As Christians, we understand that the Gospel is not violence, at least not in the way that the world accuses it. For, while the Gospel does attack the parts of us which are deader than dead, it also brings never-ending life that replaces our death and can never be taken away. The Gospel damaging our sinful flesh brings life in the same way the surgeon’s scalpel cuts away the cancer to preserve the patient. Therefore, to withhold the Gospel, which is the only cure for the malady of man, would be the only actual violence we could ever perpetrate against humanity.
 
INTRO
A kind of fragile despair has crept into the modern mind so that it can no longer be safely challenged. To question the thoughts, or the lifestyle, of another person or group has become the moral equivalent of executing violence against them. Or so we are told. To say that this or that thing is morally wrong, and needs to be repented from, is to become culpable for their suicide. This was the ugly goblet of shame recently dumped on my unsuspecting head.
In a private message on Facebook, I was asked the following questions by a random user:
“Do you think my friend deserved all the abuse and pain that she took? Are you happy that she’s dead? Do you hate my friend? Pastor, did you want transgender people to kill themselves? Is that what you wanted?”
These questions were shocking to me. Not only does my very existence (and Biblical beliefs) threaten the life of another human being, but the only acceptable recourse offered is for me to no longer call transgenderism a sin. As a Christian, I cannot comply here. According to this logic, either I will disobey God by turning a blind eye toward sin or become a serial killer with bloodstains on my hands. This is the highly polarized perspective I was invited into.
But, as I was thinking about this exchange, I realized that this is precisely what persecution will look like in the modern world. When a Christian shares truth from Scripture, even in the most gentle and loving ways, we will not be beaten, beheaded, or thrown in prison. At least not yet. More likely, we will be accused of murdering people with ideas. We will be endlessly boycotted and ever hated by people who do not have the love of Christ and, as a result, have an endless supply of fury to spew in our direction for a thousand lifetimes.
The message continues:
“You’ve made an enemy. Until you stop your vendetta, die, or move away, I guess I’m just going to have to fight you forever.”
As Christians, how are we to think about messages such as this?
REMEMBER, WHO WE ARE
Before we move on to strategy, we need to remember who we are in Christ. We are people who have been ransomed out of the kingdom of darkness and brought into God’s marvelous Kingdom of dazzling Light (Col. 1:13). Before Jesus rescued us, we were enslaved by our aberrant passions (Ti 3:3) and consumed by all malice and disgusting rebellions (Ro. 1:29-32; Gal. 5:19-21; 1 Co. 6:9-10). There was nothing at all different between the most flagrant sinners on earth and us, which is, in fact, where God stepped in (1 Cor. 6:11). From that wicked and lowly estate, the Lord Jesus Christ set His electing affections upon us and purchased us out of the thralls of sin to become His slaves of righteousness (Ro. 6:17-18). Now, as people who belong to Him, we declare our allegiance and adorations, our loyalty and love, by no longer gratifying our former lusts (Gal 5:16; Eph. 2:1-8), but by killing the flesh (Ro. 8:13), so that we can be obedient to Him (John 14:15; Eph 2:10). That loving and loyal obedience requires that we will go, do, and say whatever He commands (Luke 6:46), which involves nothing less than discipling the pagan nations to know what Jesus thinks concerning all things (Mt. 28:18-20). Essentially, being a Christian means joining Jesus’ campaign to conform the world (the world we once belonged to) into His beautifying redemptive vision. That work requires sharing the Gospel (Mk 16:15).
REMEMBER, WHAT WE ARE CALLED TO SHARE
Now, to share something, we must first know what that thing is. We can only speak intelligently about a thing if we fully comprehend what that thing is. For that reason, a brief sketch of the Gospel is in order, followed by some common lies that the world will accuse us of when we are vigilant in sharing God’s truth.
The Gospel is God’s loving offer of reconciliation and compassion to seedy rebels (Ro. 5:8). It is an offer executed by Christ alone (Jn 14:6), applied by His Spirit alone (1 Pt. 3:18) for the salvation of those He predestined alone (Eph. 1:5; Ro. 8:28-30). It is a message meant to be communicated by the very ones it saves (Ac. 1:9). It is a message we are called to become increasingly familiar with and effective at sharing (Phm 9). And it is a message that has certain essential elements that must be included if it is to be considered a “Gospel message.” Those elements are as follows.
The Gospel begins with the bad news that we deserve death for our rebellion against God (Gen 3:19; Ro.1:32) and that we cannot repair the relationship by our own fickle virtue (Eph 2:8-9). The Gospel tells us that our sin is the poison that is killing us slowly (Ja. 1:15), and it is the toxic venom that will ensure our everlasting death in agony forever (Rev. 21:8). Because we are utterly helpless to rescue ourselves salvation must come from God alone (Jnh 2:9), which is why God sent the Lord Jesus Christ to save His people from their sin (Jn. 3:16).
That rescue plan required Christ perfectly obeying the law that you and I had perfectly transgressed (Heb. 4:15). It would involve God crediting us with the righteous status of Jesus Christ (Phil 3:9) while pouring our sin and our rebellions onto Him (2 Co. 5:21). Christ would trade places with us, giving us His life and freedom, taking our misery and shame down into the grave (Gal 3:13-14) and bringing us new life in His resurrection (Ro. 6:6). For Christ Jesus on the third day, rose from the dead, being exalted above all things (Phil 2:9), securing redemption for all His lowly people (1 Co. 1:16-17), and making Christ the author and perfecter of our salvation (Heb 12:2). Then, after ascending into heaven, to reign at the right hand of God (Ro. 8:34), He is now pouring out His Spirit onto all whom He chooses (Jn. 6:63; Ac. 2:33), so that they will have faith in Christ alone (Ro. 15:13), and so that the Spirit will help them declare His Gospel alone (Jn 16:13; Ac. 4:12; Ro. 10:14).
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Edwards repeatedly uses the word condescension, and we need to understand that this is a theological word and concept, with no hint of the negative connotations that the word holds in common usage today. Christ’s condescension was his descent from a higher divine state to a lower human one, accompanied by his relinquishing of divine privilege in order to accomplish an action (the salvation of people) that strict justice does not require.

Infinite Condescension
In this act of taking on human nature, Christ’s infinite condescension [“descending to be with”] wonderfully appeared, that he who was God should become man, that the word should be made flesh, and should take on him a nature infinitely below his original nature. And it appears yet more remarkably in the low circumstances of his incarnation: he was conceived in the womb of a poor young woman, whose poverty appeared in this, when she came to offer sacrifices of her purification, she brought what was allowed of in the law only in case of a person . . . [who] was so poor that she was not able to offer a lamb.
And though his infinite condescension thus appeared in the manner of his incarnation, yet his divine dignity also appeared in it; for though he was conceived in the womb of a poor virgin, yet he was conceived there by the power of the Holy Ghost. And his divine dignity also appeared in the holiness of his conception and birth. Though he was conceived in the womb of one of the corrupt race of mankind, yet he was conceived and born without sin. . . .
His infinite condescension marvelously appeared in the manner of his birth. He was brought forth in a stable because there was no room for them in the inn. The inn was taken up by others who were looked upon as persons of greater account. The Blessed Virgin, being poor and despised, was turned or shut out. Though she was in such extreme circumstances, yet those that counted themselves her betters would not give place to her; and therefore, in the time of her travail, she was forced to betake herself to a stable; and when the child was born, it was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. There Christ lay a little infant, and there he eminently appeared as a lamb.
But yet this feeble infant, born thus in a stable, and laid in a manger, was born to conquer and triumph over Satan, that roaring lion. He came to subdue the mighty powers of darkness, and make a show of them openly, and so to restore peace on earth, and to manifest God’s good-will towards men, and to bring glory to God in the highest, according as the end of his birth was declared by the joyful songs of the glorious hosts of angels appearing to the shepherds at the same time that the infant lay in the manger; whereby his divine dignity was manifested. . . .
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All of this invites questions of great practical consequence: why did we bring into our own denomination a requirement – this vow to support – that was only introduced into our predecessor in the years of her growing infidelity, that was used to coerce and intimidate the faithful remnant, and that was not precedented (in the actual meaning of that abused word) in over 220 years of earlier Presbyterian polity in this country?

In a previous article I discussed somewhat the meaning and implications of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)’s fourth membership vow (see footnote for text).[1] Since that time an earlier work of a very learned gentleman, Barry Waugh, that gives a history of how that vow came to be included in the PCA’s Book of Church Order (BCO) has been republished here. It is worth the read, as is much else that Waugh has written, but as its extensive documentation makes it somewhat long (approximately 3,000 words), I’ll summarize his point here.
In 1929 the PCA’s predecessor, the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), added the vow in question as a response to a practical difficulty that had arisen due to the increasing popularity of what were then called voluntary agencies, or what we would now call parachurch ministries. These had so much increased in popularity that the church believed its own ministry was being adversely affected by being deprived of its members’ funds and talents. To ensure that such parachurch entities did not undermine the church, and in keeping with the historic Presbyterian belief that Christ established the church to advance his kingdom, the church added the vow in question to emphasize the importance of members supporting the institutional church in its own work. When the PCA later formed, this vow was one of the many things she brought with her from the PCUS.
Whether it should have done so is a separate question. As Waugh amply documents, there were no membership vows in the first approximately 200 years of Presbyterian history in this country. And as other reading will attest, worldliness and unbelief, clothed in the respectable monikers of reason, science, scholarship, necessity, utility, and the usual gamut of high-sounding and urgent rhetoric, had made a deep infiltration in the PCUS, so that by 1929 that denomination was far along the road of infidelity. When the seeds of unbelief began to bear a wicked fruit with increased severity and frequency in the succeeding generation, there arose that movement of reaction that ultimately lead to the formation of the PCA in 1973.
And it is my understanding, gleaned especially from Frank Smith’s early history of the PCA, The History of the Presbyterian Church in America, that at that time, and in the years prior, the unbelievers in the PCUS appealed to the membership vow in question (and its associated notion of church participation) to coerce people into remaining in the denomination and providing it with full support. Whenever individuals, churches, or presbyteries withheld financial support from certain agencies, sought to separate, or were otherwise involved in the continuing church movement or refused to give full support to the program of apostasy in the PCUS, they were accused of infidelity. (“The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light . . .”) Others were restrained by their own consciences from supporting the continuing church and joining the PCA on account of the vow in question.
And taken literally, the vow places members under a burden that does not accord with the New Testament conception of stewardship. The New Testament records the church saying its members’ possessions are theirs to dispose of as they determine best: speaking of land and its sale, Peter tells a member (Acts 5:4a) “while it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” And elsewhere Paul, collecting an offering for the saints in Judea, says that “each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7). Indeed, though he urges the Corinthians to “excel in this act of grace” (8:7), he emphasizes that this is an appeal for voluntary generosity (“I say this not as a command,” v. 8).
Such verses attest an enormous authority in stewardship to the individual believer vis-à-vis the church. And on the opposite side of things, far from insisting upon his rights, Paul says he was pleased to not live off the contributions of the Corinthians and Thessalonians (1 Cor. 9:6-18; 2 Cor. 12:13; 1 Thess. 2:9). And yet the fourth vow requires support to the institutional church to the best of one’s ability. I do not believe it is sufficiently appreciated how grave and strict this requirement is, and of how much it requires of the individual member.
Consider some examples. If one is able, after all lawful debts, liabilities, necessities, and prudential savings, to give $12,000 a year to the church, and instead gives $11,000, opting to give $300 to the state forest system and another $700 to the local rescue mission, he has not given to the church to the best of his ability. If someone has a free Wednesday night for church work and instead opts to go elsewhere, he is not supporting the church to his best ability. In each case he had the time or money at hand to support the church and used it for something else. There is no understanding of that being “to the best of your ability” that such examples meet.
Now at this point you might say I am engaged in a reductio ad absurdum argument, and being rather silly by taking this far more seriously than our people and courts are accustomed to taking it. Actually, I would say that I am taking the words in view in their plain, common meaning, and that our ethical thinkers have always thought that words related to vows and covenants are to be thus taken in their common, plain meaning.
Consider the first membership vow: “Do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope save in His sovereign mercy?” All PCA courts understand this in a traditional Reformed light. “Sinners” means ‘people who are fundamentally alienated from God by their very nature, and who cannot truly obey his will or be reconciled to him unless they are born again of his Spirit.’  “Without hope” means ‘inescapably doomed to be condemned and punished by his just displeasure because of our sins.’ “His sovereign mercy” means ‘his grace as manifested in unconditional election, calling, regeneration, justification, sanctification, and final glorification,’ and is deemed monergistic in nature, not as some sort of Pelagian, Semi-Pelagian, or Arminian ‘prevenient grace’ that has been dispensed indiscriminately so that all people have the natural ability to repent and believe apart from a particular work of the Holy Spirit.
Now if we understand such words in light of the common, public meaning of them as expressed in our doctrinal standards, why would we not also interpret “best of your ability” in light of its society-wide common meaning? If it is within your ability to do something and you do not, you have ipso facto not done it to the best of your ability. We confess that “an oath is to be taken in the plain and common sense of the words, without equivocation, or mental reservation” (WCF 22-4). And again, “best of your ability” has a plain meaning in contemporary English.
All of this invites questions of great practical consequence: why did we bring into our own denomination a requirement – this vow to support – that was only introduced into our predecessor in the years of her growing infidelity, that was used to coerce and intimidate the faithful remnant, and that was not precedented (in the actual meaning of that abused word) in over 220 years of earlier Presbyterian polity in this country? One which seems to contradict other fundamental principles of our polity (BCO Pref. II.1, 7), runs contrary to the New Testament conception of such matters, and which forces a person to swear a strict allegiance to an institution that history attests might fall away? We have twice escaped institutional apostasy (Rome and the PCUS), and the Scriptures abundantly attest that unbelief and rebellion have been common in the church as Old Testament Israel, and that they will be so in these last days as well (Matt. 24:9-13; 2 Thess. 2:3). And yet we think it wise to force people to vow support to an institution that could fall away from Christ and make war upon his people?
The only answer to all of this is that the fourth membership vow ought to be taken as requiring support to the true church universal, which is invisible, and only to any visible church body insofar as it bears the marks of being a participant in the one true church. Further, that the support in view is a general support, directed by one’s own conscience and toward the church as both organism and institution, and that supporting extra-ecclesiastical entities that advance Christ’s kingdom is not contrary to the vow in view (comp. Mk. 9:38-41), but actually a commendable and effective way of fulfilling it. And last, that a vow taken to enter a covenant cannot be more restrictive than the covenant entered, nor oblige one to things that are not inherent in that covenant, nor deny one’s rights under that covenant. The covenant between believers and Christ and his church includes both obligations and rights, and we hold that those obligations are those laid down in the Scriptures (that is, voluntary giving according to one’s means), and that those rights include a large and wide (but by no means absolute) right of conscience in stewardship. To conceive the vow in view in the typical meaning of the words without these further considerations would entail our denomination in a soul tyranny worthy rather of Rome than the proponents of the individual believer’s rights of conscience.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 
[1] “Do you promise to support the Church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?” BCO 57-5
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