Grief gripped the entire Nashville community. In shock, as pundits and politicians attempted to make sense of the senseless, across our presbytery men and women gathered in their homes, schools, and churches to pray. We did not need to ask, “Why did this have to happen? Why did this have to happen to us?” We know why. It was for precisely this sort of calamity that Jesus came in the first place. He came to deliver us from our sin and the corruption of this valley of tears.

“Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation.  And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history—the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can’t seem to keep in our collective memory.” Hilaire Belloc
Day dawned on March 27th in Middle Tennessee with the redbuds blooming, the songbirds trilling, and the gentle breeze blowing under crystalline springtime skies. There was little portent of what the unfolding of the day might bring. Several committees had gathered and were diligently working on preparations for the upcoming stated meeting of the Nashville Presbytery. The senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church, Chad Scruggs, was in one room, and several of his elders were in the next room over.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, our deliberations were interrupted by a flurry of calls and texts: there was an active shooter at Covenant’s school facility. We emptied into the hallway, stricken, eyes clouded with unbelief, horror, and grief. Spontaneous cries of supplication and intercession went up. The Covenant men hurried on their way back to the church. The rest of us began frenzied monitoring of the news while contacting our own flocks and families to mobilize prayer.
Our worst fears were realized. A disturbed young woman armed with assault weapons and seething hate shot her way into the well-secured building and proceeded to take the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adults before the Nashville Metro Police were forced to stop the assailant with lethal force. One of the victims was the daughter of Pastor Scruggs.
Grief gripped the entire Nashville community. In shock, as pundits and politicians attempted to make sense of the senseless, across our presbytery men and women gathered in their homes, schools, and churches to pray. We did not need to ask, “Why did this have to happen? Why did this have to happen to us?” We know why. It was for precisely this sort of calamity that Jesus came in the first place. He came to deliver us from our sin and the corruption of this valley of tears. Moreover, He comforts us in our pain and sorrow.
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We must walk in repentance always seeking the Lord’s will. This obedient walk is one of spiritual growth. Instead of works righteousness we must obey the Lord in our good works all for His glory. We will do good works, but as a product of Christ’s Righteousness in us not earning salvation by those works. Also, when we are blessed by godly pastors, elders and deacons who refuse to compromise with the World or become part of the Compromised Church, we should thank the Lord for them, pray for them, help and support them as God leads.

1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2 and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.3 By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. 4 The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; 5 but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: 6 the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. 1 John 2:1-6 (NASB)
One of the most tragic aspects of the Compromised Church, which is a product of its emphasis on numbers, baptisms. relavance, and worldliness is its complete lack of correct theology pertaining to salvation and assurance. Those who are believing they became part of the Kingdom of God in these churches are, for the most part, responding to a doctrine of salvation based upon some form of works righteousness which is the belief that one’s standing before God is founded and maintained by works of merit. These works begin with walking an aisle at an invitation then praying a sinner’s prayer followed by baptism. Assurance of salvation is then always looking back at that moment as when the believer chose to be “saved” by obeying the call at the invitation.
The need to repent is never mentioned in this type of “evangelical” church. It is never mentioned because no mention of why it is necessary is ever mentioned either. These preachers never mention God’s Holiness, Righteousness or Justice. His wrath against all sin is not mentioned either. Instead God is presented as a loving god who wants all people to simply seek Him and do some religious work so they can become part of His Kingdom. When people do respond to this “evangelical” invitation they are never counseled about their sin and their need to repent, deny self and take up their cross as they follow Jesus. Instead, they simply assent to whatever doctrinal statements the church wants them to agree to and that’s that. There is never a call to biblical discipleship.
Since this type of “salvation” permeates the Compromised Church their numbers are dominated by simply religious people who are, for the most part, unregenerate. They base their assurance of salvation on their religious work at that moment when they assented. They may have even prayed a “sinners prayer” before they were presented to the church for membership and baptism. However, there has been no regeneration by God because the genuine Gospel is not preached in these churches.
These works righteousness Christians, being unregenerate, are basing their salvation on their own work at the moment of their spurious conversion. When they doubt, and they will, they are told to look back to that day when they knelt and prayed that sinner’s prayer and were baptized. However, if they are ever presented with Bible passages such as the one I placed at the top of this post (1 John 2:1-6) they struggle because they have no real spiritual power to keep God’s commandments. They don’t grow in grace because they are unregenerate. They are religious, that’s all.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Friday, June 3, 2022
And so surely the Christian cause of this month should be opposing Pride Month and its flag in as public and strident a way as many have opposed racism and its symbols. Let us have many blog posts and tweets on the topic. And may we even have pointed op-eds and major articles slamming Pride by those Christians privileged enough to have access to the pages of The Atlantic and The New York Times. Social justice surely demands it. And I, for one, am looking forward to reading them all.

If anybody wants to understand what is happening to the public square in America—indeed, if anyone wants to know how America, or at least her ruling class, wishes to understand itself, they need look no further than Pride Month. If the arrival of the Pilgrims, the founding of the nation, and even the contribution of Martin Luther King Jr. receive no more than 24 hours on the national calendar, the LGBTQ+ alliance has an entire month to party in the streets. And this street party is enabled by the countless commercial ventures that post rainbow flags in their windows and on their websites.
For anyone not completely hoodwinked by the erotic obsessions of our day, taking pride in one’s sexual identity—indeed, even considering sexual desire to be an identity—would seem at best pitiful and at worst a deep perversion of what it means to be human. Yet, here we are. And we should not underestimate the power of what it signifies.
It is a basic fact of history that if you control time and space, you also control the culture. The early Christians of the fourth century knew that as they slowly but surely claimed space in pagan Roman culture for churches and marked the rhythm of time with the development of the liturgical calendar.
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