Written by David S. Steele |
Friday, July 7, 2023
We fail to meet the divine standard. The Divine Representative stands in our defense. All these things clear the path for the divine accomplishment, which John unfolds in 1 John 2:2 – “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). When the gavel falls, a verdict will be rendered. Will you bear the weight of your sin and thus, endure 10,000 degrees of white-hot wrath? Or will you trust Jesus to stand in your defense? 

It has been said that one of the greatest problems that plagues contemporary people is unresolved guilt. Sin squeezes the life out of unwitting victims. Sins of omission, sins of commission, sins of regret, neglect, fear, ungodly anger, broken relationships, and insubordination pose a massive threat to the well-being of well-meaning people.
No one is excluded from this sinful parade. We have all committed sin. We are sinners by nature and by choice – and as a result, guilt rears its ugly head. Sometimes the guilt waits to surface until we’re all alone. For some of us, guilt is a constant note on the musical score sheet of our lives. For others, the only time we feel guilt is when we hear a preacher remind us about our sin.
Here is the problem: Apart from the grace of God, we all stand before the bar of God’s justice – and we stand condemned. Apart from the grace of God – we are guilty.
The sound of the gavel is unmistakable in a courtroom setting. When the gavel falls, it reminds us that a verdict has been reached. It announces the guilt or innocence of the defendant.
In 1 John 2, the apostle John ushers us into the celestial courtroom and answers the question, “What is the greatest need of sinners when the gavel falls?” As we enter the heavenly tribunal, I invite you to encounter the divine standard and the divine representative.
The Divine Standard
If you ever have the opportunity to attend a trial in a courtroom one of the first memories you will have is when the Judge enters the courtroom. The bailiff announces, “All rise!” John the apostle introduces the presiding Judge of the universe in 1 John 1:5. He writes, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
The Presiding Judge of the Divine Standard
He is the majestic God of the universe. The psalmist proclaims, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens” (Ps. 8:1, ESV). Moses says, “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exod. 15:11).
He is the transcendent God of the universe. “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isa. 57:15).
He is the sovereign God of the universe. The psalmist reminds us, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3,).
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The Son, the good Shepherd, lays down His life for His sheep.  The sheep for which He dies are His sheep.  In fact, the Lord says that He knows His sheep and His sheep know Him, even as He knows His Father and His Father knows Him.  That is incredible!  How should we understand such a thing?  Simply put, this is covenantal language.  God is not admitting to know certain facts about us and us Him.  No, the baseline of covenantal knowledge is that of intimacy; He loves us and He has enabled us to love Him.  As a matter of fact, He loved us when we were yet sinners and unworthy of His love.

A theological earthquake shook my life over twenty years ago.  I can still see the classroom lit by the afternoon sun.  It was mostly quiet and peaceful that day with one exception.  A classmate was standing in front of me trying for all he was worth to persuade me of definite or limited atonement.  If the terminology is unfamiliar to you just remember that it is standard nomenclature used to describe the nature and the extent of Christ’s atonement.  To flesh this out even further, a Calvinist believes that “God’s method of saving men is to set upon them in his almighty grace, to purchase them to himself by the precious blood of his Son, to visit them in the inmost core of their being by the creative operations of his Spirit, and himself, the Lord God Almighty, to save them.”[i]
My friend had an uphill battle to wage.  But that day he did something very simple.  He verbalized my own position.  He said something that I believed and had said myself many times before.  But that day when I heard him articulate my position back to me it sounded strange; it sounded wrong.  What did he say, you ask?  He said, “Jeff, according to your position Christ’s death only made salvation possible, which means that you must concede two hypothetical scenarios; the death of Christ could have saved everyone or no one.”  Yes, that was what I had believed and what I had taught but on that day it sounded erroneous.
God had given to me a new set of ears.  So, I went back to the Scripture and started asking a basic question; for whom did Christ die?  It didn’t take long for me to find the answer.  If you have a Bible handy grab it and turn to John 10.

As a feminist more or less from the left, not everything Perry says will be embraced by those who are conservative and/or religious. But when you have someone like this making a fairly strong case for the differences between men and women, the importance of marriage, and the depersonalising nature of the sexual revolution and porn culture, then you know you need to sit up and take notice of the arguments that are being made.

Over the past few decades there have been a number of excellent works critiquing the sexual revolution, the porn culture, sexuality divorced from morality, and so on. While many of these are penned by those who are conservatives and Christians, not all are. Some are written by secular, liberal feminists. Perry falls into this camp, so she cannot simply be dismissed as just some right-wing religious type.
Her new book makes a powerful case for how the much-vaunted sexual revolution has actually been a massive failure, and certainly has not been beneficial to women and children. Indeed, wealthy men tend to be the main beneficiaries of all this.
In her first chapter, “Sex Must Be Taken Seriously,” she explains what her main topic is: “the effect of the sexual revolution on relations between the sexes.” As many before her have documented, relations have suffered greatly, and women especially bear the brunt of all this.
And again, the bitter fruit has long been documented. But when someone normally associated with supporting what the 60s has wrought speaks out against it—at least in good measure—then you know maybe things are not really right, and a closer look is needed.
So in well-documented chapters she looks at a number of shibboleths that her own side has pushed, noting their very real shortcomings. Imagine for example taking on one of the big liberal dogmas of our time: that men are actually the same as women.
Since Perry has been involved in rape crisis work, she knows that this is more than just a theoretical discussion. She states that she used to buy the standard yarn that there are no real differences between the sexes, and that what we have is just socialisation processes.6
But the more she worked with rape victims—and the more she read some countervailing research—the more she became convinced that this must largely be rejected. She says human beings are animals, members of the Great Apes. And there we see very real differences between male and female. She notes physiological distinctions, among others. The trans debate arises here of course, and she writes:
But recognising these kinds of physical limitation does not sit well with a liberal feminist project that aims to challenge any restrictions on human freedom. If we acknowledge that there are immovable differences between the sexes in terms of strength and speed, then we are also forced to acknowledge not only that natal males cannot fairly compete in women’s sports, but also that natal females experience a permanent physical disadvantage. And the consequences of this disadvantage go well beyond sports, particularly when male upper body strength is set beside the fragility of the female throat and skull. In the modern West, it has become increasingly possible to become detached from the sexually dimorphic body when one does not do a manual job, compete in sports or bear children. But the unwelcome truth will always remain, whether or not we can bear to look at it: almost all men can kill almost all women with their bare hands, but not vice versa. And that matters.
Getting back to the rape issue, she suggests that we may need to ease up—at least somewhat—on the common assertion that it is just “an expression of political dominance rooted in patriarchy” and might better understand it as “an aggressive expression of sexual desire.”
This is examined further in her next chapter, “Some Desires Are Bad”. It discusses the porn culture in general and paedophilia in particular. The tsunami of sleaze—including things like child porn—that we now have raging all around us must be challenged and we might have to admit that many defenders of the sexual revolution were on the “wrong side of history.” As she says:
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