15 of the 24 men on the SJC have now, to some extent, gone on official record to express concern over TE Johnson’s views. This development contradicts claims that TE Johnson’s views were exonerated by the SJC in Speck v. Missouri Presbytery. In the case, the SJC decision represented an adjudication regarding a particular presbytery’s process by evaluating the investigative process of Missouri Presbytery. This case was chiefly about Missouri Presbytery and not about TE Johnson or his views. The case was about evaluating Missouri Presbytery’s investigation of TE Johnson. At the very least, the SJC has not vindicated TE Johnson (as Johnson claims), and this case has not made the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) into a Side-B denomination….

Earlier this week, byFaith Online published an article entitled SJC Answers Dissent in Greg Johnson Case. This comes several months after the majority made a ruling on a complaint against Missouri Presbytery that sided with Missouri Presbytery over how the Presbytery conducted an investigation of one of its members, TE Greg Johnson. On October 21, 2021, the majority concluded, “based on the Record, there was no reversible error in the decisions reached by Missouri Presbytery regarding the four allegations. It was not unreasonable for Presbytery to judge that TE Johnson’s ‘explanations’ on the four allegations were ‘satisfactory’.”[1] The Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) believes that the investigation led by Missouri Presbytery was done in a reasonable and procedurally sound fashion. The SJC vote was 16-7-0 (with one member unable to attend the meeting).
On October 31, 2021, the seven dissenters submitted their dissent in writing. The dissent concludes:
The SJC overlooked the clear deficiencies of Presbytery’s investigation, which is proven by re-opening the record and admitting additional information that sought the “present” positions of TE Johnson, extending consideration of facts well beyond the events complained against. Moreover, it was incumbent on the SJC to deal with the matters raised by the Complainant as issues of Constitutional interpretation instead of deferring to the lower court in this case.[2]
In other words, they believe the SJC erred by submitting new questions for TE Johnson to answer regarding his views on sexuality. To the minority, this is proof that Missouri Presbytery failed to conduct a proper investigation of TE Johnson concerning his views and statements on sexuality.
This week, it was revealed that the SJC chose to reconvene on February 1, 2022 in order to adopt a response to the dissenting opinion. In this response, the majority commends the dissenters “zeal for truth, and their evident desire to promote the peace and purity of the Church,”[3] but also claim that the dissenters do “not accurately reflect either the Record in this Case or the ruling and opinion of the SJC.”[4] The SJC chose to adopt a response to the dissent due to the majority’s belief that the dissenters misrepresented the case in their dissent.
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[1] Standing Judicial Commission, “Decision on the Complaint of TE Ryan Speck v. Missouri Presbytery,” 2021, 28.
[2] Steve Dowling et al., “Dissenting Opinion on the Complain of TR Ryan Speck v. Missouri Presbytery,” 2021, 8.
[3] Standing Judicial Commission, “SJC Answer to the Dissenting Opinion of RE Steve Dowling et Al.,” 2022, 13.
[4] Ibid.

When Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he was not simply saying, “Remember the historical facts of my death.” No, no. He was telling you to take hold of all that he accomplished for you by faith. He gave you bread and wine and the promise of the gospel. You see the gospel in the Supper. You also receive the gospel. Christ, through the minister, gives you bread and wine to taste, to eat, to drink, as signs and seals of his true body and blood.

Let’s think about the Lord’s Supper. Let’s try to better understand this incredible gift from our Lord. What’s God’s intent for the Lord’s Supper? Why did God give you and me the Lord’s Supper?
Heidelberg 67 asks, “Are both the Word and the sacraments, then, intended to focus our faith on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as the only ground of our salvation?” It answers, “Yes, indeed. The Holy Spirit teaches us in the gospel and assures us by the sacraments that our entire salvation rests on Christ’s one sacrifice for us on the cross.” God intends the public preaching of His holy Word to focus your faith on the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ as the only ground of your salvation. Through preaching, the Holy Spirit teaches you the gospel and powerfully works faith in your heart. But God has given you more than preaching. God has given you the sacraments. The Lord’s Supper, then, is intended to teach you as well. The bread and wine are visible, tangible, and physical signs and seals through which the Holy Spirit further declares to you the gospel and assures you of the benefits of the gospel. The Lord’s Supper shows you that the gospel is true and real for you, and through the Supper, the Holy Spirit nourishes and strengthens your faith.
The Lord’s Supper is not a complicated ceremony. It’s pretty simple: bread and wine are served to eat and drink. In this Supper, Jesus himself communicates or gives or imparts himself to you (WSC 88). He said, “This is my body . . . this is my blood of the covenant.” As much as you receive the Supper by faith, Christ is giving you himself and all the benefits of salvation. The Supper is not magic. It possesses no power or grace apart from Christ (WSC 91). Nor does its grace and helpfulness depend on the minister giving it. Christ gives you himself and the benefits of salvation by his Holy Spirit working in you. Christ graciously blesses you, a believer, through the Supper. The blessing only comes through faith. In fact, one who participates in the Supper without faith eats and drinks God’s judgment and wrath against themselves. So faith is the means by which the soul feasts on Christ. Faith is the soul’s mouth.
What is the Lord’s Supper then? I mean, what are we talking about? Westminster Shorter Catechism 96 explains:
The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament, in which by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ’s direction, His death is shown forth; and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of His body and blood, with all His benefits, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. [1]
You need to get this. Christ gives you bread and wine. That’s what he commanded. The bread and wine are signs and seals for you; they truly show you Christ’s sin-atoning death. When you receive, you are eating and drinking substances with your mouth: bread and wine. But as you believe in Christ, you are actually eating and drinking Christ spiritually by faith. You are eating and drinking with the mouth of your soul, which is faith.
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Written by Samuel D. Ferguson |
Monday, October 23, 2023
People have long recognized their need for inner healing and change. Humans suffer from bad thinking, broken hearts, and any number of internal psychological disorders. But the transgender revolution’s path toward healing and wholeness assumes that the deep change a person with gender dysphoria needs must happen mainly on the outside. Those who suffer are told they need to change their external appearance, not their perspective. Increasingly, gender dysphoria is treated not through counseling but through transitioning, a process that involves puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgeries.

A Sweeping Revolution
The transgender revolution is sweeping. Deeper understanding of it requires us to consider three core beliefs that underly it and make it possible. Though often unarticulated, these beliefs are like the framing of a house, giving the transgender movement its present shape and stability.
Belief 1: My Identity Is Self-Determined
We can’t understand the transgender movement if we don’t grasp how it relates to our culture’s obsession over the question Who am I? Traditionally, our identity was something we received, and it was therefore relatively stable. Who we are was understood as determined by family of origin, nationality, biological sex, religion, and perhaps occupation. These matters were largely “givens,” arising not from feelings or decisions but from realities outside a person’s control. Things have changed. Today, identity is a do-it-yourself project based on self-discovery and self-expression.1 This gives personal feelings and decisions pride of place, and it resists external constraint. “[Here is] a view of personhood,” Carl Truman explains, “that has almost completely dispensed with the idea of any authority beyond that of personal, psychological conviction, an oddly Cartesian notion: I think I’m a woman, therefore I am a woman.”2
Belief 2: My Feelings, Not My Body, Determine My Gender
When I was in graduate school, a classmate named Taylor shared with me about his experience of gender dysphoria. Taylor was a biological male but, since early childhood, felt like a girl. Taylor was on a hormone treatment, experimenting with cross-dressing, and hoped to undergo transition surgery. One day Taylor asked me, “Do you feel like a man?” I answered, “Yes.” Taylor fired back: “What does that mean? And don’t tell me it means you like girls and sports. What does it mean to feel like a man?”
For years, that exchange troubled me. How do you describe the feeling of being a man—or a woman—and do so without reaching for cultural stereotypes about gender? In a culture obsessed with gender identity, I was shocked at how hard it was simply to describe what being a man feels like.
Finally, it dawned on me. Taylor’s question contained a significant assumption. Taylor didn’t ask me if I was a man. He asked me if I felt like a man. Subtle but seismic, this shift in verbiage reflects a core belief of the transgender movement: your feelings, not your biology, determine your identity. It’s a mind-over-matter view of people, and we may be tempted to think there’s nothing wrong with this way of thinking. But try applying this logic to age or race. What if a sixteen-year-old trying to buy a six-pack of beer blurts out to the vigilant clerk, “But I feel twentyone”? What if a fifty-year-old man pursuing a sixteenyear-old girl says to her father, “But I feel sixteen”? What if a White male applying for a scholarship designated for African Americans responds to the university examiner, “But I feel Black”?
Our society agrees—at least for now—that age and ethnic identity are determined by cold, hard facts, not feelings. You may have feelings about your age or ethnicity, but those feelings don’t determine your age or ethnic background. Why the difference in the case of gender?
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