Truth or Love?

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not  inherit the kingdom of God?

-1 Corinthians 6:9

 Al Mohler said, “No truth without love, No love without truth”. The problem in the church today is too many are only practicing the, ‘no truth without love’. In their desire to see people come to Christ and their church, they do not confront sin for sake of offending or under the false assumption that they will drive  people away with the truth. I share the following as examples.

First, from Brandon Hatmaker. He is the lead Pastor of Austin New Church. He is married to Jen Hatmaker a Christian author and speaker. The following quotes were from a post by Pastor Hatmaker, “Jen and I are 100% on the same page regarding her recent interview about our love and hope for the LGBTQ    community. This is a journey we have been on together. We  both believe a same-sex marriage, as a life-long monogamous   commitment, can be holy before God. So we committed to a season of study and prayer. We started with scripture (again, please assume a ton of prayer). For more than a year we studied every version of every verse in the Bible that appeared to discuss “homosexuality”. Bottom line, we don’t believe a committed life-long monogamous same-sex marriage violates anything seen in scripture about God’s hopes for the marriage relationship.”

(To read the whole post go to https://www.facebook.com/HatmakerBrandon/posts/where-i-stand-on-lgbtq-as-you-read-this-and-consider-responding-please-also-reme/661677820673474/)

Second, from Passion City Church in Atlanta. Louie Giglio is the senior pastor there. The following is from a lesbian, Erica Ferguson, about her experience at the church.  The article starts out, “Erica Ferguson was a faithful attendee of Passion City Church. She was excited about joining a community that welcomed all of who she was, including her LGBTQ+ identity. However, when she sought to be baptized, the ambiguity of  policies for  LGBTQ+ participation created a complicated cloud of hearsay and unnecessary personal devastation.” Erica writes. “In June 2016, I went through a program called “Launch” with Passion City Church, a popular mega church in Atlanta that Pastor Louie Giglio leads. It was a six or seven week session for people that just had questions about Jesus, faith, etc. It was there that I came out as a gay woman to a church group of any kind for the first time.

To my surprise, I was met with grace and love, honestly feeling like I was in a safe space where I could be my true self. I decided  to apply for baptism in October 2016. As my baptism date approached.,I was getting very excited, joyous to declare my    faith publicly in a church that, while they may not be completely affirming of LGBTQ+ people still affirmed that I was a follower   of Jesus.  But in March 2017, I get a call from the woman who did my initial interview. I was heartbroken and crushed. The church I poured my heart and my money into the past couple of years didn’t really care about me. They were concerned with the ninety-nine sheep, but not the one who was outside the flock, the one Jesus would have sought after.”  She then decided to meet with a pastor of the church. She writes this about that meeting, “I pointed out that I was still allowed to take communion, asking why I was    allowed to receive one sacrament but not another? If my relationship with my fiancé was sinful, why didn’t it just flat out disqualify me from participation all together? He didn’t have an answer for me, but he said he’d think on it more. I ended up meeting with the pastor a couple more times, and finally, he was honest about the policies at play. I had pressed him on the fact  that I had literally just attended service and a woman was being baptized that had been divorced three times. They told her story with no hesitation. In that meeting I sincerely wanted him to tell me how a church that swears their foundation is on scripture could permit the baptizing of someone who had been divorced three times, but not baptize someone that was marrying a  woman. Once again, he couldn’t answer and simply said that in society, divorce is an “approved sin,” that the reason I couldn’t get baptized was that I would want to tell my full story, of being gay and Christian, and Passion City Church couldn’t do that without taking a stand they weren’t willing to take.” (https://www.churchclarity.org/updates/when-they-denied-my-baptism-erica-ferguson)

These are just two examples of love without truth. The first is a clear example of poor exegesis and hermeneutics. There is no  defense of homosexuality in scripture regardless if it is monogamous or not, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination” (Leviticus 20:13).  Some people say, “You Christians pick and choose which verses    of the Bible you want to obey. The book of Leviticus also prohibits what you can eat and prescribes animal sacrifices. Why do you disregard those rules but adhere to these rules?”

There is a simple answer. The only rules of the Old Testament that apply to us today are the rules that are repeated in the New Testament. The New Testament says nothing about dietary restrictions or animal sacrifices, but it does repeat the commands about adultery, premarital sex, and homosexuality.  In Romans 1:26-27, Paul said, “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.”  The Bible says homosexuality is against God’s natural law with severe consequences. You can be forgiven of homosexuality. You can be forgiven of any sin. But to be forgiven of a sin, you must admit you have sinned. The Bible prohibits    homosexual behavior.

The second example is so tragic. Erica is lost in her sin and she went to a church who loved her but did not love her enough to share the truth of the Gospel. As I read about Erica I prayed for her that God would bring her to saving faith and that she would walk through the doors that would meet her just where she is and tell her that God loved her enough to die to set her free. A word  of caution. These examples are about the sin of homosexuality   but all sin separates us from God.  I leave you with the following passage from 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Or do you not know that the    unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards,  nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were     sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Your shepherd,

Pastor Mark