[The Grace of Shame]

“Today, every Christian is being called to choose between the wide path of acceptance by the world and the narrow path of calling sexual sinners to repentance. Certainly we’ll be misunderstood, scorned, and persecuted, but this is how Jesus suffered before us. No generation of Christians has ever escaped taking up their cross in following Jesus. He bore the cross first, so shouldn’t we bear it with him? This refusal to speak God’s words to sinners, using His language He has given us in His Word, is itself sin. When we are ashamed of God’s words, we betray our duty. If we have any compassion for the effeminate, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals, we must return to speaking biblically about their sins and temptations.”

On Biblical Manhood. “Once we catch a vision for living out our manhood by faith as a command of God, then we begin to see that the real essence of manhood isn’t having a buff body. Rather, it’s taking initiative and responsibility for others. It’s saying no to our lusts and pleasures. It’s having faith to do things that look like they are going to absolutely destroy any future of us getting jobs or having a church. It’s calling others to follow you by faith on that same crazy path. It’s taking weight on yourself, and carrying it for other people. In a word, it’s fatherhood.”

Hard Men vs. Soft Men. “Hard men build civilizations; soft men destroy them. Hard men build families; soft men destroy them. Hard men preach; soft men wonder and suggest. Hard men are zealous in worship; soft men are passive. Hard men love discipline; soft men hate it. Hard men love soft women; soft men loved hard women. Hard men raise sons and daughters; soft men raise persons. Hard men are loud in worship; soft men are loud in whining. Hard men are in the kingdom of God. Soft men are not.”

On the ‘Gay Christian’ Movement. “The ‘gay Christian’ movement is contrary to God’s Word whether or not the particular person claiming the label is sexually active. God doesn’t create any man gay or any woman lesbian. Jesus told us that, from the beginning, God made them male and female. God made man to love and desire woman—not another man. He made woman to love and desire man—not another woman. This is as true today of our sons and daughters as it was true of God’s son and daughter, Adam and Eve. Thus it is that Scripture warns that soft men and sodomites will not inherit the kingdom of God. They are turned against who God made Adam to be—and every man since. The Word of God says these men have ‘abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another,’ and every Christian trembles to read this judgment, turning to plead with God to rescue these souls He has given over to degrading passions.”

On Reparative Therapy. “A man’s sexuality goes to the core of his being, so how can it be ‘superficial’ to talk to him about ways he can embrace his manhood in Christ? What is ‘superficial’ and why should we apologize for pleading with him and praying for him to be healed of his sins of softness, complacency, fearfulness, masturbation, and irresponsibility?... The truly superficial response of ministers to the effeminacy and sodomitic sins of the souls around them would be for them to announce they now believe in homosexual orientation and thus are opposed to reparative counseling that tries to change his sexual orientation—covering up their retreat by telling their constituents they made this change because of their deep commitment to repentance and the pure simplicity of the Gospel.”

“Repentance and faith cannot be pried loose from our personhood, which is to say our manhood and womanhood. Coming to faith and Christian discipleship are never asexual, because God made us in His own image, male and female. Thus freedom in Christ always liberates us to better love and live our God-ordained manhood or womanhood. We come to faith through repentance from our effeminacy, sodomy, or lesbianism, and the sincerity of our repentance and faith is proven by embracing heterosexuality. It can’t be otherwise. Anything less is superficial healing. If we oppose reparative therapy, we tell the watching world that the effeminate and men who lie with males can’t change, or don’t need to. Where, then, is our Christian love for these sinners? Maybe more to the point, where is our fear of God?”

But isn’t all sin the same? “If the project we’re working on is getting the sheep to embrace gay Christian pastors, success will require breaking down and removing the sheep’s biblical repugnance to sodomy passed down to them by two millennia of Christian fathers and mothers. If that’s the goal, pulling in sins like greed and pride to ‘sit on the same level’ with sodomy is perfect strategy. It’s also good strategy to rename sodomy ‘same-sex sexual activity’ and to commend it as ‘loving and monogamous.’… Not all sins are equal. Scripture says the opposite. Some sins are worse than others and one sin is the worst of all—blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul also warns that sexual sin is worse than other sin because ‘the immoral man sins against his own body.’… Yes, the Word of God declares that men who are covetous, who are drunkards, who are effeminate, and men who lie with other men will not inherit the kingdom of God, but this is not to say that none of these sins are worse than the others. Sodomy is so very wicked that—along with child sacrifice, incest, and bestiality—it polluted the land of Canaan and caused that land to spew the Canaanites out.”

On ‘Gay Christianity.’ “There have always been men serving faithfully in the diaconate, eldership, and pastorate who have committed terrible sins in the past, yet God raised them up to be shepherds of His flock. Take the Apostle Paul, for instance: he had been a persecutor of Christ and His church. The Apostle Peter denied Christ three times, and later he was rebuked by the Apostle Paul for siding with the Judaizers. Lot committed incest, Augustine shacked up with his girlfriend, John Newton was a slaver—need we go on? But this is what they had been, past tense. None of these men declared that these sins were their present identity. Augustine didn’t come out of the closet and say he was a ‘fornicator Christian.’ Lot didn’t come out of the closet and publicly identify himself as a man whose present desires ran toward incest… Kind David repented of his adultery and murder; he didn’t tell everyone ‘adulterous Christian’ was his present identity and would remain so to his dying day. He didn’t ask Desiring God to publish an article about how nasty and men church people are to adulterous Christians, going on to tell their constituents that there’s nothing wrong with adulterous Christians being pastors… Every pastor has confessed sin himself and has heard other pastors, elders, and deacons confess their sin. If we were listening to a man’s confession of sin during his examination for ordination, and he said he had been a fornicator, murderer, or adulterer, we would not tell him he was disqualified any more than we would tell a man he was disqualified who said he had been effeminate, or had had sex with a man. Rather, we would say: ‘Such were some of us; but we have been washed, we have been sanctified, we have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.’ But that’s not what’s going on here. The entire ‘gay Christian’ advocacy movement being promoted by the Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, and Living Out is not focused on reminding the church who we all used to be and how lost we were back then. These organizations are not naming men who have repented of effeminacy and sodomy, men who have been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Quite the opposite: they are naming men who have not repented of effeminacy, and they are joining these men in their demand that the church stop calling them to be the men God made them to be.”

On Shame. “Christians must discern the difference between true and false shame. True shame is the result of falling short of the standards set by God in His Word, whereas false shame is connected with falling short of man-made, cultural standards which have nothing to do with the standards set by God in His Word… In Christian cultures of former times, many of their standards were aligned with God’s commands, so the shame they attached to sin was a great help to souls in their pursuit of God. Now though, Westerners have thrown out God’s big laws, replacing them with innumerable petty laws that flow from man’s prejudices and cater to his sinful desires.”

On Gay Pride. “Remember that it is God who hammers home the shame of men lying with males. He’s the One who inspired the words ‘profane, ‘abomination,’ ‘defiled,’ ‘perversion,’ and ‘detestable.’ He’s also the One who placed same-sex intercourse in sin lists alongside the most terribly degraded sins of incest, bestiality, and murder. Homosexualists were determined to remove sodomy’s shame, and their methods weren’t subtle. Since pride is the opposite of shame, they named their rebellion ‘gay pride,’ and ran their flag up the pole everywhere. They printed buttons and bumper stickers, wrote books and articles, filled the National Mall with rainbow quilts, and held ever-larger and ever-more-obscene marches down Main Streets where they paraded their shame. They have been so successful that, today, pastors and church leaders prattle on about ‘gay Christians,’ ‘spiritual friendship,’ and ‘homosexual orientation.’ Christians no longer speak of ‘sodomy,’ but merely ‘alternative lifestyles,’ and we have arrived at the point that the language of the world and the language of Christians is almost indistinguishable. It’s gotten to the point that the high point of many pastors’ Gospel witness is to make a rather hesitant suggestion that ‘alternative lifestyles may not be God’s best for human flourishing.’”

“We are to seek ways to call people who are filled with shame to trust Jesus and repent of their sin. We are to call those covered with the shame of their sin to turn from their desire to hide and despair of themselves, trusting Jesus to wash them whiter than snow… The Gospel of Jesus Christ never minimizes shame. Rather, the Gospel removes shame through the justification of the lost, the sanctification of the believer, and the glorification of all those who belong to Christ when we pass from this world to the next. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, all who believe on the name of Jesus will ‘lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit’ and ‘put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.’ There’s an old saying: ‘There are three things which the true Christian desires with respect to sin: justification, that it may not condemn; sanctification, that it may not reign; and glorification that it may not be.’”

On Total Depravity. “Total depravity is a terribly heavy biblical doctrine even when it isn’t misunderstood to mean we are always as bad as we could be. It’s hard to look in the face of the Fall and see the corruption our father Adam brought on us all for what it really is… [What] else [besides Total Depravity] could explain our unlimited capacity to desire evil and give ourselves to sin? Only the Fall and corruption of original sin explains us to ourselves. Only the man who understands original sin also understands Scripture’s statement that Christ reconciled us to God when we were His ‘enemies,’ and that, outside Christ, every man is a ‘slave’ of ‘sin,’ ‘lawlessness,’ and ‘corruption.’ That those who don’t have God as their Father have the devil as their father.”

Political Correctness in the Church. “Today’s political correctness gags God’s truth everywhere. No one says it (because it’s embarrassing to admit), but political correctness is almost as oppressive inside the church as it is in the public square. In our online age, political correctness stultifies Christian writing, teaching, and preaching. There is no privacy. Everything goes online and is judged by the horridly intolerant homogenization of what the most insecure and unprincipled citizens of our nation judge to be either ‘nice’ or ‘mean.’… [St. Paul] never stopped suffering for his faithfulness to God, and much of that suffering is chronicled in his New Testament epistles, which record the constant attacks upon God’s truth—not outside—but inside the church… [The] most important battles the Apostle Paul fought for the Gospel were against those who infiltrated the church, promoted themselves as wise men and leaders, and flattered the members of the church with false doctrine in order to gain those members as their supporters.”

Imperfect Evangelism. “There is no such thing as perfection in our witness to the Gospel today. Each of us has our own sins and temptations and we will see those sins and temptations in everything we do and say, including our Gospel witness. We all know the routine: Satan tempts us to be quiet until we’re perfect, and then he makes sure we’re never perfect so we’re always silent. Perfectionism is the perfect gag for Christians. But if we wait until we’re perfect to witness to the world of sin and righteousness and judgment, we’ll never do it at all.”