An encouragement sandwich

Jesus affectionately calls His disciples “my friends” (Luke 12:4) and “little flock” (Luke 12:32), and sandwiched in between those terms of endearment He warns them to fear God because God has the power to both kill them and throw them into hell:

“… I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:5, ESV)

I believe this startling juxtaposition of tenderness and sternness is deliberate: The unmatched love God has for us is no reason to forget His fearful holiness, and His utter holiness and power is no reason to forget His unmatched love. Embrace them both and you will do well.

Lately I have been hearing a worrisome permutation of Christian thinking about homosexuality. It cannot be entirely coincidental that three unrelated people have told me lately they are changing their minds “slightly” about homosexual marriage. Interestingly, all three have the same reason: Christians have debased the marriage covenant by our wholesale divorces, extra-marital affairs, and pre-marital sex. Therefore …

To be precise, all three are thinking that Christians should stop resisting same-sex marriage. One, a young man, said in pique that he would prefer to attend the wedding of a homosexual friend than express being OK with another friend who just shacks up with his girlfriend with no intention to marry.

Another, a man in the leadership of a Christian ministry to the “sexually broken,” said that a redirection of Christian energies is in order—to shore up our own house and dilapidating marriages and to leave homosexuals alone and not resist their agenda.

The third, a man with political ambitions, told me that while he still sees homosexuality as unbiblical, he would work to facilitate same-sex marriage because he feels he should be supportive of any person in any place who is interested in commitment, family stability, and legitimacy.

The only problem with the enacting of your political vision, I said to the last man, is that in a generation from now your puny little personal scruples against homosexuality would be entirely forgotten and we would have on our hands the total normalization and validation of same-sex marriage side by side with biblical heterosexual marriage. Just think of how those lonely picketers at Planned Parenthood facilities have single-handedly kept the pro-life fires alive four decades after the Supreme Court thought to have driven a stake through its heart.

But most importantly (here we return to gentle Jesus’ warning of hell), by relaxing our resistance to homosexual marriage we would find ourselves guilty of the souls who went into a legal same-sex marriage, because we did not warn them about the eternal consequences.

The best reason to keep beating back the homosexual putsch is Jesus’ law of love. If we love people, we don’t want to see them go to hell. Blunt as it is, hell’s reality is what should keep us in the fight.

A great stocking stuffer: Andrée Seu Peterson’s Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, regularly $12.95, is now available from WORLD for only $5.95.