There is no other Redeemer, no other Savior, no other hope, and in that we rejoice and proclaim Him. This message is the gospel; it is truly good news. God has sent His Son in history to find and save sinners, to pay the debts we owed, to face the punishment we deserved, and to forgive—to bring rebels into His family.

It had been a remarkable few days for the Apostle Peter, which had followed a remarkable month and several remarkable years. He had found himself preaching to thousands, with three thousand responding in faith to his preaching. Every day seemingly brought wonderful new opportunities. A man unable to walk from birth was healed in the name of Jesus Christ. The people were astounded, and Peter took the opportunity again to open his mouth and preach. The religious leaders were not enamored of Peter’s message. They were greatly annoyed and had Peter arrested. The rulers, the elders, and the scribes wanted to know: “What right and what authority have you got to be speaking the way you do?” Again, Peter found his voice and declared to them: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” There was astonishment on the part of the religious leaders, but they warned Peter and John to speak no more of this man. They were to keep the only message of salvation to themselves (Acts 2:1–4:22).
The world hasn’t changed. Few things are more offensive to people than the belief that there is no salvation apart from faith in Christ. We’ve all heard people say, “There are many ways up the mountain to God; we all take different paths” or “What really matters is that you are sincere.” In the culture of which I am a part, people believe in “justification by death.” All you have to do is die, and somehow you are ushered into a better place. There is an unthinking assumption of relativistic pluralism, that all religions are basically the same and that we shouldn’t take any of them too seriously.
Tragically, there are those who call themselves Christians, even in churches, who would believe that the one God worshiped by us is the same Lord worshiped in different ways by Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims. From our earliest days, our culture tells us that we’ve all got a book, all got a symbol, all got a special day. All religions are the same.
It is helpful for us to think about what we believe about the Lord Jesus Christ in relation to these challenges. We believe that He is the Son of God, the Messiah promised in the Old Testament, born of a virgin; He lived a sinless life, was crucified on the cross, was buried, and on the third day rose again to life forevermore. Without these things, we do not have Christianity. Jews are insistent that Jesus was not the Messiah, and they believe that they are still awaiting their Messiah. Islam declares that Jesus didn’t die on the cross and that the claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God is blasphemous. At its very core, Christianity is completely incompatible with these other religions.
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The problem of lack of peace in the PCA is because we disagree regarding matters so essential as the three core marks of the Church (WCF 25:4, Worship, Sacraments, Gospel). If we disagree on these essentials, we will not agree on a united vision on the mission of the Church. These are not mere semantic disagreements.

I grew up in a city with a Presbyterian seminary where breakfast tacos are renowned. But I wasn’t a Presbyterian; I was reared Lutheran.
However, and through no fault of my parents, I became a Dispensationalist through the television ministrations of one wealthy former presidential candidate. He urged viewers like me to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” with the assurance that as I sought the blessing of the Jews in “their” city, I too would be blessed.

But in college, through the ministry of Rev. Irfon Hughes and the other elders at Hillcrest Presbyterian Church, I was introduced to a better, fuller way to understand the Scripture. Instead of trying to understand the Bible through the lens of current geopolitics and the news, I learned to see the Scripture as centered on God and His glory as He redeemed His Church through the blood of His Son.
This changed my whole understanding of the Scripture and, of course, my life.
I. Praying for the Peace of Jerusalem
Psalm 122 is not about praying for the Jewish ethnic group to hold a certain town, but rather the peace that flows from God’s love for, blessing in, and reign over His Church: the place where He meets with His saints.
There thrones for judgment were set,the thrones of the house of David.Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!May they be secure who love you!Peace be within your wallsand security within your towers!—Psalm 122:5–7
The PCA is troubled and not characterized by peace within her courts despite our vows placing a premium on peace. Both for members:
Do you submit yourselves to the government and discipline of the Church, and promise to study its purity and peace?
And especially for officers:
Do you promise to strive for the purity, peace, unity[,] and edification of the Church?
I believe the absence of peace in PCA courts is the product of a lack of purity; we don’t agree on core matters of what it is to be a Reformed Church.
Note how Psalm 122 marvels at the “thrones for judgment…of the House of David” set in Zion immediately before calling the saints to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”
Right judgment must be established in the Church before the Church can have peace. To put it another way: purity must be secured before peace can be enjoyed; until the PCA unites to work for the purity of the Church, she will not have peace.
Our Confession reminds us there will be no completely pure church until Christ returns:
Particular churches…are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.—Westminster Confession of Faith, 25:4
Westminster gives three marks of the Church, which together are a superb measure of church health:

The Gospel Rightly Preached (biblically)
Sacraments Rightly Administered (biblically)
God Rightly Worshiped (biblically)

Those three issues are at the core of our disagreements in the PCA.1
II. Confusion in the Marks of the Church
A. Biblical Worship
In a recent episode of the most influential and significant podcast within the PCA, Elder Doug Sharp noted the difficulty of recommending a PCA church to travelers because of the broad diversity reflected in our congregations, which is nowhere more pronounced than in worship.
1. What is Worship, and Who Leads It?
Recent events suggest there is not agreement on what public worship is in the PCA. A prominent congregation in New York featured a purportedly ordained woman “teaching” in the worship service (or was it just an event that looked like a worship service; the church website lists it under “sermons,” but the page itself says it was a “BIBLE STUDY”?).2
Whether the event was understood to be a bible study or a service of public worship remains ambiguous, but what is not unclear is that the Lord’s Supper was observed during this event, which raises another issue: the propriety of observing the Lord’s Supper without the preaching of the Word. It seems there is no unity of understanding in the PCA regarding the distinction between public worship and other activities of the Church.
The example of an Episcopalian priestess preaching (or was it teaching?) in a PCA congregation may be something of an extreme, but not unique. One former Covenant Seminary administrator even took to social media to celebrate his daughter the preacher at an event in another faith communion:

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 Flavel was flexible, resilient, and persevering amid suffering. When he could not preach, he wrote. For example, during the persecution of Nonconformists in the 1670s and early 1680s, Flavel published at least nine books, including A Token for Mourners, The Touchstone of Sincerity, The Method of Grace, and Treatise on the Soul of Man. Flavel’s Mystery of Providence is perhaps the best book ever written on the doctrine of divine providence. It comes from the pen of a man who experientially knew suffering in the crucible of affliction.

John Flavel was born in the town of Bromsgrove, England. He was the son of Richard Flavel, a pastor who died (along with John’s mother) during the Great Plague of 1665 while imprisoned at Newgate for nonconformity. After receiving an education in the Scriptures from his father, John began his studies at the University of Oxford, where he was a remarkably diligent student. After receiving ordination from the presbytery of Salisbury in 1650, Flavel settled in Diptford, where he honed his gifts. In 1656, he accepted a call to minister in the seaport town of Dartmouth. This position earned a smaller income than he had received in Diptford, but his work was more profitable. Many were converted through his ministry.
Government officials ejected Flavel from the pulpit in 1662 for nonconformity but he continued to meet secretly with his parishioners for worship. Once he even disguised himself as a woman on horseback to reach a secret meeting place where he preached and administered baptism. Another time, when pursued by authorities, he plunged his horse into the sea and escaped arrest by swimming through a rocky area to safety.
After the Five Mile Act went into effect in 1665—prohibiting pastors from teaching within five miles of their pastorates—Flavel moved to Slapton. There, he continued to minister to many in his congregation. He secretly preached in the woods, sometimes until midnight. Once, soldiers rushed in and dispersed the congregation. They apprehended and fined several fugitives, but the rest brought Flavel to another wooded area where he continued his sermon. Flavel preached from other unique pulpits, including Salstone Rock, an island submerged at high tide.
After King Charles II gave Nonconformists greater religious freedom in 1672 by issuing the Declaration of Indulgence, Flavel returned to Dartmouth. When officials canceld the indulgence the following year, Flavel once more secretly preached in homes, secluded neighborhoods, or remote forests. In the summer of 1682, he sought safety in London, where he assisted in a friend’s congregation. Flavel returned to Dartmouth in 1684, where he continued his ministry under house arrest. He preached there every Lord’s Day and on many weekday evenings to the gathered crowds. He was faithful even in the face of opposition from the government and hostile townspeople (who burned his effigy in a mob). Yet he wrote concerning his beloved Dartmouth, “Oh, that there were not a prayerless family in this town!”
In 1687, King James II issued another indulgence for Nonconformists that allowed Flavel to preach publicly again. His congregation built a large chapel to herald his return to the pulpit.
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