For example, these are four different Gospel articulations that I’ve used repeatedly in speaking and teaching. They are not definitions or creeds. They articulations that summarize and balance the content of the Gospel as I understand it. It’s language I want my hearers to hear frequently. Sometimes in phrases. Sometimes in whole sermons or lessons.

Announcement: The Gospel is the glad announcement that God himself, through Jesus, has done everything necessary to rescue his broken world and save its broken people from judgment and ruin. All persons are invited to believe this glad announcement, to be forgiven and to become a disciple of Jesus who is King and Lord.

God: In the Gospel, God shows us that he is the loving and gracious Father revealed in Jesus Christ his Son. This is the face of God that the Christian will look upon for all of eternity. In our Father, there is no condemnation or rejection for his Son or those who belong to God in him. Everything the Bible says about God is true, but for the Christian, God is Jesus in our experience. The Glory of God is the majesty and Glory of Jesus in the incarnation, his sufferings/resurrection and the scriptures.

Jesus: Jesus is our salvation. We say with Simeon: “My eyes have seen your salvation” as he held the infant Christ. Jesus is the one mediator between God and man. He lived a life we could not live and and died a death in our place. He was raised to make us right with God and give us life in God’s Kingdom. By his life, death and resurrection, Jesus has defeated the power of Satan, evil and condemnation. Jesus rules the universe today as the one true King and will return to rule over a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus commands all persons to repent and believe in him.

Kingdom: The Kingdom of God was announced and established by Jesus and it continues in human history by his authority and power. Salvation comes into history as the Kingdom of God takes root in the world. The Kingdom of God is the beginning of the new heaven and the new earth where God’s righteousness lives and salvation is experienced. Jesus invited all persons to come into this Kingdom, to live in its new realities and to work for its inevitable triumph.

This is some of the “foundational content” that should underlie whatever applications we make and whatever we say that reflects on the Gospel.

It doesn’t seem that it would be particularly difficult to put the Gospel in a place where, for example, if we talk about God without Jesus or the culture war without reference to the Kingdom or salvation without reference to the person of Christ, it would sound wrong.

So why doesn’t it?

(By the way, I’m not offering these articulations for theological autopsy. This is how I talk and unless you are an ordination committee I’m seeking to get past, don’t treat me like my articulations are up for theological pinata practice.)

First, there is the level of scriptural definition. While I can answer the question “What is the Gospel?” it is the Biblical material that should form my definition. Before I give some simple Gospel articulations, what are the Biblical sources of Gospel definition?

Does the Bible give a definition of the Gospel? Or is the Gospel a theme that connects alll of scripture, yielding definitional material and language, but also context, meaning and significance for many other things?

Mark 1:14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Then in Paul’s Letters

I Corinthians 15:1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

In Galatians…

Galatians 3:8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”

The introduction to the entire book of Romans is…

Romans 1:15 So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Paul sees his entire life wrapped up in the Gospel.

2 Timothy 1:8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, 9 who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, 10 and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,

Many passages seem to be talking about the Gospel, but do not specifically say they are doing so. For example:

Philippians 2:5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There are other sources, especially in John, that we should include.

If we look at the categories of foundational content and necessary consequence, the Gospel is foundational content. It may be stated in different because it is a thread making its way through the entire tapestry of the Biblical story, but the Gospel- the Good News- is what the scriptures exist to tell us. There are many voices telling the Gospel at different places in the Biblical story. It may seem strange to say that the Gospel was preached to Abraham without mentioning Jesus, that Jesus preached the Gospel as he came proclaiming the Kingdom and Paul heard the Gospel in the tradition of Jesus’ death and resurrection. But this is the case. The Gospel is the foundational content of the message the Bible is announcing all the way through.

As the Bible tells the Gospel, it tells it to each one of us. We are the hearers and responders. We are the nations that are blessed. We are those called to repent and believe. We are the ones asked to believe the testimony of the Apostles. We are the ones who will be willing to suffer and/or experience the power of the Gospel once we have heard and believed it.

Going back to the Gospel-less, often Christ-less content of much evangelicalism, there is the possibility that the Gospel is assumed and we have now passed from foundational content to application.

I do not believe this is the case, because the resulting application and articulation does not build on the Gospel, but on a foundation that often qualifies for Paul’s Galatians 1 warning of “another Gospel, which is no Gospel at all.” Does application always rest on some articulation of the Gospel, or is the Gospel assumed?

New Testament scholars often point out that the basic rhythm of Paul’s letters is explanation of the Gospel- or some emphasis within the Gospel- followed by specific application of the Gospel. If this is the basic movement of the great apostle as he communicated with the early churches, is it outlandish to see this as a kind of healthy example of how Gospel articulation and application should generally co-exist in a healthy Christian experience?

From these scriptures, I believe our Gospel articulation should include:

The Gospel as announcement of what God has done
The Gospel of God
The Gospel as a message about Jesus
The Gospel as the message of Jesus/The Kingdom
The Gospel as God’s redemption of his broken world (covenant story)
The Gospel as the foundation on which our responses- worship, missions, obedience, etc. – exist.

Next, I will build some specific articulations of the Gospel on these various levels.

I expect that this emphasis on my part will not endear me to some people, mostly on grounds that I am failing to see the significance of things like moral issues, behavior change and political causes. I’ve come to the point that I realize a discussion of the Gospel is going to have a predictable shape:

1) We all know the Gospel. It’s basic.
2) Once you’ve preached or taught the Gospel, then you need to deal with other things.
3) If you are constantly trying to bring the Gospel to the forefront as the main concern, you’re missing the importance of things like behavior change and obedience.

Or

1) Any message on any Biblical text is “the Gospel.”
2) You’re trying to push your theology over basic things like obedience and behavior change.

Or

1) The point is to get people to accept Jesus into their hearts, not turn people into theologians.

In my own tradition as I experience it in several hundred sermons a year, the Gospel is rarely articulated with Biblical priority or in Biblical balance with the rest of scripture. Good ideas from the Bible are common. Concerns of preachers and church leaders are heard every week. Frustrations with the decline of society or poor behavior of individuals is constant. Some form of the Gospel will frequently pass through these sermons in a place where the truth is seen, but it is also not uncommon to hear generic deism, pure moralism or behavior modification based on “Biblical principles.” Vague ideas like “living for God” or “being a good witness” are frequently referenced. As my readers have often heard, sermons without reference to Jesus are so common as to no longer be that shocking.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this decline is how often in 18 years of ministry I have addressed this topic of the Gospel specifically. Never underestimate the power of preaching to make little impact on deeply held beliefs. Clearly, this displacement of the Gospel is not perceived to be particularly problematic. Of course, these are people who have not been exposed to the Gospel-centric emphasis coming out of various places in evangelicalism or reformation traditions today. There is a reason so many of my good friends don’t emphasize the Gospel: to them “Gospel” is a word in front of singing. At most, it references a four step evangelism outline. It is not the central concept in the Christian life. Something like “Holiness” or “obedience” seems far more practical.

In the second post, I will share some of the ways I’ve tried to consistently articulate the Gospel over the years.

A few days ago I asked Catholic blogger and philosopher Bryan Cross to do an interview here at IM on the subject of Christian Unity. Bryan blogs at Principium Unitatis. Bryan is a prolific writer and was gracious to do the interview. He’s given me enough content for several posts, so I am going to divide the interview into three parts. In part one, Bryan will talk about his journey from Pentecostal to Calvinist to Anglican to Catholic. Then I’ll post his answer to my first question on his personal passion for Christian unity.

Bryan is a patient teacher and apologist. Obviously, many IM readers will disagree with parts of his presentation while others will applaud. Having given articulate Lutherans and Anglicans space this year, I want to give Bryan time to talk about his personal mission of promoting church unity and reunion in the Catholic Church.

Some of you may want to read Bryan’s response to the “All the Romery People” piece at Mockingbird.

Thanks for coming to Internet Monk.com for this interview, Bryan. Take a couple of paragraphs and tell us your basic story, what you are doing now and about your family.

Thanks Michael for the invitation. I’ve enjoyed reading Internet Monk.com for the last couple years. I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute to it in this way.

I was raised in the Pentecostal tradition. On both my mother’s and father’s sides my family was involved in the early stages of Pentecostalism in the first part of the twentieth century. In our family it was considered essential to know Scripture. My siblings and I were consistently taught Scripture since as early as I can remember. We attended church twice Sunday, and Wednesday nights, and attended Sunday school every week. We went to all the revivals and all the vacation Bible-schools. So my family and the Pentecostal tradition gave me a thorough familiarity with the Bible, a healthy fear of God and a disposition to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

During my undergraduate education at the University of Michigan, I was exposed to Christians of all different traditions, and this raised a number of questions for me. By the end of my senior year, I was reading various books on theology, and I became convinced that Reformed covenantal theology was more biblical than the dispensational theology in which I had been raised. For the following three years my wife and I led an international student fellowship composed of students from Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan. During that time I continued to read books on Reformed theology. By the end of that three years, I came to see that if I was going to be a pastor, I needed much better theological training. So we moved to St. Louis where I studied at Covenant Theological Seminary for four years, earning an M.Div.

In my last year of seminary, I took a graduate philosophy class at Saint Louis University on the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. Studying Aquinas raised many questions regarding the Reformed tradition. I couldn’t answer those questions at the time, but it was clear to me that there was at least a deep tension between the philosophical and theological positions and methods of the Reformers, and those of Aquinas. I had hoped that a rigorous study of the biblical languages and exegesis would provide the means to resolve interpretive disagreements between the Christian traditions. I had poured myself into exegesis with that hope, so much so that at graduation the seminary faculty honored me with the exegesis award. But I began to see the implicit role that philosophy was playing in our interpretation of Scripture. My belief as a seminarian was that other Christian traditions didn’t agree with us (Presbyterians) primarily because they didn’t know exegesis as well as we did. At the seminary we believed that exegesis was on our side, that it was exegesis that validated our position over and against that of all the other Christian traditions. But when I began to see the degree to which philosophy was playing an implicit role in our interpretation of Scripture, my beliefs that exegesis was a neutral objective science, and that it was sufficient to adjudicate interpretive disputes, began to crumble. So I decided to study philosophy, in order to get a better understanding of the relation of philosophy to theology throughout the history of the Church. If I couldn’t avoid bringing philosophy into exegesis, at least I was going to do my best to bring in true philosophy.

I completed the internship required for ordination and continued to teach Sunday school at the Presbyterian church we were attending. But at that point I decided not to pursue ordination, because for me there were too many theological questions unanswered. Two years after finishing seminary, my youngest daughter went through a very seriousness illness, and during the following year I went through what I would call an intellectual crisis concerning theology and the ecclesial practice of Christianity. It wasn’t a personal faith-crisis; my belief in Christ and love for Him was never in question. At the time, I couldn’t have explained exactly what was the problem. Anglicanism and Catholicism were not even on my conceptual horizon. I knew that I didn’t want to go to church to hear any more “man-talk,” i.e. opinions of men. If church were primarily about “man-talk,” I could go to the library and find much more erudite thinkers and writers. With what I was learning from ancient philosophers and medieval theologians, I found myself mentally refuting sermons point-by-point as they were being delivered during every service. Of course I knew we are not supposed to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, and yet existentially I couldn’t see any good reason to “go to church.” At one point I stopped going to church altogether because I was so frustrated with the whole scene, a scene that to me seemed spiritually vacuous and human-centered in its continual “man-talk.”

Eventually a friend of mine suggested that I visit an Anglican church, so I did. I went by myself. It was completely different. It was quiet and reverent before the liturgy began. The liturgy itself was beautiful, rich, and meaningful. Here for the first time I found freedom from “man-talk.” There was no personality at the front of the church with a microphone, saying whatever came into his head at that moment. There was no speculative exegesis or theological argumentation which I could critically dismantle. The liturgy is God’s speech spoken back to Him by His people or by one representing them. Of course Holy Communion is the climax of the liturgy, and it too is not “man-talk.” In this sacrament God was speaking to me not through words and propositions, but through a physical action, giving Himself to me in a very intimate way. This was not something toward which I could take a critical, disengaged stance. I could only receive it humbly and gratefully. In that respect, this sacrament almost bypassed my intellect and went straight to my heart. We received Holy Communion at the front of the church, on our knees. The very form of worship communicated something altogether different from the way of taking communion I had previously known. I found God to be present there in the beauty, reverence and silence of the liturgy. In that sacredness my heart, which had been starved under a diet of mere propositions, was drawn anew toward God.

The initial problem was that the Anglican church seemed to have no position on moral issues like abortion and homosexuality, matters on which we could not compromise. Eventually we found an independent Anglican parish that was in agreement with the natural law on these issues, and we were confirmed there in 2003. But I was still thinking about unity, and had started reading the Church Fathers. Already by the following year I found myself with serious questions about Anglicanism, as I sought to understand the underlying reason for the obvious disunity among Christians. I was reading everything I could get my hands on about the differences between Catholics and Protestants. Around that time I started to see ‘ecclesial consumerism’ for what it is.

My Anglican bishop seemed to have no interest in dialogue with the local Catholic bishop with a view to eventual full communion with the bishop of Rome. That troubled me. I knew from reading the Fathers that the bishop of Rome had a unique authority and role as the Church’s principle of unity, because of his succession from the Apostle Peter. When I asked myself why I was following this Anglican bishop, rather than the successor of St. Peter, I didn’t have a good answer. When I asked my Anglican bishop which ecumenical councils we [Anglicans] accept, his answer also troubled me. He said something like “we believe the first four, but are selective about what we believe from the others.” That seemed entirely arbitrary to me. How could we pick and choose from an ecumenical council, or from among ecumenical councils? Either we should treat them as good advice, or we should accept them all. Picking and choosing from them, and then saying that the ones we have chosen are authoritative, was to my mind self-deceiving. Finally, every Sunday while reciting the Creed, when we would get to the line “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” I couldn’t say it, because my conscience was telling me that we (as Anglicans) weren’t saying the word ‘one’ with the same meaning that those bishops who wrote the Creed intended it. We were treating what was a collection of groups not in full communion, as though it were a true unity. But I had come to believe that this was not how the early Church conceived of the unity of the Church. Real unity meant full communion of the bishops, especially with the bishops in communion with the bishop of Rome.

On April 22, 2005 I reached the conclusion that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, and decided that day to seek full communion with the Catholic Church. But my wife wasn’t ready, and it took her about a year to do her own reading, and be ready to enter the Church. Finally she and I and our two daughters were received into full communion with the Church on October 8, 2006. Presently I am teaching philosophy full time at Lindenwood University, while completing my dissertation in philosophy at Saint Louis University.

1. Your passion for Christian Unity is clearly a special part of your own understanding of the Gospel. Talk about how “unity” fits into your understanding of the Gospel.

When asked about marriage, Jesus refers back to the beginning. And here too, in order to understand the place of unity in Christ’s gospel, we have to look back at the beginning. When God made man, He established man in a unity, that is, an order consisting of various harmonies. There was friendship between God and man, shown by the fact that God walked with them in the cool of the day. They also enjoyed an internal harmony such that their lower appetites were ordered to reason, and their bodies were ordered to their souls so that they were immortal. They also enjoyed a harmony with the rest of creation; they exercised dominion over nature in a way that we do not presently enjoy. And finally they enjoyed a social harmony between the two of them. Had they not sinned, every child that would have come into the world would have become a participant in that social harmony, and in that way the initial harmony between them would have spread over the whole world, as a peace and harmony between all peoples. (CCC, 376)

Adam’s sin destroyed each of those harmonies. We see that in Cain’s murder of Abel, and especially at what happened at Babel. Origen points out, “Where there is sin, there is multiplicity, there are schisms, there are heresies, there are dissensions.” St. Augustine likewise, says, “Adam himself is therefore now spread out over the whole face of the earth. Originally one, he has fallen, and, breaking up as it were, he has filled the whole earth with the pieces.” The prophet Isaiah likewise says, “We had all gone astray like sheep, each of us was following his own way.” (Isaiah 53:6) The result of sin is described by the prophet as each one following his own way. Contrast that with Christ’s statement in John, where He refers to the Gentiles being joined to the New Israel, and says that they will become “one flock with one shepherd. (John 10:16)

God’s purpose in Christ is not only the salvation of the individual human person, but the restoration of the human race to unity in Him. We see this already at Pentecost. Peoples of all nations were present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and the Apostles were given the gift of speaking in all their languages. In this way Pentecost reveals how the Church is to be a reversal of Babel. Isaiah spoke of this, saying, “The mountain of the house of the LORD will be established as the chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills; And all the nations will stream to it.” It will be a “house of prayer for all the peoples.” (Isaiah 2:2; 56:7) Being reconciled to God through Christ is also the means by which all human beings are to be reconciled to each other; it is in this way that the Church reverses Babel. We refer to this universal character of the Church, by which every division effected at Babel is healed in Christ, as the catholicity of the Church.

For this reason, unity is at the very center of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because the unity of God and man in Jesus Christ is at the center of His gospel, in the greatest union of all time, God united to man in the incarnation of Christ. Through union with the incarnate Christ, our friendship with God is restored, and so likewise is the social harmony between one another, as one family of God, the household of faith, the Body of Christ. In Christ God has reconciled us not only to Himself but also to one another. To become a Christian is to be incorporated into this unity, the New Israel, the Church. Christ’s desire for the unity of His followers can be seen clearly in John 17, where He prays infallibly that we would be one, as He and the Father are one, so that the world would believe that the Father sent the Son.

I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one. … I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me. (John 17:11, 20-23)

By our unity with one another, across every tribe, tongue, people and nation, we demonstrate to the world that something supernatural is at work here, because we transcend the sort of nationalism and racism that views others who are different as a threat to be defeated or subdued. When nations are joined to Christ in His Body, they no longer take up weapons against each other. Natural man tries to do this through the United Nations, but this can be done only by a supernatural unity, which is the Body of Christ. So the unity and catholicity of the Church are together a sign to the world that the One whose Name we bear as Christians was from God, because this kind of unity cannot come from man, but only from God. On the other hand, when Christians are divided against each other, we obscure the gospel and diminish its credibility. Disunity among Christians is an offense against Christ and His gospel, not only because it hides the gospel of Christ from the world, but especially because it contradicts the unity at the heart of the gospel, and in that sense denies the gospel.

(More of the interview coming….)

I’m going to surprise a lot of you with an interview post with Catholic blogger Bryan Cross, writer at Principium Unitatis. I’ve often been a bit snarky to Bryan, but when it comes to the subject of Christian unity, he’s really an eloquent and optimistic Catholic voice. Read his blog bio and you’ll see he’s had a fascinating journey. I’ll be asking him questions about the recent Anglican arrangement and the overall issue of Christian unity.

Bryan’s blog was the original source for some excellent lectures by Ave Maria University professor Dr. Lawrence Feingold. His current collection are portraits of the Early Church Fathers. Dr. Feingold is an outstanding teacher, whether you agree with him or not. The entire series on The Church and Israel is outstanding Catholic teaching.

Fr. Walter Barron has a review of Alastair McGrath’s Christianity’s Dangerous Idea and a discussion of the issue of Church authority.

When I interview Bryan. We’ll talk a bit about JDK’s post at Mockingbird, All The Romery People. What is the real reason you’re not Roman Catholic?

I didn’t read Amy Welborn when she was at Beliefnet. Now she’s back at her own blog, and we all need to be regularly reading her. One of the best bloggers.

Dwight Longnecker’s blog is a fine blog by a Protestant convert who is a married priest and a good preacher. Fr. Longnecker knows a lot about the road from Anglicanism to Rome, as his post today demonstrates. Here’s a sample:

Pope Benedict’s move this week will have similar impact in the world of Christian dialogue. With Personal Ordinariates not only have the professional ecumenists been shown the way forward, but the duplicitous liberal Catholic bishops who would have stalled, moved it into ‘discussion groups’ and presented ‘further obstacles’ have also been very effectively gone around. No longer will a gifted, willing and able convert priest have to wait years to be ordained and in the meantime be pushed from pillar to post by Catholic bishops who are driven by a liberal agenda that is actually illiberal.

Finally, the English and Americans should stop being so parochial and offended. Pope Benedict did not make this move to offend the Church of England or to poach people from the Episcopal Church. He was responding to pleas from people who have already left or are planning to leave the Anglican Church. Furthermore, he is aware of the tremendous growth of both the Catholic and Anglican Churches in the developing world. I believe he has his eye on the faithful Catholics and Anglicans in Africa and Asia, and that he hopes this move will enable them to join together in a young, new and energetic alliance for the twenty first century.

A great little summary here. Always worth reading.

For the past two years, I’ve been trying to get a single question answered:

What are the actual historical evidences, before Zwingli, for the Baptist view of the Lord’s Supper?

I’ve asked this question high, low, in-between and everywhere I could get a hearing.

Long story short: No answer. If there are evidences, then someone needs to write a book, asap. It’s long overdue.

Now let’s be clear what I am saying and not saying. My reading of the New Testament is deeply shaped by my Baptist upbringing, and it’s hard for me to read anything in any discussion of the Lord’s Supper that isn’t a version of the Zwinglian position. Baptists, at their best, such as in the Second London Baptist Confession, articulated a view quite similar to the language of John Calvin: in the Lord’s Supper, we feed on Christ by faith. As I have demonstrated in past posts here at IM (See the Baptists category), I believe there are many confessional resources in the history of Baptists to articulate a richer, deeper theology of the Lord’s Supper than what is commonly heard from Baptist pulpits: a deconstruction that virtually has taken the supper out of church life and the discipleship experience of most American Baptist Christians.

But I am not talking confessional resources, I am talking historical evidences, between the New Testament and Zwingli.

I have not changed my mind that Jesus inaugurated a re-imagined Passover meal, with the meaning changed to his own death on the cross as the ultimate Passover lamb.

I see nothing of any kind of transformation happening in any New Testament text on the Lord’s Supper.

I do, however, see that Paul’s words in I Corinthians, written before any of the Gospels, emphasize both the presence of Christ and fellowship with Christ.

The Didache, a second century document, describes the Lord’s Supper in language that connects it to thankfulness for creation, remembrance of Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises and an image of Jesus’ eternal-life giving relationship to the church.

The Didache neither “confirms nor denies” any particular view of the Eucharist. Evidence in its language can be used by every position.

Beyond the Didache, the evidence veers decisively to a recognition of the presence of Christ’s body and blood in the eucharist.

The Baptist position requires that the early church go decisively wrong in a critical matter following the second century, with not only no dissenting majority, but no dissenting minority. Until Zwingli, the historical evidence for the Baptist position is restricted to interpretation of the New Testament and the Didache.

I am not opposed to seeing the church as mistaken when the evidence is persuasive. I believe the early church did go off track in some significant ways in the later second century. I believe the evidence from respected scholars such as Everett Ferguson, G.R. Beasley-Murray and David Wright, as well as ecumenical documents on the history of baptism, all indicate that infant baptism developed in the second century. While there are various theological ways to interpret this development, I see no evidence that infant baptism and its accompanying theological justification is anything other than reasonable second century developments.

But I do not see this development with the Lord’s Supper. The evidence that I see at this point has convinced me that something more like the eucharist as it is celebrated among Lutherans and Anglicans is more faithful to the Biblical evidence AND the historical evidence as well.

This has nothing to do with the Baptist celebration of the Supper or my participation in it. It is only a comment on the evidence in history for the Zwinglian position.

COMMENT RULES: 1) We won’t be arguing the Catholic view of the Eucharist. 2) We can discuss the POST. 3) I’m not going to be involved in a debate. 4) Don’t make this a big deal. It’s a matter of historical evidence and that’s it. I’m not going to any other denomination. I’m just fine as who I am: A Baptist with a Catholic wife, Anglican Children, a Presbyterian interim pastorate and a gig with the Mennonites next weekend. It’s fun being me. 5) I want to know if there are any significant differences in the Lutheran/Anglican view of the Eucharist, aside from closed communion.

Jesus is the constant mediator. Jesus is the constant advocate.

Satan is the constant accuser.

The law of God also accuses our conscience. And the grace of God in the Gospel, Jesus himself, answers the law’s thunderings.

Satan has plenty to work with in the law, and in my life and yours. It is no wonder he accuses us “day and night” before God.

Have you thought what the devil would do if he took to the pulpit of a church?

Of course, there are dozens of possible manifestations of his schemes we could imagine in the pulpit. (Ephesians 6:11, II Corinthians 2:11) It would make an interesting series of messages.

But if Satan were true to his nature, he would be the “accuser” of the family of God.

He would accuse us of not being the children of God; of not being worthy or righteous; of having no right to call upon the Lord and no hope of standing before him in judgment. If he followed the script in the book of Job, he would say God has bribed us, and that we are really nothing more than self-centered mercenaries. If he followed the script he used with Jesus (and Adam/Eve), he would question what God had said and explore our doubts that God is worthy of trust and obedience.

In the end, he would accuse us of not loving God as we should, of loving other things more than God, of being false professors, of needing to examine ourselves to see what sin and hypocrisy are in us.

He would torment us with our inadequacies, torture us with our disobedience and trounce us with our sins.

Satan would, if true to his nature, revel in announcing that we are unjust, unholy, unloving, ungracious, uncaring, unworthy in every way.

But wait……

Doesn’t that sound a lot like the message many Christians hear all the time? From….other Christians?

Examine yourselves and see what fruit you see. A-ha! Not enough.

Look at your record this week. The prayerlessness. The sloth and the disobedience. How dare you call yourself a Christian. (Sound familiar?)

Here’s bound to be a Satanic favorite: What do you love more than God? Do you love ANYTHING or ANYONE more than God? Your family? Your children? Didn’t Jesus even say “if you love anything more than me- even family- you aren’t worthy of me?”

Didn’t God say give him first place in everything? All the time? Do you give God first place? In everything? All the time?

What do you take more joy in than God? Annnnything? Anyone? Does anything ever make you more happy than your salvation?

Why aren’t you happier and more joyous in church right now than you are any time of the week? Look at you at that football game…cheering for your team. You aren’t 10% that excited in the house of God.

Look how dull and insensitive you are to holy things. How much have you prayed? Or even wanted to pray? How much time have you spent with God this week? Was it more time than you spent in meaningless worldly pursuits?

When God looks at you, just think what he sees. Think of all the vile and dirty thoughts, the petty selfish thoughts, the unholy thoughts and feelings that have filled you this week. And then you come into the house of God, sitting there like you are a Christian.

Just who do you think you are? You are an embarrassment to God and the church. Only if you repent, and show your repentance by brokenness, is there any hope that God can change you from what you are to what he desires for you to be.

OK. Thanks Satan. Fine sermon. And yes, I know all those lines not because I have access to the devil’s sermon notebook, but because I know what Gospel-less preaching sounds like.

I remember several years ago a young preacher came to our school and literally was shouting this stuff from the moment he entered the door. He went after everything: music, drinking, porn, sleeping in church, not having Bibles, modesty, purity and on and on. He had the room full of students shaking in their shoes in 15 minutes. He then commanded everyone down to the altar to get saved, or resaved or really repentant or whatever it took.

He was violent in his methods, cruel in his message and utterly GOSPEL-LESS in his ministry. Of course, he’s a successful full-time evangelist these days. A lot of people love the devil’s sermons.

I want you to imagine the sheep who grow up with this, whether it’s in church, in their home or in some ministry group. These will be beaten, cowering sheep. Or they will be sheep who run away, and good for them in doing so.

They are sheep who only know the Good Shepherd as the lesser of two evils; the enforcer of the devil’s accusations.

When Satan would engage Luther with this kind of inner voice, Luther would say, “Let’s write it all down. All of my sins. And then at then end, write, PAID FOR, by the blood of Jesus Christ.”

The Holy Spirit convicts. Satan revels in torment of the conscience. The Spirit exposes our need of Christ. The accuser comes up with various comparisons and tests to brutalize us with personal applications of the law. (”If God said I can only save the world if one of your children is damned forever, would you still love God?”)

Jesus gives us the truth. Satan distorts the truth so that the Gospel is lost in the noise. Christ wants to bring the wandering sheep home. Satan wants the sheep to despair and jump off the cliff.

The Gospel is news that is too good for accusers. The law is exact and in the hand of the enemy of our souls, it is a brutal, soul-killing weapon. In the hands of the Spirit, it is a schoolmaster that leads us to Christ. Leads. Not beats us to despair.

So this week, you may want to say. “You know pastor, I think I heard that sermon before. I believe I know where you got it.”

Apparently, by the email count, I’ve said something right.

Earlier in the day, Blue Raja and I had a discussion at the Boar’s Head Tavern about an earlier post where I quoted a Semi-Pelagian IM commenter. It’s discouraging to read that the atonement “opened the door” for us to now live a life worthy of the Kingdom of God. As I usually do, I expressed my despair at these kinds of “living to please God” systems of salvation and the blatant dishonesty they encourage and despair they induce.

So here was one of my replies.

The Gospel was never good news for me until Luther helped me see that life could continue to be tragic. I never worry about abundant life doing more than the occasional appearance in the present. I’m content with Christ in the shadowlands if he guarantees to raise me from the dead and bring me home.

This keeps coming back to me from readers who say it’s hit home with them, and where can they find more.

Before I talk about finding more of that, let me assure you that I responded to the Lutheran altar call a very long time ago.

In 1987, I was living in Louavul, going to seminary and working at a church just off campus. One J-term- a one week, intensive summer session, I believe- I was taking “Theology of Martin Luther” from the new church history guy, Dr. Timothy George.

I’ve had very, very few mystical experiences in my life, but during one lecture in that class, heaven opened up to me like never before or since. I was transported. The personal, existential dimension of the incarnation as it applies to my salvation fell on me like a gigantic wave.

To say the least, I became a Luther reader, which led me, unfortunately, to be susceptible to 16 years of Calvinism. The reason for that was simple: I didn’t know any Lutherans. The few I met wouldn’t talk to me. It was a crucial error. If I had developed relationships with Lutherans, I could have found the Lutheran reformation. Instead, the Calvinistic resurgence in Baptist life found me (Al Martin variety) and led me to some good things (Founder’s, Spurgeon) and a lot of wasted time and self-effort disguised as doing everything “to the Glory of God.”

Thank God for Steve Brown, The White Horse Inn and Michael Horton, Calvinists who stayed on more than friendly terms with the Lutheran reformation and knew how to communicate its heart.

It was Luther’s approach to his own humanity that saved me. Literally. Luther led me out of the “victorious Christian life” swamp. He simplified the Gospel. He stayed earthy and didn’t play the goofy spiritual games that evangelicalism was so prone to adore. The center was Christ and the Gospel was for sinners.

[In the interests of fairness, I should also say that in 1980, I had visited an LCMS church and was turned away at the altar abruptly, without explanation. That was my own ignorance, of course, and my own church at the time practiced closed communion. But the experience gave me a bad taste that has never entirely gone away.]

I found Luther in several places:

1. I found him in his own writings and sermons. Especially in Dillenberger’s Luther Reader, Luther’s own Table Talk, the commentary on Galatians and the “House Postils,” usually sold as the “Sermons of Martin Luther” in sets.

2. I found him at the White Horse Inn, where Rod Rosenbladt’s voice became synonymous with all I liked about Lutheran spirituality.

3. I came to appreciate that a lot of what I was hearing from Michael Horton wasn’t typical Baptist Calvinism as a kind of Kuyperian Calvinism deeply influenced by Lutheran theology. Horton has no bad books, but In the Face of God, A Better Way and Too Good To Be True especially apply here. I haven’t read Christless Christianity, but it surely would be included. Horton’s work on the web is archived at his Monergism fan page and MP3 site. If my quote appealed to you, read “Singing the Blues With Jesus.”

4. More recently, I’ve appreciated the Lutheran Confessions, the Treasury of Daily Prayer, the Lutheran Service Book (I really love this complete guide to all worship resources + hymnal) and the many hours of fine Lutheran teaching available at Pirate Christian Radio and, especially, the best program on the radio/internet, Issues, Etc. Check out the topics at Issues, etc. the past few days. Is your church going to address “The Super Christian Myth” in a series about depression in the lives of Christians anytime soon?

5. I have to mention my friend Josh Strodtbeck. He infuriates me. I’ve kicked him off the BHT multiple times. No one has shown me less mercy in my writing. But he’s turned out to be a true friend and has made me think about Lutheranism more than any one human being. Now all he does is rant about politics, but in the golden era of his blogging, he was a very helpful teacher.

I’m a Baptist. I can’t imagine I will ever be a Lutheran. I have sacramental issues with infant Baptism. If we could get rid of the babies and not talk about “what’s really happening,” I’d probably be fine. But Lutheranism is a long way from being the core of who I am, but it has deeply influenced the way I preach, read the Bible and understand the Gospel. Today, my Lutheran side reads Capon and Zahl, both Anglicans. Go figure. I know that Luther was just as Catholic as he was Protestant, and some of that side of him is inaccessible to me given my own journey. I can let it rest.

What I like about Lutherans is their anthropology and their stubborn refusal to fall for the various “victorious life” or “holiness” schemes that evangelicals and others frequently can’t resist. Luther was realistic about himself and he was realistic about what he was doing. He had very little tolerance for the abuse of religion or the complicating/polluting of the Gospel. I’ve been reading some of his epistles on liturgical reform and it’s plain that he wants the basics to remain front and center, and the additions, inventions and accretions to be thrown overboard.

So Luther lived with a lot of mystery. He didn’t mind asserting that two different things could both be true in the language of the Bible. He didn’t bother himself with speculations a la Jonathan Edwards or an army of marching Calvinists. He didn’t try to impress anyone with how pious he was.

I’m not attracted to Lutheranism because of Lutherans or their outreaching churches. A lot of the Lutherans I’ve met won no merit badges for representing their tradition with any generosity toward other traditions. Some Lutherans are legendary for their intolerance of other Christians and lack of concern for anyone with a curiosity about Lutheranism. This is acknowledged by many Lutherans, and it is changing. Confessional Lutheranism is learning a different manner and discovering a constructive conversation with other Christians. This is a good thing, and I am glad to see it. But there is a long way to go. I am still hours away from a Lutheran church.

I used to have a co-worker who was Charismatic. He’d been raised Lutheran. He would come to my breakfast table, see I was reading something liturgical and start in. “None of those Lutherans were saved. I never heard the Word of God from them. They aren’t free.”

I heard three things here: 1) These are people who aren’t constantly trying to re-save everyone. 2) They probably used lots and lots of scripture. 3) There weren’t any ridiculous hi-jinks blamed on God.

Sounded good to me.

Some of you reading this heard what I said about Luther allowing life to still be tragic, and your heart beat faster. Could it be that there is a way off that treadmill? Is there a way out from under that pressure? Is there a door out of the evangelical circus into something else that won’t drive you to despair?

Yes, and chances are, if you are a typical evangelical or Calvinist, you know almost nothing about the Lutheran way. So spend some time getting to know it.

NOTE: Commenters are encouraged to list other Lutheran resources on the web and in 3-D.

NOTE: Despite the fact that this post is law, you should still read it

I want to talk about a specific problem in preaching and teaching: the problem of preferring law over Gospel.

I consider the primary problem with preaching and teaching in my Southern Baptist tradition these days to be an obsession with (or addiction to?) preaching the “law.” To put it mildly, it’s brutal out there. In many churches and ministries, you’re getting clubbed into putty with the law and hearing slightly less Gospel than what you’d get in fifteen minutes of country music, all courtesy of a preacher who has no excuse not to know better.

I’m using the simple Lutheran “law/Gospel” division here: all of scripture is either what God commands/demands under penalty or what he promises/provides freely by grace. This is law and Gospel. “Do” or “Done.” Moses or Jesus. God the accountant older brother or God the Father of the Prodigal. Advice or announcement. Sinai or the cross. Threat or comfort. Blessing or curse. You do it or else. God did and praise.

If you get this, Luther said, you are a theologian even without the degree. So if you don’t know this, learn it, and if ou learn it, use it. Go to New Reformation Press and get you some Rod Rosenbladt or, if you’re up for it, the book by Walther. (Lutherans can make suggestions for the rest of us on this.)

There’s a lot to discuss with this topic, because I believe genuine discipleship, which has aspects of law to it, grows out of and lives in the Gospel, not the law. (Think of Gospel as soil and law as fence. How does your garden grow?) The Gospel is the Gospel of the Kingdom, and the King has a moral law. So I’m not simplistic. I sometimes hear people that I really respect do things with the Law-Gospel distinction that makes my skin crawl and that sounds like weird dispensationalism.

But let’s get this clear: I’m going to err on the side of the Gospel, not on the side of the law, so just expect that and understand it’s why I love Capon and Zahl. And don’t think it’s an easy thing for me to be consistently Gospel centered in my own life. God has really humbled me on this one through events in my own family. I have so much law stuffed in me from growing up Baptist that sometimes I’m useless. I could preach a great “beat-you-around-the-ears” law sermon in my sleep. When I hear preachers pummeling their people with the law and acting like the Gospel isn’t in existence anywhere in scripture, I understand how you can know better, but still get to that point.

For one thing, most of us have heard so much law preaching that we’re drowning in it. Most Baptists love it, too, or say they do. “You really told them today, preacher. You let ‘em have it” or my fave as a young preacher-boy “You really stepped on our toes today.” I must not have done it right then, because the law KILLS you, not annoys you, so you can be resurrected, not corrected.

I could name preachers all day who made their reputations on being law preachers, and they are popular because we love to hear someone preach our congregation or youth group right into the ground. When our people sleep and our youth group doesn’t care, we love to hear someone come in with the big stick and humble those uncaring sheep. Right?

Law preaching is powerful. It feels powerful. Even when it’s done poorly and just amounts to nagging, it makes the preacher feel like he/she is doing something. That’s one reason it’s so popular- you’re telling them what to do. You’re like Moses hitting the rock. Look what I did, you bunch of stubborn yokels. And joined with invitationalism and revivalism, it works. It fills the altar with crying students. I brings people down to get baptized for the 5th time and really mean it this time.

The Gospel, on the other hand, takes the power out of your hands. It’s the announcement of what God has done. You aren’t powerful at all. You’re one loser telling a bunch of other losers that they are going to be treated like winners. Bread for the thieves. Pardon for the unquestionably guilty. Love for rebels. You’re announcing that everyone gets paid the same. You’re issuing banquet seats to people who have no right to a ticket because they are dirty and sinful. You’re telling sinners that the lamb of God has paid the bill and it’s not going to appear on their charge anywhere.

You are telling people it is too good to be true, but it is too good and completely true, and it changes everything.

Apparently this must not be very exciting to a lot of preachers, because they just don’t enjoy preaching it (and often enjoy saying why they despise free grace.) I’m not saying they never say “Jesus died for you,” but it’s not a finished salvation given as a gift to sinners with nothing put empty hands. It is, as I usually hear it, something Jesus did that made salvation “possible.” Possible. If salvation is just “possible,” I’m toast. Burned on both sides.

If I can go to hell, I will. It’s that simple. (Sorry Catholic friends, but that’s what happens when you keep reading a thread like this. You should have turned back the first time I said “Luther.”) If Jesus closed hell by taking it upon himself for me and anyone else who believes, if hell has been conquered and sin/death defeated by the resurrected/reigning Jesus, then I can be saved. Because God does it and God promises it. (I’m enjoying the fact that I’m irritating some readers right now. See, the Gospel can be fun.)

What I hear in the pulpit is a lot of phrases like “get your priorities and values straight” or “do what pleases God.” This kind of talk can make some sense once we’ve been to the cross and understand the Gospel, but it is deadly if you put your hope in such efforts.

Remember this: Discipleship will put you in despair without the Gospel. Discipleship that’s rooted in law will just drive you into despair or Pharisaism. Discipleship needs to grow out of the Gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit magnifying Jesus and the love of God.

You can recognize law preaching because it’s always full of references to the Bible being a “handbook for life,” full of principles for a successful life. If your Bible is just a handbook for life, throw it away.

The Bible is the story that delivers us the Gospel. It’s point is to get you to Jesus, the one mediator between God and man. It’s a big book to get you to a short message. You buy the whole field, but the treasure is the Gospel, not the book of Judges or financial principles from Proverbs. Once you have the Gospel right and you know what preaching is all about, then you can read and preach Leviticus or Malachi or whatever you want, as long as Jesus is in his proper place and the message is the Gospel, not the law, or the old covenant, or this week’s good advice.

I really think we have an army of preachers who think that people ought to come hear them “preach” about various life questions and issues. How to have a great family. How to get along at work. How to use money. How to discipline kids.

Why would I want a preacher to tell me anything about these things? Why are preachers talking about sex, politics and what Jesus wants you to eat? Can anyone admit that the preacher’s ego is often inflated to dangerous level when we let his/her advice about politics or parenting become legitimate material for preaching.

Preach the Gospel, brother. Then sit down, be quiet and let’s do something else. We can pray, sing or go eat. All good.

The Bible is about the Gospel. You are about the Gospel. Give me enough of the law to make the Gospel good news, though I’ll admit I’m not one of those people convinced that we need to try and recreate Bunyan’s conversion. I’m with Spurgeon on that one. Our job is to keep the Good News out there.

Law preaching demotes the preacher, often abuses the congregation, denies them the Gospel and offers a false hope in things like “getting serious about pleasing God.”

Law youth ministry is a waste of your time. If all you’re doing is trying to make kids behave, make good choices and buy into the church as a place to hang out, then by all means, get another job. Or be honest and just say you’re a moralistic therapeutic babysitter carrying out the wishes of the church to not have any kids make bad decisions.

What is ministry? Get them to the Gospel and Jesus, sister. Let Jesus decide if they need to be in jail or not.

In other words, it’s an unmitigated disaster unless the Gospel is heard louder, longer and much clearer than anything else.

I’d really like to apologize to anyone- and there are a lot of these people- who ever showed up at church and heard the “good news” that if they would take their talent and use it for the Lord, they’d be blessed. Or if they surrender their all to Jesus, they’ll be happy no matter what happens. Or if they will stop making excuses and get serious about following Jesus, they can please God.

Really, I apologize. We’ve got better news than that.

We’ve got the news that if everything sucks, asteroids hit the earth, you die, the economy tanks, no one at work likes you, Christians are jailed, your computer breaks and your kid turns out to be a lawyer, you still can’t stop the Good News of what God has done for you.

We’ve got the news that God has declared religion out of business. We’ve got the news that the church has nothing to offer or say except the Gospel, so that should simplify your search for a church. We’ve got the news that at the end of the world, there’s going to be a party for you and me, where we’re going to be embraced, loved and taken to the new heaven and the new earth completely on the free grace of God in Jesus.

We’ve got the news that the law has been satisfied and love is what remains. Faith, Hope and Love, and the greatest of these is Love, because we know who he is. Death has become resurrection. A world of hurt has become a new heaven and a new earth….in the GOSPEL.

Can we preach this please? My soul needs it and I am not alone.

I’ve always been encouraged that there is so much discussion of the Gospel in the Christian blogosphere, but I’ve been disappointed where most of that discussion has focused. I’m sure there’s a great need to clarify the differences between Piper and Wright on the nature of justification, but I doubt that the church on the corner has many people walking in the doors who particularly care. (Oh, I know that the theologians among us can tell us why they should care, but the theological class has never suffered from a lack of confidence in the significance of their particular areas of interest, yours truly included.)

There are, however, areas of largely untouched Gospel proclamation and application that are walking into churches and sitting across from you at Panera Bread; areas and issues usually avoided and left unexplored. I rarely- never?- hear them addressed, which is what this blog is for, right?

I’m sure very few readers have failed to have I Corinthians 6:9-11 brought to their attention multiple times, mostly because it contains specific references to sexual sins and that those who “practice” and “indulge in” them will not inherit the Kingdom of God (one of Paul’s rare mentions of the Kingdom). If we could put aside for a moment the debate regarding exactly what sort of sexual sin Paul is describing or how we need to shout the sinfulness of sin louder than the world, there’s something else rather extraordinary about this passage, particularly given the portrait of the Corinthian church that emerges in the New Testament.

To the point, the Corinthian church, for all its lack of mature leadership, division, indulgence in the sins common in Greek culture and raucous abuse of the Lord’s Supper, must have, at least at some point, been a pretty good place to repent of serious sin and become an accepted part of the Christian community. As the NLT puts it, “Some of you were once like that,” “that” being the sins listed in that passage. “But now….” those same persons were in the Corinthian community hearing this letter.

In other words, repentance happens somewhere, if it happens, other than just in your head and heart. The Corinthian church appears to, at one time, have been one of those places.

This may shed some light on the situation in I Corinthians chapter 5, where Paul says the Corinthians are “proud of” their acceptance of a man living in a Jerry Springer-esque relationship with his step-mother. Acceptance of the sinner may have been the Corinthian’s strong suit if chapter 6 is any evidence, and their lack of discernment and leadership may have let them to sometimes tolerate too easily- even gladly- what they should have sometimes excluded as incompatible with belonging to Christ. In fact, a number of passages in these letters leave the impression that the Corinthians’ acceptance of real sinners and their patience in dealing with real sin may have gone off track without unified, mature leadership.

What I want you to see, however, is that their acceptance of sinful, repenting, in-the-process-of-changing new believers was a legitimate and importance application of the Gospel. We don’t just arrive at the destination; we travel the road and the road may be less than a straight line. The Christian community into which the Corinthians were all baptized as converts was, at any one moment, a community of persons moving from one kind of person to another; a community of persons acquiring in real time the inheritance and realities given them in their union with Christ in baptism and faith.

Our only other choice is to assume that the person who was “once” on the list in chapter 6 was excluded from the community until they became the new “you” of the same verses. There are Christians and communities that strive to be this very thing: communities where all transformation is instantaneous and the stated rules render the process of repentance and personal transformation unspeakable…unless it is finished. This, by the way, is the genius of Paul’s “sin lists,” which always counterbalance the “big” sins with what we would judge as more mundane sins, by human comparison. Of course you must exclude a persistent sexual sinner, but “greedy” people? We can work on that as we go along. No need to make a big deal about that sort of thing.

I’m not suggesting that Paul or any New Testament writer was advocating that anyone in leadership would be in the process of committing scandalous sin. The pastoral letters are clear on such matters. I am suggesting, with good evidence I think, that the Corinthian fellowship contained persons who entered into the Christian journey as they repented from real sins, and that such repentance was ongoing and, I’m certain, imperfect. That the church is to be a “hospital for sinners” and not a ward of healthy people telling stories of their former illnesses is a challenging calling.

Now I have more than a Bible study in mind this morning, and I want to get to the point. I think there are sins we virtually don’t talk about at all simply because we don’t want people in the process of repenting of those sins around us or our families, and so we fail to see that the church as community is, in many ways, much more like the moralistic, judgmental secular world than like the movement that grows from Jesus and his world-altering Gospel.

Consider the sin of domestic abuse, both emotional and physical. I believe it’s one of the great unmentioned sins in the church, because it is one of the great plagues of the culture. Christians don’t have a lot of verses on this one because the Bible was written in cultures that seldom defined abuse as we do today. Abuse of women and children- and occasionally men- is rampant, common and even accepted in many cultures. I am fairly certain I could walk- not drive- to the homes of several families I know that are dealing with this right now, including prominent families in churches.

Have you ever talked to a counselor- secular or Christian- about how they feel about abusive men? I have two books on emotional abuse on my bedroom shelves right now. Both say the emotional abuser will almost certainly never change and the victim/woman must divorce and leave such a man no matter what he says.

That is the message of the culture to the family that is struggling with emotional/verbal or physical abuse: no change possible. Get out. End it and start over. To do otherwise is the enable the abuser to continue the cycle of abuse.

Now I understand this, and I have advised many women to get out and have called social services on behalf of young people. I am not that guy who says “submit and take it,” so don’t write me with stories of how churches and pastors said stay and wait for him to change. I am basically on your side and I respect your pain and loss. I just have another problem.

I deeply disagree with the hopelessness of the typical scenario. I believe Christ and the Gospel can change the abuser. I believe it, I’ve seen it, and- hang on- I want every church to have some kind of niche in their community- aside from a professional counselors office- where such repentance can go on. I want support for the abused, and I want some community for the genuinely repenting abuser. If we say no abuser ever tries to repent, then we deny the Gospel, and that’s a big deal.

Maybe a Samson Society. Maybe a Celebrate Recovery relationship. Maybe a Promise Keeper’s small group. Maybe a healing prayer service. Maybe a prayer partner. Maybe a mentor or accountability group. Someplace where it can happen in the real world, with other men, and not just in a counselor’s office where it’s unlikely he’ll hear the Gospel.

If there isn’t such a place for that man who seeks to repent of his shabby and rotten treatment of his wife and family, then what business do we have preaching the Gospel to that man? What business do we have reading him I Corinthians 6:9-11?

Oh, I know. Your mind is already going where mine went long ago: the who catalog of sins that our culture has placed in the “pariah” file. Pornography addicts. Sexual abusers. Violent criminals. Sociopaths. Child molesters.

No fellowship of mere humans can create the community where everyone can repent openly. It’s just not possible. Some sins and their consequences are too controversial and dangerous, even in the process of sincere repentance. Most churches are too imperfect to love every sinner as they should be loved. No church can turn an eye to realities of risk and recurrence.

God bless those in prison ministry and those who can go to the men and women no church can allow in, but are there churches seeking to call out and equip those persons for that ministry? Even if it that ministry can never result in joining the church’s formal, 3-D fellowship? (By the way, once again, one can see certain advantages to the Catholic way of doing church. It may fall short, in some of our assessments, in the quality of “typical” community, but it also may be much more accommodating to the person who, truly, can only come to confession, receive the sacraments and then must leave, or to the person who can’t enter a fellowship at all.)

I wonder how many who hear preachers inveigh against viewing internet porn are also sitting in a fellowship where there is a place one can confess, experience acceptance and become accountable for such a struggle with sin? How many are sitting in a place where Paul could write I Corinthians 6:9 with a modern list of shocking sins, but no one can say “I was one of those, but thanks to the Gospel I heard and experienced here, I am that no more?”

This is a real challenge, because the world is full of bad things and as often as we are accused of being rigid and Puritanical, we are also accused of being sloppy and naive with forgiveness. (Listen when someone on death row claims to have been forgiven by Jesus.) As Jesus shaped, Gospel loving people, the scandal and shock of forgiving real sinners is one sign we are getting it right. If the Corinthians went over the line and into the ditch, I’m just glad they were on the right side of the road. For too many of us who claim to be Jesus’ followers, there is very little mercy for anything resembling the prodigal unless he comes home looking very good and sporting a nifty testimony. We don’t want to be in the business of cleaning that kid up.

In most of the churches I’ve served, someone has been convicted of a crime and gone to jail. Some of those persons were sitting in the church’s pews the weeks before. Paul Zahl says you would be very surprised to discover how many people you know have spent a night in jail.

You’d probably be more surprised to learn that the woman next to you at the gym is there because her husband verbally abuses her about her weight. Or what your best friend’s husband is doing on that work computer. Or who is on the sex offender’s registry because as a 22 year old public school coach they had consensual sex with a 17 year old student. Or who is addicted to prescription medications. Or who punched their 15 year old son in the jaw. Or who is paying the mortgage having sex with strangers off of Craig’s list. Or who is a three time convicted shoplifter. Or who was arrested for a DUI last month. Or who smokes pot every day.

Yes, most of us don’t want to think about it, because these are messy, life dominating sins, scattering trails of wreckage behind them that no one wants to become involved with. But we preach the Gospel to them when we preach it to anyone.

We have a Word to hear, an aisle to walk, water to be washed in and a table to come to, but do we have a people gathered around that Gospel who will strive to make a community of repentance possible?

NOTE: For those who are interested in this topic, the life’s work and especially the recent writing of Dr. Larry Crabb is invaluable.