Pastor, persevere to the end of your days in keeping a close watch on both your piety and your theology. You will never reach a level of maturity or a time in your life when you no longer need this vigilance. Again, when Paul writes or speaks specifically to ministers, he basically repeats what he says here to Timothy. To the elders of the Ephesian church, he says, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock” (Acts 20:28). When he says, “and to all the flock,” we know Paul is urging them to “Keep a close watch on . . . the teaching,” because in the very next verses he warns the elders that false teachers will soon come, “not sparing the flock” — men who will “draw away the disciples after them” (verses 29–30).

During the 24 years I served in pastoral ministry, I saw a continual stream of advertisements about how to grow a bigger church. In nearly 50 years of preaching and teaching, I have heard dozens of messages on evangelism, missions, and church growth. And yet I could probably count on one hand the number of times one of these ads or messages mentioned the only verse in the Bible that essentially says, “Do this, and you will see people saved.”
The message of this verse was so important to the apostle Paul that when he specifically addresses elders in the New Testament, he communicates its essence. This is also the only verse in the Bible (that I can recall) that gives the same exhortation three times. Think it’s important?
What is the verse? First Timothy 4:16,
Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
For 28 years, I have turned to this text every semester on the last day of class. In the compact space of two short sentences are three imperatives and two promises. We’ll begin with the imperatives before turning to the promises.
1. ‘Keep a Close Watch on Yourself.’
How does a minister “keep a close watch” on himself? By cultivating faithfulness to and avoiding the erosion of his devotion to Christ. How does he do this? By obedience to a command earlier in this chapter: “Train yourself for godliness” (1 Timothy 4:7). And how does he do this? By consistently and wholeheartedly practicing the biblical spiritual disciplines, especially the disciplines related to the word of God and prayer, for these are the God-given means of godliness.
Godliness — a Bible word essentially synonymous with Christlikeness, holiness, and sanctification — is cultivated by the personal and interpersonal spiritual disciplines, both positively (vivification) and negatively (mortification). In other words, these biblical habits are the means through which the Holy Spirit works to help us experience God and grow in grace as well as to defeat sin.
Remember that this command was first given to a minister (Timothy) and then by extension to all Christians. So, do not think, pastor, that while your people will become more godly by practicing the spiritual disciplines, you will become more Christlike simply by being in the ministry. The temptations and pressures of the ministry will conspire to make you more ungodly if you do not train yourself for godliness. Mentally remove everything in your life that’s related to ministry. With what is left, could it be said that you are growing more Christlike?
I strongly urge you to read Richard Baxter’s treatment of 1 Timothy 4:16 — especially his eight reasons why you need to keep a close watch on yourself — in his pastoral classic, The Reformed Pastor. Particularly note his third reason: you are exposed to greater temptations than others. Satan is not stupid. He knows that if he can make you fall, it will have a more damaging effect on the church than if he fells the guy who comes once a month and sits in the back row.
Unless a pastor — new or old — devotes himself to the scriptural means of godliness, he will cease to be a godly man. And what healthy church wants a pastor who isn’t godly?
2. ‘Keep a Close Watch on the Teaching.’
In this pastoral imperative, “the teaching” refers to doctrine — to “the teaching” found in “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Put another way, “Study theology, pastor!”
Even to the end of his life, Paul was an example of diligent study. Despite his thorough knowledge of the Scriptures and all he had seen and experienced as an apostle, he pled with Timothy in the final chapter of his last inspired letter, “When you come, bring . . . the books, and above all the parchments” (2 Timothy 4:13).
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Written by Robert A.J. Gagnon |
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Christians who attend a “gay wedding” should be honest with themselves and announce publicly that they have changed their mind about homosexual practice in key ways that deviate from the only witness of Scripture. They will eventually come to that realization in the not-too-distant-future if they aren’t already putting on a fake mask now.

The question as to whether it is right and loving for a faithful believer in Christ to go to a same-sex “wedding” should be answered from a Christ-centered, biblical perspective. If the reader agrees with that premise, then the moral answer is a relatively easy one: Certainly not.
To be sure, carrying out this answer when invited to a same-sex wedding involving a family member, friend, or employer may create internal disquiet in the faithful Christian. It might lead to a severance of relationship or affect one’s job. Yet Christians are never assured by God that doing what is truly right and loving will never come at a cost. Quite the opposite. I will come back to why it is a scripturally easy answer; but first I want to note the differing opinion of some prominent Evangelicals.
Some Evangelicals Who Answer “Yes” or Allow a “Yes”
Some Evangelical leaders today who claim to accept (or at least once accepted) the scriptural view that homosexual practice is a sin do not see the answer as a certain “No.” Timothy Dalrymple, the CEO and President of Christianity Today, formerly the flagship magazine of Evangelicalism, actually attended a “gay wedding” in 2019, where he engaged in activities that could only be characterized as celebratory. His defense to me was that the employee who invited him was a dear friend to whom Timothy’s attendance meant a lot. So he went, albeit telling his friend that he held to a “traditional view of marriage.” For him it was “a Romans 14 issue,” a decision left to each Christian’s Spirit-led conscience.
Similarly, when addressing whether a Christian can attend a same-sex “wedding,” Focus on the Family called it “a Romans 14 issue” and cited Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4 as an example of how Jesus “scandalously overleapt all of the social barriers in order to show His love and concern for her,” but without expressing “approval for her lifestyle or behavior.” It seems that Focus uses John 4 in part to indicate that one could attend a “gay wedding.” Yet nothing in that text suggests that Jesus would have attended an immoral wedding ceremony, least of all one celebrating a woman being married to another woman.
Preston Sprinkle, a biblical scholar who heads up his Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender, thinks that saying “yes” to an invitation to attend a “gay wedding” is one of the options that “can be faithful to the biblical view that marriage is between two sexually different persons—as long as you don’t send mixed signals to the couple getting married.” He too appeals to Romans 14. He even advises parents to attend their child’s “gay wedding” lest they be shut out of their child’s life forever (and grandkids!) and miss an “opportunity to embody Christ’s love in your son/daughter’s life.” This is responding to the child’s manipulation and extortion to do evil, setting a pattern that will eventually lead to de facto, if not explicit, acceptance of the child’s immoral actions.
Megachurch pastor Andy Stanley is reported by one pastor as saying at a meeting with pastors (corroborated by other pastors present), “I don’t do gay weddings, but I can’t say I would never do a gay wedding. . . . If my granddaughter asked me someday, maybe I would” (also this). However, these are probably not the words of a Christian pastor who still believes homosexual unions to be sinful. Stanley, who has been drifting toward acceptance of homosexual unions for at least a decade, employs counselors like Debbie Causey who direct Christians struggling with same-sex attraction to ministries that affirm homosexual practice.
Not “a Romans 14 Issue” as the Analogue of Incest in 1 Corinthians 5 Shows
Attending a “gay wedding” is not “a Romans 14 issue” where believers can agree to disagree over matters of indifference like eating meat or not, which do not determine entrance into the kingdom of God (Rom. 14:17). Those who think otherwise either have difficulty reasoning analogically on this matter or else have departed in some way from the scriptural view of homosexual practice. They use arguments like wanting to stay in relationship with a “gay” family member or friend; imitating Jesus’ practice of eating with sinners; or comparing attending a “gay wedding” to attending a wedding of a divorced believer.
All these arguments can easily be seen as wanting if one compares attending a “gay wedding” to its most appropriate analogue: Attending an incestuous wedding between consenting adults “committed” to one another—for example, a man and his mother, or a woman and her brother. There may even be a “genetic sexual attraction” between close kin who are reunited late in life (see also this, this, this, and this). Incestuous unions are comparable to homosexual unions in terms of degree of severity (though from a biblical perspective homosexual practice is even worse) and problematic aspect (sex with another who is too much of an embodied same, whether as regards kinship or gender).
Paul’s response to the incestuous man in 1 Corinthians 5 gives us a good indication of what Paul’s response to attending a “gay wedding” would have been. True, Paul doesn’t mention that the self-professed Christian man who is in a sexual relationship with his stepmother is getting married to his stepmother. Yet, given Paul’s overall reaction to the situation, it is historically absurd to contend that Paul would have given his consent to their attendance of such an incestuous wedding, had it been requested.
The Corinthian response of being “puffed up,” inflated with pride, at their ability to tolerate an incestuous relationship, certainly made matters worse. That does not mean, though, that had they made clear to the incestuous man their disapproval of the relationship, Paul would have approved their attendance of a wedding between the two.
Paul insists rather that the Corinthian believers should “mourn” his actions, because it puts the offender at high risk of exclusion from God’s kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9–10). One mourns at a funeral. A person cannot go to a wedding mourning, since the entire point of the event is to celebrate the rendering permanent of the union. Marriage involves a commitment to stay in the union permanently. In this case, the parties would be declaring their intent to sin egregiously as long as they live, and celebrating that declaration. A believer can’t attend such a ceremony.
Indeed, Paul recommends that the Corinthians put the incestuous man, who “calls himself a brother [i.e. a believer],” out of the community (“remove from your midst the one who did/does this deed”), to cease “associating with” him, “not even to eat with such a one” (1 Cor. 5:2, 11). Obviously, such injunctions preclude something much worse: Going to the wedding of a man celebrating the grave immorality of incest. Going to a wedding that celebrates a gravely immoral union would be comparable to going to a ritual celebrating a person’s suicide or self-immolation.
Paul’s Act of Love in the Face of Today’s Excuse to Stay in Relationship
Paul’s actions may seem harsh, but Paul’s hope was to yet save the offender’s “spirit . . . on the day of the Lord” (1 Cor. 5:5). Paul’s actions are remedial, not punitive. The offender needs a massive wake-up call; otherwise, he is heading to hell in a hand basket. He does not need further accommodations to his death-inducing immorality by the church. Paul wants the incest to have stopped yesterday, for the sake of the offender (whom he seeks to reclaim), for the sake of the community (whose accommodations to immorality are threatening their existence), and for the sake of God (who expended the ultimate cost to redeem them, the atoning death of his Son).
We should bear in mind that this is the same Paul who wrote in marvelous praise of love just eight chapters later in the same letter. Paul did not violate that praise in the actions that he took toward the incestuous man.
To claim that Paul gives us no advice as to whether a believer can attend an incestuous wedding, making it “a Romans 14 issue,” would be historically ridiculous. Paul’s remarks in 1 Corinthians 5 make crystal clear that there is no way that he would have condoned attendance at such a celebration of immorality. Try any of the arguments that some Christians use to justify attendance at a “gay wedding” and see if they work well for an incestuous “wedding.” For example:
“It is better to go to an incestuous wedding and stay in a relationship with a person who wants to marry a parent or sibling than it is to not go and thereby cut oneself off from future opportunities to witness to Christ.” Do you think such an argument would pass muster for Paul, much less for Jesus? Attending an incestuous wedding communicates acceptance even if you tell your incestuous friend that you do not approve of incestuous unions.
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According to Erwin Lutzer, it is his character, his nature, and his will. I’ve heard it said that character is who you are when no one is looking. God reveals himself as someone who existed long before there was anyone looking, and then as now, his character was marked by love.

God has graciously chosen to initiate relationship with human beings who, left to themselves, deny his power and even his very existence. He does this through revelation—through revealing himself to us.
But what is it that he reveals about himself? According to Erwin Lutzer, it is his character, his nature, and his will. I’ve heard it said that character is who you are when no one is looking. God reveals himself as someone who existed long before there was anyone looking.
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