The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love. He is faithful to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. And this is exactly what we see Him do throughout the passage, and throughout all of history. We see that God’s goodness is not dependent upon His people’s faithfulness. And Nehemiah 9:18-25 certainly does demonstrate the unfaithfulness of the Israelites.

In the fall of 2021, as our church was going through the book of Nehemiah, I was working through the prayer of confession in chapter 9. As I studied the passage, it helped me to recognize something extremely important:
It’s really hard to believe in God’s goodness.
Most Christians will say that we do believe God is good, of course. We can affirm the general truth. But when we start looking at our own lives, we struggle to see how God can be good to us because we’re not terribly faithful people.
But Nehemiah 9 has some very good news for us all, even today, which is that God’s goodness is not limited by our faithfulness, because it’s not based on our faithfulness.
Where We Start in Thinking About God’s Goodness
The prayer that comprises Nehemiah 9 starts where it should—with praise for God’s self-disclosure, His creation of the world, His covenant with Abraham, and His rescuing of the people from bondage in Egypt. But in verse 16, the prayer moves from praise to confession. It is a recognition of the people’s ongoing rebellion against Him. That rather than responding with worship, they countered with rejection.
They refused to listen—they refused to obey God. They did not remember the wonders He performed, even the ones that
And then there’s the last half of verse 17:
But you are a forgiving God,gracious and compassionate,slow to anger and abounding in faithful love,and you did not abandon them.
Even in the midst of this confession of the people’s sin, the Levites couldn’t not point the people back to God. In fact, the language here is a paraphrase of God’s own self-disclosure from Exodus 34:6-7:
The Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.
Now, stop and think about those words for a second. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love. He is faithful to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. And this is exactly what we see Him do throughout the passage, and throughout all of history. We see that God’s goodness is not dependent upon His people’s faithfulness. And Nehemiah 9:18-25 certainly does demonstrate the unfaithfulness of the Israelites.
God’s Goodness to the Faithless
In the wilderness, the people denied Him at every opportunity. Before the Red Sea had been parted, they were sure that God had led them into the wilderness to be killed.
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When will the postmodern conception of language cease to be tolerated in the PCA? Words don’t get to mean what one wants them to mean.  The doctrines in Scripture or our Constitution or AIC Reports don’t get to be so nuanced until they mean the opposite of what they intend.  The law of non-contradiction might not hold for Derrida, and maybe not in the PCA anymore, but it does to our Lord.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word with With God, and the Word Was God. – John 1:1
God is not a God of confusion but of peace. – 1 Corinthians 14:33
Much ink, um, keystrokes has been typed regarding the source of the divide in the PCA.    We have been told by Progressives (in the Bryan Chapell sense of the term) that we are just misunderstanding each other and that we actually agree.  All of these never-ending disagreements are actually agreements.   We supposedly agree on what the Westminster Standards mean as well as the AIC Report on Human Sexuality and the one on Women in Ministry also.  We supposedly agree to follow the BCO.  That does of course depend on what you mean by the word “agree.”
We don’t even agree on what words mean, let alone complex systems of doctrine or AIC reports that simply provide guidance.  The two wings of the PCA are completely divided on women deacons, women preachers, human sexuality as it relates to identity, appropriate missional posture, Revoice, CRT, Side B Gay Christianity,  and clarity of speech.  You object?  It all depends on what one means by preaching, deacon, corporate worship, and every other word in this article.
This whole thing is reminiscent of when Bill Clinton uttered the brilliant words “it depends on what the meaning of the word is is” nearly 25 years ago.  It would be funny if it weren’t so serious. Playing fast and loose with words and clarity in our Lord’s Church is no laughing matter.  Quite frankly it’s sad.
How long before “Let your yes be yes and your no be no” becomes “well that depends on what you mean by yes and no. In one sense it is yes and in another sense it is no.?”  Brothers and sisters, sadly, we are already there.
It is Pharisaical Legalism at Its Core
Seeing the letter of the law in our Standards, the BCO, AIC Reports, and Scripture itself then looking for ways  to do what one wants to do is Pharisaical legalism.  It is legalistic to look for workarounds, loopholes, and wiggle room to do mission.  No amount of law or guidance will prevent a legalist from pursuing these things. No language will either.
It is Pharisaical legalism to put women in the roll of Deacon with the only difference being that hands were not laid on her and then say she is not a Ordained Deacon.[1]
It is Pharisaical legalism to not have the office of deacon at all, but to have another made up board of men and women doing everything the diaconate is supposed to do.[2]
It is Pharisaical legalism to have women teaching and/or preaching assembled Christians but say that she didn’t teach or preach because it wasn’t at a Worship Service or we didn’t call it a sermon, but rather she exhorted at a study.[3]
It is Pharisaical legalism to host a Transvestite Celebration on property that is owned by the church through a ministry run by church leadership/members but say it was separate from the Church because the building it was held in was “decommissioned” and the organization that runs the ministry is separate from the Church.
It is Pharisaical legalism to plant non-PCA churches or start para-church ministries that are overseen by PCA churches, officers, and members that do all the things we aren’t allowed to do.
It is Pharisaical legalism to look at the AIC Report on Human Sexuality and say we agree with it, but then ignore all that it advises against because it doesn’t say “shall not” or “shall,” thereby justifying the wholesale use of what the spirit of the report calls unwise and must be rejected.
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The entire worldview of Karl Marx was built upon the idea of destruction. He saw world history as cycle of conflict between two classes: the oppressors and the oppressed (originally, the bourgeois and proletariat); and believed that this conflict would someday lead to a Utopia called Communism

Cultural Marxism is a modern adaptation of the social and political theories of Karl Marx. That’s why it is sometimes referred to as Neo-marxism. Marx lived over a century ago, so a brief historical orientation may prove helpful here. The industrial revolution changed everything in the nineteenth century. With the development of technology, the invention of machines, and the building factories, millions of people moved away from the country and into the cities to work.
Those who owned the machines and factories quickly became wealthy as everyone else worked long hours with low pay. Remember, there were no unions back then and OSHA did not yet exist, so life as a worker was hard.
Deep bitterness set into the heart of many workers and they began to despise the rich. This is called the sin of Envy. It is more than discontentment and even more than jealousy. It is when you see what another man has and feel the need to destroy it.
The entire worldview of Karl Marx was built upon the idea of destruction. He saw world history as cycle of conflict between two classes: the oppressors and the oppressed (originally, the bourgeois and proletariat); and believed that this conflict would someday lead to a Utopia called Communism (i.e., a state in which there is no private property, where men share all things in common, and where the workers own the means of production, thus having equal share in all the products). This was Marx’s dream, his hope, his eschatology, and he honestly believed that it would eventually come to pass.
Another prophetic voice of communism was Vladimir Lenin and he agreed with Marx on all but one thing. Rejecting the concept of eventuality, he began a violent revolution. The blood of the rich and powerful flowed. Even the blood of poor farmers soaked the soil as some refused to surrender their land rights to Lenin’s Bolshevik army.
Others, like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong took the same bloody approach in an attempt to realize their Communist eschatology. To date, over one hundred million people have been killed in the name of Marxism or Communism and while the Christian might well grieve over such numbers, the Marxist does not because this is their means of grace. This is, in fact, their god and we shall explore that more fully in our next article.
Christian McShaffrey is a Minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and is Pastor of Five Solas Church (OPC) in Reedsburg, Wis.