to focus on our needs and see our spouse as a means to gratification, or in the well-crafted phrase of Jonathan Grant, as a “happiness technology.” Again, we find that it’s not just that porn is selfish; it shapes our view of sex selfishly.

Finally, pornography pushes us towards isolation when sex was designed to draw us out of ourselves and into relationship with others.

When God said it was not good that Adam was alone in the garden, it was partly because he couldn’t be fruitful and multiply on his own, and it takes a whole society to display the image of God properly. Sexual desire is tied into this God-designed need for community. Pornography, however, doesn’t move toward community. Pornography thrives in privacy. This is not just because of the shame attached to it, but because it does not require the existence of others to meet our needs. This is only heightened when you include the imagination, as Jesus does, in sexual immorality (Matthew 5:28). C.S. Lewis hits the nail on the head in a letter he wrote to a young man about masturbation:

“For me, the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides, he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.”²

All this means is that present, or even past use of pornography, leaves its mark on us and our relationships.

We see this increasingly in our society; there would be no #metoo movement if we weren’t so shaped as a culture by wrong practices of sex. We see it in the rampant loneliness of a world that has lost the art of family, friendship and community. We see it in countless marriages as our sexual desires dominate and distort God’s purpose in marriage. In a world awash in pornography, this can be tremendously discouraging. Many of us can look back on years of deforming habits and liturgies of sin and wonder if there is any road back. However, the hope we have as Christians is that, in the same way, we can be deformed by pornography, we can be transformed in Christ. This is not just about believing the right things about Jesus, but about practicing his ways. By cultivating proper habits of sexuality (what the church historically has called chastity), and proper relationships with humans that affirm God’s design and their image-bearing nature (think of Paul telling Timothy to treat younger women like sisters with all purity), we can put-off the old practices of sexuality, and through putting on the new ways of Christ, be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Ephesians 4:22-23).

_{Originally published on July 21, 2020}

Notes:

_{¹ Smith, James K.A. Desiring the Kingdom.
² Lewis, C. S. (2004–2007). The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis. (W. Hooper, Ed.) (Vol. 3, p. 758). New York: HarperCollins e-books; HarperSanFrancisco.}