“Intersectionality, sweetheart.”

That’s how I answered a question from my then 9-year-old daughter. She asked me what I was reading about. As it seems like many pastors were busy doing in 2020, I had retired for the evening to my chair to ponder one of our many social challenges. The rest of our brief conversation went like this:

“What is intersectionality?”“I’ll teach you about it when you’re older.”“Why not now? Is it a scary idea?”“Yes, it is.”

I’m not the first dad to be faced with a decision like that. Corrie Ten Boom once asked her father, “What is sexism?” He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked her to pick up his traveling case, filled with gear for his work on watches. “It’s too heavy,” she said. “Yes,” he replied, “and it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now, you must trust me to carry it for you” (The Hiding Place, 42).

What Is Intersectionality?

I am carrying a growing list of thoughts and theories about the world for my children. Intersectionality has been one of them. Some days, this knowledge feels quite heavy.

Intersectionality began as a way for legal scholars to recognize a phenomenon. An individual can be discriminated against as a woman and as a minority at the same time. Simple enough. But the picture is more complicated than that, as I was learning.

Intersectionality emerges from the worldview of critical theory that views all human relationships through the lens of power dynamics. In this worldview, the story of humanity is that of a grand struggle for liberation from oppression. Intersectionality makes three assumptions: first, that every human interaction is characterized by an oppressor-oppressed relationship; second, that this oppression can be traced along impersonal group-identity markers such as skin color and sex, even weight and age; and third, we know oppressor groups from oppressed groups by disparities, which are always the result of discrimination. Each combination of intersecting traits represents a unique victim group. Only by elevating the voices of these victims while silencing “privileged” oppressors can we tear down the structures that hold humanity captive.

How Intersectionality Oppresses

The Scriptures are emphatic: sin is pervasive and oppression is real. No individual or group is exempt. Sin can even be systemic. But intersectionality presumes that we can sort out oppressed people and oppressors by mere demographic details. No surprise, the fruit of this false worldview not only undermines the gospel but also advances its own oppression.

My family feels that oppression in a unique way.

That day I declined to explain intersectionality to my daughter, and she skipped off to play with Legos. But her perfect 9-year-old question — “Is intersectionality scary?” — has stuck with me. Why didn’t I want to tell her about intersectionality? What was I scared of? Sitting in that chair, the subtle but socially corrosive power of the intersectional worldview was palpable to me. I don’t think I was scared for her. But I was sad for her and for all my children. My whole family has skin in this game that’s being played on us. Insight into how that is a reality for our family will be instructive for anyone living in our intersectional age.

So, let me introduce you to my family.

Test Case for Intersectionality?

Kristi and I were married in 2003, and today we are a family of seven. No two of our kids are alike.

Our oldest two, a boy and a girl, are 13. We call them “the twins.” My oldest son is a ferocious reader with an interest in history. He’s not into sports, but he can school you in Greek mythology and dominate you with the yo-yo. My oldest daughter is a nurturer. She will feel your feelings before you do. Her sensitivity is a strength with typical challenges that come from sensing what others are thinking. She’s also a budding artist.

Then, there’s our 11-year-old daughter. She’s by far the most imaginative. No one can play as she does, and no one can get us laughing at the dinner table as she can. She has all the marks of a typical youngest child, which was her badge of honor until the two babies were born. In 2019 God gave us a little girl who has an amazing poker face and a little boy who is all smiles.

I see all this and more when I look at my kids. Just like any parent. Each child has a unique profile of strengths and difficulties, interests and insecurities, birth-order traits and unique potential.

So, what makes our family a unique test case for the impact of intersectionality? All but one of our children came to us by adoption.

Wait, Who Are We?

If you stand my kids in order of age and then squint, you’ll see a beautiful shade of color that moves from dark to light. The oldest two are from Ethiopia. They’re four months apart. Our middle child is from Jackson, Mississippi, probably of Haitian descent. Our baby girl is older than her brother by six months. She’s from Atlanta, Georgia, part Cherokee, part African origin, and part Caucasian. The youngest and only biological child is a white male. He is as pale as mom and dad, with blood that goes back to Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. We’re America under one roof. You can see where this is going.

When my daughter asked me that question about intersectionality, to whom was she talking? A white man? To whom was I talking? A young black girl in America? What is our relationship, exactly? Am I her colonizer? Is she my victim? Are we guilty of murder or of cultural genocide, having killed her ethnic heritage? We’ve been told this by academic journals and our social media feeds.

Should my brown-skinned children hold a grievance against my white-skinned son? Does my part-Cherokee daughter have a trump card over all of us? When my white son figures out that he holds no moral authority, should he search out and hold the atrocities of his siblings’ ancestors against them?

No, no, and no.

Compassion or Cruelty?

Oppression is a reality, and people can be exploited and despised on the basis of skin color. We need to say this. Though the ideology I’m addressing is parasitic and destructive, we must not overlook the history of racism in America. Some, to be sure, wrongly make racist oppression the main thing about America. Nevertheless, we must remember our own country’s history in appropriate ways.

“Oppression is a reality, and people can be exploited and despised on the basis of skin color. We need to say this.”

In recent years, however, sincere but vague and misguided feelings of compassion on account of that history have undermined a proper remembrance and growth. People we love have come to view the world through the lens of oppression — seeing “white people” as villains and “black people” as victims. Though they wouldn’t put it that way, this perspective is evident when they comfortably mock white people as ignorant and out of touch and respectfully, even reverently, speak about black people as an enlightened class due to their lived experience. For some, seeking absolution for sins they didn’t commit is a way to deal with false guilt; for others, accepting responsibility, even if they are uneasy about doing so, is a means to avoid cancellation. No doubt, it is a means to power for some who feel powerless and a means to innocence for others who feel guilty by association with America’s past. In the midst of these are opportunists of every kind.

We can assume the best concerning many well-meaning friends. People can be sincere and decent in their intentions even if there are sinister designs behind these ideas. But none of this has felt compassionate to our family. It is false compassion when others tell my kids — over and over — that their neighbors are secretly afraid of them, that police officers are at war with them, and that their teachers don’t believe in them. Cruel is a better term for it.

It’s cruel to tell children that their future will be determined by the moral improvement of intractably racist people.

It’s cruel to tell my children that they can make it in life as long as others hold them to lower standards.

It’s cruel to tell my children that potential employers won’t hire them because of their skin color. It is equally cruel — and equally racist, it seems to me — for businesses to treat my children as particularly valuable hires because of the color of their skin. Implicit in this are two conflicting and crushing messages: no one wants you because of your skin, but we want you because of your skin. At its best, it’s a misguided attempt to right historic wrongs that short-circuits a natural process of development. At its worst, it’s a self-serving attempt to avoid the charge of racism that treats real people as pawns. Either way, these practices send a subtle message that undermines the dignity and confidence of my children as they face the future.

Discerning adults may reject this intersectional framework but then downplay its impact. I can appreciate that spirit. But my children are at impressionable and tender ages, and they are the battlefield targets of this teaching. If our family took these ideas seriously — as serious proponents intend — they would suffocate our love, steal our joy, and destroy my family. Intersectionality brings the division of mother against child and son against father in very different ways than Christ does.

It has been a while since my daughter asked me that question. Since then, I’ve come to realize that our family is not only a good test case for the impact of bad ideas, but also a good testing ground for a more biblical and beautiful way of seeing one another. That’s one reason we are talking about intersectionality now. How is that going for us? How am I protecting my family at the intersection of race in America? If an intersection got us into this mess, maybe an intersection can get us out.

Right of Way

New drivers tend to avoid busy intersections for fear of hurting someone or getting hurt. They are not being unreasonable. Yet a simple rule keeps everyone safe: yield to the car that arrived first. Instead of yielding to an ideology that just recently arrived on the scene, we give the right of way to God’s word, spanning all the way back to Genesis and the beginning. Understanding right-of-way protects us from confusion and collision.

Thinking further on this analogy, this occurred to me: if right-of-way protects us at a driving intersection, perhaps it can help us at the intersection of our many differences. Perhaps the best way to protect my family against the group-identity framework of intersectionality is to do what we have always done with them: to tell them who they are. My children are individuals, yes. They also belong to various groups. But the way forward at this intersection is to get these aspects of their identity in the right order.

I want three identities especially fixed in the minds of my kids. These are not the only important facts about them, but these are the especially objective and therefore orienting facts about them.

‘You are made in God’s image.’

It’s this basic truth that helped me understand the first reason I didn’t want to tell my daughter about intersectionality: by fixing our eyes on color, intersectionality reduces the resolution of our shared humanity. That is, it takes out the detail. It focuses our attention on incidentals, not essentials. It settles for what we can know about a person when we squint.

I can remember being asked as a new adoptive father, “Are you going to teach your children about where they’re from?” Of course. How could we not? Why would we not want to? But there is more. I want to go back further than their country or state of origin. Our children came to our family from various places and peoples, but all those people go back to our common ancestor, to one man named Adam (Acts 17:26). Adam understood this when he named his wife Eve, “because she was the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20). In Adam, we share a common origin and divine purpose for humanity.

Intersectionality must assume some basis for human dignity in order to ground its appeal to justice. But without moorings in a transcendent worldview, it fixes our attention on our differences, judging differences as disparities. We may certainly assume the best of many who hold this worldview — namely, that they promote our differences to protect persons from hostility. Some disparities, to be sure, represent difficult and sad realities that should concern us all. But a relentless focus on differences — and especially superficial distinctions — undermines not only a proper understanding and productive response to real problems, but also the deepest truth that holds humanity, and my family, together.

Intersectionality dehumanizes my family when it prioritizes our skin color over our basic humanity. That’s why, in our home, we prioritize our common humanity. This stands in stark contrast to what we see and hear when we step outside our home — from the wall of books at Target, to an advertisement before the movie, to the messages on jerseys of our favorite basketball team — the world tells my children, “You are Black” or “You are White.” That might not be a problem except that these categories — impersonal colors as they are — come preloaded with an ideology that tells them what team they are on, where they come from, what they are to think, and how they are to relate with the rest of their family.

Instead, we say, “You are a person made in the glorious image of God,” and after that, “You are a man,” or “You are a woman.”

‘You are Hunters.’

That’s our last name, Hunter. Sometimes we’ve been asked what we know about our children’s “real parents.” We have never taken offense to this question. We know what they mean. But it has thrown us off balance when someone asks that question in front of our children. That’s because the second most important truth our children need to grasp is that they are indeed our children. After the fact of their humanity, the priority is their human family.

In fact, on reflection, this way of talking to our kids is the second reason I didn’t answer my daughter that night: taken seriously, intersectionality would make us foreigners first, family second. This is its intention, and not just for families like ours.

There’s a reason why the Bible teaches us about the origin of marriage and moms and dads by the second chapter of Genesis (Genesis 2:24), and why the apostle Paul prayed to the Father, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14–15). Family is a basic source of meaning for us all. But intersectional thinking undermines all of this for a family like ours. It teaches my children that they are not truly at home among family. It teaches my children that the primary sphere of belonging is that of a group identity assigned by skin color or some other victimhood status.

Intersectionality aggravates our already fragile relationships owing to sin by leading my children to hold the deepest motives of their parents and siblings in suspicion. Intersectionality teaches my kids that people who are white, like mom and dad, brought them into our family for wicked — even if unconsciously sinister — purposes. Intersectionality teaches my children that racism is as alive as ever, albeit in a covert way, underneath the surface of our interactions as a family. At worst, intersectionality stokes the fires of racism in their own hearts against the people who love them most.

Simply put, intersectionality hurts my family by prioritizing the color of our skin over our family name. That’s why, in our home, we make a big deal about being Hunters. We come from a line of morticians, creative inventors, brilliant managers, war heroes, and yes, so we imagine, hunters. Inside our home we are real brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. This is what we see in the mirror, and it’s who we talk to across the dinner table. Adoption is not an asterisk to this picture. It’s a part of our family history.

‘You are Americans.’

Even if I couldn’t articulate it that first night, I hesitated to tell my daughter about intersectionality because of the concentric circles of personhood and interaction. The first reason was personal, having to do with whom she sees in the mirror. The second reason was familial, having to do with whom we sit across from at the dinner table. A third reason is social, having to do with our interactions with people in our community and country: intersectionality alienates my children from their neighbors by discounting the value of our shared citizenship as Americans.

Citizenship can be a neglected grace. When Paul picks up the image with reference to our heavenly citizenship, he draws on our experience of earthly citizenship as those who belong to nations (Philippians 3:20). Earthly citizenship is a reality, and, though a fleeting one, a good reality.

It is true that, considering eternity, our earthly citizenship is relativized when we become Christians, but it’s not reduced to nothing. Paul was not only comfortable in his Roman citizenship but claimed it when he was persecuted, arresting the attention of the authorities hundreds of miles from Rome (Acts 22:22–29). Paul’s citizenship meant something for him and for everyone else. Everyone in the room knew it.

It seems virtuous in some circles these days to be cynical about America. There are aspects of our country (past and present) that are heinous. Decent Americans agree. But that’s at least an indication of one of America’s strengths: honest self-criticism. We’re not unique for having a history of slavery, but we are unique for our literature on that history. That’s because our nation was born suspicious of humanity. The very structure of our government reflects that creaturely humility. The ideas that define America are humble, even if the humans who penned them were sinners.

No, our American citizenship is not the final ground of our interactions with one another or our neighbors. That belongs to our shared humanity and, for Christians, our new humanity. Nevertheless, our American citizenship is a meaningful category and a way for my children to understand who they are and where they are when they walk into a room.

Intersectionality hurts my family by prioritizing the color of our skin over our earthly citizenship. That’s why, in our home, we remind one another of our earthly citizenship. We are Greenvillians, we are Carolinians, and we are Americans. There’s no place we’d rather be as a mixed-ethnicity family. We are surrounded by all kinds of people, including many who do not look like us but who nevertheless share the same nationality, a nationality rooted not in ethnicity but in an idea held in common and expressed in our nation’s founding documents. This includes our gymnastics teacher, the cashier at the grocery store, and the neighbors we meet on our evening walk. We teach our children to embrace a healthy solidarity as those who share a common citizenship.

Is color of any importance? Yes, color is beautiful! So are the stories that our colors represent. Our colors are not only beautiful, but they also raise good questions. Yet intersectional thinking isn’t interested in our answers — only its answers. And that’s why it’s scary. It is perniciously reductive. In the name of promoting color and diversity, intersectional thinking mutes our voices and mangles our actual stories. Worst of all, it attempts to steal the sense of belonging my children know, need, and should cherish as image-bearers, as Hunters, and as Americans.

But of course, there is more to say.

We Are Christians

My children will remain siblings, but if they take the logic of intersectionality seriously, I don’t see how they can remain honest friends. They will forge their righteous standing on each other’s backs. They will use one another in the pursuit of their own power or innocence, just like our fellow Americans are doing around us. Intersectionality displaces the gospel, making Christ’s atoning sacrifice unnecessary for some and never enough for others. In its place, its logic demands never-ending penance to appease the unappeasable grievances of whole classes of people. Like a parasite, it feeds on our grievances and our guilt, real and perceived.

“Intersectionality displaces the gospel, making Christ’s atoning sacrifice unnecessary for some and never enough for others.”

I don’t see how love can breathe in that air. I want my children to take on the identity that puts into proper perspective every other human difference, to say with their parents, “We are Christians.” That’s why, in our home, we tell our children: “You are sinners in need of grace.”

And that’s why we go to church on Sunday.

A newcomer to our church recently commented, “I noticed your church is mostly white. What are you guys doing about that?” One sister in our church who is from Colombia would have laughed had she heard that. She raves about our “beautiful mix.” This brother, however, was born in America, where majority culture is inherently problematic — even shameful — when it looks “mostly white.” Questions like this entice pastors to apologize or, alternatively, boast in the ethnic diversity of their churches. It’s a reason why a church’s ethnic makeup is increasingly the first question asked or the first credential offered when some pastors meet. At its worst, it’s a worldly obsession with looks and approval. That doesn’t make a family like mine feel more welcome. It makes us feel needed for all the wrong reasons.

Candidly, for a moment I felt ashamed of our church. That shame did not come from the Spirit of Christ. That was the spirit of the age enticing me to objectify Christ’s precious bride. But I’m grateful that I didn’t speak out of that shame. I was direct:

Everyone is talking about color these days. We talk about Christ. What would he have us do? He would have us obey all that he commanded. Which means we go to all the nations and would be glad if they came to us. When that proves hard, we welcome one another as Christ welcomed us. We show hospitality to everyone, the high-resolution kind that is interested in everything about every person. And we show partiality to no one, not for membership or discipline, not for leadership or a smile. We think this kind of simple obedience to Christ is the way forward.

Would that put him off? To my delight, he was strangely refreshed. This brother was from a place where a church’s color palette was a first indicator of faithfulness. In that moment, he needed discipleship in the truth, and our church needed protection from error.

Safest Intersection in Town

We love our church. For my family, it’s the safest intersection in town.

Why? Because there is a Lamb on the throne in the middle (Revelation 5:9–14). The blood of that Lamb tells us that we are fellow sinners, all of us, but also forgiven sinners and fellow citizens, members of God’s household (Ephesians 2:19). His blood is both necessary and enough. It tells us that the line between the just and the unjust does not run horizontally between humans but vertically between all of humanity and our God. Yet by the blood of this Lamb we are made just. This throne tells us that we are a people under the authority of a righteous king with all the power, one who uses that power to love his people (Ephesians 1:20–23; 3:18–19). It’s the love of this king that compels us to love one another in deep and personal ways (Ephesians 4:1–6). In this love we see the Father advancing his cause to “unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10). It is here at church that we find an identity more fundamental and precious than our nation, our family, and even our shared humanity. In baptism and the Lord’s Supper we see the death — the tearing down — of sin and the making of a new humanity in Christ.

It’s also at church that the world can see the beginnings of a truly better world to come, with all of its manifold beauty. In that day, Christ will be surrounded by men and women from every tribe and language and nation. That kind of diversity, I take it, is beautiful to him in this age when it shows up within faithful churches, but also between faithful churches united in his worship. Our church’s ethnolinguistic profile is downstream from many factors: history, geography, socioeconomics, our faith tradition, and my own education and accent as the preacher. We’re not here to preserve our church’s unique flavor — we are comfortable in our own skin and happy to be stretched. But neither are we ashamed of our unique cultural expression, and that’s important to say these days. Despite what the world may say, at this intersection, Jesus gets the right-of-way. He controls the traffic, and he has accepted us.

Intersectionality taps into the human longing for a better world. At church, our family tastes something of the world as it will be.

What I Want My Children to Know

That guest to our church asked a question that was on his mind. In the summer of 2020, my daughter asked the question that was on her mind. I’m glad she did. In my reading that evening, I was coming to see that intersectionality is not merely a legal tool, but an ideological weapon. And where it is wielded, it divides and destroys. I want her to understand this.

That’s why we’re talking about intersectionality now. It’s a burden of knowledge our children will need to carry for themselves. But they’re not scared about it, and I’m not sad for them. That’s because, at this intersection, Christ carries our burdens for us, and nothing is too heavy for him.

My dear Globdrop,

Excuse my prolonged absence. Works darker and more disgraceful arrived on my doorstep. The agency needed to issue a cease and desist, let’s call it — a resistless commission. I return to your misshapen mount of letters stacked upon my desk, with more vice and vitriol than ever.

From the few entreaties I survived this afternoon, it appears much has transpired — little for the better. Your man is married, is he? To a Christian, no doubt. And in my absence, he began — no, wait, here it is — he graduated from an unapproved training facility. Of all things, nephew. Am I to report you as a double agent?

Your man “aspires for ministry”; let’s begin here. As you know, several types of shepherd meet the approval of our Headquarters. Our favorite, no doubt, wins the Enemy’s protest, “You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep” (Ezekiel 34:3). A demon’s glory, Globdrop, winged upon undying sneers of howls: to create a shepherd who enjoys lambchop and wool socks.

But given your archery of late, you must aim at a bigger target. If not feasting on the flock, then he at least must be unarmed and unwilling to guide or protect her. Softer than ewe’s fleece, he must think it amiss that he would be required to confront anyone — whether other shepherds or sheep or wolves or robbers. He must never goad straying sheep or strike at bears, never raise his tone or lift the rod. Paint him in green pastures with warm colors and carefree expressions — no wanderers or predators or violence.

But I’m guessing you have already enrolled him in N.I.C.E.?

N.I.C.E.

It appears not.

Honestly, Globdrop, you will not last the century if you can’t manage your wits at the front line. You should have enrolled him in the N.I.C.E. program years ago. This is for all of the Enemy’s cows, but especially the males.

Commit the fourfold essentials of N.I.C.E. to your quaking mind immediately.

Nestle

Smooth shepherds stand in high demand, fitting especially well with this generation’s chief end: the self. Liberated from the chains of “objective truth,” they are self-made and self-making. No objective “me” — vulnerable to the opinions of others — exists. To disapprove of or contradict someone’s self or chosen path is a high offense — how can anyone else know what’s best for me? Disagreement, dear nephew, is dead. Assert your truth on anyone else, and you declare war on a sovereign state.

Do you fault an Enemy’s man, then, for being susceptible to speak that singular message of our favorite wartime pastors of old: “Peace, peace”? Why Paul would warn of ravenous wolves from without and perverse teachers from within, he cannot tell. Compelling speech — beat it into his head — is never confrontational speech. His staff is a mere walking stick. Let the straying or snarling or sleeping damned lie, undisturbed.

Impress

Once his speech is sanded, smooth it further. If your man becomes “helpful” because of his soft words and silken tone (even to a few), let him hear the good news immediately. This, in turn, tenders him to criticism and reinforces his own reluctance to offer anything else. Let him leave his neighbor with spinach in his teeth or a log in his eye or idols in his heart.

At first, he may resist the temptation, it is true. But how quietly do we turn the rudder of crude words like “godliness” into “the appearance of godliness”? “The Enemy’s ministry” into “my ministry”? He may think he asks, What does the Enemy say? But under all this, the quiet and fragile purr: Will everyone be happy with me? Will they be impressed?

Confess

What surgeon refuses his scalpel, what demon his darts — and will your man really lay down the Enemy’s blade or his staff? He will. For to do so is humility, after all. Behold the puppet show.

The rule runs thus: he must never operate on sins that haven’t scarred him. Nathan told David, “You are the man!” — without having stolen any poor man’s sheep. He spent no time confessing his many faults to keep he and the sinner on level plane. Not so with modern Nathans. Hear him, after blurting his many sins, bashfully suggest, “And maybe . . . I’m not certain, but just possibly — and don’t take this the wrong way — but you could be the man . . . well, a man, really. . . . But of course, we all are . . . I especially.”

It must remain the height of arrogance to help someone out of a pit one hasn’t first lived in. Reproving uncommitted sin is worse than the sin committed. Seriously, nephew, how can any man tell a woman what she cannot “do with her own body”? This is the kind of lowliness we support.

Emasculate

In summary, desex his teaching. We have worked tirelessly to train this generation to despise language associated with the male sex . . . gender . . . thing. Direct speech, forceful speech is always naughty speech. Shave the chest, blunt the blade. Think apes in the circus: cap his head and teach him to juggle.

Make the general’s cry, the trumpet blast, the call to arms seem excessive, aggressive, impolite. Such naked conversation is most irregular, improper, and ungentlemanly. Not to mention proud. He may share but never preach. “Thus saith the Lord” reeks of ancient bigotries and that old sock of patriarchy. Concerning their tongues, we still remember, and agree with, Paul’s exclamation: “I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!” (Galatians 5:12) — though we would never speak this crudely, of course.

Brunch with the Queen

Visualize his Christian life and “ministry” as a sunny afternoon sipping tea with the queen. Remind him to keep good posture, mind his manners, and not talk warfare at the table — pinky finger out. Oh, he is still a soldier — no denying that. Look at that clean, creased uniform, that sharp, pointy sword tucked neatly at his side. Those sewn-on badges nearly blind us in the sun! This polite man requests our admiration — and fear, even — we must render honor its due.

But what of the prophets, apostles, and the Enemy himself, you wonder? So few today seem to ask. Rascals of the old guard threw spears at our training. Rabid tongues of men like Paul, John the Baptist, Peter, Elijah, and the Enemy himself lashed out against our rules of decorum — so we silenced them.

Style him our kind of N.I.C.E. — more the smiling mannequin than man or minister. Make him shrink back before the bleat of the sheep’s and goat’s displeasure and refuse the unpleasant work of warning, correcting, or laying down his own life. There exists a broader, kinder, easier way. If he ever suspects cowardice, let him censure the dead.

Your returned savior,

Grimgod

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning, and welcome back to a new week, number 499 in our history. Amazing! And we start week 499 with a question from a listener named Elizabeth, who has an interesting question about the saving work of Christ. “Hi, Pastor John. I am studying 1 Peter, going through your LAB videos, and digging deeper to share with my fellow stay-at-home moms at church. My question pertains to tauta in 1 Peter 1:11, translated ‘subsequent.’ I’m trying to tie together ‘the sufferings of Christ’ and his ‘subsequent glories.’ It does not seem to simply refer to a chronological progression. Peter very often ties suffering and glory together (1 Peter 1:6–7, 10; 2:12; 3:9, 14; 4:12–15; 5:1, 10).

“So, here’s my question: Did Jesus have to suffer in public for God to give him those glories? Couldn’t Jesus have lived a perfect, law-abiding, substitutionary life for us in total isolation or at least in obscurity? I know he underwent his formal temptations alone. So, could he have died serenely, then risen, and defeated death and sin, but not by suffering in public? Or if he had done this, would he have not received the ‘subsequent’ glories? Was it required for him to suffer publicly and die early? So then, again, what’s the ‘subsequent’ relationship between his public sufferings and his eternal glory?”

I’m drawn to answer this question, even though in one sense it’s the kind of a “what if” question that the Bible doesn’t really address directly (“What if Jesus had lived a perfect, sinless life and died a natural death at age 85 — could that life and death save us?”). The Bible doesn’t spend a lot of time reflecting on that possibility. And so, you might think, “Well, why would you even go there?” Nevertheless, in trying to answer this particular question and questions like that, we are led to ponder the wonder that God did it, in fact, a certain way — he planned for his Son to suffer agonizingly, publicly, extremely — and why he did it that way. And that’s worth our serious meditation.

Christ’s Public Payment

So, as I have pondered the question of whether our redemption could have been accomplished by the perfection of Christ without the public suffering of a crucifixion, I see at least six reasons that the Bible gives for why this could not have happened — in other words, why Christ’s public, horrific suffering by crucifixion was absolutely necessary for our salvation.

1. Predestined Plan

The first and perhaps the most obvious reason is that these particular sufferings were predestined by God before the foundation of the world. It was God’s eternal plan that his Son suffer in this way. Acts 4:27: “Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”

So, everything that Herod, Pilate, those Gentile soldiers who drove the nails and the spear, and the crucifying mobs — everything they did to Jesus in those last hours was God’s plan. It had been predestined to take place. It was not up for grabs. The alternative of a leisurely life and an 85-year-old death was not in the plan. That’s the first reason. It couldn’t have happened.

2. Fulfilled Scriptures

Second, these sufferings were prophesied in God’s word — the Old Testament scriptures that cannot be broken. Over and over again in the Gospels, the details of the final sufferings of Christ are said to be “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled” (Matthew 26:56; Luke 22:37, 24:26; John 13:18; 19:36). For example, “He was pierced for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5). Pierced. Not cancer, not old age, not cardiac arrest. He was pierced for our transgressions.

“The horrific public shaming and sufferings of Christ were scripted down to the details.”

In other words, the horrific public shaming and sufferings of Christ were scripted down to the details of what would happen to his clothing in the Old Testament. If those writings cannot be broken, then the sufferings could not be avoided.

3. Fitting Sufferings

Third (and this gets closer to the heart of the matter), Hebrews 2:10: “It was fitting [underline that word; put a big red circle around that word; it’s an amazing word] that he for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.”

This is very profound, and it is worth much study and hours of meditation. God’s eternal decision to achieve our salvation through the sufferings of Christ is not arbitrary or whimsical or meaningless, but is owing to a profound fitness, appropriateness, suitableness as God considers all things. It is appropriate; it is suitable; it is ultimately, you might say, beautiful. That is, it’s in perfect harmony with all of God’s other acts and plans. We can spend a lifetime probing into why it is fitting, but let Hebrews 2:10 fly like a great banner over the sufferings of Christ. It was fitting — right, good, suitable, beautiful — in the mind of God for our salvation to be accomplished this way and not another way.

4. Sacrificial Lamb

Fourth, the death of Jesus was an intentional sacrifice given by God similar to the sacrificial offerings of a lamb in the Old Testament. Jesus, Paul says, is “our Passover lamb” (1 Corinthians 5:7). So, just as in the Old Testament, allowing a sheep to get old in the flock and die from mange was not a sacrifice. That’s not the way it worked. You took the sheep and you handed him over with your heart and with an intentionality.

So, Christ growing old in some remote village and dying would not have been a sacrifice of God slitting the throat of the precious Lamb of God. The word slaughter is used in Revelation for what happened to the Lamb and how he accomplished our salvation. There was an intentionality to the sacrifice. Jesus was offered up on the cross as a sacrifice. Hebrews 10:12: “When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.”

5. By His Blood

Fifth, over and over in the New Testament, Christ is said to accomplish his saving work by means of his blood. For example, Romans 5:9: “We have now been justified by his blood.” Hebrews 9:22: “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.” I think that’s another way to draw out the significance of Christ’s death as a sacrifice.

6. Even Death on a Cross

And then finally, number six, Philippians 2 describes the humiliation of Jesus from the highest point of equality with God, to the lowest point of death — and then he adds, “even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8), as the path from the highest to the lowest, as the path that God rewards with the exaltation of Jesus, not only to new life in resurrection, but to the acclamation of all the nations as Lord of lords.

Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death . . .

And then these words are not throwaway words, because it had to be the lowest point to accomplish our redemption:

. . . even death on [the most despicable, shameful, painful instrument of execution] a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6–11)

“There is, in God’s mind, a path to glory for his Son, and this path was a painful, humiliating death by crucifixion.”

There is, in God’s mind, a path to glory for his Son, and this path was a painful, humiliating death by crucifixion. It was the depth of the suffering, it was the ignominy of the cross that he endured that was the lowest point that he had to reach for God to reward him with the highest office of lordship as a Redeemer.

Worthy to Be Lord

Perhaps one last passage to point to the fact that the slaughter of the Lamb was what made Jesus a fitting ruler of all the peoples of the world — namely, Revelation 5:9–10:

Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals [in other words, “Worthy are you to be the Lord of the unfolding of history”], for you were slaughtered [esphagēs, not died in a remote village at age 85], and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.

So, for those six reasons at least, I would say, we can say that the glorification of Jesus Christ and the achievement of our salvation did indeed require the kind of sufferings he endured, and we will sing the song of the Lamb, the slaughtered Lamb, forever and ever as a tribute to those sufferings and our salvation.