If we are going to survive the onslaught of post-Christian ideologies, we need to embrace the freedom we have to love God’s Law, freedom that comes through the saving gift of the Gospel. For in knowing that Christ, who fulfilled the Law perfectly, and who is now righteousness for us, we are free to love his Law and to strive to uphold it, without fearing the consequences of the inevitable failures we bring to it.

Gospel Freedom to Love the Law
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law.Romans 7:7
How can one stand firm in the shifting sands of a post-Christian, progressive age? How can we be equipped to discern God’s voice amongst the world’s alluring alternatives?
The answer is certainly not blowing in the wind, nor can it found by looking within. It’s actually where it has always been: The undivided, unchanging, Word of God. As Christians not only do we need to reflect on the good news of the Gospel, but also about why it is good news. That realisation can only come through a growing love for God’s “Law” and how it relates to the cross of Christ. Of course, “Law” in this sense is not to be understood as a set of rules tied to a judicial system, but rather as God’s loving instructions for life.
Any attempt to treat “Law and Gospel” as exclusive entities and not two threads intricately woven by the same divine hands, is to render the Gospel no Gospel at all. Loving the God of the New Testament but rejecting the God of the Old is a bit like believing the sun can set despite never having risen. It’s not only confusing, it’s a theological absurdity.
Salvation is by grace through faith, but does that render God’s Law obsolete? Certainly not. Grace detached from the conviction of God’s Law can become a grace accepted on one’s own terms, a grace that universally accepts sinners as they are without acknowledging the need for repentance according to God’s unchanging Law.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.Titus 2:11-14
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We see that grace in chapter 6—God showing favour to Noah and rescuing him and his family.  We see that grace in chapter 9 with God’s covenant to preserve creation and never again destroy it with a flood.  And we have seen that grace in the promise of the serpent-crusher. What about the serpent-crusher?  Keep following the line of descendants.  This section ends with another genealogy (chapter 11): from Shem to Abram.  The search for the serpent-crusher continues!  Abram will be the next great character in God’s story of salvation but he will not be the serpent crusher, we have to carry on many more generations until we come to him. 

  My dad loves genealogies—working on the family tree.  I know of at least one occasion where our summer holiday included a picnic in a graveyard—dad was gathering information from a gravestone.  I suppose the thrill is in the search, searching further and further backwards into history and the people who were there.
            There are genealogies in Genesis and they too are part of a search, but this search looks forwards not backwards, for it is anticipating someone that is to come.
            This search begins at chapter 3, verse 15.  There the LORD God says to the serpent:
 And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your offspring and hers
He will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.
            Note in this verse the singular ‘he’ and ‘his’!  There is an individual we are looking for.  We are searching for the offspring of Eve who will crush the serpent’s head?  [1]
Cain and Abel (chapter 4)
In chapter 4 we read of the first of Eve’s offspring.  Cain is the first-born.  Will he be the one to crush the serpents head?  No!  In fact Cain crushes his brother Abel!  In this murder we see how the breakdown in relationship between God and humanity inevitably leads to a breakdown in relationship among humans.
With regard to finding to the serpent-crusher Cain and Abel lead to a dead end (in Abel’s case literally!).  Abel has no descendants, and when we read of Cain’s (4:17-24) we see little hope.  The line from Cain leads to Lamech, who boasts of killing a man for striking him (4:23).
So where will the offspring of Eve that will crush the serpents head come from?  In verse 25 we read of the birth of another son born in the place of Abel, Seth.  A new line of descendants begins and immediately it is associated with the worship of God— at that time men began to call on the name of the LORD (verse 26).  This is the line of descendants that we are to follow as we search for the serpent-crusher.
The account of Adam’s line (chapter 5)
You might be tempted to skip over chapter 5 if you are working your way through Genesis.  Certainly it is not the most exciting read: ‘so and so had lived for a certain number of years, he became the father of someone else, he lived for a certain number of more years and had other sons and daughters.  Altogether he lived a certain number of years, and then he died.’  The pattern is repetitive!  But there are important things being taught here!
To start with a certain line is being traced, only one member in each generation is mentioned: we are moving in a direction towards one person.  This line, as we will see, continues right through Genesis and contrary to expectation it does not always continue through the first-born—it goes through Seth rather than Cain, Isaac rather than Ishmael, Jacob rather than his first-born twin brother Esau.
This genealogy also serves as a reminder that the consequence of sin—death. Again and again we read—and then he died.  People don’t like to talk about death, some even try to avoid the word.  Apparently there is a hospital in America that refers to death as ‘negative patient care outcome’[2].  However death is a harsh reality of life.
Noah (chapters 6-9) ‘Grace and Covenant’:
In chapter five the line leads to Noah who is introduced by his father’s hopeful words, “He will comfort us in the labour and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed” (5:29).

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Saints, we should be concerned with evangelism, but we should also be concerned with doing evangelism biblically. The He Gets Us Campaign does not practice biblical evangelism, and it does not present the biblical Jesus. We in the PCA should be seriously concerned that our leadership is even considering cooperating with such a Campaign, much less promoting and defending it to our Churches.

I don’t get the “He Gets Us” Campaign. If you aren’t familiar with this organization, be prepared to hear denominational leaders promote it in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
The campaign has a noble goal to “reintroduce people to the Jesus of the Bible.” Based on recent surveys like Ligonier’s on The State of Theology, it is clear that those outside and inside the church need a reintroduction to the Jesus of the Bible. There is growing confusion on a range of topics from the inspiration of Scripture to misunderstandings on gender and sexuality. The campaign organizers should be applauded for their passion to reintroduce people to Jesus. Sadly, I am not so sure that the Jesus they want to introduce is the one found in the Bible. There are a number of red flags on the campaign’s website.
About the Campaign
Let’s start in the “About Us” section. If you were hoping to find out who is behind this campaign, you would be disappointed. All we are told is that “a diverse group of people passionate about the authentic Jesus of the Bible” (emphasis mine) started the campaign. At the very bottom of this section, it says that the “He Gets Us” campaign is an initiative of the Servant Foundation. If you Google “Servant Foundation” you will find this: https://servantokc.org/the-servant-foundation It is an endowment fund controlled by the Church of the Servant’s Foundation Board and the Oklahoma United Methodist Foundation. The Oklahoma United Methodist Foundation is dedicated to “empowering you to invest your resources to do long-lasting good in the world. From writing wills and estate plans to caring for single mothers and orphans, we empower you to commit your resources to do good that echoes for generations.” This is confusing. Is the whole initiative an outworking of one Church? Is it funded by the Methodists? If the latter, then which ones, since they are currently splitting? Finally, the Church of the Servant doesn’t tell you much about their beliefs. The Church’s “Our Beliefs” section tells us only that they love Jesus and that he died as a “demonstration of God’s redeeming love.” There is no statement on why Christ’s death (i.e., the Atonement) was necessary. Jesus’ death did “demonstrate God’s redeeming love,” but Scripture repeatedly says he died for my sins, which is not mentioned in the statement of belief on the Church’s website. Such clarity is likewise absent from the “He Gets Us” campaign site.
[PCA Polity] Editor’s Note: after initial publication of this article, a reader noted the following. “HeGetsUs lists “Servant Foundation,” not “The Servant Foundation.” This matches “The Signatry” which does business as “Servant Foundation.” “The Signatry” is involved in all sorts of broadly “Christian” work and functionally anonymizes where the money is coming from – basically a dead end for anyone wondering who is funding the campaign and what their theological convictions may be.” Of course, the ambiguity of the founding and accountability structures in place for the Campaign does nothing to address the concern of the author (or editor) of this piece.
One more thing worth sharing from the “About Us” section is that it says, “We’re also not affiliated with any particular church or denomination. We simply want everyone to understand the authentic (emphasis mine; there’s that adjective again) Jesus as he’s depicted in the Bible – the Jesus of radical forgiveness, compassion, and love.” This is confusing based on what I said above about this being an initiative of “The Servant Church.” It is also confusing with regards to why they keep referring to an “authentic Jesus.”  Who is He?
According to the “About Us” section, the “authentic Jesus” is characterized by the following values: “radical forgiveness,” “compassion,” “love,” “radical compassion,” and he “stood up for the marginalized.” His sacrificial death, teaching about hell, and emphasis on holiness are apparently not important enough aspects of the “authentic Jesus” to be worth mentioning. Finally, the emphasis of the Campaign is on Jesus’ humanity, “Ultimately, we want people to know his teachings and how he lived while here on Earth. And this will be a starting point to understanding him and his message.” Though they say they affirm Jesus’ full humanity and divinity, they again stress this is not all too important because “We’re simply inviting you to explore with us at He Gets Us how might things be different if more people followed his example.” So what kind of things does He Gets Us want the world to know about the “authentic” Jesus?
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