The Authority of Scripture Archives

Justice, Liberty, & Love (CCD)

Christ Church on September 11, 2022

THE TEXT

“For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. . .” (Galatians 5:13–23).

Justice, Liberty, & Love (King’s Cross)

Christ Church on September 11, 2022

INTRODUCTION

Justice, freedom, and love are the buzz words of our culture, but it is not at all clear that many of our neighbors know what these words mean. The Bible teaches that all three of these gifts originate in the Triune God and are only received and enjoyed through the Cross of Jesus.

THE TEXT

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

True liberty is the ability to love our neighbors, through serving them lawfully from the heart (Gal. 5:13-14). The opposite of liberty (slavery) destroys community, through biting and devouring, driven by lusts and envy (Gal. 5:15, cf. Js. 4:1-3). Those who walk in the Spirit are led by the Spirit and therefore free from the lust of the flesh (Gal. 5:16). There is a battle in true Christians, where they sometimes find themselves doing what they do not want to do (Gal. 5:17). But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the condemnation of the law (Gal. 5:18, cf. Rom. 8:1). You can tell you are under the condemnation of the law because you are enslaved to the works of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-21). The marks of true freedom are the fruit of the Spirit, against which the law can bring no charge (Gal. 5:22-23).

NEGATIVE V. POSITIVE JUSTICE

The Bible teaches that justice is primarily negative and punitive (Rom. 13:3). It is only positive in declaring innocence, affirming or praising the righteous (Rom. 13:3), but otherwise it condemns and punishes, executing God’s wrath (Rom. 13:4). Lady Justice is pictured in all the old paintings and statues as blind or blindfolded holding a set of scales in one hand and a sword in the other. Her job is simply to weigh out certain actions and demand equity – retribution and/or restitution that restores balance to the world, according to the law of God (cf. Ex. 22:1-15).

Related to the notion of justice is the notion of “rights,” and rights always imply obligations. If you have a right to life, everyone around you is obligated not to harm you. If you have a right to private property, everyone around you has an obligation not to take or damage what belongs to you. If you are a wife, you have a right to be provided for, and your husband is obligated to provide for you as himself (Eph. 5:29). Justice is called for when one of these obligations has been breached, defied, or severely neglected — eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life (Dt. 19:21). However, when someone claims they have a right to a job, education, health care, or welfare, the implication is that someone else is obligated to give it to them. But who? God has assigned the family government the ministry of health, welfare, and education. God has assigned the church government the ministry of worship in the word and sacraments. God has assigned the civil government the ministry of justice, punishing evil doers.

LOVE IS LIBERTY TO SERVE

The problem with coerced “love” from the state is like that demon-possessed guy in the tombs from the gospels – his name is Legion. First, the state is presuming to know how my resources are best used for the good of others. Second, the state is presuming to know how my neighbors will be best cared for and served. Third, the coercion of the state destroys the personalism of individuals freely giving and serving and receiving, reducing “love” to a merely material transaction or wealth transfer. Fourth, the automated provision of the state creates weak, irresponsible, immature, and ungrateful dependents. Fifth, the coercive automation of the state is massively inefficient. In all of these ways (and more), love and liberty are destroyed by the threatened violence of the state. True liberty is the room to exercise true wisdom and generosity with time and resources to care for the needs of your neighbors, and in particular, those entrusted to your care (Eph. 5:28-29, 6:4, 1 Tim. 5:8).

SINS & CRIMES

Many moderns confuse jurisdictions by conflating sins and crimes. Crimes are those acts that harm the person or property of others or are designated by God to corrupt society and therefore fall under the jurisdiction of the civil magistrates for punishment. Sins are those thoughts and acts that break fellowship with God and others, many of which fall under the jurisdiction of families and churches. True love, liberty, and justice occur when each jurisdiction submits to God’s assigned sphere. In a Christian civil order, all crimes would also be sins, but in most civil orders, there are a mix of crimes that may or may not be sins. So if the magistrate orders that meeting for worship is a crime, it would not be a sin to disobey that order (Dan. 3:18, Acts 5:29). But the other point is that not all sins are or should be crimes. So for example, covetousness is a sin and it may reveal itself in bad thoughts or words, but it isn’t a crime until it turns into overt theft or vandalism. The point is that Lady Justice deals with black and white actions, punishing evil doers upon the testimony of two or three witnesses, but she is not entrusted with matters of the heart, house rules, or matters of worship. When “justice” tries to meddle in those things assigned to the family or church, you don’t get love, liberty, or justice.

CONCLUSIONS

The greatest act of liberty ever performed was also the greatest act of love and justice: Jesus laid His life down freely as a ransom for sinners. No one took His life from Him, He laid it down freely (Jn. 10:18). And He had that freedom because it was obedience to His Father.

But the sinful heart of man always wants to get this backwards and upside down. The sinful, prideful heart of man wants to collapse and confuse justice, liberty, and love in order to remake the world according to its own wisdom, which always involves manipulation and coercion and demands that you must acquiesce to the demands of government thugs.

But justice only punishes or exonerates. That’s all it does. And that is what it did in the Cross. God’s perfect justice punished Jesus in our place, and then because our debts were fully paid, God’s justice exonerates all who trust in Him. That is a supreme manifestation of God’s love and liberty, but you cannot mix them up without confusing the gospel.

Those who receive this gospel really are set free, and the Spirit begins to lead them to love their neighbors freely and generously in imitation of Jesus in obedience. But slavery to the flesh is manifest and obvious. So which one are you? What characterizes your life? Is it the fruit of the Spirit or the works of the flesh? If it is the works of the flesh, then any demand for justice is only to have the law of God fall upon you with all of its fierce condemnation. But if it is the fruit of the Spirit, you are truly free, and you are a manifestation of the righteousness of God in Christ.

Man, Woman, and Sexuality

Christ Church on September 4, 2022

INTRODUCTION

So we have reached a point in our society where people can no longer deny that religion influences our culture, customs, institutions and the like. People’s eyes are starting to open given the wild changes we’re experiencing. The 2015 Supreme Court Decision Obergefell v. Hodges claimed that a man has the constitutional right to marry another man. Transgenderism is being normalized to the degree that Boston Children’s Hospital now has a Gender Multispecialty Service that provides affirmative care to gender diverse and transgender individu- als. And these services are provided for children as young as 3 years old.
Our culture is increasingly confused about fundamental principles: What is a man? What is a woman? What is marriage? And this confusion is the result of God handing us over to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. God’s Word sheds light on these matters. And through his Word, God graciously restores man so that he can know both himself and his Creator.

THE TEXT

“And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, ‘Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?’ tempting him. And he answered and said unto them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ And they said, ‘Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, ‘For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female . . . ‘” (Mark 10:2-9)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The Pharisees attempt to trap Jesus with a question about divorce (v. 2). Notice this is a temptation of Christ, not a genuine question about particular grounds for divorce. That being the case, biblical grounds for divorce (and there are such grounds) don’t come up in this exchange. Jesus replies to the Pharisees by asking them about the law of Moses (v. 3). They read Moses to say that a man can put his wife away through divorce papers (v. 4). But Jesus explains that Moses took that measure because of their hard hearts (v. 5). From the beginning of creation, God made male and female (v. 6). And this is the very reason a man leaves his parents and holds fast to his wife (v. 7). This cleaving is such that the two are no longer two, but one flesh (v. 8). And man must not tear this one for God is the one who joined the two into one (v. 9).

A GRENADE AMONG THE UGLY ISMS

This passage is truly a death blow to many of the vain ideologies that beset us. If we take the sword of the Spirit seriously in these nine verses, then transgenderism, nihilism, paganism, and secular humanism are slain. We see the rise of these empty philosophies around us in the dissolution of marriage and the defaming of the image of God. And the text at hand speaks directly to that image and the divine institution of marriage.

GOD MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE

Verse 6 states plainly that God made them male and female. We hear this same truth in Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 5:2. It is clear that God likes to create in binaries. He made sun and moon, heaven and earth, sea and land, peanut butter and jelly. We are not surprised to see him make male and female. And we are not surprised that they go together so well. This is his craftsmanship and it is glorious.

Genesis tells us that God made man and woman in his image. Here is the fundamental answer to the question. What is man? The image of God. What is woman? The image of God. But Scripture tells us more. 1 Corin- thians 11:7 says that man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man. There are those who would look down upon this verse, believing it to in some way degrade the female. But what is degrading about being the glory of the glory of God? Who thinks being the crown of the crown is a slight?

THEY TWAIN NO MORE TWAIN

God made them different so that they might pair so well. And here is why androgyny is not only boring but the pits. It attempts to erase the two rather than join the two. Marriage is glorious for its leave and cleave. There is action there. There is something captivating. There is a miracle, a work of God. If you get rid of the distinction, then you get rid of the unity. And if you get rid of the distinction and the unity, then you get rid of the fruit.

This one flesh union in marriage and its fruit obliterates nihilism with its meaninglessness and despair. The first woman came from man. And man has been coming from woman ever since. Along these lines, Paul says, “For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God” (1 Corinthians 11:12). In other words, all of this leaving, cleaving, and procreating is a big neon sign pointing you to your Creator. How could you despair in ear shot of the babies cooing? The kiddos giggling? And in the case of our covenant children, God stills the enemy and the avenger with the noises coming out of the mouths of those babes (Psalm 8:2).

WHAT GOD HATH JOINED TOGETHER

And this leads to another point. Jesus does not only say that the two become one, but God joins the two to- gether (v. 9). It follows that there is no room for paganism. That is, there is no room for thinking that creature alone did this. Creature did not make them male and female in the beginning. And creature did not keep mak- ing them male and female down through the centuries.

Look at a man. Look at a woman. God’s fingerprints are all over them. Then, look upon man and woman joined in marriage. And remember as you do that this is the very picture Obergefell attempted to defame. Neverthe- less, look at that marriage. And here again, you see God’s handiwork.

LET NOT MAN SEPARATE

Jesus provides an imperative that you might think should already be clear. That imperative is, “Let not man separate what God has joined together.” And we can hear the rage of the kings in the background, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:3). The kings of the earth from Psalm 2 do not like the bonds that have come down upon them from the Creator. Those given to homosexual lust and acts are in the same situation. They do not like God’s order and design. They do not like two becoming one. In this sense those given to transgender confusion are the same. They too reject the design of the Creator. And according to our Lord’s words, those who would divorce without cause, while not stumbling to the same degree, are stumbling in the same direction, tearing apart what God himself has fashioned.

The good news is, amid all of our futile attempts to stamp out the image of God, amid our attempts to tear apart what he has fashioned, the Father sent his Son, a Son of Man, a Second Adam. Through his blood, man is reconciled to his Creator and the image of God in man is restored.

Man, Woman, and Sexuality (CCD)

Christ Church on September 4, 2022

THE TEXT

The Pharisees came and asked Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” testing Him.

³And He answered and said to them, “What did Moses command you?”

⁴They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.”

⁵And Jesus answered and said to them, “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. ⁶But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ ⁷‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, ⁸and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. ⁹Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate (Mark 10:2–9 NKJV).