Transformative Gospel: Navigating Identity and Social Justice

I think it begins with understanding what the church is that the church is a redeemed community of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ along with their families and in the new birth god dramatically changes your life he takes out your heart of stone he gives you a heart of flesh he writes his word upon your heart he puts his spirit within you he causes you to walk in his statutes in the new birth If any man be in Christ he's a new creature the old things have passed away new things have come [00:02:13]

and so one who would be lets say previously a homosexual or a lesbian with the new birth that is that is left behind and you now have your new identity in Christ you have a new mind you have a new heart that is not to say that there will not be temptations and at times struggles but nevertheless that no longer is the dominant power in your life that has been crushed you have been crucified with Christ and your old life has been buried and you have been raised to newness of life [00:02:59]

and so those they are people who are unregenerate or welcome to come to church and hear the gospel we want them to come and hear the gospel because they are our mission field but the mission field is not the church and the church must be a pure bride a chaste bride for her to have the power of God upon her and so to be inclusive of those who are unregenerate is a devastating effect upon the purity and the power of the church [00:05:20]

RC used to say that the church is the only organization wherein you have to admit you're a sinner to get into it and the problem in our day is there were just not calling sins sins because as Lawson said we want to show love we want to show respect to those who are from every different background and identify in every different way they want to identify we show them love but we preach the gospel we proclaim the truth of God to them because we know that at the end of the day the only thing that's going to change hearts is the gospel [00:06:30]

I agree with everything that's been said but I think we have to be very clear as Christians that our criticism is not just of some sins but that we stand against all sin and in order to have integrity in criticizing homosexual sin we have to be just as clear in criticizing heterosexual sin and I don't generally speaking like clapping but I'm really glad you clap for that because I think it's a very important testimony that we oppose all sin [00:07:39]

the gospel of Jesus Christ and the scripture is very clear 1st Corinthians 15 that as a matter of first importance now nothing else if there can only be one first importance there cannot be two or three or four first importance that God has clearly said in his word without any equivocation that what is of first importance is the gospel of Jesus Christ and the gospel in his most succinct statement in verses 3 and 4 is that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture that he was buried and that he was raised from the dead according to the scripture [00:16:14]

my concern is that there are those who are elevating social issues to the very same level as the gospel and saying it is a gospel issue it is not a gospel issue the gospel issue is that Christ died for our sins was buried and was raised from the dead there are implications of the gospel concerning how the gospel is to be lived out in that sense every imperative in the New Testament is a gospel issue every biblical principle that runs from Genesis to Revelation is a gospel issue as it relates to application and as it relates to an implication of the gospel but it is not the gospel [00:16:14]

I think just two things as we talked about this conversation one is let's just talk about justice that we're adding this social justice let's just talk about justice this is a word that's all through the pages of scripture of course our God is a God of justice and we need to be concerned about this in some ways we're letting sort of the current conversation drive us rather than letting the Bible drive us [00:21:16]

and I think too in the Reformation one of the great stresses was that we need to preach the law and the gospel and we preach the law to hold up the holiness of God we preach the law to hold up the standard of God we preach the law to hold up the goal to which we press in our lives and we hold up the law to show us how sinful we are and just as churches perhaps have not adequately preached the gospel they sometimes have not adequately preached the law to help us see what holiness would look like and to to help us see how far short we fall [00:21:16]

and our Savior said the law says to every one of us we have to love our neighbor and in case we missed the point he talked about who is our neighbor everyone is our neighbor so that has to be a standard that we as Christians hold up and we could look at our history and say we have failed miserably in so many ways and that's a terrible thing a thing we have to resist and reject and try to get beyond but resisting and rejecting sin as important as it is as godly as it is as biblical as it is is not the gospel no matter how much success you make in social justice it won't get you to have it only a life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ will get you to heaven [00:26:05]

I think another really important point that too often gets neglected in this discussion is that we as Christians should have common goals I think we should all agree I trust we do all agree that we ought to end racism that there should not be racism that right racism is fundamentally unchristian but we ought to recognize that Christians may legitimately differ on what is the right path to end racism and we ought to be able to sit and talk to one another about that the tragedy of too much political discussion in this country has been that we think the way the truth is to shout down our opponent we need to talk we need to love we need to listen maybe I should have said listen before talk we need we need to listen and then we have to be willing to agree to disagree in a loving way because we won't always agree we could agree with the goal but the means to the goal we may have honest legitimate maybe even useful disagreements but it's a it's a huge issue and a serious issue but it shouldn't compromise the gospel or divide Christians [00:26:05]

you know it's been said that the church has become more worldly in the world has become more churchy and it seems to me that not only is the church taking all of its cues from culture these days not from the Word of God but that even the world and the secular culture in which we live has begun to take sort of their religious cues from the church I mean some of these theories that are being advanced are almost like a religion in and of themselves [00:26:05]