My goal isn’t to condemn or shame anyone who has chosen cremation for others (much less those who’ve simply carried out their departed loved ones’ directives). My desire is forward-looking, to give us something to think about as we make decisions about our funerals and as we discuss plans with our friends and loved ones, especially those who are in Christ. Burial is a Christian act in that it better represents the biblical examples, biblical analogies, and biblical teachings on the body. So as our culture paganizes, let’s be countercultural. Let’s reclaim Christian burial. 

For most of history, no one asked whether Christians should cremate their dead. Burial was such a standard practice that it was usually referred to as a “Christian burial,” and cremation was something people read about in Viking tales.
But things have changed in the West. And as cremation has become more common, it has become less strange. In many countries, cremation is now more common than burial, and often Christians now opt for cremation without a second thought. Nevertheless, “What do you think about cremation?” is a question I still get asked as a pastor, so it’s worth pondering.
I argue that “Christian burial” isn’t a misnomer but a fitting description.
It’s not that God is somehow unable to resurrect cremated remains (it’s easy for him). And it’s not that cremation is a violation of a direct biblical command (it’s not, but that doesn’t mean all cultural practices are an equally good fit with Christian theology). Rather, I argue burial is a Christian act in the sense that it better reflects biblical precedents, biblical imagery, and biblical theology about the human body and its future.
For that reason, Christian burial is a practice worth reclaiming as a sorrowful yet joyful way to visibly proclaim the Christian hope amid a hopeless culture.
Ask the Right Question
While there’s no moral prohibition on cremation in the Bible, Scripture gives numerous examples of God’s people burying their dead and almost no examples of God’s people being cremated. Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Joseph, Miriam, Moses, David, Elisha, John the Baptist, Stephen, and most famously Christ himself were all buried (Gen. 25:10; 35:19, 29; 49:31; 50:14; Num. 20:1; Deut. 34:6; Josh. 24:32; 1 Kings 2:10; 2 Kings 13:20; Mark 6:29; Acts 8:2; 1 Cor. 15:4). 
It’s worth asking why. There were other options—Stephen Prothero says that “with the notable exceptions of the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Hebrews, cremation seems to have been the standard practice of the ancients” (5). Yet burial was the standard practice of God’s people in both Testaments. Why?
This pattern didn’t stop with the completion of the Bible. History shows that as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, cremation disappeared and was replaced by burial. The same is true in basically every culture where Christianity has become dominant or influential. One could argue it has only been with the waning of Christianity’s influence in the Western world that cremation has been making a comeback (though the rising population and funeral prices have also played a role). Why?
Why has burial always been the dominant practice among God’s people throughout history, even when it was countercultural? Could there be natural fitness between Judeo-Christian beliefs about the human body and Judeo-Christian burial practices?
The answer is yes, for a simple reason. Namely, what we believe about the human body and its future influences how we treat the human body—even after it’s dead.
The Body Among World Religions
To take one example: historically, Hindus have burned their dead. In places like India or Nepal, cremations are often done in public. This is at least partly because of what Hindus believe about reincarnation and the human body. According to one Hindu website, “After death, the outer flesh, the physical body serves no purpose and the quickest way to release the soul & help in the re-incarnation process is to burn the body.”
There’s a natural fitness between Hindu beliefs about the body and the afterlife and Hindu cultural practices surrounding death—which shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Other religions view the body as a shell or a prison for the soul. While this doesn’t necessarily rule out burial, it does make belief in a bodily resurrection seem pointless—after all, who wants to go back to prison once he’s escaped (Acts 17:32)? On the flip side, while not all who practice burial believe in a bodily resurrection, belief in a bodily resurrection does seem to lend itself to burial (as we see throughout Christian history).
Religion is part of culture, and cultural beliefs influence cultural practices.
The Body in Christianity
Christianity is different from Hinduism in this respect. As Christians, we don’t only believe in the immortality of the soul—we believe in the resurrection of the body. Unlike many other religions, Christianity has a positive view of the human body and of creation in general. Scripture teaches that God created the world and everything in it and then pronounced it “very good” (Gen. 1:31; see Gen. 1–2).
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Good works call for our devotion. After all, they’re what we were “created in Christ Jesus for” (Eph. 2:10). We must actively “learn” to do them. The ability to do good works is infused into us when we’re born again—so the potential is there. But the actual doing of them is a learned skill (like riding a bike or reading), and part of Great Commission discipleship is teaching people to do them (Matt. 28:20).

The Bible has a lot of negative things to say about “works,” especially “works of the law.” Paul stresses repeatedly that we’re justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. Salvation is “not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Eph. 2:8, NKJV).
But “good works” are another matter. By my ESV search, the phrase “good works” (plural) is used 13 times in the New Testament, with eight occurrences in the Pastoral Epistles. Without exception, the phrase is used in a positive, nonironic way to describe exemplary Christian activity.
Few chapters are as relentless in advocating good works as Titus 3. If someone tells you Paul and James disagree about the need for good works, point him to this chapter. Here we can identify three facets of good works: their foundation, their importance, and their definition.
Foundation of Good Works
No less a do-gooder than William Wilberforce once defined Christianity as “a scheme . . . for making the fruits of holiness the effects, not the cause, of our being justified and reconciled.” Good works are the fruit, not the root. Or to tweak the analogy, good works are what goes on in the house, but they’re not the foundation of the house. 
This is exactly what Paul says in Titus 3:8: “The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.”
Notice that the people who are told to devote themselves to good works are “those who have believed in God.” Saving faith and good works aren’t like our two separate hands—rather, faith in God is the foundation for good works.
Paul isn’t referring to a general faith in God’s existence but rather a specific faith in God’s loving kindness for us in the gospel. Notice how he begins verse 8. Good works are the result of Titus “[insisting] on these things.” We insist on these things so that believers will do good works. But what are “these things”? What is this “trustworthy saying”? The answer is found in the immediately preceding verses:
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (vv. 4–7)
The only message that can be trusted to produce good works is the message that tells us our works can’t save us. It seems counterintuitive, but it’s the gospel. If we want a house filled with good works, we must first lay a solid foundation for them.
Importance of Good Works
Sometimes gospel-centered people can be skittish about good works. We think, Just preach the gospel, and good works will happen on their own without any sustained focus on them. But this isn’t what we see in Titus 3. Instead, Paul says things like “let our people learn to devote themselves to good works” (v. 14) and “[let believers] be careful to devote themselves to good works” (v. 8). There’s an urgency here that’s often missing in our preaching.
Good works call for our devotion. After all, they’re what we were “created in Christ Jesus for” (Eph. 2:10). We must actively “learn” to do them. The ability to do good works is infused into us when we’re born again—so the potential is there.
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Being ignorant and inexperienced is not the problem. We all start out this way — both as children and as adults beginning new seasons (like getting married, having our first child, or starting a new career). The problem is being unwilling to yield, hard to be entreated, and not open to reason. It’s a stagnating, suicidal state of mind, like a dry garden shielding itself from the rain. None of us is self-sufficient. By God’s design, we need other people’s input in order to grow into wise, fruitful people. 

In his essay “The Trouble with ‘X,’” C.S. Lewis describes that person who makes our lives difficult. Who is it that gives you regular grief? Maybe it’s a spouse or a coworker or a fellow church member. Sometimes a friend, seeing us look “glum,” will probe us until we reluctantly open up.
On such occasions the . . . friend usually says, “But why don’t you tell them? Why don’t you go to [them] . . . and have it all out? People are usually reasonable. All you’ve got to do is to make them see things in the right light. Explain it to them in a reasonable, quiet, friendly way.” And we, whatever we say outwardly, think sadly to ourselves, “He doesn’t know ‘X.’” We do. We know how utterly hopeless it is to make “X” see reason. Either we’ve tried it over and over again — tried it till we are sick of trying it — or else we’ve never tried it because we saw from the beginning how useless it would be. (God in the Dock, 161–62)
But in contrast to those like “X,” whom Jane Austen describes as “beyond the reach of reason” (Pride and Prejudice, 57), God calls us to be “open to reason” (James 3:17). Are you open to reason? As we consider this description, seeking to be transformed into reasonable people ourselves, we can keep from becoming someone else’s “X.”
Heaven-Sent Wisdom
The object described as “open to reason” in James 3:17 is not people, but wisdom. Wisdom is the issue here in the surrounding context (James 3:13–18). And not just any wisdom, but “the wisdom that comes down from above” (vv. 15, 17). In typical James fashion, it’s a wisdom that shows itself by its works, not simply by its claims (v. 13).
Notice how James speaks not of the “brilliance” but of “the meekness of [this] wisdom” (v. 13). This kind of wisdom is moral, not merely intellectual. It’s about how you learn, not simply what you know. It affects how you get along with others, not just what you can teach them. To be without this wisdom is not simply to be ignorant, but to be “earthly, unspiritual, [and] demonic” (v. 15). Its absence (and counterfeit) is marked by “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition” (vv. 14, 16).
If you can spot fool’s wisdom by its rivalry, drama, and disorder, then how do you know when you’re looking at the real thing? In answer, James gives us a sevenfold description of “the wisdom from above” (v. 17):

pure
peaceable
gentle
open to reason
full of mercy and good fruits
impartial
sincere

This is the context for our phrase. Other translations render it “easy to be entreated” (KJV) or “willing to yield” (NKJV). Hopefully a mental picture is beginning to emerge.
Life with Closed Ears
As soon as you begin to grasp what “open to reason” means, you also begin to see why it matters. It matters because the alternative is a kind of closed-minded stubbornness that not only makes us dumber but also destroys our relationships.
The trouble with “X” is that you can’t teach him anything. Like Nabal, “he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him” (1 Samuel 25:17). He often has to be bailed out by others around him (like his wife, Abigail), though he often won’t even realize it, and he certainly won’t thank you for it.
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American Awakening is packed with biblical wisdom for Christians of every color, both sexes, and almost all political persuasions. But if you’re a Christian who’s attracted to identity politics, Mitchell wants to convince you that what’s attracting you isn’t a legitimate political extension of Christianity but rather an idolatrous substitute. His chief claim is that “Christianity has not disappeared from America; rather, the Christian categories of transgression and innocence have moved into politics” (34). And unless they’re moved back where they belong, our society is doomed.
False Atonement: Scapegoating Straight White Men
Christianity teaches the doctrine of original sin—all mankind is fallen in Adam and inherits his guilt and stain at birth. The only way to have our stain removed is by having it transferred onto the divine Scapegoat, Jesus Christ, who bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Pet. 2:24; cf. Isa. 53:6; John 1:29). This is the heart of the Christian gospel: salvation by substitution. What can wash away our sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
But when this message is rejected, the need for cleansing doesn’t just disappear. Instead, we seek to cover our guilt by other means, either engaging in penance ourselves or else finding scapegoats to blame. This has been a driving force for false religions throughout history: the effort to achieve innocence by scapegoating something (or someone), thus appeasing the gods.
When scapegoating moves from religion into politics, we get identity politics. And according to Mitchell, “The scapegoat identity politics offers up for sacrifice is the white, heterosexual man. If he is purged, its adherents imagine, the world itself, along with the remaining groups in it, will be cleansed of stain” (xxi).
Straight white males make a natural scapegoat (I speak as one). In intersectional scorekeeping, we rank dead last. As males, we’re guilty of oppressing women. As whites, we’re guilty of oppressing racial minorities. As heterosexuals, we’re guilty of oppressing those who identify as LGBT+. And worse, according to identity politics, we’ve also “broken the world…economically by [our] invention of capitalism…and environmentally by the greed of [our] industrial capitalism unleashed” (72).
Some of these concerns are legitimate. All of them also require clarification. But, as a whole, this condemnation feels like an updated version of the old “white man’s burden,” only this time with white men cast as the villain instead of the hero.
Mitchell presses the religious nature of this scapegoating further. In embracing his role as scapegoat, the straight white male doesn’t literally have to die (though hopefully demographic destiny will diminish him in due time). But he’s required to forever engage in acts of “innocence signaling.” In a Passover-like ritual, he must display the acceptable “signs of innocence on his front door—or more likely, his office door—for all to see.” Examples include stickers declaring “This office is green,” announcements about upcoming “diversity training,” and New York Times articles excoriating Donald Trump (xxiv–xxv). When they see the blood, they’ll pass over you. Just remember, this is a daily ritual, not a yearly one—so gird up your loins.
Some might wonder if Mitchell is blind to the genuine racial injustices of the past (or present) or whether he may be unwittingly carrying water for true racists. I don’t think he is. He spends an entire section of the book condemning the alt-right as yet another perverse alternative to Christianity (104–20).
But given how broadly the definition of racism has been expanded (10), in addition to being lumped in with other dubious social justice issues (like LGBT+ rights), Christians of all colors will have to risk being falsely accused of this sin by certain hostile sectors of the American public. Our goal is to not actually be a glutton or a drunkard or a racist—rather than to avoid being called one at any cost (Matt. 11:19). God knows our hearts, and he’ll vindicate all who truly love him and his people on the Last Day, if not sooner.

We don’t have to live in terror of the final day. We can be preparing for it. Because for those known by Jesus, the final day won’t be some huge disruption. It’ll simply be a heightened continuation of the relationship we already enjoy with him now, by faith. So let’s examine ourselves and ask not only “Do I know Jesus?” but “Does Jesus know me?” Let’s live in such way that he’ll not be ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters on that day. And let’s not be deceived, because this is too good to miss.

Christians may disagree over what constitutes the scariest passage in the Bible. But most would agree Jesus’s concluding words in the Sermon on the Mount rank near the top.
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt. 7:21–23)
It’s frightening to think about going to hell. It’s even more frightening to find out too late that you’re going to hell when you thought you were going to heaven. And still more frightening to think that not just a few, but “many” will have this experience. Some people think they’re Christians, they call Jesus “Lord,” they even do mighty works in his name—and yet they’re not truly saved and never were.
When reading this passage it can be tempting to throw up our hands: Who then can know if they’ll be saved? It sure seems like a huge gamble. You do your best to follow Jesus, but who knows whether you’ll get smacked down at the end.
But that’s not Jesus’s goal here. He’s not trying to confuse us or rob us of assurance. True, he doesn’t want us to be deceived, but neither does he want us to live in terror or uncertainty about our final state.
So let me offer two ways to maintain—and even build—assurance in the face of this frightening passage.
1. Recognize What It Means to “Do the Father’s Will”
In verse 21, Jesus describes the one who will enter the kingdom as “the one who does the will of my Father.” But what exactly does that mean? Judging by the context, it must mean more than simply saying “Lord, Lord” and doing mighty works in Jesus’s name. So how can we know if we’re doing the Father’s will? And do we have to do it perfectly?
To see the answer, we should note that this is only the second time in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus has spoken of “entering the kingdom of heaven.” The other is the Sermon’s theme verse, Matthew 5:20: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Comparing these two passages, we can say that “doing the Father’s will” is parallel to possessing a greater righteousness. So by implication, Matthew 7:21–23 is describing those whose righteousness did not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.
Here’s why this matters. When Jesus says our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, he’s not saying “Do what they did, only better.” It’s not that the Pharisees didn’t try hard enough—it’s that they were trying really hard at the wrong things.
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God does more than just influence—he predestines. That’s why all things will work together for the good of the called, and Christ will be the firstborn among many brothers (Rom. 8:29). God is in charge. The outcome is secure. And that, my friends, is a guarantee.

To this day, whenever I stand behind a pulpit and say things like “All true saints will persevere to the end and none will be lost,” I still have to pinch myself. I laugh inwardly and think, What would the 22-year-old me say if he could hear me now?
You see, I wasn’t always a Calvinist.
I was raised a classical Arminian in the Free Will Baptist tradition. As a teenager, I cut my teeth on theologians like F. Leroy Forlines and J. Matthew Pinson, along with older divines like James Arminius and John Wesley. As a 22-year-old man, I believed and taught that grace was always necessary but never irresistible, and that genuine Christians could abandon Christ and forfeit their justified status.
Beneath these beliefs lay a view of the God/man relationship that went like this: humans were created to exist in a loving relationship with God. The nature of that loving relationship requires a free—and undetermined—response on our part. To quote Forlines, I saw God working with man in an “influence-and-response relationship” rather than a “cause-and-effect relationship” (like the Calvinists thought). God could influence us, but he respected our personhood by always leaving the final decision up to us. And God did this, not because he was weak, but because this was how he meant for the relationship to work.
And in case you’re wondering, the difference between a God who influences and a God who causes can be summed up in one word: guarantee. Forlines puts it this way in his book The Quest for Truth:
I think the description of God’s relationship to man that Calvinists would give would be much like my description of influence and response. However, the result is thought to be guaranteed…Any time the result is guaranteed, we are dealing with cause and effect. When the guarantee is gone, Calvinism is gone.
He’s right. I agreed with him then; I agree with him now. I’ve simply changed sides. So what happened? The short answer is I ran up against Romans 8:28–30.
Passionate Preacher, Problem Passage
Romans 8:28–30 is often referred to as “the golden chain of redemption”—so called because of its five “links” of divine foreknowing, predestining, calling, justifying, and glorifying.
As an Arminian, I saw Romans 8:28–30 as a problem passage. Verse 29 was definitely a key prooftext for election-based-on-foreseen-faith. But the rest was difficult. I knew what my preferred commentators said about it, but I’d never been fully satisfied. So I chalked it up to an anomaly. After all, no theological system explains everything perfectly.
Then I started listening to John Piper’s sermons on Romans, and my world was unmade. It was 2004, I was 22, and I had never heard such preaching. His meticulous exposition exposed all the weaknesses I already sensed in my interpretation of the passage, while uncovering some new ones. I can’t say I emerged from those sermons a convinced Calvinist. But my confidence was severely shaken. And eventually I came to realize that Paul’s golden chain, like Calvinism, was very much about a guarantee.
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