As Warren begins the appeal process and the decision heads to the SBC’s convention floor, the question is not one of proper biblical hermeneutics regarding women pastors. When Warren and other egalitarians advocate for female pastors, their position is solidly based upon strong emotion rather than sound exegesis. The SBC’s current challenge is that it has been shaken by pragmatism and a leftward cultural drift. Furthermore, the denomination has gone through a number of ideological earthquakes. Will the next tsunami wave be too much to handle? 

On March 11, 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake rocked Japan. The center of the quake was said to have been in the North Pacific, 81 miles east of Sendai, the largest city in the Tōhoku area.
The Pacific Ocean is home to the largest seismic belt on the planet. Japan is accustomed to and prepared for earthquakes, much like its Pacific neighbor to the east, California. The rare tsunami accompanying an earthquake is often more damaging than the quake itself.
Those familiar with the region pay little attention to earthquakes. Due to their infrequency, many people ignore the warnings associated with tsunamis. Ignoring such warnings can have disastrous consequences, as more than 20,000 lives were lost on the Sendai coast.
For the past few years, many in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) have disregarded numerous warnings of their own. Many in SBC leadership pay little attention to the cracks in the denomination’s core. The latest is Rick Warren’s decision to appeal the SBC’s decision to kick Saddleback Church out of the fellowship. This is a tsunami warning for the SBC. There are some in SBC circles who regard Warren’s commitment to installing three women pastors at Saddleback Church as a clear violation of Scripture and the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.
The crucial question is: Will the SBC heed the most recent tsunami warning and stand on the high ground of Scripture, or will a tsunami wave of egalitarianism destroy its shores?
The Earthquake before the Tsunami: MLK 50 & Social Justice
Long before the terror of a 500-mile-per-hour tsunami wave traveling ashore, the Tōhoku area’s residents would have been wise to pay attention to the early warning signs of a tsunami—an earthquake. Likewise, recent history will attest that the SBC has endured numerous quakes that should have served as an early warning sign for what was coming.
The first seismic event to hit the SBC occurred in 2018 during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. The Gospel Coalition collaborated on a joint event with the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). The MLK 50: Gospel Reflections from the Mountaintop event occurred in Memphis, Tennessee. Speakers included Charlie Dates, Jackie Hill-Perry, Eric Mason, and others.
Eric Mason, pastor of Epiphany Fellowship Church in Philadelphia and author of Woke Church, took to the podium. Mason reflected on what he believed to be a pivotal time in history. Connecting the historical racism of King’s day with the present-day experience of blacks within white evangelicalism, Mason told the audience,
Multiplicities of Negros ain’t feeling evangelicalism…. Whites have to assume … that because there is offense … you need to press into that particular offense and begin to educate yourself on … not having reductionistic ways in which you try to cause racial reconciliation, like through hiring non-qualified African-Americans to be the multi-ethnic engineers in your local churches…. And you know they’re not qualified because Blacks haven’t hired them.
Eric Mason, MLK 50 (10:46)
The audience filled the air with laughter and numerous “amens.” Mason continued,
And it works against unity when you hire somebody that we not feeling. And you’re wondering why multi-ethnicity isn’t happening at your church? It’s because you have a person that is black on the outside but angloid on the inside.
Eric Mason, MLK 50 (12:06)
Charlie Dates, once one of the SBCs most popular and celebrated preachers, used MLK 50 to connect King’s social gospel to the economic, political, and educational needs of today’s black communities. In Dates’ view, it’s our “white evangelical brothers and sisters” who bear the responsibility to repair disparities within black communities. Dates reserved his sermon’s homiletic punch for the conclusion of his message, and he could not have been more explicit when he said,
This is what has frustrated many black churches with our white evangelical brothers and sisters, those of you who have a firm grasp on orthodoxy, who understand the finer tenants of the gospel, who launch coalitions, who sustain commissions, and who produce curriculum and lobby with Congress. We have expected you to be our greatest allies in the struggle against injustice. We wanted you to tell your churches and your congregations that God was never pleased with segregation and the systems that segregation has created.… We wanted you to end the long night of systemic injustices. We wanted y’all to cry about the public school-to-prison pipeline.… And we wanted you to shout it from your pulpit.
Charlie Dates, MLK 50 (20:25)
With Mason and Dates framing the foundation of their ideas on the San Andreas fault line of King’s social gospel, each speaker charged white evangelicalism with being responsible for and obligated to fix the disparities experienced in black America.
The Village Church pastor of Fort Worth, Texas, Matt Chandler, would join the chorus of speakers, describing what his church was doing to promote black empowerment in the pulpit.
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Jesus embodies lowly character throughout His life; He was born in the humblest of circumstances (Luke 2:7), lived in the unremarkable town of Nazareth (Luke 4:16), and died an undeserving death for His people (Luke 22:1–23:56). But, on account of Jesus’ faithfulness, God vindicated the Son and exalted Jesus to the Father’s throne (Luke 24:50–53). Believers must take this pattern to heart because God promises that we too will undergo difficult circumstances. We will not be publicly vindicated until our physical resurrection at the consummation. Only in the eternal state will God’s people enjoy an exalted existence.

Luke’s gospel is the longest book in the New Testament and one of the most sophisticated. While most Christians are familiar with the birth of Christ in chapter 2, not many are familiar with some of the nuances of the third gospel that enrich our understanding of the person of Christ. Below we will attempt to carve out three areas that are often overlooked: the purpose of the book, the exaltation of the humble and the humbling of the proud, and Jesus’ relationship to the Old Testament.
1. The purpose of Luke.
New Testament authors don’t often inform the readers why they are writing a letter or gospel. But two of the four Gospels do such a thing. Luke explains to Theophilus in 1:4 that he’s writing to him so “that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.” While we don’t know much about Theophilus, scholars believe that he was likely a gentile who converted to Judaism and then subsequently to Christianity. Theophilus may have even funded Luke’s gospel and the book of Acts, since publishing in the first century was a costly endeavor. In any case, the point is that Luke writes Theophilus to confirm what Theophilus already knows. It appears, then, that Theophilus is familiar with the broad strokes of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and Luke pens his gospel to fill in the gaps of Theophilus’ knowledge with the purpose of preserving his faith. This is an incredibly important principle, a principle that the church in the twenty-first century must value. One’s knowledge of Christ’s ministry is directly tied to one’s personal faith. When doubt creeps into our hearts, as it inevitably does, we must turn to the Gospels and refresh our minds with the truth of Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection.
2. The exaltation of the humble and the humbling of the proud.
Hymns in the Bible often encapsulate key themes, themes that are woven throughout the book (e.g., Dan. 2:20–23; Dan. 4:1–3, 34–35; Dan. 6:25–27).
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Written by Mitchell L. Chase |
Monday, June 26, 2023
While God’s creation is good, the corruption of sin and death has wreaked havoc. We see the sorrowful things of the world around us and we know that injustice cries out for justice, that fractured lives long for wholeness, and that the moral guilt weighing upon the consciences of God’s image-bearers needs a remedy. Genesis 3 is a useful apologetic for Christians as we help others around us see why things are the way they are.

This article is part of the 10 Things You Should Know series.
1. The fall refers to the rebellion of God’s image-bearers in the garden of Eden.
Genesis 3 is a threshold in the Bible’s storyline. While dwelling in a sacred space and surrounded by the blessings of God, Adam and Eve did what God had forbidden. God had made them in his image, but they defied his word and sought a kind of knowledge in an unsanctioned way. Made for communion with God, they experienced alienation. Made for trust and hope and life abundant, they descended into sin and shame. They fell.
2. The fall is a nonnegotiable piece of the Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation paradigm.
One of the most popular schemas for the Bible’s “big story” is the fourfold chain of words: creation, fall, redemption, consummation. Creation tells us what God made, the fall tells us what happened to it, redemption tells us what God has done to address what happened, and consummation tells us where everything is headed. If the notion of the fall were removed, the implications would be disastrous. Let’s engage in a thought experiment. If there is creation but no fall, then what explains all that has gone wrong in the world? If there is redemption but no fall, why would redemption be necessary? If there is consummation but no fall, why would the Christian’s hope be oriented toward a new heavens and new earth and resurrection life?
3. The serpent in Genesis 3 was Satan, the archnemesis of God and God’s people.
The tempter in Genesis 3 does not have the best interests of Adam and Eve in mind. The serpent counters and twists God’s words. But throughout the account, the tempter is never called by name. If interpreters suspect that this is Satan himself tempting Eve, they would be correct, because he is certainly the archenemy of God’s people and the purposes of God. The New Testament confirms this identification. God told the serpent that it would be crushed (Gen. 3:15), and Paul told the Romans that “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20). John says in Revelation, “The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12:9).
4. The fall is treated as a historical event by later Scripture.
Because the Holy Spirit has inspired the writings of Genesis through Revelation, and because God does not err, we can trust the biblical accounts in what they reveal about God and God’s dealings with the world he’s made. Later Scripture does not contradict earlier Scripture, but we continually see how earlier Scripture is clarified and confirmed by the progressive revelation across the writings of the biblical authors. In Romans 5:12–21, the obedience of Christ contrasts the disobedience of Adam. In 1 Corinthians 15:21, Paul says that “by a man came death.” And in 2 Corinthians 11:3 and 1 Timothy 2:14, he mentions the deception of Eve. The New Testament treats the Old Testament account of the fall as a historical rebellion of a real Adam and a real Eve.
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