I believe the greatest challenge we face in engaging our fallen culture lies not in the culture but in ourselves. All that Jesus has ever done, he can still do. All of God there is, is in this moment. But he can do through us only what we allow him to do in us.
According to a former roommate of the alleged Atlanta mass shooter, the man struggled with sexual sins he committed in the establishments he attacked. The New York Times responded with an article calling the suspect’s “fixation on sex” a “familiar thorn for evangelicals.”
In recent weeks, we’ve learned of abuse committed on a staggering scale, but it didn’t come from nowhere. It came from a long-term trajectory of compromises made possible by a perfect storm of failures – of accountability, of honesty, of tolerating, hiding, and abetting temptation. It is a gift of God that so few of us are in such a position to commit evil on this scale.
It may seem that, like a medicine that promises to make us well but makes us sick, our faith does not do what it claims to do. If Christians are not more like Christ than anyone else, why follow Christ? A biblical response is that our faith never promises that Christians will be made perfect in this life. Sanctification requires cooperation, which is why we are to “put to death what is earthly in you” (Colossians 3:5). Even Paul the Apostle admitted, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19).
When we obey God, He strengthens us. When we humble ourselves, His grace is manifested more abundantly, “Just as water ever seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds you abased and empty, His glory and power flow in” (Andrew Murray). Disobedience leads to desperation and despair.
How should Christians respond when Christians sin? We need to separate the message from the messenger, hold each other to the standards of Christ, and balance grace and consequences. To the last point, I wrote that “sinners can be forgiven, but they must seek restitution.”
As I noted yesterday, Christianity offers the hope of moral transformation for those who follow Jesus and submit to the Spirit. To this, I would add that Christianity offers a unique hope of such transformation.
In his closing benediction at President Joe Biden's inauguration, Pastor Silvester Beaman prayed that Americans acknowledge their sins and work toward unity.
Our secular culture will permit you to be a religious person so long as you keep your religion to yourself. But if you begin making your faith the ruling dimension of your life and encouraging others to do the same, you’ll be accused of intolerance. And intolerance is the only “sin” left in our culture.
One of the falsehoods of moral relativism is that there are no falsehoods. Since all truth is subjective, “sin” is equally subjective. As a consequence, there can be no judgment for sin, since there is no basis for such judgment.
If you were Satan, committed to leading as many people into sin as possible, wouldn’t you try to persuade as many people as possible that this lie is true?
