In saying “we have come to know and to believe” God’s love for us, John reminds us that our theological convictions are proven and deepened by living experience. Just as a good marriage takes seriously the vows made on the wedding day, each spouse learning to daily rely on the other’s love, so in our relationship with God do we learn to rely on His love. In Christ’s economy, trials and tests come if for no other reason than that we might learn to rely on God’s love for us.

Doubt isn’t unusual for the Christian. If we take a brief inventory of our spiritual pilgrimages, many of us will recall times when we’ve faced uncertainty, wrestling with whether our faith is genuine. Aware of this, John said that he wrote his first epistle “that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13).
The basis of our certainty isn’t merely that we’re religious, that we joined a Christian club, or that we subscribe to the Ten Commandments. Believers know God personally and experientially. Central to the Christian claim is that God lives in us, and we abide in Him (John 1:12; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 John 2). Indeed, we may summarize the message of 1 John in a statement: we are God’s children, and our Christian experience is real.
In 1 John 4:13–16, the apostle expounds this claim, providing three evidences of God’s presence in our lives.
We Are Given God’s Spirit
We can say that God lives in us, first, because He gives us His Spirit:
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” (1 John 4:13)
While it’s impossible for us to have only a portion of the Holy Spirit, it is possible for Him to have less than all of us.
A number of things happen to us when we’re born again of God’s Spirit. Not only does God wipe the record clear of our sins and adopt us into His family; He also unites us with Christ in His death and resurrection. United to Christ, we become God’s sons and daughters (Rom. 8:15–16). And, as John reminds us, we receive the Holy Spirit.
The fact that we receive the Holy Spirit at conversion is a biblical reality, though certain groups deny it. Some teach that we receive the Spirit at conversion, but not in full; they assert that He’s given progressively in installments, so to speak. But the Bible teaches the very reverse of that. When we receive the Spirit, we receive all of Him. It isn’t possible for us to have Him at 60 percent, for He’s an indivisible unity. The Spirit is one divine person.
Now, while it’s impossible for us to have only a portion of the Holy Spirit, it is possible for Him to have less than all of us. That’s why Paul warns against Christians grieving God’s Spirit (Eph 4:30). Instead, we are to “be filled with the Spirit” (5:18). By this Paul means not that we receive more of what we don’t already possess but that we experience a constant renewing and directing of God’s Spirit in our lives. And the degree to which the Spirit has fullness in our lives is the degree to which we may experience assurance that God lives in us.
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There are still presbyterians around whose consciences are pricked by the prospect of thousands of people (Christians and pagans alike) working on the Lord’s Day for the sake of “recreation.” For them, obvious violations of the Second Commandment take all the fun out of America’s biggest Sunday.

We are reliably informed that this is “Super Bowl Week,” a promotional publicity-fest that is something like Advent for the USA’s greatest holy day. That this holy day falls on the first day of next week—the Lord’s Day if you are a confessional presbyterian—may have something to do with professional football’s relatively late arrival on the American sports scene. That some churches and elders who ought to know better embrace this mega-event as an appropriate occasion for church activities may indicate the diminishing regard presbyterians have for their historic standards.
By the time burly bruisers began to get paid for playing football, Saturdays were taken—already the domain of high school and college football.1 Professional football arose in the 1920s when Blue Laws prohibiting many commercial activities on Sundays were fading away. All over the country local and state governments were greenlighting Sunday contests. By 1967 TV viewers were ready for some football and the TV networks were ready for increased revenues so when 65 million people watched the first Super Bowl the die was cast. Every Super Bowl since has been played on Sunday. The NFL owns Sunday now from fall through winter. A few cranky protestants pose no threat to the new lords of the old Lord’s Day.
American churches generally accepted the ongoing relevance and application of the Ten Commandments until about the time professional sports went wild in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By then the glories of Revivalism were fading and pragmatism called evangelicals like a siren. The doctrinal underpinnings of Lord’s Day observance were largely lost on both the fundamentalist right and the progressive left. The right was running on the fumes of Calvinistic doctrine (see the early Southern Baptists). The 1925 Baptist Faith & Message reflects an almost-Westminsterian understanding of the Lord’s Day. The 2000 revision showed the loss of this understanding by the end of the 20th century. While evangelicals may have fallen prey to pragmatism, the mainline loved respectability. The old ways of honoring the Lord’s Day were just…weird. And no one wanted to be weird. (Witness the baptists’ Lord’s Day declension.)
But back to the 1920s: by then waves of European immigration brought the freer, so-called “Continental Sabbath”2 to American cities where Sunday freedom became a political issue. Cultural resistance to a commercial Sunday crumbled and many evangelicals and confessional protestants forgot why they had ever cared about the Fourth Commandment. And they kept forgetting. Christians loved the courageous example of sabbatarian conviction portrayed in the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire, but there was no resurgence of regard for the Christian Sabbath. Scottish athlete Eric Liddells’s sacrifices for the sake of his convictions in 1924 were inspiring but already seemed quaint and out of date.
In the middle of the 17th century the Westminster Divines believed the Christian Sabbath was too important to forget, and their warnings against such forgetting seem almost prophetic. In Westminster Larger Catechism 121, they wrote: “Satan with his instruments much labor(s) to blot out the glory, and even the memory of (the Christian Sabbath), to bring in all irreligion and impiety.”
In 2024, after about 100 years of professional Sunday sports, it’s common to see evangelical pastors wearing football jerseys on their church stages (or even behind rare vestigial pulpits) to promote “Super Sunday” events. Whether conceived for outreach or fellowship, these events are always billed as FUN! Less common are confessional presbyterian churches engaging in February football hijinks. Less common, I say, but not unknown.
A PCA church somewhere in the southeast is having a big, public, commercial Super Bowl party this year. Surely it is not the only such church to do so, but we are persuaded that such events are still quite rare. Now, informal gatherings of church families or small groups to watch what we (for legal reasons) are supposed to call the BIG GAME are not unheard of, and neither are youth events centered around the advertising-entertainment festival to which a football game has been attached. Sunday evening worship services, since they have almost disappeared in the PCA, are no hindrance to such gatherings. Neither, it would seem, are the doctrinal standards of the church.
The PCA church in question is meeting not at its building but at a brewpub, though prospective attendees are assured that non-alcoholic drinks will be available. And the victuals for the viewers will be provided not by church ladies or warmed-up Costco pizzas, but by a food truck. And speaking of food trucks (chariots of hire, if you will), we’ve noticed a churchy trend in that regard: churches contracting with food trucks to vend on church campuses on the Lord’s Day after worship. This at least serves to render the old “Should we go out to eat on Sunday?” controversy moot. Now the restaurant comes to you. Dinner on the grounds just ain’t what it used to be. Who ever got great street tacos at a potluck anyway?
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Written by Gregory S. Baylor |
Thursday, November 17, 2022
The Respect for Marriage Act was introduced in July and quickly pushed through the U.S. House of Representatives without any public hearings, enabling its proponents to mischaracterize the bill as a simple codification of Obergefell. Let’s be clear: the Respect for Marriage Act is unnecessary and could have a disastrous effect on religious freedom.

As soon as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, activists went to work mischaracterizing the ruling.
Many used the decision—and particularly Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence—to claim that the Court could revisit other rulings, including the one in Obergefell v. Hodges, which created a constitutional “right” to same-sex marriage.
Using this feigned outrage as a cover, these activists pushed for a federal law called the Respect for Marriage Act.
The Respect for Marriage Act was introduced in July and quickly pushed through the U.S. House of Representatives without any public hearings, enabling its proponents to mischaracterize the bill as a simple codification of Obergefell.
Let’s be clear: the Respect for Marriage Act is unnecessary and could have a disastrous effect on religious freedom.
What is the Respect for Marriage Act?
The so-called Respect for Marriage Act is a misnamed bill that expands not only what marriage means, but also who can be sued for disagreeing with the new meaning of marriage.
While proponents of the bill claim that it simply codifies the 2015 Obergefell decision, in reality it is an intentional attack on the religious freedom of millions of Americans with sincerely held beliefs about marriage.
The Respect for Marriage Act threatens religious freedom and the institution of marriage in multiple ways:

It further embeds a false definition of marriage in the American legal fabric.
It opens the door to federal recognition of polygamous relationships.
It jeopardizes the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that exercise their belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
It endangers faith-based social-service organizations by threatening litigation and liability risk if they follow their views on marriage when working with the government.

The truth is the Respect for Marriage Act does nothing to change the status of same-sex marriage or the benefits afforded to same-sex couples following Obergefell. It does much, however, to endanger religious freedom.
Has the Respect for Marriage Act passed Congress?
On July 19, 2022, the House passed the Respect for Marriage Act. The vote caught many by surprise: not only did it happen quickly—just one day after the bill was introduced—but a surprising 47 Republicans, many of whom likely did not appreciate the threat it posed to religious liberty, voted in favor of the bill.
As the bill moved over to the U.S. Senate, a strong coalition of religious organizations voiced concerns and urged the Senate to slow down and take time to consider its true consequences.
An alliance of over 80 groups sent Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a letter urging him to stand firm against pressures to move the bill forward, and over 2,000 churches and ministries sent a letter to the Senate specifically calling attention to the effects of the bill on their ability to serve their communities in accordance with their religious beliefs. ADF organized and led both of these initiatives.
These efforts are working.
After the Respect for Marriage Act sped through the House, the Senate has delayed consideration of the bill so senators can better understand the harms it will cause to countless Americans. While many have voiced total opposition to the bill, a small group of senators from both parties, led by Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Susan Collins of Maine, are attempting to amend the bill to address the concerns that have been raised.
Unfortunately, their proposed amendment does not adequately address the bill’s significant religious freedom issues.
What would the proposed amendment to the Respect for Marriage Act do?
While these senators seem to acknowledge the objections to the Respect for Marriage Act, their amendment fails to address the bill’s problems in a substantive way.
Here are the major issues with this amendment:

There are no real protections for religious individuals or organizations.

The amendment adds a new section to the Respect for Marriage Act that purports to address religious liberty and conscience concerns.
But rather than adding any new concrete protections for religious individuals and organizations threatened by the Respect for Marriage Act, the new section simply states that those Americans whose beliefs are infringed can invoke already existing legal protections, like the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). As such, this new provision does not fix the bill’s negative impact on religious exercise and freedom of conscience. Those targeted under the bill will be forced to spend years in litigation and thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees to protect their rights.

The amendment leaves numerous religious social-service organizations vulnerable.

The proposed amendment adds language that confirms that churches and religious organizations would not be forced to solemnize or celebrate a marriage against their sincerely held religious beliefs.
Unfortunately, this proposed provision ignores the true threats to religious organizations. No one thinks the Respect for Marriage Act requires churches to solemnize marriages.
The real problem is that the bill can be used to punish social-service organizations like adoption or foster placement agencies that serve their communities in accordance with their religious belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The proposed amendment does nothing to help such organizations.

The amendment fails to address concerns over nonprofits’ tax-exempt status.

The amendment adds a new section that attempts to address concerns about the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that live out their beliefs about marriage.
Once again, the amendment fails to substantively remedy this problem. When the IRS determines whether an organization is “charitable” under the Internal Revenue Code, it asks whether the entity’s conduct is “contrary to public policy” or violates a “national policy.”
If the Respect for Marriage Act were enacted, the IRS could rely upon the bill to conclude that certain nonprofits are not “charitable.” The amendment’s new provision does nothing to prevent this.
Unfortunately, the proposed amendment utterly fails to meaningfully address the serious religious freedom problems with the Respect for Marriage Act. The inclusion of provisions that purport to address religious freedom concerns may be a sign that senators heard the criticisms of the bill, but the hollow nature of the amendment demonstrates they do not understand the depth of the concerns being raised.
How can I advocate for marriage and religious freedom?
Alliance Defending Freedom is working hard to take a stand for marriage by opposing this bill, but it is imperative that senators hear from their constituents about the threat to religious liberty and the institution of marriage that the Respect for Marriage Act represents—even if amended.
We need the Senate to hear from you.
The Senate is expected to vote on the Respect for Marriage Act before the end of the year. Call your two senators and ask them to vote NO on the Respect for Marriage Act. You can find your senators’ phone numbers on this page by clicking on your state.
When you call them, remind them about the three main problems with the bill:

It empowers the government to punish tens of millions of Americans who wish to live according to their deeply held beliefs.
It exposes religious individuals and organizations to predatory lawsuits.
It could weaponize the IRS against faith-based organizations by threatening their nonprofit status.

Every phone call to a senator helps. The Respect for Marriage Act has little to do with protecting rights—quite the opposite. Its text betrays an intent to stigmatize and take rights away, especially from people of faith.
Tell your senator to stand firm against these blatant attacks on religious freedom and the institution of marriage.
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