Yes, We Need Overture 23
Written by David P. Cassidy |
Thursday, August 3, 2023
Overture 23, however, provides a unique opportunity to unite around language that avoids the unclear and potentially harmful while humbly and joyfully affirming the Biblical standards for sexual holiness we expect from the Officers of Christ’s Church. I was delighted to vote in its favor, will work with others for its passage in our Presbyteries, and hope for its adoption by the Fifty-First General Assembly.
For the past several years, the PCA has been embroiled in debates about, studies of, and Overtures concerning a whole array of issues surrounding human sexuality. That’s hardly unusual for ecclesiastical communions these days. After all, these are difficult and contentious matters, and our perspectives are often shaped by personal experiences and backgrounds as varied as the creatures in the sea – and sometimes just as frightening. Such debate and dissension can be an understandably wearying process to go through. That’s aggravated by the fact that we are by nature an impatient people, made even more so by the speed of technology. We stand in front of microwaves muttering, “C’mon already.”
Yet we really should rejoice in the debate and the process. Through it all, we can grow in our capacity to listen to one another, learn from each other, and – as we all wish to do – accomplish the work of the Church in such a way that her understanding, holiness, witness, and mission are strengthened for God’s glory. We need each other to free one another from the captivity of our lack of knowledge, our misgivings, fears, parochial prejudices, and even our wounds. In the end, attentive and patient work with one another can eventually yield peaceful fruit and deeper maturity. I think that’s the outcome we see in the success enjoyed by Overture 23 at our recent General Assembly.
By a vote of 1673-223, the Fiftieth General Assembly of the PCA overwhelmingly approved Overture 23 submitted by the Mississippi Valley Presbytery. There is much in it to commend to our churches, leadership communities, and Officers, and as a testimony to the wider communion of Christ’s Church. The Overture addresses the Biblical mandate for all of our Deacons and Elders to be above reproach in sexual holiness, not only in their conduct but also in their teaching and public declarations concerning the Church’s doctrine on sexuality.
The Apostle Paul was understandably concerned about Christians learning to follow Jesus in the path of holiness as his disciples. He emphasized it, especially with the fledgling churches in his mission in the Roman world. The Classical world was a society that displayed a sexual ethic vastly different than one reflecting God’s love and kindness. Rooted in power and often characterized by both brutality and hedonistic pursuit of mere pleasure instead of love, the Roman world’s views stood in need of a great sexual revolution. That certainly arrived with the Gospel.
The Roman view gave men free rein to explore their sexual appetites but greatly restricted and frequently denied a woman’s high place in marriage, giving them no authority in their sexual relationships with their husbands (and in virtually no other way either). Both male and female slaves, including young boys and even children, were viewed as degraded objects provided for the pleasure of owners and superiors. On the other hand, Christian teaching viewed all people as God’s offspring to be honored and loved. Sexual license, the abuse of power, and the dishonoring of any through sexual exploitation were steadfastly opposed by Christian teaching. Ancient Christians recognized every person as an image-bearer of God and acknowledged that a Christian’s body is a sacred space, the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
Our approach to sexuality originates in God’s good creation of all things and in his redemption of the world from our fall into sin, joining believers by the Spirit to his Son. Referring to creation, Jesus taught that our sexual union is a gift between men and women in a life-long covenant marriage bond protecting wives from abandonment and improper divorce by unfaithful husbands. He also upheld the Law, highlighting and emphasizing not only the necessity of our external conformity to it but also our need for cleansing from every internal disordered desire that does not submit to it (see Matthew 5-7 and 19).
The Apostles preserved and applied Jesus’ teaching, urging the ancient Christians to abandon their conformity to long-held cultural norms of power and pleasure and to be instead transformed by God’s grace, embracing mutual respect between husbands and wives, chastity as singles, and purity of heart in all things.
-
Why Do Christians Do Bad Things?
A Christian is someone who has been renewed (regeneration), is being renewed (sanctification), and will be renewed (glorification). His sin has been dealt with judicially (justification), it is being dealt with progressively (sanctification), and it will be dealt with permanently (glorification). These nuances help us make sense of the presence of sin in the life of a Christian. While we saints remain in these bodies of sin in a fallen world, we continue to battle our own flesh and its non-reigning, extant sin—which is why Christians still do bad things. But one day, coming soon, we will do only that which is good, in glorified bodies and a renewed world that aren’t polluted by sin and corruption.
There are generally two basic forms in which this question is asked. First, most Christians have at some point asked themselves, “If I’m a true Christian, why do I keep sinning?” Second, Christians and others have asked questions like, “How could Christians have committed such atrocities during the Crusades?” The two questions are different, but they have essentially the same theological and biblical answer. The answer requires us to understand what Scripture says is true of Christians in the threefold application of redemption. We must consider the Bible’s teaching about what has already happened to the Christian, what is happening to the Christian, and what has not yet happened to the Christian.
Already: What Has Happened to Christians (Regeneration, Justification, Adoption)
According to the Bible, when a person becomes a Christian, he has gone from death to life. He has experienced what we often call “regeneration.” This is foundational to our Christian identity. The Christian is a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). He has been born again (John 3:3; 1 Peter 1:3). He was in darkness, and now he is in light (Acts 26:18; Eph. 5:8; 2 Cor. 6:14; 1 Peter 2:9). He was dead in trespasses and sins, and now he is alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:1–2; Col. 2:13). He was a slave to sin, and now he is a slave to righteousness (John 8:34; Rom. 6:1–23; Gal. 5:1). He had a heart of stone, and now he has a heart of flesh (Ezek. 11:19; 36:26). Regeneration and its fruit, conversion to Christ, signify a drastic change in identity. Regeneration does not, however, purge the effects of our fallenness from our souls and bodies. Regeneration imparts spiritual life into the soul, but one’s history before regeneration is not changed. This means that a Christian will hate his sin, but he still might be attracted to the same sins as he was before conversion. In the new birth (i.e., regeneration), we are effectually called, meaning that the Spirit not only calls us to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ by faith but also gives us the ability to respond to that call. When we place our faith in Christ, the Spirit unites us to Christ, from whom we receive the benefits of redemption, including “justification, adoption and sanctification, and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 32). In our union with Christ, justification, adoption, and sanctification are distinct yet inseparable benefits. In the act of justification, a person is pardoned of all sins and accepted as righteous in the sight of God only on account of the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith alone (WSC 33). In the act of adoption, a person is received into the number and given a right to all the privileges of the sons of God (WSC 34). In the work of sanctification, a person begins to be renewed in his whole being after the image of God and is enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness (WSC 35). Whereas justification and adoption are acts of God, sanctification is a work of God. Justification and adoption are punctiliar, one-time events. Sanctification is a progressive, lifelong work. So while the Christian is declared righteous in God’s sight on account of the imputed righteousness of Christ, he has not yet been entirely renewed in his whole being. At least not yet. As Martin Luther said, the Christian is simul justus et peccator—at the same time righteous and sinful. Regeneration makes a man new, yet he is an undeveloped man—a man who is being sanctified but has not yet been perfected.
Already/Not Yet: What Is Happening to Christians (Sanctification—Mortification and Vivification)
Some people, upon conversion, find that many of their old affections and sinful patterns immediately dissolve. Others experience a more gradual renewal of their desires. Although there is a sense that we are sanctified at our conversion, in that we are set apart as holy to the Lord, sanctification as a process is experienced at different rates.
Read More
Related Posts: -
The Greatest Is Love
Our love for God must be a love that grows. Because without true love, there is no true knowledge of God. As J.I. Packer wrote, there is all the difference in the world between knowing about God and knowing God. The presence or absence of love makes the difference. An atheist professor of theology might know far more about God than many Christians do, but because he doesn’t love God, he doesn’t know God at all.
When the Apostle Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 13, he wasn’t composing a sonnet or a ballad on the theme of “love” for the Corinthians to admire. He was doing quite the opposite: reproaching the Corinthians severely for the evident lack of love that they were displaying. Yet the result is one of the most beautiful passages in the entire Bible, one that is frequently read at weddings and funerals and on other occasions. It is no wonder that Jonathan Edwards (1703–58), in his sublime treatment of this chapter in sixteen sermons, Charity and Its Fruits, expounded on love in his final sermon, “Heaven, a World of Love.”
What is love? The clear answer from the Bible is that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). There is no true love in the universe except the love that has its source in God. Our love for God, our love for other people, whether in family, church, among friends or elsewhere, has its origin in the God who is love.
If God had never created anything, He alone would exist. But in fact, God does create, and into this vast space God creates or enables the creation of all kinds of objects—jewels, crystals, kaleidoscopes, lenses, prisms, mirrors, stained glass windows—that reflect and spread and scatter the light that comes from Him who is light with all the colors of the rainbow. Now we have a universe that is ablaze with light, but the source of that light is God alone.
Now substitute “love” for “light.” God is love, God is the only source of true love, but that love is emitted and radiated to all His creatures, who should reflect that love back to Him and to one another. This true love has certain hallmarks and characteristics that mark it out as genuine. We’ll look at three of them.
Love Endures
“Love never ends” (1 Cor. 13:8). Love must be eternal because God Himself is eternal. God cannot fade, wither, perish, or die; therefore, neither can true love.
Here is a reality that we must all recognize: the need and longing for eternal love is found in every human heart. We all long to love and to be loved, with a love that will never end. Not only has God put eternity into every human heart, as it says in Ecclesiastes 3:11; more poignantly, He has put the yearning for eternal love into every human heart.
What would eternity be without love? It would be eternal misery. And is love truly love if it is anything less than eternal? Try this: make a list of books, films, poems—but perhaps especially songs, of all genres—that have the word “love” combined with words such as “eternal,” “everlasting,” and “undying.” I can guarantee you that it won’t be a short list.
This points to the certain reality that we have all been created for relationship, created to love and to be loved. The God who is Himself an eternal loving Trinitarian fellowship of persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—created a man and immediately said about him, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18). So God created a companion for the man, a fellow being, so that each could love and be loved. This need finds expression in marriage, but community is not restricted to marriage. We are all created to relate to others, and to relate to God, in love.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Why Is the Trinity an Essential Christian Doctrine?
Written by J. Warner Wallace |
Friday, July 21, 2023
The cross is the place where God Himself paid the price of our sin; He did not require the death of another created being, the sacrifice of one human for another. Instead, He offered himself in our place. In addition, the Trinity explains an apparent contradiction in Scripture. The Bible clearly teaches that God is ONE (see Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Isaiah 43:10, James 2:19, 1 Corinthians 8:4, 6 and 1 Timothy 2:5-6). At the same time, however, the Bible also teaches that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit all possess the classic divine attributes of omnipotence (Isaiah 64:8, John 1:3, Job 33:4), omniscience (1 John 3:20, John 16:30, 1 Corinthians 2:10), omnipresence (1 Kings 8:27, Matthew 28:20, Psalm 139:7-10), and omnibenevolence (John 3:16, Ephesians 5:25, Romans 15:30-31).I recently received an email question from a listener who wrote: “I have studied quite a few different translations of the bible and have full faith in what it says. I also believe that Jesus is my savior, and do my best to live by what He taught. However, I am not a Christian according to many religious leaders, because I do not believe in the doctrine regarding the trinity. I have read nothing in the Word that supports this idea, in fact Jesus proclaims many time that He is less than the Father. My question is simply this, how can I be judged based on my faith in Jesus and following what he taught, and be told that I am not Christian because I won’t accept what I believe is a man-made theory?”
Keeping Jesus In His Place
Most people (and groups) who have historically denied the triune nature of God have relegated Jesus to a subordinate position that describes Him as something less than divine. This is perhaps the greatest danger in misunderstanding the Trinity. To deny the Trinity is to either embrace some form of polytheism or deny the Deity of Jesus. For this reason, a denial of the Trinity is a denial of Christian orthodoxy.
A Suitable Sacrifice
If Jesus is simply a created being (even if He is something special yet not God), His death on the cross is insufficient to save us from our sin. In fact, if Jesus is not God Himself, the Christian God can fairly be described as a horrific deity that requires human sacrifice to appease his demands for justice. This is a common objection offered by skeptics who fail to understand the Trinity and the Deity of Jesus. The cross is the place where God Himself paid the price of our sin; He did not require the death of another created being, the sacrifice of one human for another. Instead, He offered himself in our place.
Solving a Biblical Dilemma
In addition, the Trinity explains an apparent contradiction in Scripture.
Read More
Related Posts:
