The Creator of the universe, who holds everything in being, from all the galaxies to every grain of sand, and who governs everything that happens, from the fall of nations to the fall of every bird that dies — this God has decreed that he will accomplish his enemy-reconciling, worshiper-creating purposes among all the peoples of the world through your mouth.

Listen to the words of the apostle Paul: “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20). Think of it: there’s God, with his appeal to the peoples of the world; there’s Christ, who provided the basis of the appeal by his death for sin and his triumph over death — and there’s you, with your mouth.

You take your Christ, your great Treasure, and his magnificent salvation, and you open your mouth, and wonder of wonders, God makes his appeal through you: “Be reconciled to God.” This is how we make disciples of all nations. This is how the Great Commission is completed. God makes his appeal through us: “On behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” When you say that, it is the voice of God.

Christians, the Voice of His Excellencies

Don’t shrink back from this, as if it were meant only for apostles. Do you remember what Peter said about who you are? You are Christians: “You [you!] are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). You are the voice of his excellencies. That’s not a missionary calling. That’s your Christian identity. It’s who you are — the mouthpiece of the excellencies of God.

So, my prayer for this message — indeed, for this day and this conference — has two layers.

Layer #1: I am praying that God would redirect the lives of hundreds of you from where you were heading when you came to this conference, or from the muddle your life was in, into a life totally devoted, vocationally, to opening your mouths among the least-reached peoples of the world — God making his appeal through you for the reconciling of his enemies and the creation of his worshipers.

Layer #2: I am praying that the rest of you would see this divine enterprise as so glorious that you would celebrate it and support it in every way possible.

What can I do in the rest of this message that God might use to make you an answer to one of those prayers? What I’m going to do is to try and show you from the Gospel of John how God will use your mouth to create worshipers of the true God among the nations. I think if you could see how God actually does it, you might feel called to join him in doing it.

Whom the Father Seeks, He Will Have

Let’s start with John 4:23. Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. She has just pointed out that Samaritans worship on Mount Gerizim while Jews, like Jesus, worship in Jerusalem (John 4:20). To this Jesus responds,

The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for [or because] the Father is seeking such people to worship him. (John 4:23)

The reason there will be true worship on any mountain or in any valley or on any plain is because the Father is seeking worshipers. That’s why worship among the nations happens.

This is not a seeking as in an Easter egg hunt, as if God doesn’t know who they are or where they are. This is a seeking because they are his, and he means to have them and their wholehearted, happy worship for himself forever.

“Yahweh calls the Messiah a priest ‘forever.’ Forever? Now we are at a new level of lordship.”

As Jesus prayed to his Father in John 17:6, “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.” The Father is seeking worshipers from all the nations because they are already his. “Yours they were!” Jesus declares. “And you gave them to me.” God chose them before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4–6). They are his. He is seeking them. He will have them.

How does he do that? How do we move from “yours they were” from all eternity to countless worshipers from every people, language, tribe, and nation at the consummation of history with you, and your mouth, in the middle?

To answer that question from the Gospel of John, we need to know, What’s the relationship between worshiping and believing in this Gospel? Because Jesus just said in John 4:23 that the Father is seeking worshipers. Yet this whole Gospel is written, according to John 20:31, to create believers: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

What’s the relationship between believing and worshiping? Which should we seek? Is there a first and second? Are they the same? Do they overlap?

Belief as Soul-Satisfaction

Here’s my very condensed answer, which starts with a stunning fact: In this so-called “Gospel of Belief,” John never uses the noun belief or faith (Greek pistis) — never! — in all 21 chapters. But he uses the verb believe (pisteuō) 98 times. That can’t be an accident. What’s the point?

I think the point is this: John wants to emphasize that believing is an action, and one of the soul, not the body. The movements of the body are the effects of believing. What the soul does is believing. And what are the actions of believing in the soul? John answers at the very beginning of his Gospel in John 1:11–12: “[Jesus] came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Believing is the soul’s receiving of Christ.

Receiving as what? A ticket out of hell that you put in your back pocket and never think of? A wonder-worker to keep my wife alive and my children safe (and a failure if he doesn’t)? No. John and Jesus have a different kind of receiving in mind. It’s the receiving of Christ as soul-satisfying bread from heaven and as thirst-quenching living water: “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst’” (John 6:35).

Believing John Dewey, the American educational reformer who died in 1952, said, “We never think until we have been confronted with a problem.” That may be an overstatement, but not by much. Thinking, especially thinking with a view to attaining more truth for the sake of more worship and more obedience, is hard work. Thinking demands effort.

But the Bible encourages us to think. Paul said to the younger Timothy, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Timothy 2:7). And to the Corinthians he said, “Do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20).

A lot of people have given me T-shirts over the years. My favorite was in 1980, when I finished six years of teaching biblical studies at Bethel College and became a pastor at this church. My students gave me a T-shirt with the initials of Jonathan Edwards on the front, and on the back it said, “Asking questions is the key to understanding.” That made me feel like I had at least partially succeeded in my six years at Bethel.

The reason John Dewey’s statement and that T-shirt go together is because asking questions is a way of being confronted with a problem. We don’t think until we have a problem, Dewey said. And we don’t understand until we think. And asking questions is a way of posing problems. Therefore, asking questions triggers thinking, and thinking is a path to understanding. One of my goals as a teacher is to build into students the habit of asking good questions — not because I want them to be skeptics, but because I want them to be thinkers. “Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”

Man of Questions

One of the reasons this is relevant to our text is that, in the four Gospels, Jesus asks over three hundred questions. I checked this out, just to make sure, by reviewing the list online. Now, in my ESV Bible, the Gospels fill 101 pages, which means that on average Jesus asks three questions on every page. I don’t doubt that there are far more reasons for why he did that than we will ever know in this world, but one of those reasons was, surely, to make people think — to think their way into truth, or to think their way into self-incrimination and silence.

Which is what happens in our text. So, let’s read Matthew 22:41–46. There are four questions in this text, all directed at the Pharisees:

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, [Question #1] “What do you think about the Christ? [Question #2] Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, [Question #3] “How [therefore does] David, in the Spirit, [call] him Lord, saying,

“‘The Lord [Yahweh] said to my Lord [adonai],“Sit at my right hand,     until I put your enemies under your feet”’?

If then David calls him Lord, [Question #4] how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Jesus had silenced the Sadducees in verses 29–33 when they asked about the resurrection. Then the Pharisees tested him in verse 35 by asking what the Great Commandment is. He answered them, and now come his own four questions, after which — you can see in verse 45 — no one asked him any more questions: “nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

Let’s take Jesus’s questions one at a time to see if we can grasp what he is trying to communicate with these four questions.

Question #1: ‘What do you think about the Christ?’

“The Christ” means “the Messiah” — that is, the long-expected king of Israel who would fulfill the promises and bring Israel into her destiny as God’s chosen and ruling people in the world. Remember that the woman at the well in John 4 said,

“I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” (John 4:25–26)

And here in Matthew, Jesus asked the disciples,

“Who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16:15–17)

In other words, “Yes, I am the Messiah.”

So this — “What do you think about the Christ [the Messiah]?” — is an explosive question because it has more than one level of meaning. At one level, it’s a biblical, theological question about the meaning of “Christ” or “Messiah.” Jesus and the Pharisees will have a lot of common ground on this question.

But at another level, the question touches on Jesus himself. Is he the one? The answer to the first level is not explosive at first. But the answer to the second level will get Jesus crucified. At his trial the high priest will say, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (Matthew 26:63). To which Jesus responds, signing his own death warrant, “I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64). In other words, he will be seen as David’s Lord, sitting at God’s right hand, according to Psalm 110.

But now in our text, after asking his first question, Jesus does not wait for an answer to this general question of “What do you think about the Christ?” Because he knows where he is going with these questions, and he is not interested in a general answer about the Christ. He aims to be more specific. So, he moves to the second question.

Question #2: ‘Whose son is he?’

Now, every Jew knew at least one right answer to that question because of 2 Samuel 7:12–13, where God says to King David through the prophet Nathan,

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

The Messiah would be the son of David. This is what the ordinary folks called Jesus. When he entered Jerusalem, they cried out, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 21:9). The Jewish leaders knew what this meant, and so they asked him, when the children called him the son of David, “Do you hear what these are saying?” To which Jesus responded, “Out of the mouth of infants . . . [God has] prepared praise” (Matthew 21:16).

So, when Jesus asks in our text, “Whose son is he?” we have these two levels of meaning again. At one level there is theological agreement: the Messiah is the son of David — no controversy. At the other level, just below the surface, is the question, Is Jesus this son of David?

The Pharisees answer Jesus’s second question: “The son of David” (Matthew 22:42). There’s the theological agreement: the Christ is the son of David.

But now comes the third question, which the Pharisees will not answer, because Jesus is leading them with Scripture to a place they do not want to go, and they can see it coming. This is often how questions work.

Question #3: ‘How does David call him Lord?’

Let’s reread what surrounds this question.

He said to them, “How [therefore, in view of your correct answer, does] David, in the Spirit, [call] him Lord, saying,

“‘The Lord [Yahweh] said to my Lord [adonai],“Sit at my right hand,     until I put your enemies under your feet”’?” (Matthew 22:43–44)

This question has often puzzled me. But before I explain why, let’s nail down five details.

Five Clarifications

First, verse 44 is a quotation of Psalm 110:1: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’”

Second, the phrase “in the Spirit” (from “David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord”) means that Jesus regards these words as written by David and inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is not human opinion; it is God’s word.

Third, the first reference to “Lord” in the quote from Psalm 110:1 in Hebrew is the proper name of God, Yahweh. And the second word for “Lord” in the Psalm (“the Lord said to my Lord”) is the generic word for a master or a lord, adonai, which is used over three hundred times in the Old Testament for human masters. And the word “my” refers to David, the writer of the psalm: “The Lord [Yahweh] said to my Lord [adonai].”

Fourth, the second word for “Lord” (verse 44, or “master,” adonai), refers to the promised Messiah. And we know that because it says he will sit at God’s right hand, ruling over all his enemies. There was no disagreement about this reading of Psalm 110 so far with the Pharisees.

So fifth is that, since David is writing this, when he says, “[Yahweh] said to my Lord [my adonai],” David is calling the Messiah his Lord.

What’s So Controversial?

Now, what has puzzled me about Jesus’s third question — “How does David call him Lord?” — is why it would be considered controversial. Why would it stump the Pharisees, when in fact the Pharisees agree that David called the Messiah his Lord? Jewish people, from then till now, don’t deny that when or if the Messiah comes, he will be greater than David. He will be David’s superior and leader and Lord. That’s not news. That’s what the text says, and that’s what Jews have believed.

The way I used to read it simply does not seem to create the crisis Jesus seems to be creating. I think I’ve been reading it with the wrong twist. So, I’m going to suggest that we put the emphasis in this question on a different word, which I think solves my problem — my misunderstanding. I’m going to put the emphasis on the word “how” in verse 43 and treat it as a real “how” question.

Verse 43: “How [in what way, therefore, does] David, in the Spirit, [call] him Lord?” I think it’s misleading to translate it this way: “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord?” Because if you translate it, “How is it that . . .” it means, idiomatically, in English virtually the same as “Why does he call him Lord?” And that’s what throws me off, because the answer to that question would be easy for the Pharisees to answer. Why? Because he is.

But I don’t think Jesus is asking why David calls the Messiah his Lord, but how — in what way is he Lord? In what sense is he Lord? How is the Messiah the Lord of David, according to Psalm 110? Jesus is beckoning us into the whole of Psalm 110 to see how David writes about the Messiah to bring out what his lordship involves. This would require another sermon — to work our way, verse by verse, through Psalm 110, so let me just summarize what I see.

How David Calls the Messiah His Lord

In verse 1, “[Yahweh] says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” The Messiah sits at the exalted place in heaven at Yahweh’s right hand. Then in verse 4, Yahweh speaks again about the Messiah: “[Yahweh] has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’” Yahweh calls the Messiah a priest “forever.” Forever? Now we are at a new level of lordship. The Messiah is a priest-king at God’s right hand forever.

“When David called the Messiah his Lord, he was pointing to the divinity of the Messiah.”

Then he says in verse 5, “The Lord [adonai] is at your right hand.” And the most natural meaning of the word “your” is the “you” of the preceding verse — verse 4: “You are a priest forever.” Then comes verse 5: “The Lord is at your right hand.” Which means that David, as he composes Psalm 110, is now saying that God is at this priest-king’s right hand. In other words, they have, in essence, switched places from verses 1 to 5: in verse 1, the Messiah sits at God’s right hand, and in verse 5, God is at the Messiah’s right hand.

I’m suggesting that what Jesus saw in this psalm is that when David called the Messiah his Lord, he was pointing to the divinity of the Messiah. The Messiah and Yahweh are one God. This is how the book of Hebrews understands this psalm in Hebrews 1:13. This is how Matthew understood Jesus’s messiahship: he is “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). This is what I mean by focusing on the word “how” in verse 43. How does David call the Messiah his Lord? The way he does it is by showing that the Messiah is David’s God.

That’s a lot to pack into a question that gets no answer. But the fact that there is no answer from the Pharisees suggests that they can smell that Jesus is leading them somewhere they don’t want to go. So, with that understanding of what was in Jesus’s mind, we turn to the fourth question.

Question #4: ‘If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?’

This question now means, “If David calls the Messiah his God, we have a real problem. How is the Messiah David’s son?” That’s a problem because, to be David’s son, one has to be human and be in the human line of David. But if the Messiah is God, how can that be? No answer. In fact, public debating with Jesus is over. And the final question ringing in our ears is, If the Messiah is God, how is he a man, specifically a man in David’s human lineage?

Matthew has left us no doubt as to his answer: Jesus was divine and human because he was conceived in a human virgin by the divine Holy Spirit. Matthew 1:18: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”

And Joseph, in the royal line of David, legally adopts Jesus, and Jesus becomes the legitimate son of David. Matthew 1:20: “An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.’” And in taking Mary as his wife, he takes Jesus as his son. And Matthew clarifies the miracle of a divine-human Messiah with these words: “‘They shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:23).

Back to question #4: “If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matthew 22:45). That is, “If, then, David calls him God, how is he a man in David’s line?” Not: “Is he?” But: “How is he?” Answer: by human birth in the womb of a virgin, and by legal adoption by a son of David.

Will We Have Him for Who He Is?

We are left not mainly with a question about who Jesus is.

Jesus (and Matthew) makes plain, “I am God, and I am the human son of David, the Messiah. Follow me. Devote yourself to me for the rest of your life. Treasure me above all things. Your sins will be forgiven. Your life will have its fullest meaning. And you will live forever in the joy of God’s presence.”

The question we are left with is not “Who is he?” but “Will we have him as our greatest treasure?” I pray your answer is yes.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. This week we’re looking at controversy. We opened the week looking at the sick love of controversy. In APJ 1949, on Monday, we looked at this disease called “craving for controversy,” as Paul calls it in 1 Timothy 6:4.

Today we look at how to best speak of a culture’s sins — when we must do so. Such work is complicated by the fact that Paul seems to tell us there are some sins in a culture that are simply too wicked and too “shameful” to even speak of. That’s according to Ephesians 5:12, at least on the surface of it. So what shameful sins should Christians not even speak about? The question is from a listener named Dan.

“Pastor John, hello to you! I am an elder at my church, and I was thinking about how sin is to be addressed by Christian preachers, both pastorally to the congregation and in calling out the sins of culture. What advice would you give preachers on how to avoid merely complaining or going off on angry rants about cultural sins, and how to wisely identify and call for repentance from sins inside the church? So what cultural sins do we expose and speak out against? What cultural sins do we ignore or refrain from talking about because of their vulgarity? And how do you think preachers in local churches will best balance addressing the sins of culture and the sins in the pew?”

This is an important question because the sinfulness of contemporary society is today more outlandish than it has been for hundreds of years in America — and more in your face because of the ubiquity of social media and online streaming and advertising. Those two facts — outlandish and ubiquitous — are a strong temptation for a pastor to vent his anger and frustration at the degeneration of the world, so that the pulpit runs the risk of becoming not a place mainly of exultation over the glories of God in Christ, but a place of irritation and condemnation of the insanity that is going on out there in the world. A pastor can feel that things are so bad that if he does not linger over the latest grossness of evil, it will look like he’s going soft on sin.

Sounding the Right Note

So, it’s good for us to think about how to speak of sins in the world and sins in the church and yet sound the dominant note of amazement at the glories of the grace of God in Christ, so that that’s what people walk away with on Sunday morning — namely, we are amazed here at the beauty and the glory of the grace of God in Christ.

There is surely a reason why Paul said to the Philippians, who were threatened by legalistic dogs who wanted to ravage their faith (Philippians 3:2), and by “enemies of the cross of Christ” whose “end is destruction, [whose] god is their belly, and [who] glory in their shame” (Philippians 3:18–19) — there’s a reason why Paul said precisely to this embattled church, surrounded by so much belly-god debauchery, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8).

We are not to be consumed emotionally or attentively with the latest drag queen strutting among the 4-year-olds or the latest butchery to the genitals of 8-year-olds. There is a fitting groaning and tears over the wickedness of these things, but if it consumes us, we have lost our bearings and need to go back to Christ. Think about this. Paul said, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). He said that seven verses after saying, “[I] tell you even with tears, [they] walk as enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18). That’s amazing.

Sins Outside and Inside

So, let’s take Ephesians 5:3–12 as an example of how Paul deals with sins outside and inside the church in his preaching. Here’s what he says.

Sexual immorality and all impurity [and he had a lot of gross stuff in that word] must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk and crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.

That is, fill your mouth up with something positive so it pushes out all the filthiness and foolishness and crudeness.

For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you [and he’s talking about believers here] with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

See the connection there? You watch out — you Christians watch out for deception. And then he calls those whom he’s really talking about “sons of disobedience,” which means unbelievers.

Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light . . . and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.

Uncontaminated Exposing

So, here you have Paul naming the sins of the world: sexually immoral, impure, covetous. And then he warns the saints not to be partners with them. So he’s not just grandstanding against those bad people out there; he’s concerned about the church. “You are saints now. You are in the kingdom of Christ now. You are the children of light now.” But he doesn’t draw the inference from this, “Well, all we need to do is stand aloof, castigate the world.” Rather, he makes the sins of the world an occasion for warning the saints. “We are vulnerable. If you partner with them in those sins, you too will come under the wrath of God.”

“There’s a way to expose the sins of the world without being verbally contaminated.”

And then he closes with something paradoxical. He says, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” (Ephesians 5:11–12). So, there’s a way to expose the sins of the world without being verbally contaminated. “It’s shameful even to speak of them,” Paul says. Which I think means it’s shameful to find pleasure in talking about them, lingering over them with excessive attention. It is possible to find pleasure — we’re just so deceived on things like this; we can deceive ourselves so easily — in talking about the things we hate. Isn’t that awful? It’s possible to find pleasure in talking about the things we hate. God doesn’t want this. That’s not good.

So, the right way to summarize that paradox would go something like this, I think: Expose, but don’t gloat. Expose, but don’t linger. Expose, but weep. Expose, but pray. Expose, but don’t grovel in the mire, even in the name of mocking the mire. Some people think they’re justified in lingering in the mire by spending a lot of time finding clever ways to put it down. Expose, but then return quickly to the clean, clear, holy, happy air of the mountains of Christ’s fellowship.

Overcome Evil with Good

I have just three more bullet points, observations that might give some more guidance on how to deal with sins outside the church.

“Expose, but then return quickly to the clean, clear, holy, happy air of the mountains of Christ’s fellowship.”

First, when you deal with them, do it in a serious, biblical way. That is, do a biblical analysis, a careful analysis, a thoughtful analysis for why they are sin. Some sins we think are so gross, so harmful that we don’t need to give any kind of biblical analysis or rationale for their rejection. I think that’s a mistake, because it tends to make us think simply on a par with conservative unbelievers. That’s not a good place to be for a Christian, simply on a par with conservative unbelievers. But a biblical analysis would get to the root of how the sin relates to God and to Christ. And our dealing with the sin then would be seen as a passion for God’s glory and Christ’s majesty, his mercy, not just our proper gobsmack at the outrage.

Second, keep in mind 1 Corinthians 5:12–13: “What have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside.”

Third and finally, aim at the fullest experience possible of Romans 12:21: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

“Intersectionality, sweetheart.”

That’s how I answered a question from my then 9-year-old daughter. She asked me what I was reading about. As it seems like many pastors were busy doing in 2020, I had retired for the evening to my chair to ponder one of our many social challenges. The rest of our brief conversation went like this:

“What is intersectionality?”“I’ll teach you about it when you’re older.”“Why not now? Is it a scary idea?”“Yes, it is.”

I’m not the first dad to be faced with a decision like that. Corrie Ten Boom once asked her father, “What is sexism?” He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked her to pick up his traveling case, filled with gear for his work on watches. “It’s too heavy,” she said. “Yes,” he replied, “and it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now, you must trust me to carry it for you” (The Hiding Place, 42).

What Is Intersectionality?

I am carrying a growing list of thoughts and theories about the world for my children. Intersectionality has been one of them. Some days, this knowledge feels quite heavy.

Intersectionality began as a way for legal scholars to recognize a phenomenon. An individual can be discriminated against as a woman and as a minority at the same time. Simple enough. But the picture is more complicated than that, as I was learning.

Intersectionality emerges from the worldview of critical theory that views all human relationships through the lens of power dynamics. In this worldview, the story of humanity is that of a grand struggle for liberation from oppression. Intersectionality makes three assumptions: first, that every human interaction is characterized by an oppressor-oppressed relationship; second, that this oppression can be traced along impersonal group-identity markers such as skin color and sex, even weight and age; and third, we know oppressor groups from oppressed groups by disparities, which are always the result of discrimination. Each combination of intersecting traits represents a unique victim group. Only by elevating the voices of these victims while silencing “privileged” oppressors can we tear down the structures that hold humanity captive.

How Intersectionality Oppresses

The Scriptures are emphatic: sin is pervasive and oppression is real. No individual or group is exempt. Sin can even be systemic. But intersectionality presumes that we can sort out oppressed people and oppressors by mere demographic details. No surprise, the fruit of this false worldview not only undermines the gospel but also advances its own oppression.

My family feels that oppression in a unique way.

That day I declined to explain intersectionality to my daughter, and she skipped off to play with Legos. But her perfect 9-year-old question — “Is intersectionality scary?” — has stuck with me. Why didn’t I want to tell her about intersectionality? What was I scared of? Sitting in that chair, the subtle but socially corrosive power of the intersectional worldview was palpable to me. I don’t think I was scared for her. But I was sad for her and for all my children. My whole family has skin in this game that’s being played on us. Insight into how that is a reality for our family will be instructive for anyone living in our intersectional age.

So, let me introduce you to my family.

Test Case for Intersectionality?

Kristi and I were married in 2003, and today we are a family of seven. No two of our kids are alike.

Our oldest two, a boy and a girl, are 13. We call them “the twins.” My oldest son is a ferocious reader with an interest in history. He’s not into sports, but he can school you in Greek mythology and dominate you with the yo-yo. My oldest daughter is a nurturer. She will feel your feelings before you do. Her sensitivity is a strength with typical challenges that come from sensing what others are thinking. She’s also a budding artist.

Then, there’s our 11-year-old daughter. She’s by far the most imaginative. No one can play as she does, and no one can get us laughing at the dinner table as she can. She has all the marks of a typical youngest child, which was her badge of honor until the two babies were born. In 2019 God gave us a little girl who has an amazing poker face and a little boy who is all smiles.

I see all this and more when I look at my kids. Just like any parent. Each child has a unique profile of strengths and difficulties, interests and insecurities, birth-order traits and unique potential.

So, what makes our family a unique test case for the impact of intersectionality? All but one of our children came to us by adoption.

Wait, Who Are We?

If you stand my kids in order of age and then squint, you’ll see a beautiful shade of color that moves from dark to light. The oldest two are from Ethiopia. They’re four months apart. Our middle child is from Jackson, Mississippi, probably of Haitian descent. Our baby girl is older than her brother by six months. She’s from Atlanta, Georgia, part Cherokee, part African origin, and part Caucasian. The youngest and only biological child is a white male. He is as pale as mom and dad, with blood that goes back to Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. We’re America under one roof. You can see where this is going.

When my daughter asked me that question about intersectionality, to whom was she talking? A white man? To whom was I talking? A young black girl in America? What is our relationship, exactly? Am I her colonizer? Is she my victim? Are we guilty of murder or of cultural genocide, having killed her ethnic heritage? We’ve been told this by academic journals and our social media feeds.

Should my brown-skinned children hold a grievance against my white-skinned son? Does my part-Cherokee daughter have a trump card over all of us? When my white son figures out that he holds no moral authority, should he search out and hold the atrocities of his siblings’ ancestors against them?

No, no, and no.

Compassion or Cruelty?

Oppression is a reality, and people can be exploited and despised on the basis of skin color. We need to say this. Though the ideology I’m addressing is parasitic and destructive, we must not overlook the history of racism in America. Some, to be sure, wrongly make racist oppression the main thing about America. Nevertheless, we must remember our own country’s history in appropriate ways.

“Oppression is a reality, and people can be exploited and despised on the basis of skin color. We need to say this.”

In recent years, however, sincere but vague and misguided feelings of compassion on account of that history have undermined a proper remembrance and growth. People we love have come to view the world through the lens of oppression — seeing “white people” as villains and “black people” as victims. Though they wouldn’t put it that way, this perspective is evident when they comfortably mock white people as ignorant and out of touch and respectfully, even reverently, speak about black people as an enlightened class due to their lived experience. For some, seeking absolution for sins they didn’t commit is a way to deal with false guilt; for others, accepting responsibility, even if they are uneasy about doing so, is a means to avoid cancellation. No doubt, it is a means to power for some who feel powerless and a means to innocence for others who feel guilty by association with America’s past. In the midst of these are opportunists of every kind.

We can assume the best concerning many well-meaning friends. People can be sincere and decent in their intentions even if there are sinister designs behind these ideas. But none of this has felt compassionate to our family. It is false compassion when others tell my kids — over and over — that their neighbors are secretly afraid of them, that police officers are at war with them, and that their teachers don’t believe in them. Cruel is a better term for it.

It’s cruel to tell children that their future will be determined by the moral improvement of intractably racist people.

It’s cruel to tell my children that they can make it in life as long as others hold them to lower standards.

It’s cruel to tell my children that potential employers won’t hire them because of their skin color. It is equally cruel — and equally racist, it seems to me — for businesses to treat my children as particularly valuable hires because of the color of their skin. Implicit in this are two conflicting and crushing messages: no one wants you because of your skin, but we want you because of your skin. At its best, it’s a misguided attempt to right historic wrongs that short-circuits a natural process of development. At its worst, it’s a self-serving attempt to avoid the charge of racism that treats real people as pawns. Either way, these practices send a subtle message that undermines the dignity and confidence of my children as they face the future.

Discerning adults may reject this intersectional framework but then downplay its impact. I can appreciate that spirit. But my children are at impressionable and tender ages, and they are the battlefield targets of this teaching. If our family took these ideas seriously — as serious proponents intend — they would suffocate our love, steal our joy, and destroy my family. Intersectionality brings the division of mother against child and son against father in very different ways than Christ does.

It has been a while since my daughter asked me that question. Since then, I’ve come to realize that our family is not only a good test case for the impact of bad ideas, but also a good testing ground for a more biblical and beautiful way of seeing one another. That’s one reason we are talking about intersectionality now. How is that going for us? How am I protecting my family at the intersection of race in America? If an intersection got us into this mess, maybe an intersection can get us out.

Right of Way

New drivers tend to avoid busy intersections for fear of hurting someone or getting hurt. They are not being unreasonable. Yet a simple rule keeps everyone safe: yield to the car that arrived first. Instead of yielding to an ideology that just recently arrived on the scene, we give the right of way to God’s word, spanning all the way back to Genesis and the beginning. Understanding right-of-way protects us from confusion and collision.

Thinking further on this analogy, this occurred to me: if right-of-way protects us at a driving intersection, perhaps it can help us at the intersection of our many differences. Perhaps the best way to protect my family against the group-identity framework of intersectionality is to do what we have always done with them: to tell them who they are. My children are individuals, yes. They also belong to various groups. But the way forward at this intersection is to get these aspects of their identity in the right order.

I want three identities especially fixed in the minds of my kids. These are not the only important facts about them, but these are the especially objective and therefore orienting facts about them.

‘You are made in God’s image.’

It’s this basic truth that helped me understand the first reason I didn’t want to tell my daughter about intersectionality: by fixing our eyes on color, intersectionality reduces the resolution of our shared humanity. That is, it takes out the detail. It focuses our attention on incidentals, not essentials. It settles for what we can know about a person when we squint.

I can remember being asked as a new adoptive father, “Are you going to teach your children about where they’re from?” Of course. How could we not? Why would we not want to? But there is more. I want to go back further than their country or state of origin. Our children came to our family from various places and peoples, but all those people go back to our common ancestor, to one man named Adam (Acts 17:26). Adam understood this when he named his wife Eve, “because she was the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20). In Adam, we share a common origin and divine purpose for humanity.

Intersectionality must assume some basis for human dignity in order to ground its appeal to justice. But without moorings in a transcendent worldview, it fixes our attention on our differences, judging differences as disparities. We may certainly assume the best of many who hold this worldview — namely, that they promote our differences to protect persons from hostility. Some disparities, to be sure, represent difficult and sad realities that should concern us all. But a relentless focus on differences — and especially superficial distinctions — undermines not only a proper understanding and productive response to real problems, but also the deepest truth that holds humanity, and my family, together.

Intersectionality dehumanizes my family when it prioritizes our skin color over our basic humanity. That’s why, in our home, we prioritize our common humanity. This stands in stark contrast to what we see and hear when we step outside our home — from the wall of books at Target, to an advertisement before the movie, to the messages on jerseys of our favorite basketball team — the world tells my children, “You are Black” or “You are White.” That might not be a problem except that these categories — impersonal colors as they are — come preloaded with an ideology that tells them what team they are on, where they come from, what they are to think, and how they are to relate with the rest of their family.

Instead, we say, “You are a person made in the glorious image of God,” and after that, “You are a man,” or “You are a woman.”

‘You are Hunters.’

That’s our last name, Hunter. Sometimes we’ve been asked what we know about our children’s “real parents.” We have never taken offense to this question. We know what they mean. But it has thrown us off balance when someone asks that question in front of our children. That’s because the second most important truth our children need to grasp is that they are indeed our children. After the fact of their humanity, the priority is their human family.

In fact, on reflection, this way of talking to our kids is the second reason I didn’t answer my daughter that night: taken seriously, intersectionality would make us foreigners first, family second. This is its intention, and not just for families like ours.

There’s a reason why the Bible teaches us about the origin of marriage and moms and dads by the second chapter of Genesis (Genesis 2:24), and why the apostle Paul prayed to the Father, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14–15). Family is a basic source of meaning for us all. But intersectional thinking undermines all of this for a family like ours. It teaches my children that they are not truly at home among family. It teaches my children that the primary sphere of belonging is that of a group identity assigned by skin color or some other victimhood status.

Intersectionality aggravates our already fragile relationships owing to sin by leading my children to hold the deepest motives of their parents and siblings in suspicion. Intersectionality teaches my kids that people who are white, like mom and dad, brought them into our family for wicked — even if unconsciously sinister — purposes. Intersectionality teaches my children that racism is as alive as ever, albeit in a covert way, underneath the surface of our interactions as a family. At worst, intersectionality stokes the fires of racism in their own hearts against the people who love them most.

Simply put, intersectionality hurts my family by prioritizing the color of our skin over our family name. That’s why, in our home, we make a big deal about being Hunters. We come from a line of morticians, creative inventors, brilliant managers, war heroes, and yes, so we imagine, hunters. Inside our home we are real brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. This is what we see in the mirror, and it’s who we talk to across the dinner table. Adoption is not an asterisk to this picture. It’s a part of our family history.

‘You are Americans.’

Even if I couldn’t articulate it that first night, I hesitated to tell my daughter about intersectionality because of the concentric circles of personhood and interaction. The first reason was personal, having to do with whom she sees in the mirror. The second reason was familial, having to do with whom we sit across from at the dinner table. A third reason is social, having to do with our interactions with people in our community and country: intersectionality alienates my children from their neighbors by discounting the value of our shared citizenship as Americans.

Citizenship can be a neglected grace. When Paul picks up the image with reference to our heavenly citizenship, he draws on our experience of earthly citizenship as those who belong to nations (Philippians 3:20). Earthly citizenship is a reality, and, though a fleeting one, a good reality.

It is true that, considering eternity, our earthly citizenship is relativized when we become Christians, but it’s not reduced to nothing. Paul was not only comfortable in his Roman citizenship but claimed it when he was persecuted, arresting the attention of the authorities hundreds of miles from Rome (Acts 22:22–29). Paul’s citizenship meant something for him and for everyone else. Everyone in the room knew it.

It seems virtuous in some circles these days to be cynical about America. There are aspects of our country (past and present) that are heinous. Decent Americans agree. But that’s at least an indication of one of America’s strengths: honest self-criticism. We’re not unique for having a history of slavery, but we are unique for our literature on that history. That’s because our nation was born suspicious of humanity. The very structure of our government reflects that creaturely humility. The ideas that define America are humble, even if the humans who penned them were sinners.

No, our American citizenship is not the final ground of our interactions with one another or our neighbors. That belongs to our shared humanity and, for Christians, our new humanity. Nevertheless, our American citizenship is a meaningful category and a way for my children to understand who they are and where they are when they walk into a room.

Intersectionality hurts my family by prioritizing the color of our skin over our earthly citizenship. That’s why, in our home, we remind one another of our earthly citizenship. We are Greenvillians, we are Carolinians, and we are Americans. There’s no place we’d rather be as a mixed-ethnicity family. We are surrounded by all kinds of people, including many who do not look like us but who nevertheless share the same nationality, a nationality rooted not in ethnicity but in an idea held in common and expressed in our nation’s founding documents. This includes our gymnastics teacher, the cashier at the grocery store, and the neighbors we meet on our evening walk. We teach our children to embrace a healthy solidarity as those who share a common citizenship.

Is color of any importance? Yes, color is beautiful! So are the stories that our colors represent. Our colors are not only beautiful, but they also raise good questions. Yet intersectional thinking isn’t interested in our answers — only its answers. And that’s why it’s scary. It is perniciously reductive. In the name of promoting color and diversity, intersectional thinking mutes our voices and mangles our actual stories. Worst of all, it attempts to steal the sense of belonging my children know, need, and should cherish as image-bearers, as Hunters, and as Americans.

But of course, there is more to say.

We Are Christians

My children will remain siblings, but if they take the logic of intersectionality seriously, I don’t see how they can remain honest friends. They will forge their righteous standing on each other’s backs. They will use one another in the pursuit of their own power or innocence, just like our fellow Americans are doing around us. Intersectionality displaces the gospel, making Christ’s atoning sacrifice unnecessary for some and never enough for others. In its place, its logic demands never-ending penance to appease the unappeasable grievances of whole classes of people. Like a parasite, it feeds on our grievances and our guilt, real and perceived.

“Intersectionality displaces the gospel, making Christ’s atoning sacrifice unnecessary for some and never enough for others.”

I don’t see how love can breathe in that air. I want my children to take on the identity that puts into proper perspective every other human difference, to say with their parents, “We are Christians.” That’s why, in our home, we tell our children: “You are sinners in need of grace.”

And that’s why we go to church on Sunday.

A newcomer to our church recently commented, “I noticed your church is mostly white. What are you guys doing about that?” One sister in our church who is from Colombia would have laughed had she heard that. She raves about our “beautiful mix.” This brother, however, was born in America, where majority culture is inherently problematic — even shameful — when it looks “mostly white.” Questions like this entice pastors to apologize or, alternatively, boast in the ethnic diversity of their churches. It’s a reason why a church’s ethnic makeup is increasingly the first question asked or the first credential offered when some pastors meet. At its worst, it’s a worldly obsession with looks and approval. That doesn’t make a family like mine feel more welcome. It makes us feel needed for all the wrong reasons.

Candidly, for a moment I felt ashamed of our church. That shame did not come from the Spirit of Christ. That was the spirit of the age enticing me to objectify Christ’s precious bride. But I’m grateful that I didn’t speak out of that shame. I was direct:

Everyone is talking about color these days. We talk about Christ. What would he have us do? He would have us obey all that he commanded. Which means we go to all the nations and would be glad if they came to us. When that proves hard, we welcome one another as Christ welcomed us. We show hospitality to everyone, the high-resolution kind that is interested in everything about every person. And we show partiality to no one, not for membership or discipline, not for leadership or a smile. We think this kind of simple obedience to Christ is the way forward.

Would that put him off? To my delight, he was strangely refreshed. This brother was from a place where a church’s color palette was a first indicator of faithfulness. In that moment, he needed discipleship in the truth, and our church needed protection from error.

Safest Intersection in Town

We love our church. For my family, it’s the safest intersection in town.

Why? Because there is a Lamb on the throne in the middle (Revelation 5:9–14). The blood of that Lamb tells us that we are fellow sinners, all of us, but also forgiven sinners and fellow citizens, members of God’s household (Ephesians 2:19). His blood is both necessary and enough. It tells us that the line between the just and the unjust does not run horizontally between humans but vertically between all of humanity and our God. Yet by the blood of this Lamb we are made just. This throne tells us that we are a people under the authority of a righteous king with all the power, one who uses that power to love his people (Ephesians 1:20–23; 3:18–19). It’s the love of this king that compels us to love one another in deep and personal ways (Ephesians 4:1–6). In this love we see the Father advancing his cause to “unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10). It is here at church that we find an identity more fundamental and precious than our nation, our family, and even our shared humanity. In baptism and the Lord’s Supper we see the death — the tearing down — of sin and the making of a new humanity in Christ.

It’s also at church that the world can see the beginnings of a truly better world to come, with all of its manifold beauty. In that day, Christ will be surrounded by men and women from every tribe and language and nation. That kind of diversity, I take it, is beautiful to him in this age when it shows up within faithful churches, but also between faithful churches united in his worship. Our church’s ethnolinguistic profile is downstream from many factors: history, geography, socioeconomics, our faith tradition, and my own education and accent as the preacher. We’re not here to preserve our church’s unique flavor — we are comfortable in our own skin and happy to be stretched. But neither are we ashamed of our unique cultural expression, and that’s important to say these days. Despite what the world may say, at this intersection, Jesus gets the right-of-way. He controls the traffic, and he has accepted us.

Intersectionality taps into the human longing for a better world. At church, our family tastes something of the world as it will be.

What I Want My Children to Know

That guest to our church asked a question that was on his mind. In the summer of 2020, my daughter asked the question that was on her mind. I’m glad she did. In my reading that evening, I was coming to see that intersectionality is not merely a legal tool, but an ideological weapon. And where it is wielded, it divides and destroys. I want her to understand this.

That’s why we’re talking about intersectionality now. It’s a burden of knowledge our children will need to carry for themselves. But they’re not scared about it, and I’m not sad for them. That’s because, at this intersection, Christ carries our burdens for us, and nothing is too heavy for him.