Recently I spoke at the Baccalaureate service for Covenant Day School, a ministry of Christ Covenant Church and the school my own children attend. What follows is a slightly edited version of that message.
I know that I’m speaking to a lot of different ages this morning. I hope you will all be able to pay attention and learn something from this message, but I want to specifically talk to graduating seniors. I know many of you have heard hundreds of sermons over the years–many of them at church, and for some of you, one sermon a week for the past 12 or 13 years at CDS. And now you have one more. But since you are here, you might as well listen and see what God might want to say to you.
This is a season of milestones for many of you. Final papers. Final exams. Last games, last meets, last classes. You’ve worked hard to get to this point. And you are probably working hard for what is coming next. For most of you that’s college or university. You’ll get ready over the summer. You’ll buy some dorm furniture. You’ll say goodbye to your friends. You’ll say goodbye to your parents. You’ll find your way around a new school and a new place. For many of you, it will mean a new city or a new state. You are making preparations for all that lies ahead. After filling out forms, sending in applications, and narrowing down your choices, you finally made your decision. And in a few months, you’ll start something–whether that’s school close by, or school far away, a gap year, or something else.
You are probably tired of making big decisions. But I want to remind you of one colossal decision that is coming your way. The decision doesn’t seem earth shattering. In fact, it seems much less important than a hundred other decisions you’ve had to make in the last year. It’s a decision so much an afterthought for most graduating seniors that many of you have not even considered it.
Here’s the decision you’ll have to make in a few months:
You are living on your own–in a dorm or in an apartment somewhere. You’ve unloaded your stuff. You’ve met your roommate. You’ve signed up for classes. You’ve had a few meals in the cafeteria. You’ve endured days of boring orientation activities. You’ve done some of the awkward pre-planned fun and games. And after a short night of sleep on your first Saturday in this new phase of your life, you wake up Sunday morning. What are you going to do?
Of all the decisions you’ll face this year, the most important one may be whether you get up and go to church on the very first Sunday when no one is there to make sure that you go to church.
Of all the decisions you’ll face this year, the most important one may be whether you get up and go to church on the very first Sunday when no one is there to make sure that you go to church.
I pastored a church in Michigan that was for many years right across the street from Michigan State University. We saw scores of freshmen visit our church that first Sunday on campus. True, many of them never came back. We saw students who started at church and didn’t last. But we rarely saw students who didn’t start at church and eventually made it there. What you do in those first weeks on your own, especially what you do with your commitment to a local church, will set you on a trajectory where Jesus Christ will truly be Lord of your life or where he will be something that you learned as a young person and then left behind.
Listen to Jesus
I know, I know, this is what you would expect a pastor to say to you: “Be sure to go to church, young man! Don’t sleep in on Sunday, young woman!” You may think, “I’m not against going to church, but isn’t my relationship with Jesus the really important thing? I’ll still read my Bible even if I don’t make it to church.” Some of you will be going to Christian colleges, and you’ll have chapel services and Christian roommates and chaplains wanting to meet with you. Others here will be at state schools, and you’ll look to get involved with Cru or RUF or Campus Outreach. That’s great. Praise God for good campus ministries. Praise God for Christian colleges.

But your chapel is not a church. Your weekly Cru meeting is not a church. Your dorm Bible study is not a church. Remember what Jesus said to Peter in Matthew 16, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (v. 18). Jesus never promised to build up a Christian college. He never promised to build a Christian day school. He never promised to build a campus ministry. There is only one institution on earth that Jesus Christ promised to build, and that’s the church.
If you want to be into what Jesus is into, you’ll get into a church.
You need to decide before you leave home, what will I do on that first Sunday morning. Don’t wait until that moment to decide, because you’ll probably decide you’re tired, or you don’t have a car, or you don’t know where to go, or you’ll get to it next week. Decide before that Sunday what you will do on that Sunday. You’ll be making all sorts of plans this summer, and one of the most important decisions you may ever make is what you will be committed to that first week and those first months. Will you get up and go to church–not just chapel, not just campus ministry–but a local church, where the people aren’t all your age, where the music isn’t all your style, where the pastor may not be everything you’d want him to be?
A Grotesque Anomaly
One of the most famous pastors from the last century was John Stott who ministered for many years in London. Like a good, refined, English preacher, Stott was not known for overstatement, which is what makes these words, written a few years before his death, so striking: “An unchurched Christian is a grotesque anomaly. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought.”
Think of three of the main images for the church in the New Testament. The church pictured as a building, as a bride, and as a body. Christ is the foundation, and the church is the building. Christ is the groom, and the church is the bride. Christ is the head, and the church is the body. Each pair goes together. You are not meant to have one without the other. We are not meant to have Christ without the church.
Would you want your building to have a foundation but no house?
Would you call it a marriage if there was a groom but no bride?
Would you want to carry around a head without the body?
In Greek mythology Perseus was the son of Zeus who killed Medusa, the monster-like Gorgon with a head of hair consisting of snakes. You probably remember the story. If anyone looked on Medusa, he would turn to stone. So when Perseus went to kill Medusa, he had to use his shield to look at her reflection so he could approach Medusa in her sleep and cut off her head. Of course, Perseus still can’t look at her head, so he keeps it in a bag, wrapped up so he doesn’t accidentally see it. Later in the story, Perseus defeats the Kraken by taking Medusa’s head out of the bag and holding it out for the sea monster to gaze upon it and turn to stone. It’s a famous scene depicted in ancient sculpture, in artwork, and now in a number of movies.
It’s rather grotesque when you think about it–carrying around a severed head, lifting up a head without its body. Decapitation is not pretty. If you were into severed heads without their bodies, we would think something was really wrong with you.

Except, it seems, when it comes to our Christian lives. Then we think decapitation is cool. Some of us even think it is positively good and beautifully spiritual. Too many Christians think they can have Jesus without the church. They want the head without the body. They want a decorpulated Christianity. They want a decapitated Jesus.
A Worldview and a Rhythm of Life
I am willing to bet that at some point in your years at CDS you’ve heard the word “worldview.” That word is in the mission statement of almost every Christian school. We want to give students a Biblical lens for looking at everything. We want you to be renewed in your minds so that you view the world not just as someone with a great education but as someone with a distinctly Christian education.
That’s all very important. I hope to impart a Christian worldview to my children. But do you know what may be even more important than getting them to think the right things? It’s getting them to instinctively embrace the right rhythms. The most powerful influences in your life are often the things you don’t even think about, the things you do out of habit, the things you do because you always do them, whether someone makes you do them or not.
We are formed not just by thoughts but by habits–study habits, exercise habits, social media habits, personal hygiene habits. These may not be planks in our worldview, but they shape us just as much or even more. It’s just what we do. And in time what we do becomes who we are. Will the local church be one of your habits in the next year? There are plenty of lukewarm Christians sitting in churches every week across this country. That’s not the goal. But you want to know where you can find passionate, on fire, totally sold-out Christians? In church. In fact, you won’t find them anywhere else.
I said at the beginning that this was a message for seniors, but there are things we all need to hear. For the rest of the high school, when it comes time to make your decision about where to live or where to go to school, you should put church at the top of your list. What eternal good will it do you if you find a school with a great cafeteria, a great campus, a great sports program, and a great academic pedigree, but no great church nearby?
For younger students here, many of you are already very committed to church. You go with your parents every week. There is almost no greater blessing they can give you, almost no better privilege than that. Try to listen as best you can. Try to go in with a good attitude, even when you’re tired or bored. Maybe even ask your parents “Why aren’t we going to church this Sunday” if they aren’t going.
And parents, think about the priorities you are passing down to your children. The good news is you have the biggest influence on whether your child will go to church. The bad news is you have the biggest influence on whether your child will go to church. Your kids will pick up your walk more than your talk. They will follow the example of a lifetime more than the exhortation you give them when you drop them off at college. Are your kids growing up with the habit of regular church attendance? It’s one of the best things my parents ever did for me: they took me to church every week, Sunday morning and Sunday evening. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t up for debate. It didn’t depend upon the weather. It didn’t depend on whether we had a full day of activities on Saturday. It didn’t depend on whether the sports league had a tournament on Sunday. We went to church, and so it never even crossed my mind that Christians don’t go to church. It didn’t cross my mind that I would go off to college and not go to church. It’s what we did. It’s who we were. It was a non-negotiable rhythm of life.

Finding the Fullness
If you want to be much less of a follower of Jesus Christ five years from now, make church marginal in your life.
Let me conclude with this prediction, which I think is not only supported by personal experience but by the word of God: if you want to be much less of a follower of Jesus Christ five years from now, make church marginal in your life. If you make church an afterthought, you won’t be thinking about centering your life on Jesus five years from now. Don’t give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing (Heb. 10:25).
Ephesians 1 says, “[God] put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (22-23). Don’t cut the head off of a Jesus. Decide today that you will get up on that Sunday morning and find a good gospel-preaching, Bible-believing church. To be sure, we can meet with God anywhere. But only in the church do we have the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.

Last year was not a good year for race relations in the United States. Whether you think the main culprit is the police, politics, or protesters, I think most of us—Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, or whatever—look at the racial tensions in this country and, at least on our worst days, feel a dangerous mix of confusion, discouragement, frustration, and hopelessness.
And if things are bad in the country at large, it’s hard to see how they are better in the church. While I’m sure many Christians are still laboring behind the scenes to love their neighbors and to give people of a different skin color (or people with a different approach to skin color) the benefit of the doubt, the public face of Christianity—the way we talk to each other and talk about each other—is not impressive. Our witness to the world does not scream Isaiah 1:18 (“Come now, let us reason together”) or John 13:35 (“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”). On the whole, when it comes to talking about this country’s most painful and most vexing problem, we are often getting Spurgeon’s dictum exactly backward: we are making soft arguments and using very hard words.
I can imagine what the rejoinders might be to that last paragraph. From the left, some will say, “Of course you want us all to settle down. That’s your privilege talking.” And from the right, some will say, “Just what I expected. More tone police when the church is being overrun by heresy.” If you think perpetual outrage and recrimination is the way forward, I suppose you are entitled to your opinion. But that doesn’t mean everyone else is obliged to share your opinion. For my part, I refuse to believe that talking about racial matters in a way that is reasonable, thoughtful, careful, and charitable makes one beholden to Whiteness or makes one a compromised squish.
The simple, honest truth is that Bible-believing orthodox Christians are not setting a Spirit-infused example in how to talk about racial matters. That’s the bad news. The good news is no one else is setting a great example either, which means it’s not too late for grace-filled, truth-loving followers of Jesus to show to the world a still more excellent way (1 Cor. 12:31).
What might it look like for Christians to talk about race in a more constructive and more helpful manner? Here are three suggestions.
1. Focus on ideas, not labels.
I’ll be blunt: I am no fan of Critical Race Theory. Judging by this introductory volume, I disagree with CRT’s aggressive color-consciousness (17), its jaundiced view of American history (48), its rejection of legal neutrality (3), its emphasis on economic redistribution and equality of results (29, 115), its interpretative principle that divides the world into rigid categories of oppressors and the oppressed (58, 78, 81), and its insistence that racism is pervasive and at the center of everything (8, 91). If that’s CRT, I see little to be gained by using it as a hermeneutical lens, let alone as an all-encompassing worldview.
And yet, I will be the first to confess I am no expert in CRT. While I think every point in the paragraph above comes directly from the book in question—and, consequently, from two leading proponents of CRT—I’m more interested in debating those ideas than I am in debating Critical Race Theory per se. To be sure, there are some experts among us who have deeply studied the major CRT texts. I’m happy for these Christian thinkers to discuss CRT at length. But for the vast majority of us (myself included), CRT is something we’ve heard a lot about and have studied very little. Consequently, one person hears “Critical Race Theory” and thinks: Marxist, leftist, postmodern, anti-Christian ideology. Another person hears “Critical Race Theory” and thinks: helpful tool for demonstrating that racism is more central to our history and has more explanatory power for our present situation than we thought.
My concern is that CRT has become an issue of symbolism before substance, a flag to be waved (for or against) in order to prove that we are sufficiently orthodox or sufficiently sensitive. The result is that Christians end up one step removed from discussing the issues we really need to be discussing. Too often, we think we are fighting about the gospel or fighting about whether we should love and listen to minority brothers and sisters, but really we are fighting about how to define Critical Race Theory. As a pastor, that’s way down on the list of fights I want to have.
When I served on the PCA’s sexuality study committee, we made the decision early on not to mention Revoice, even though everyone could see that was a major reason the committee was formed. But we knew that if we made the report about Revoice, there would be endless arguments about what Revoice is, and who is a part of it, and what so-and-so really meant. We thought it much better to focus on the theology we wanted to promote, the ideas we wanted to warn against, and the pastoral approach we wanted to encourage. In the same way, I think our discussion about race would be greatly helped by saying a lot less about Critical Race Theory and a lot more about the specific ideas that we find promising or problematic.
2. Approach the conversation with intellectual integrity and personal maturity.
What does this mean? Several things in my mind.
Don’t take everything personally. Don’t turn up every disagreement to 11. Recognize when people change their minds or nuance their views. Don’t define someone by their worst statement, and don’t then define every institution they’ve ever been a part of or any friend they’ve ever had by that statement.
Whenever possible, isolate the issue you mean to talk about. Don’t make the issue about gospel fidelity, if the argument is actually about interpreting American history. And don’t make the issue about whether you agree with the prophet Amos, if the argument is about how to interpret policing data.
Let’s show ourselves as Christians to be more logically rigorous and definitionally precise than the world. Don’t confuse correlation with causation. Don’t look for the worst examples on the other side to prove the rightness or righteousness of your side. Don’t assume that the person not entirely with you on every point is, therefore, an enemy not to be trusted on any point. Don’t think that courage means you can’t be careful with your words, or that compassion means you can’t ask uncomfortable questions.
3. Be willing to work with a few common sense both/and propositions.
If there is one kind of argument I generally loathe, it’s the lazy third way approach to solving all of life’s problems. I’m not against finding middle ground (see below). I’m not against seeing how Christianity sometimes transcends our labels and differences. What I am against is intellectual laziness masquerading as above-the-fray, third wayism: “I’m not liberal; I’m not conservative; I’m just Christian!”
Having said that, it seems to me there are a few basic both/and propositions that could turn down the temperature of our rhetoric, while also pushing the racial conversation toward greater clarity and usefulness.
For example, might we be able to acknowledge that systemic injustice can exist while also asking for evidence that, in whatever particular situation we are studying, it does exist? That seems like a reasonable starting place for further conversation. “I acknowledge that structural racism could play a part, but let’s take a closer look at the evidence for that claim.”
Similarly, might we be able to acknowledge personal choices and cultural factors almost always play a role in shaping who we are, the mistakes we make, and the opportunities we find? I’m sure we will still disagree about the relative importance of each factor but recognizing that we are all complex people—not merely the product of environment and circumstance, nor simply the accumulation of our individual decisions—is surely a better way to talk about racial matters than assuming that every disparity is the result of discrimination or that personal responsibility alone can right every social wrong.
Likewise, isn’t it possible that American history is both worse than most white people think, when it comes to race, and still a story with much to celebrate and be thankful for?
Isn’t it reasonable to think that minorities have different experiences than members of the majority and that members of the majority may be blind to those experiences, while nevertheless rejecting the kind of standpoint epistemology that circumscribes the right to speak, and even defines the measure of truth itself, by the standard of one’s lived experience?
These both/and propositions won’t remove all our different emphases and suspicions, but they might help us inch toward one another in finding common ground. That is, if we want to find common ground. The incentives in church discourse are unfortunately the same as in political discourse. There is more to be gained (humanly speaking) by dealing with racial issues in Manichaean categories of absolute light and darkness. Nuance and precision don’t get you much, except the expectation of being shot at from all sides.
There is no way to make an honest conversation about race an easy conversation. There is too much in our history for that. There is also too much in the human heart that is self-justifying, other-accusing, and innocence-seeking to make race and racism a simple intellectual discussion. But with the power of the Spirit and the hope of the gospel, we need not despair. God can yet give us the humility, the rationality, and the charity we need.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.

The accounts of Jesus’s birth in Matthew (chapter 1) and Luke (chapters 1-2) are clear and unequivocal: Jesus’s birth was not ordinary. He was not an ordinary child, and his conception did not come about in the ordinary way. His mother, Mary, was a virgin, having had no intercourse prior to conception and birth. By the Holy Spirit, Mary’s womb became the cradle of the Son’s incarnation (Matt. 1:20; Luke 1:35).
Of course, the doctrine of the virgin birth (or more precisely, the virginal conception) has been ridiculed by many outside the church, and, in modern times, by not a few voices inside the church. Two arguments are usually mentioned.
First, the prophecy about a virgin birth in Isaiah 7:14, it is argued, actually speaks of a young woman and not a virgin. (To be fair, some scholars make this argument about Isaiah’s prophecy and still believe in the virgin birth). Many have pointed out that the Hebrew word in Isaiah is almah and not the technical term for virgin, bethula. It is true that almah has a wider semantic range than bethula, but there are no clear references in the Old Testament where almah does not mean virgin. The word almah occurs nine times in the Old Testament, and wherever the context makes its meaning clear, the word refers to a virgin. More importantly, the Septuagint translates almah with the Greek word parthenos (the same word used in Matthew 1:23 where Isaiah 7:14 is quoted), and everyone agrees that parthenos means “virgin.” The Jewish translators of the Septuagint would not have used a clear Greek word for virgin if they understood Isaiah 7:14 to refer to nothing more than a young woman.
Second, many have objected to the virgin birth because they see it as a typical bit of pagan mythologizing. “Mithraism had a virgin birth. Christianity had a virgin birth. They are all just fables. Even Star Wars has a virgin birth.” This popular argument sounds plausible at first glance, but there are a number of problems with it.
(1) The assumption that there was a prototypical God-Man who had certain titles, did certain miracles, was born of a virgin, saved his people, and then got resurrected is not well-founded. In fact, no such prototypical “hero” existed before the rise of Christianity.
(2) It would have been unthinkable for a Jewish sect (which is what Christianity was initially) to try to win new converts by adding pagan elements to their gospel story. I suppose a good Jew might make up a story to fit the Old Testament, but to mix in bits of paganism would have been anathema to most Jews.
(3) The supposed virgin birth parallels are not convincing. Consider some of the usual suspects.
Alexander the Great: his most reliable ancient biographer (several centuries after his death) makes no mention of a virgin birth. Besides, the story that began to circulate (after the rise of Christianity) is about an unusual conception, but not a virgin birth. Alexander’s parents were already married when he was born.
Dionysus: like so many of the pagan “parallels,” he was born when a god (in this case Zeus) disguised himself as a human and impregnated a human princess. This is not a virgin birth and not like the Holy Spirit’s role we read about in the Gospels.
Mithra: he’s a popular parallel. But he was born of a rock, not a virgin. Moreover, the cult of Mithra in the Roman Empire dates to after the time of Christ, so any dependence is Mithraism on Christianity and not the other way around.
Buddha: his mother dreamed that Buddha entered her in the form of a white elephant. But this story doesn’t appear until five centuries after his death, and she was already married.
In short, the so-called parallels always occur well after the life in question, well into the Christian era, and are not really stories of virginal conceptions.
What’s the Big Deal?
Even if professing Christians accept the virgin birth, many would have a hard time articulating why the doctrine really matters. Several years ago, Rob Bell (in)famously argued that it wouldn’t be a big deal if we discovered “Jesus had an earthly father named Larry.” What if the virgin birth was thrown in to appeal to the followers of Mithra and Dionysian religious cults? What if the word for virgin referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse? Bell suggested that none of this would be catastrophic to the Christian faith because Jesus would still be the best possible way to live.
So what is the big deal about the virgin birth? Why does it matter?
For starters, the virgin birth is essential to Christianity because it has been essential to Christianity. That may sound like weak reasoning, but only if we care nothing about the history and catholicity of the church. Granted, the church can get things wrong, sometimes even for a long time. But if Christians, of all stripes in all places, have professed belief in the virgin birth for two millennia, maybe we should be slow to discount it as inconsequential. In his impressive study of the virgin birth, J. Gresham Machen concluded that “there can be no doubt that at the close of the second century the virgin birth of Christ was regarded as an absolutely essential part of the Christian belief by the Christian church in all parts of the known world.” It takes a lot of hubris to think that an essential article of faith for almost 2,000 years of the Christian church can be set aside without doing damage to the faith.
Second, the gospel writers clearly believed that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived. We don’t know precisely how the Christ-child came to be in Mary’s womb, except that the conception was “from the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:20). But we do know that Mary understood the miraculous nature of this conception, having asked the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). The Gospels do not present the virgin birth as some prehistoric myth or pagan copy-cat, but as “an orderly account” of actual history from eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-4). If the virgin birth is false, the historical reliability of the gospels is seriously undermined.
Third, the virgin birth demonstrates that Jesus is truly human and truly divine. This is the point the Heidelberg Catechism makes when it asks in Question 35, “How does the holy conception and birth of Christ benefit you?” The answer: “He is our mediator, and with his innocence and perfect holiness he removes from God’s sight my sin—mine since I was conceived.” If Jesus had not been born of a human, we could not believe in his full humanity. At the same time, if his birth were like any other human birth—through the union of a human father and mother—we would question his full divinity. The virgin birth is necessary to secure both a real human nature and a completely divine nature.
Finally, the virgin birth is essential because it means Jesus did not inherit the curse of depravity that clings to Adam’s race. Jesus was made like us in every way except for sin (Heb. 4:15; 7:26-27). Every human father begets a son or daughter with his sin nature. This is the way of the world after the fall. Sinners beget sinners (Ps. 51:5). Always. If Joseph was the real father of Jesus, or Mary had been sleeping around with Larry, Jesus is not spotless, not innocent, and not perfectly holy. And as result, we have no mediator and no salvation.
The virgin birth is part of what Christians have believed in all times and in all places, and it is a key element in what it means for the incarnation to be “for us and for salvation.” We ignore the doctrine at our peril; we celebrate it to our benefit and to God’s glory.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.