Entitlement: When Grace Isn’t Grace
When we lose sight of the fact that common grace is grace and not our due, we become like travelers who bemoan poor overnight travel accommodations and forget the paradise that is our final destination.
Few people would disagree that a sense of entitlement permeates our culture. But as the Preacher said, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9). While shifts in worldview over the past few decades may have poured gasoline on the fire, a sinful sense of entitlement was sparked for the first time in the garden of Eden, and since that day, this tendency to sinful entitlement has been embedded in our fallen DNA.
Entitlement can be defined as the belief that one is deserving of certain privileges. The belief itself may be true or false. People might believe that they have a certain right when they do in fact possess an actual right, or people can believe that they have a certain right when no such right exists. Thus, there are times when entitlement is not, strictly speaking, a sin but rather a legal right in a well-ordered society. For example, if I purchase a car, it is legally my property. I hold the legal title to the vehicle. I believe that I possess the right to that car, and my belief is in line with reality.
However, this legitimate entitlement can turn into a sinful expression of an entitlement mentality if my five-year-old niece spills a drink in the back seat and ruins the interior, or if I am the victim of a parking lot hit-and-run. It’s at those points of pressure that my sinful response to God’s providence can expose a more insidious entitlement mentality in which I think I am owed pristine automobile upholstery or a risk-free parking lot.
In the Reformed world, we (hopefully) embrace wholeheartedly the belief that we are by nature children of wrath, dead in our trespasses, unable to save ourselves, and completely dependent on the righteous life and substitutionary death of Jesus Christ to be reconciled to God and made His children. We extol the grace of God in salvation and would never say that we are owed the right to become children of God or that we are entitled to His saving grace. Therefore, the problem with our sinful entitlement mentality usually lies not in our understanding of special grace but rather in our understanding of common grace.
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Responding to the Leaven of Revoice
Written by M.D. Perkins |
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
You may think Revoice is a distant concern or that the Nashville Statement is not the best or most robust response to the issues facing the church in the 21st century. But let’s not miss the forest for the trees—there is something sinister at work here that Christians need to see.On August 29, 2022, Nate Collins, the founder and president of Revoice, decided to attack the Nashville Statement. His Twitter thread, posted on the five-year anniversary of the Statement’s release, called on all evangelical leaders who signed it to repent for having done so. He called the Statement a “form of spiritual abuse” against “sexual and gender minorities who adhere to the historic, biblical sexual ethic.” According to Collins, it was bullying, it was coercive, it robbed people of language, and, ultimately, it harmed “the least of these.”
Here is Nate Collins’ tweet thread in its entirety, posted at 9:27 AM on August 29, 2022:
The Nashville Statement is 5 years old today. Here’s how to repent from signing it.
Today is the 5th anniversary of the release of the joint @CBMW [Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood] and @ERLC [Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention] #NashvilleStatement. Many sexual and gender minorities who adhere to the historic, biblical sexual ethic experienced the NS as a form of spiritual abuse.
We felt bullied into compliance by evangelical leaders who were our spiritual heroes. The NS reduced us to pawns in a culture war and coerced us to fight a battle that we did not believe was biblical.
It also robbed us of language that we believe has enabled us to be faithful to scripture, as well as honest about our experience.
If you signed the Nashville Statement, but now see how it has harmed those whom our Savior has described as “the least of these”, here are some suggested steps you can take to repent:Contact CBMW and ask to have your name removed.
Share with your friends and co-signers your decision and why you chose to remove your name.
For those you know personally who were negatively impacted by your participation, reach out and apologize.
For those who were harmed that you do not know personally, share publicly about your change of mind. (Post, tweet, or hey, even reach out to Christianity Today and see if they would be interested to do a piece. I suspect it would rate as newsworthy.)Making mistakes—even big ones—does not have to be the end of the story, unless you let it be so. Just ask Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Peter, or Paul.[1]
These are quite strong—and striking—accusations to lay at the feet of evangelical leaders. It is expected from the godless world that “does not accept the things of God for they are folly to him” (1 Corinthians 2:14) but from someone who claims to hold to the “historic, biblical sexual ethic,” it is both sad and deeply concerning. After all, the Nashville Statement was intended to be a consensus statement articulating that historic, biblical sexual ethic that Nate Collins claims to believe. Yet he calls those who signed it perpetrators of “spiritual abuse.”
This is why I was compelled to respond to Collins’ tweets with an extensive rebuttal of my own.
Nate Collins represents a position that has been alternately labeled Side B, gay celibate theology, or the Revoice movement (named after the Side B focused conference and organization Collins founded in 2018). It is a more conservative form of “gay Christianity” that believes homosexual behavior is forbidden but that the experience of “sexual minorities” must be recognized by the church. I address the full spectrum of this position in the paper, A Little Leaven: Confronting the Ideology of the Revoice Movement.
So, why should Christians be concerned that the Nashville Statement is under attack by a major Revoice leader? You may think Revoice is a distant concern or that the Nashville Statement is not the best or most robust response to the issues facing the church in the 21st century. But let’s not miss the forest for the trees—there is something sinister at work here that Christians need to see.
Let me give three main reasons why Christians should be concerned by this most recent attack on the Nashville Statement and its signatories:The nature of the attack
The charge of spiritual abuse
The hidden allegiance with LGBT activists and the “Affirming Church”Read More
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Actually, We Do Care (Part 1): A Response To Greg Johnson’s Still Time To Care
It is my intention to demonstrate with these articles that Johnson’s book muddies the already muddied terminology regarding human sexuality and that he is not alone in using classic Reformed systematic-theological language in a novel manner to support his own conclusions.
Still Time to Care: Selective Quoting?
Greg Johnson’s Still Time to Care has garnered no small amount of attention since its release in early December 2021. Prominent voices in the Reformed and broader evangelical world have hailed it as the seminal text for a new era of ministry to same-sex attracted persons both within and without our churches. Out of the ashes of the ex-gay movement of the last 50 years has arisen, they say, a new (or if you ask Greg Johnson “revitalized”) paradigm of care. For a fuller treatment of the book’s contents I would heartily recommend Dr. Jonathan Master’s review. In fact, the reader may find it helpful to consult his panoramic view of the forest before reading what is my cross-sectioning of several noteworthy trees.
It is my intention to demonstrate with these articles that Johnson’s book muddies the already muddied terminology regarding human sexuality and that he is not alone in using classic Reformed systematic-theological language in a novel manner to support his own conclusions.
Throughout the book, Johnson puts what he calls “heterosexual orientation” and “homosexual orientation” side by side in an attempt to demonstrate how both are fallen, sinful orientations (139).1 Johnson is not shy in expressing his frustration with those who turn a blind eye to their own heterosexual sins and fixate instead upon the homosexual sin of others. To be sure, if a man is addicted to internet pornography, frequenting gentlemen’s clubs, or cheating on his wife, he is no place to identify specks or beams in the eyes of others when he has such a whopping beam in his own. Sexual sin is not the exclusive vice of the same-sex attracted. This is not up for debate, we are all in agreement. Men and women sin when they lust after a member of the opposite sex who is not their spouse.
As true as this is, Dr. Johnson so stresses the sinfulness of heterosexual lust that, at times, he obscures the Reformed distinction between sins that are against nature and sins that are not thereby obscuring the differing degrees of heinousness. 2 In one particular instance Johnson does so by bending the language of others to support his premise that “heterosexuality as experienced on this side of the fall is drenched in sin” (139). In the section titled “The Sinfulness of Heterosexuality This Side of the Fall” Johnson recounts the details of his interview on the CrossPolitic podcast.3
NB: What follows should in no way be construed as a defense of the people or theology represented by the CrossPolitic podcast or as a defense of others in Moscow, Idaho. Far from it. The reader should consider me squarely in the camp of those who are opposed to the pastoral abuses that have been documented and the reader should consider me opposed to the Federal Vision theology. My only intention in recounting this discussion is to demonstrate that Johnson engages in a subtle twisting of words to support his own conclusions and misconstrue the position of his discussion partners. To what end does all of this trend? To the blurring of the distinction between sins that are contrary to nature and sins that are not. In a follow up article, I will demonstrate how Johnson further blurs these lines in choosing to apply the word “disordered” both to heterosexual and homosexual lust, but never the descriptor “unnatural” to homosexual lust.
Johnson says:
I was once on a podcast with some church leaders who seemed to be of the opinion that a gay person who becomes a Christian can choose not to be attracted to member of the same sex anymore. I questioned them about their own sexual attraction to women other than their wives.4 Can you choose to turn that off? They scoffed.
“For one, heterosexual men don’t need to repent of being attracted to another woman,” one panelist said.
Another added, “Because that’s natural.”
A third agreed, “That’s the way God planned it.”
The first one then jumped in again. “What we need to repent of is being lustful” (139).
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Notes
1 My using the terms “homosexuality,” “heterosexuality,” and “orientation,” is not a wholesale endorsement of those terms. I find them problematic at a number of points. The purpose of their usage is to engage as directly as possible with Johnson’s line of argumentation.
2 See WSC Q.82 and WLC Q.151 s.3
3 The full interview can be found here. Please note that this is not an endorsement of the CrossPolitic podcast. For more on this podcast see the resources below, e.g., “The Smear Was Intentional” and “A Smear Memorialized.”
4 Please note that all emphases are my own. -
Burying the Talents of the Great Rewarder
Written by A.W. Workman |
Thursday, March 7, 2024
What was the servant doing all those years when the other servants were busy trading for the increase of their master’s wealth? Presumably, looking out for his own wealth. And why? Because he did not believe that it would be worth it to risk spending all those years and all that sweat, only to have his master come back and take it all from him. If he invested for his master, he would labor and sacrifice and risk, and for what? A stingy master? No, thanks! He would instead do the minimum, follow the letter of the law, try to serve two masters. His master had given him this money to keep safe, so he would do that – and no more.A number of months ago I was reading the parable of the talents to my kids at bedtime. There was nothing unusual about the night. I was leaning against the doorframe to the bedroom they all currently share, Bible open in my hands. The lamp was turned off in their room to help them settle down and I was relying on the hallway light for my reading. The plan was simple as always. Read a little bit, discuss a little bit, sing a song or two together, pray, give kisses and hugs goodnight, and finally, navigate multiple attempts to get out of bed again for various and sundry reasons. It was a typical night, not the kind of time I would have predicted for the conviction of the Spirit to fall.
We were almost finished our reading through the book of Matthew and that night had come to chapter 25, verses 14-30. The parable of the talents will be well-known to most of you, but if it’s not you can read it here and I’ll also post it below. The summary is that a master leaves on a long journey, entrusting three servants with three very large sums of money (called talents). The first one receives five talents, about 100 years’ worth of wages for a laborer. The second receives two talents, about 40 years’ worth of wages for a laborer. And the third receives one talent, roughly 20 years’ wages. The first two servants spend the following lengthy period investing their master’s money and both double the amounts they received. The third servant goes off and buries the money he received. When the master returns, he affirms the faithfulness of the first two servants and then rewards them with both increased authority and joy. But the third servant explains that he played it safe and merely stashed his master’s money away. He says he did this because he knew his master’s character to be harsh and stingy. The master, in turn, strongly rebukes him, telling him that if he knew this he still should have at least put the money in the bank, where it could have collected interest. He then commands that the one talent be given to the first servant, and that the wicked servant be cast out into the “outer darkness,” essentially into hell. The parable ends with the third servant losing even the amount that he had preserved, while the first two servants receive even more than the enormous amounts they had ended up with.
This is a parable I know well, and have read dozens and dozens of times. But for whatever reason, when I read it this time (and read it for my kids, no less, not for me), clarity and conviction fell hard. The familiarity of the passage meant that I’d never really understood the whole bit about the master’s character. But I suddenly realized that this was at the very core of the parable. The wicked servant says of the master, “I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Essentially, “You are a stingy, exacting man, so I didn’t risk doing costly work that would go unrewarded. I played it safe and stashed your money away.” In Middle Eastern culture, then as well as now, stinginess is viewed as one of the very worst vices.
I was struck with a question I’d not thought of before. What was the servant doing all those years when the other servants were busy trading for the increase of their master’s wealth? Presumably, looking out for his own wealth. And why? Because he did not believe that it would be worth it to risk spending all those years and all that sweat, only to have his master come back and take it all from him. If he invested for his master, he would labor and sacrifice and risk, and for what? A stingy master? No, thanks! He would instead do the minimum, follow the letter of the law, try to serve two masters. His master had given him this money to keep safe, so he would do that – and no more.
The other two servants seem to have had a radically different view of their master’s character. We see this from their actions. They do spend a long time using what their master had entrusted to them to generate even more wealth for him. How are they able to do this? Well, the parable tells us that they are faithful. In one sense, this is enough.
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