Are you holding on to unconfessed sin? The Bible never makes a case for a “probation period” or establishing sincerity before running to Christ when we see our sin. Unbelief and Satan’s lies thrive in our hearts in this dangerous gap between conviction and repentance. In this place, we turn to useless, sinful “remedies”: Atonement: I will double-down on serving in church and reading my Bible. I’m a changed person; I can make up for this fall. Penance: I will punish myself with negative self-talk and emotional self-hate because I must pay for this sin. Self-Pity: I am going to comfort myself with more sin because I’m sad about how this will impact me or my loved ones. I am the victim.

The glow of her computer screen gone, Lexi sat in the darkness of her apartment. I can’t believe I did it again, she thought, seething with self-hatred after viewing pornography. To escape the swirl of shame and condemnation, Lexi put on a movie. It would be nine long days before she would pray or acknowledge God. I’ve messed up too many times, she told herself.
Perhaps you struggle with pornography or have an ongoing relationship of sexual temptation and failure in your life. You think, I can’t go to God again when I keep pursuing this! Or maybe you’re a friend, counselor, or pastor trying to understand another’s pervasive shame.
How can strugglers and helpers move out of the shame-spiral and toward real gospel hope?
Words of Death and Words of Life
Psalm 32 can guide Christian confession for your own heart and be a helpful map if you’re discipling someone burdened by unconfessed sin. It immediately gives a sobering prognosis and a rich assurance:
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (Ps. 32:1–2)
First, the bad news; three words describe our evil hearts. “Transgression” is breaking the law. It connotes smashing or breaking ties in a relationship—always the case when we seek our own way outside of our loving relationship with our Creator. “Sin” signifies failing to meet the standard of God’s perfect law, while “iniquity” indicates the twisted, perverse nature of our hearts as we turn away from God and pursue sin.
But there’s good news! The three words of life in these verses reveal what God accomplishes for us, meeting us in our sin and shame. “Forgiven” speaks of the lifting or removal of a burden that is too great—God knows we simply cannot clean ourselves up enough to lift the weighty burden of our sin; we need help outside ourselves. “Covered” indicates God removing our sin from his sight. When God “counts no iniquity” against us, he calls us his righteous children, clothed in the spotless robes of Jesus himself. Lexi is no longer identified as a “porn struggler” or as “shameful.” In Christ, she’s a new creation.
If you’re stuck wondering how to move toward God after sexual sin or what to say to help a sexual struggler, start here. By faith, Lexi can take hold of the amazing gospel truth that when we confess our sins, our God “is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Burden lifted! Sin covered! Righteousness declared!
The Sickness of Unconfessed Sin
Why did Lexi wait nine days to lift her eyes to God? What was happening in her heart during that painful time? Psalm 32 pictures the dangerous gap between sin and confession.
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Christ has entrusted the church with the responsibility to identify who is making a credible profession of faith in Christ, based upon their life and testimony, and who is therefore baptized into the visible body of believers known as the church. This is a major aspect of what church membership is all about. It’s about individual believers expressing a desire to be united to a true, biblically sound church, and in turn, that church mutually affirming professing believers as members of the body with all the privileges and responsibilities that come with that reciprocal relationship. 

What authority does the church have in the world? Not only is this an important question, but it’s a question that has been at the center of recent conversations concerning the topic of  Christian Nationalism. Yet, when we consider the purpose of the local church, we must understand that this is also a question that gets to the very heart of the church’s God-ordained foundation and function. Therefore, the more specific question we need to be asking is this: What authority has Christ given the church? 
As we prepare to answer that question, we need to begin in the Old Testament. There, we discover that, under the Old Covenant, three offices comprised the divinely designated representatives of God. Those representatives of heaven included the prophets, who declared, “Thus says the Lord,” as they spoke to the people of God on behalf of God (Isa 4:22). It included the priests, who mediated the Old Covenant through sacrifices (Lev 9:15). And it included the kings, who ruled and reigned over the children of Israel (2 Sam 2:4). But now, through the New Covenant, Jesus has been revealed to be the fulfillment of all three of those Old Testament offices. He was and is the ultimate Prophet, Priest, and King. As the Word of God made flesh, Jesus is the Prophet who always proclaims the truth of God (Deut 18:15; John 1:1). As the Mediator of a new and eternal covenant, he is the High Priest, who himself has become our once, for-all-time, sacrifice (Heb 4:14). And as the one who reigns from heaven and will reign on earth, he is the King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev 9:16).
Like a divine rope with three strands, it is by this three-fold office that the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ now leads his church to carry out the gospel mission, as his ambassadors and representatives upon the earth. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17–21:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
The Authority to Make Disciples
So, when was this ambassadorial authority given to Christ’s followers? To see that, we turn our attention to the gospel of Matthew. As we do, it’s worth noting that Matthew’s gospel is primarily focused on helping Jewish believers understand how Jesus, the Messiah and King, has inaugurated his Kingdom and how he expects his Kingdom citizens to live and operate. Of course, as Jesus enters the scene of redemptive history, as recorded in the gospels, he is doing so as the one who has all authority. And, with that authority, he makes a fundamental shift in who represents heaven on earth.
We find that exact moment in Chapter 28 of Matthew’s gospel. Even before his crucifixion, Jesus had commanded his disciples to meet him in Galilee after he was raised from the dead (Mark 14:28). Following that instruction, along with a helpful reminder from an angel at the tomb, the disciples meet the resurrected Christ on a mountain in Galilee (Mark 16:7). As he appears to them, Jesus begins by establishing his all-encompassing authority, declaring, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (v. 18). Notice, that no domain is excluded in this proclamation. Jesus is saying, unequivocally, that everyone and everything, both in heaven and on earth, is within the realm of his sovereign rule and reign. And it will be upon this basis that Jesus grants his disciples the authority to make disciples. 
We see this sacred mantle delivered by Christ in verses 19–20. Jesus says:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
This monumental mission has traditionally been called the Great Commission. Notice that the apostles, who will go on to become the very foundation of the church, are not given a mission to be mercenaries who create converts by force. They’re not called to be vigilantes of law and order who wield the sword of retributive justice. And, they’re not called to obtain political power in order to overthrow the Roman Empire. No, the sacred mantle Christ entrusts to his disciples is the divine authority to proclaim the Word of God and shepherd the people of God for the glory of God. 
In short, disciples are entrusted with the privilege and responsibility to make disciples. We accomplish this, first and foremost, by proclaiming the gospel from our neighborhoods to the nations. Salvation comes only through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, so we must share the good news with everyone in our spheres of contact and influence (Rom 10:13–17). From there, as Jesus explains, disciple making involves baptizing believers in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This public profession of faith and identification with the risen Christ and his church, is the believer’s first act of obedience to Christ. This, then, leads to the culminating portion of Christ’s commission, which is teaching believers to continue submitting to Christ’s lordship in all things, with the accompanying promise that he will always be with us. 
The Authority to Affirm Believers
Thus, it is the church of Jesus Christ, with her Lord as the Head, who now represents heaven on earth (Eph 5:23). As Christ’s ambassadors, the church now bears the weight of the sacred mantle, appointed to fulfill a calling of eternal significance. Yet, one of the great challenges found within the responsibility to make disciples is the existence of imposters. Like Satan himself, who disguises himself as an angel of light, there are imposters in this world who claim to be genuine believers in Jesus Christ, and fellow representatives of heaven, but are not (2 Cor 11:14–15). Jesus warned us of these people and provided the criteria by which to discern their true spiritual identity (Matt 7:15–20).
It is for this reason that the church has also been given the authority to affirm true believers, which we find prescribed in Matthew 16.
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I emailed the PCA General Assembly and its Administrative Committee’s head Bryan Chapell that very question and received no response. An email obtained by The Federalist that was apparently sent to many people who complained about the French pick, however, said the PCA is “currently seeking to discern the accuracy of concerns that have been expressed to this office since the [French] announcement,” and a PCA spokesman has “asked those who have expressed concerns about Mr. French taking unbiblical positions to provide documentation.”

One month from today, Presbyterian leaders will gather in Richmond, Virginia, for the Presbyterian Church in America’s annual General Assembly to discuss and debate church issues and decide on matters of importance. One attendee, nay speaker, however, is decidedly not Presbyterian.
That little ray of sunshine is David French — the Army JAG (in case you didn’t know)-turned-religious liberty litigator-turned-writer whose brain has been so corrupted by Trump derangement that he sold out to The New York Times and The Atlantic, where his columns are indistinguishable from the dishonest drivel of the legacy press’s anti-religious religion reporters. In a phrase, he’s a regular accuser of the brethren.
French makes political polarization his personal brand, so it’s curious that the PCA has invited him to be a panelist at an assembly-wide seminar called “How to Be Supportive of Your Pastor and Church Leaders in a Polarized Political Year.” Is the denomination unaware that French’s family publicly left the PCA because it’s a “hostile” congregation of “neo-Confederates“?
If the PCA knew this and invited him anyway, shame on them. And if they somehow didn’t know because their heads are buried that far in the sand — unlikely, especially considering the PCA’s leftward decline, but I repeat myself — double shame.
So I emailed the PCA General Assembly and its Administrative Committee’s head Bryan Chapell that very question and received no response. An email obtained by The Federalist that was apparently sent to many people who complained about the French pick, however, said the PCA is “currently seeking to discern the accuracy of concerns that have been expressed to this office since the [French] announcement,” and a PCA spokesman has “asked those who have expressed concerns about Mr. French taking unbiblical positions to provide documentation.”
Long before French became a willing participant in atheist Rob Reiner’s anti-Trump “documentary” “God & Country” earlier this year, he was invoking white guilt to toss a cohort of Christians who vote differently than he does into the “Christian nationalism” basket. Evangelicals (specifically white ones) who were hesitant about getting the rushed and mandated Covid jab were actually “reluctant to consider the health of their community” and had a “spiritual problem.”
Less than two weeks after radical pro-abortion and pro-transgender candidate Joe Biden became the presumptive Democrat nominee in 2020, French said those who favored Trump were of low character and competence — even though, as Nathaniel Blake wrote in these pages, French was previously “behind ‘Evangelicals for Mitt’ and spent years arguing that our political leaders need not be avatars for our beliefs.”
Then there’s French’s evolution on so-called “gay marriage” in federal law. He says his views on traditional, biblical marriage have not changed. But during the fight over the misnamed Respect for Marriage Act — which requires every state and the federal government to recognize homosexual “marriages” and was signed into law by French-endorsed President Biden.
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