Adults have a responsibility to prioritize children’s needs and well-being. Subjecting children to irreversible “treatments” in an effort to change their bodies is harmful, and many Americans still recognize this, even if they are afraid to say so in public. It is discouraging and troubling when people are unable or unwilling to say what a woman is. It is easy to stay silent when there is an entire month celebrating a radical sexual agenda and we are constantly being told that everyone else agrees. But not only is this agenda far less popular than we are led to believe, it is and always will be harmful because it is at odds with God’s good design. Parades and marches—even surgical intervention—will never change that.

A study released earlier this year found that 43 percent of adults between the ages of 20 and 65 say that children and teens with gender dysphoria should not be subjected to puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and so-called “sex reassignment” surgery. However, a more recent study asked a slightly different question. This study asked if people believed that transgenderism is a healthy condition and whether they were willing to say so publicly. 64 percent said that it was not a healthy condition, but only 30 percent were willing to say so publicly. Seventy-eight percent were opposed to children being encouraged to undergo gender transition. Similarly, 63 percent of American adults were opposed to redefining sex to include “gender identity.”
The majority of children who struggle with gender dysphoria become comfortable with their bodies by the time they reach adulthood if they do not undergo social or medical “transition.” “Transitioning” a child signs him up for a lifetime of invasive medical interventions that come with serious, lifelong consequences.
Because God’s Word accurately describes his world, we know that the biblical view of gender and sexuality is the truth and that our bodies follow that design. This means that what God has to say about sexuality and our bodies is true not just for believers but for everyone, and that the transgender movement’s insistence that a person can be “born in the wrong body” or that mutilating surgeries and hormone “treatments” will help people become their “true selves” is always harmful.
As Christians, we are called to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God.
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In a day when the message of the cross is so often marginalised and its meaning so often undermined, doubling our efforts in proclaiming it could hardly be timelier and more relevant. Those who deny, distort, dismiss, and disparage the biblical doctrine of the atonement do injury to the gospel. Therefore, my brothers, preach the atonement. Preach it powerfully, passionately, and plainly.

“I advise you to keep close to the atonement. The doctrine of the cross is the sun in the solar system of truth.” Every gospel preacher would do well to heed this timeless counsel from John Newton. The atonement refers to the entirety of Jesus’ work of reconciling God and men, by dying as a substitute, and paying the infinite penalty for our sins. Christ died in place of sinners and bore the sins that God justly condemns and punishes. This teaching, that God himself has made full atonement for sinners (1 Peter 2:24), is unique to Christianity.
As such, it’s no hyperbole to say that the atonement is the real heart of the gospel—and the lifeblood of the Christian life. A crucified Saviour is what sets Christianity apart from all other world religions. This understanding is apostolic to the core. Even Paul preached as of first importance that “Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). More tellingly, he identifies the gospel as “the message of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1:18). One can scarcely read the Gospels without seeing that this very idea was the orienting reality of Jesus’ life and ministry. He came to “give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
No Greater Theme
Worthwhile preaching doesn’t merely rake leaves across the surface of scripture. Rather, it drills deep to mine out the gold. Such ought to be our preaching of the atonement. We need to preach that the atonement is perfect (Hebrews 7:26-28), efficacious for all those who come to God and believe (John 6:37, 40; Isaiah 53:5). We also ought to preach its various motifs: reconciliation (Romans 5:10-11; 2 Corinthians 5:18-20); redemption (Romans 3:24; Galatians 3:13); propitiation (Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17); sacrifice (Ephesians 5:2; Hebrews 9:1-10:18), forgiveness (Ephesians 1:7); and victory (Hebrews 2:14; 1 John 3:8).
Those of us who preach are never at risk of being too atonement-centred. In fact, to preach the doctrine of salvation without properly spotlighting the atonement is to preach an emaciated gospel at best and a non-gospel at worst. Paul’s resolve was to “preach Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). The knowledge of Christ crucified stands perched above all other knowledge. We may also deduce that there can’t be true pastoral ministry apart from the cross.

In light of this apostolic precedence, we too must centre the cross in our preaching and pastoring. If we do, we will benefit ourselves and our hearers in the following five ways:
1. The Atonement Establishes Both Identity and Assurance
Our essential identity as Christians is tied up with Christ’s work on the cross. Martin Luther said that the sweetness of the gospel is found in the first person pronouns: “the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Jesus did not die for nameless, faceless people. He died for “me.” His cross stands as an eternal monument of God’s holy and infinite love towards believers, like me.
His love is such that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8)! The cross testifies to the matchless blessedness of every believer. So Paul asks: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
That Christ died in our stead also cements our assurance of eternal forgiveness (2 Corinthians 5:15-21; Galatians 3:13). The words of Augustus Toplady ring ever so true: “Payment God cannot twice demand, / First from my bleeding surety’s hand, / And then again from mine.”
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We should not underestimate what God will do with wise children equipped with a biblical worldview in a covenant context. And we should not fear bringing them into the world, for God’s aim and desire is to use them to get glory for Himself in Babylon.

I don’t want to bring kids into this evil culture” is something I have heard more than once. Well-meaning Christians have long questioned the wisdom of bringing children into a fallen world. And while this hesitation might seem prudent, God doesn’t hesitate to command husband and wife, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28; 9:1). The earth is no longer a utopian Eden but a post-Eden wilderness, what the New Testament calls Babylon (1 Peter 5:13–14; Rev. 17:5). This Babylonian context isn’t foreign to children raised in covenant homes. The historical nation of Babylon was where the Jewish exiles were sent. Of those exiles, most notable were four Jewish “youths…Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah,” otherwise known by their Babylonian names: Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego (Dan. 1:1–7).
From these four youths, we find an unexpected parenting lesson: a lesson made more significant since these “youths” arrived in Babylon not as boys, six, eight, maybe ten years old but (according to the majority opinion among scholars) in their late teens or early twenties. In any, the text explicitly says they were “youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, and endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace” (Dan. 1:4).
The point is this, when these four Jewish youth entered Babylon, they entered equipped with a rigorous Hebrew education and biblical worldview that enabled them to take their stand against the secular ideologies of Babylonian paganism (Dan. 1:8–21; 3:8–30; 6). Babylon, then as now, is not neutral; it seeks to indoctrinate. These young exiles were ordered to “defile” themselves but “resolved” to abstain (Dan.1:8–21). When threatened with a fiery furnace for not bowing to idols, they refused to turn from Yahweh (Dan. 3:8–30). When commanded not to pray or else die in the lions’ jaws, they opened the curtains and kept praying (Dan. 6). Our children may never face these state-enforced punishments, but we would be naive not to expect modern versions to appear. Many concerned parents want to know what’s needed to prepare our children, and while it is tempting to want a few easy parenting tips that require little effort, moral resolve to stand in Babylon is not created that way. Scripture is clear (for Israel’s young exiles and ours) that preparing for Babylon requires a certain teaching in a certain context.
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