When it comes to more serious issues, there are more serious measures. Putting someone out of the church, is, at times, instructed. Jesus tells us to treat unrepentant sinners as outsiders in Matthew 18:17, and Paul implements this multiple times (1 Cor 5:1-13, Titus 3:10, etc.).

So understanding the difference between what is a “grey issue” - an issue of the conscience - and what is a sin issue - something with significant consequences - matters a lot. The distinction is often blurred. And when it gets too blurry, you can end up with something like this:

The gentleman who made this1 sees all issues as black and white. As a result, things that should be grey, like being a mama’s boy or a gamer, is now worthy of hell. There’s no room for discernment, no call for wisdom, no understanding of enduring for the sake of the weaker brother. Just straight into “ankle biters need to be warned.”

Sin does matter. It needs to be taken seriously. So how do I discern what is an issue of conscience and what is something more serious?

And more importantly, if someone is doing something that I think is sinful, but isn’t named outright in the Bible, how do I approach this?

In this article I will argue that issues exist on (at least) three levels: issues of the conscience, issues of the church, and issues of the gospel. After we go through all three, I’ll try to give a practical guide for approaching others.

What are Issues of Conscience?

In Romans 14, Paul names 3 specific issues that may bother someone who is “weak in faith” (14:1). These are:

1. Things someone eats.

He says, “One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables” (Romans 14:2). You can imagine how a church filled with both Jews and Gentiles would have disagreements over food. Some are avoiding pork because the Torah told them to. Some are avoiding all meat because they associate it with their past idol worship. These issues still exist! There are still people in the modern evangelical church who are holding Torah food laws. Paul calls issues of food an issue of conscience.

2. Holidays someone celebrates

Paul says, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). Again, imagine his early audience: a mix of Gentile and Jewish believers, all newly discovering Christianity. The Jews want to keep the Festival of Booths. Some of the Gentiles want to keep Roman holidays. The Jews may say to the Gentiles that they ought to leave their cultural festivals behind if they are to come to Christ. The Gentiles reply back with exactly the same line. This also, is still an issue! Good luck getting through Valentines, Halloween or even Christmas without hearing talk about the “origin” of these celebrations and why they are tainted for Christians. Christians today can’t agree on holidays either!

3. What someone considers clean or unclean.

“I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean” (Romans 14:14). Paul says that anything someone considers to be unclean, is unclean for them. What does this mean? It means that different will express their love and devotion to God differently - just as loving husbands may express love to their wives differently. See last week’s article for more.

These three issues: food, holidays and personal choice in holiness continue to dominate much of the discussion and disagreement in churches today. Christians still have strong opinions on how much of the Old Testament we are to be keeping. Christians still have strong opinions on what holidays we are to be celebrating. Christians make personal holiness choices all the time, and they are aghast when others do not make the same ones. Christians leave behind old, sinful habits, and then can’t figure out why other Christians still keep the same habits.

These are issues of conscience. These are things that we can refer to as ‘grey areas.’ In my first article I talked about how both legalism and relativism are equal dangers when it comes to grey areas. They are real. They aren’t salvific.

Paul says, “ if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love” (Rom 14:15). In other words, if you are doing something that upsets another Christian (in a grey area), you should stop doing it in front of them. You love people well by avoiding around them the things they are against. It’s not worth destroying what God is doing in a church because you disagree about what to do on Halloween, or if it is ethical to eat beef. Honour other people’s consciences and strive for unity. Churches are diverse, and differences create strength.

Issues pertaining to food, holidays and what someone considers unclean aren’t issues of sin, per se. But it also isn’t legalistic to have high standards around these areas. Paul says to listen to your conscience. Sometimes people are prone to do things they ought not to do because they know other Christians are okay with it, and they violate their conscience. This is sin. Others are quick to judge those with high standards. “Don’t you know we aren’t saved by works?” they ask. Paul says to listen to your conscience, and honour the weaker brother.

Issues of the Church

Issues of the church are issues are issues that affect the function and worship of a church. Issues of the church are theological opinions that are held so tightly, that for two people to worship together would violate one or both of their consciences. Both disagreeing persons are saved - and will recognize each other as such - but disagree on a functional choice within the church strongly enough to warrant independent worship. Issues of the church are theological, ecclesiological, and usually pertain to either sacraments or polity.

The most common example of this would be baptism. Imagine a church where two people who hold sincerely to two opposite views on baptism try to attend. One has been baptized by sprinkling, the other by immersion, and both believe this is the only acceptable way. One would start serving, and the other would whisper to those around them, “hey, that guy shouldn’t be serving! He hasn’t been baptized - at least not legitimately - yet.” And then a few minutes later that same man was serving and the man he just criticized would turn to those around him and say, “hey! That guy shouldn’t be serving…” and repeat the same spiel.

Issues of the church affect how a church should run. They are not salvation issues. No one is arguing that either man is unsaved, and no one is arguing that either man is living in sin and must face consequences. But these two men are struggling to hold their theological convictions and live them out while worshipping together.

It is possible to have a church that believes only baptism by sprinkling is legitimate. It is possible to have a church that believes only baptism by immersion is legitimate. It is even possible to have a church that believes that either sprinkling or immersion are legitimate. But once someone who believes sprinkling is illegitimate starts attending either of the other two churches, they will see people they believe have been illegitimately baptized, they will want to say something, and it will end up causing all kinds of discord.

This why elders are told to “exercise oversight” and “be examples” while the church is told to “be subject to the elders” (1 Peter 5:2, 3, 5). Ecclesiology needs to be solved top-down. If there are two men in the church both whispering, “hey! That guy shouldn’t be serving…” they need to seek clarity from the elders. The elders will tell them what the church’s view on baptism and service is, and the men both need to be subject to that leadership. If one finds subjection to be a true violation of their conscience, they can seek out a church that practices baptism the way they would like.

Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646) had a vision for denominations. His vision was one where each denomination practiced their theology well, and worshipped completely independent from each other. Despite individual worship, denominations would maintain good “fraternity.” This meant letting their pastors have a brotherhood, in which they would meet and discuss theology occasionally in order to hold each other accountable. The pastor that wanted more singing and less preaching would hang out with the pastor that wanted more preaching and less singing, and they would talk. This discussion would essentially keep either of them from saying “all preaching and no singing” or vice verse.2

Burroughs’ vision for denominations has been a recognized model for hundreds of years, perhaps more than people realize (I suspect most people don’t know how often their pastor hangs out with other pastors). In the past ten years or so, some of these fraternal links have been fracturing. Why? While issues of difference used to separate churches, increasingly there are sin issues.

The temptation is either to:

a) Try to make every issue of the conscience an issue of the church, and declare that it is impossible to worship with someone who disagrees with them on one of the 3 issues listed above. This is, at least in part, the reason why Canada has 340+ denominations.

b) Try to downplay the significance of issues of the church, as though they weren’t real or serious. I expect to spend eternity with some godly believers who are currently in other denominations that, I believe, are dead wrong on certain issues. We can all ask the Lord together someday. It is a good and valuable thing that they have churches of their own who worship and practice in a way that makes sense to them.3 As such, churches and denominations taking a stand on individual theological issues that may not be gospel issues.

Issues of the church are different than issues of the conscience because the instruction to “bear with the weaker brother” can’t be applied. Someone can’t just silently practice differently without denying the authority of the elders.

Issues of Sin

Some things are not issues of the conscience (grey areas) and they are not issues of the church (denominational preferences). Some things are clear violations of the Scripture.

What to do with issues of sin is spelled out clearly in Matthew 18:15-20. But because these consequences end with such severity, it’s important not just to know what to do with issues of sin, but what actually qualifies as an issue of sin.

The best way to know if something is sin is to see if the Bible forbids it explicitly. Find every bible verse pertaining to a subject. An index is helpful here, or, honestly, Google. See if a Bible verse specifically forbids the issue you see another Christian practicing.

The trouble with this method, however, is twofold:

First of all, this leads to cherry picking verses out of context, especially from the Old Testament law. For example, “don’t get a tattoo” in Leviticus 19:28 has to be understood in the midst of a much larger conversation regarding how much of Leviticus a Christ follower is to obey today.

Secondly, the Bible is not an exhaustive ethical guide for life. There are lots of things that are wrong that are never explicitly named in the Bible, such as animal abuse. The Bible regularly calls for wisdom and discernment, which specifically cues us to the fact that it does not intend to be exhaustive.

Despite these two drawbacks, looking for specific and relevant Bible verses is still the best method for discerning areas of sin. The second best method is to begin the process of dealing with sin detailed in Matthew 18. It starts with, “go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (Matt 18:15). Meeting with someone alone to discuss an issue you are concerned about is a great way to begin to determine if something is an issue of conscience or an issue of sin. If you don’t know, approach the other humbly, ask lots of questions, express your concerns and see how they respond. Whether he listens to you, or you listen to him, either way you’ll both gain a brother (or sister).

The To-Do-Guide

Let’s break this down into practical guidelines.

What do I do if I disagree with someone in my church on a matter of conscience? For example, they are celebrating a holiday that I think is not appropriate for Christians? You should read Romans 14. It will tell you to maintain unity, to honour both your conscience and your Christian brother’s. Depending on the issue, it could be appropriate either to have a conversation with the other Christian, or to keep silent and move along.

What do I do if I have a disagreement over an issue of the church? If you read 1 Peter 5, you will see that the Bible says to submit to your elders (and that hopefully they aren’t lording the issue over anyone). If you believe there is a matter of worship or church organization that they have interpreted incorrectly, you don’t need to speak ill of them, and you should not try to change anyone’s mind. That church is submitting to those elders. If it really bothers you, find a different church. Many denominations will work with you to plant a new church in your area if you contact them willing to help. If you think there is no other church in your area with preaching, programming, singing, and a handful of theological issues that you like, this is probably a Goldilocks issue and not a theological issue.

What do if I see a sin issue in someone? If the person is not a Christian, you don’t do anything. Non-Christians need the gospel, not direction on how to follow some laws. If it is a Christian, follow the steps in Matthew 18:15-20. You should be quite certain this is an issue of sin, and not one of the previous two issues, before advancing.

“Is listening to this singer sinful?” That was the question put to me point blank. The woman had an answer locked and loaded in the chamber, and if I responded incorrectly, I was about to hear about it.

If you’ve spent any time in the evangelical world, you’ve heard an expression pertaining to these types of issue: they are “the grey areas.” This is a simplified way of saying, “Christians don’t have a concrete answer and it may be different from person to person.” A “grey area” could be defined as an issue that needs to be left to the discernment of the individual.

Do Grey Areas Even Exist?

The first important question we need to answer is: is there any such thing? Does a God who is “holy, holy holy,” ever see anything as “maybe holy, maybe not?”

Ethics must either be objective or subjective. Objective ethics would say, “an action is right or wrong in all circumstances for all people.” Subjective ethics would say, “what is right and wrong for me is different than what is right and wrong for you.”

The Bible does deal regularly with objective morality. The ten commandments are objective. There is no sense in which “adultery is right for me in this situation, but wrong for you in others.” It is a black and white issue, spelled out plainly. The application of ethics, however, is sometimes subjective.

Eating food sacrificed to idols, for example, is not a black and white issue. Paul tells us that some Christians understand that there is no God but one (1 Cor 8:4). Other Christians, however, do not yet understand this. “Not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.” (1 Cor 8:7). According to Paul, whether or not eating food sacrificed to idols is right or wrong depends on (at least):

1. Your knowledge

2. Your former associations (or lack thereof)

3. Your conscience.

This is why the Jerusalem elders instructs new believers to abstain from eating food sacrificed to idols, until further instruction can be given (Acts 15:20, 29). They know that the new believers had former associations with idols and will be bothered by the eating.

So does this mean morality is sometimes subjective? Are these three issues three grey ethical areas? Not quite. God’s standard for right and wrong is still objectively black and white. For example,“You shall have no other gods before me” is still objective. Worship of idols is forbidden. What is subjective is whether an individual Christian can separate eating food sacrificed to an idol from the worship of that same idol. This will depend primarily on the individual and their previous associations. This is why Paul repeatedly points his readers to examine their conscience (1 Cor 8:7, 10, 12). Worship of idols is objectively wrong, eating food sacrificed to idols has to be individually examined.

In Romans 14, Paul names 3 specific issues that may bother someone who is “weak in faith” and that require discernment. These are:

1. Things someone eats

2. Holidays someone celebrates

3. What someone considers clean or unclean.

Paul tells the church not to quarrel about these issues (Rom 14:1), to abstain from a practice that bothers another (Rom 14:21) and to not do things you feel uncertain about (Rom 14:22-23).

Interestingly, these three issues - food, holidays and what is purity - tend to be the ‘grey’ issues people still fight over most today.

Love is Subjective

I have been married long enough to know that I love my wife well not by buying her flowers, but by buying her ice cream. Another husband in another marriage may find the opposite to be true - that he ought to buy his wife flowers. Both of us are trying to achieve the same objective end: buying a nice gift for our wives. But the way we accomplish this is different.

Because the two greatest commandments are built around love, rather than around specific actions, it is reasonable that the way a person accomplishes these two commands may differ. If the way I love my wife looks different then the way you love yours, it is reasonable that the way we both love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind may look different as well.

There are objective limits to what is and is not love, of course. While husbands may give different gifts to their wives, none of them gives sewage out of love. Likewise, while the application of certain ethical principles may look different for different Christians, this is never an invitation into open sin. There is no sense in which “the way I love God looks different than the way you love God” can mean “I am able to love God while ignoring one of His commands.”

Two Ditches

This leads us then, to the two dangerous extremes of navigating grey areas. On the one hand, we have what can be called relativism. This is the person who tries to name too many things ‘grey areas’ to justify their sin. “It’s up for debate what it means to speak in tongues,” they will say, “therefore it is also up for debate if a man can sleep with a man. Not all Christians agree, but we should all get along.”

On the other hand, we have the legalist, who sees the relativists and respond strongly. “It is far easier to define every issue as either black or white,” they will say, “that way we are all on the same page.” They will often make lists (even just mentally) of the right and wrong choices regarding nearly every issue, and then demand that others label the same issues the same way.

Both relativism and legalism are ditches on opposite side of the road. Both are deadly. Relativists believe they are elevating the love of God, but in fact they are simply buying into the lie every that our passions and desires are worth following. This is pure sin (Eph 2:3). Legalists have forgotten that, “even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Eph 2:5). Instead, they have tried to create a lifestyle that makes themselves look alive, that keeps them from trespasses, in an effort to earn something they are not able to earn. “God will love me more because I avoid this,” they will tell themselves. They see the relativist preach a cheap grace, and so they choose to live with no grace at all. They become the whitewashed tombs Jesus warned us of; beautiful on the outside but dead on the inside (Matt 23:27).

Conclusion

The Bible does not have a consistent encouragement to make everything look black or white so that Christian living is simpler. Instead what it has is a consistent encouragement to pursue wisdom. Solomon could have given us a book detailing exactly what kind of music we should listen to and clothes we should wear. Instead he gave us a book of sometimes ambiguous, often gnomic principles. He never got around to telling us what to do about the one specific music artist the lady in my office wants to know about. In fact, he doesn’t even name anything similar in his own day.

So, do grey areas exist? Morality is not grey, but the way individuals express their love and guard their hearts will look different. And how do we navigate the grey areas? By abstaining from things that bother others (Rom 14:21), by avoiding things you feel uncertain about (Rom 14:22-23) and by listening to your conscience (1 Cor 8:7, 10, 12).

My favourite place to start with new disciples is to read the story of Jesus calming the storm in Mark 4 and then to ask, “what does this story teach you about Jesus?” I’ve received quite a variety of answers in my life, but the most exciting is when someone announces, “it shows us that He is God!” Long time Christians like to jump to abstract application, such as, “Jesus helps us navigate the storms of life.” But there is nothing better than simple, child-like faith saying (along with the disciples), “if He can calm storms, He is no ordinary man.”

I encourage you to read Bible stories and ask this question with others. Today, I wanted to work through a few verses and show you some of the answers I found for myself. We will look at John’s account of when Jesus was arrested, and shed some light on the question, “Who is this man?”

¹ When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it. ² Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. ³ So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.⁴ Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”

⁵ “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.

“I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) ⁶ When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

⁷ Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?”

“Jesus of Nazareth,” they said.

⁸ Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” ⁹ This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”

¹⁰ Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.)

¹¹ Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”

¹² Then the detachment of soldiers with its commander and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus. They bound him ¹³ and brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. ¹⁴ Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jewish leaders that it would be good if one man died for the people.

(John 18:1-12)

Supreme Sovereign

Our first answer to, “who is this man?” comes in verse 4. Jesus knew all that was going to happen to Him. Who is this man in the garden that the guards are arresting? Someone who knows all things before they happen. And then verse 9: “This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”” Jesus had prayed in John 17 and stated that not one of the disciples would be lost except Judas (John 17:12), because before anything happened, He knew what would happen.

There’s no doubt that people have free will and are making their own decisions. Judas betrayed Him. The guards arrested Him. Peter chopped an ear off. Everyone in the garden is making their own choices. And yet, in the middle of them is a man who knows what is going to happen before it happens. Before the earth was created, He knew He’d be arrested, and He knew He was not going to lose any disciples.

He is bound, being led away. It looks like He is powerless and the Romans are in charge, but the opposite is true. When history is being recorded it is Christ who holds the pen.

All the individuals in the garden are each rulers of their own lives but He is the Supreme Ruler. He is the one who created the oxygen they all breathe, who designed the brains that make their choices. He is the one causing gravity to pull down and not up. The guards have arrested Him but He is Lord whether know it or not.

Sin’s Solution

Jesus verse 1, Jesus goes into a garden. “When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it.”

Jesus goes into a garden. All 4 gospels make a point to tell you that His crucifixion account, the culmination of His life, begins in a garden. The story of the Bible began in a garden with a man named Adam. Adam did not have a Father, because he was created by God, so he is called a son of God (lowercase s). Adam is not God’s son, but that is his descriptive title. Adam faced a choice in a garden: obedience or disobedience to God. Disobedience meant death, not just for himself but for all people. And in a garden, Adam disobeyed God, he went to a tree, and he brought death for all humanity.

Now we have the Son of God, (capital S) in a garden. Son is not just a descriptive title for Jesus, it is His identity. And He is facing a choice: obedience or disobedience to God. Obedience to God means death for Himself but life for all people. And Jesus, in a garden is going to obey God and go to a tree (that’s what we often call the cross) and bring life for all humanity.

When Adam sinned, God promised that the offspring of a woman would someday crush the head of the serpent that deceived Adam. And here, on the night of His betrayal, Jesus, born of a woman but not a man, is in a garden, preparing for obedience on a tree that will destroy the work of that same serpent.

The whole story of history culminates in Him. Who is this Jesus who they are arresting? Who is this man being led away by guards? He is the Son of God, the culmination of history, the antidote to sin, the second Adam, the defeater of the devil.

Satisfying Sacrifice

Thirdly, Jesus is the satisfying sacrifice. Have a look at verse 11. He says “shall I not drink the cup the Father gave me?” So here’s the question – what cup? He says it as though the listeners would know. What cup is Jesus drinking?

In the days of Israel’s kingdom many centuries before Jesus, Israel often lived in sin, and prophets would come to warn Israel about coming judgement. And the judgement of God, or the wrath of God was often depicted as being in a cup that He was going to pour out on the nations and that cup, filled with God’s wrath, would be drunk by His enemies and it would cause them to stagger.

This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. When they drink it, they will stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them.” So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand and made all the nations to whom he sent me drink it: Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, its kings and officials, to make them a ruin and an object of horror and scorn, a curse—as they are today (Jeremiah 25:15-18)

“Awake, awake! Rise up, Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, you who have drained to its dregs the goblet that makes people stagger.” (Isaiah 51:17)

“They, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. ¹¹ And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever.” (Revelation 14:10-11)

On my count, the image of God’s wrath-filled cup appears 12 times in 7 different books (let me know if you find more). Consistently, God’s judgement or His wrath is depicted as something He keeps in a cup. And now, here in the garden, Jesus says “Shall I not drink the cup the Father gave me?” On the cross, Jesus takes the cup belonging to God and He satisfies the wrath of God. God’s judgement is taken away because of one satisfying sacrifice.

Who is This Man?

Who is this man? He is the supreme sovereign. He is sin’s solution. He is the satisfying sacrifice. He was all of these things, yet He was arrested because He was not recognized as any of them. The importance of the disciple’s question, “who is this man?” is seen in this narrative.

I opened with an encouragement to you as you disciple someone: bring them to Scripture and ask them, “what does this story teach us about Jesus?” It helps us discover who He is. Here, you have read my own discoveries, and so allow me to close with a similar encouragement: go through the Scripture yourself, and answer the question, chapter by chapter, “what does this story teach us about Jesus?” Even as a well-seasoned, thoroughly read Christian, it is remarkable what you will find.

I wrote a blog post with my take on the matter. I titled it something like, “Here’s how all Christians should respond.” And then in my article, I tackled people I had seen in the comments sections. “Christians should absolutely NOT believe THIS,” I wrote.

I don’t remember exactly what THIS was. It doesn’t matter. Comment sections on articles had contained some strong opinions, and someone, somewhere believed THIS. I knew that because I had seen other people yelling online at those people.

My phone rang. It was my mentor from Bible College. Kelvin and I had met weekly for coffee while I was a student in his class. He had mentored me, and now he had read my article.

“You’ve written, ‘Christians should absolutely NOT believe THIS,’” he said. “Do you personally know anyone who believes THIS?”

“Pfft, uhhh, yes,” I spluttered, desperately trying to rack my brain to think which comment section had contained that opinion. Surely I had at least one friend who believed THIS. I just wasn’t sure which one.

“You should take them out for coffee,” Kelvin told me. “Hear them out, and talk to them face to face about why you disagree. But you don’t need to yell at every person on the internet about it.”

It was the best advice I ever received, and it changed how I used the internet. I started practicing two things:

1. Never argue with a stranger online. I don’t know them.

2. Never argue with a friend online. Meet with them face to face.

If you aren’t courageous enough to tell someone why you disagree with them to their face, you shouldn’t tell them online.

We are accustomed to feeling like we need to have an opinion on everything. A byproduct of social media is that it’s a little too normal to feel the need to weigh in on everything that happens. In about 10 years, Facebook feeds moved from “here’s a picture of my breakfast” to “here’s my analysis of hot button topic #456.”

But here is one of the most freeing things I’ve learned in the past decade: you don’t need to have an opinion on everything. You don’t need to yell online to make sure everyone knows your thoughts on the most recent event in the news.

There are far better practices and uses of your time: silence, time in prayer, having coffee with a friend. “Ah,” you may say to me, “but I need to be a light in the darkness, and I do that by presenting my Christian views on social media.” Personally, I’d rather be a bright light to one person than a dim, flickering bulb to a million.

There’s something particularly freeing about not needing to have a take on every issue, every day. And it gives us a far better, more Biblical practice of evangelism and discipleship. Face to face discussions are better in every way. Introducing someone to the teaching, lifestyle and love of Jesus is a combination of both words and personal conduct. Online discourse contains words but shows no conduct. Discourse through a screen should be a last resort, especially when that discourse is heated.

Here’s the other thing Kelvin said to me on the phone that day. “If you haven’t mourned and repented your own sin, you aren’t in a place to call out others.”

In Isaiah 5, Isaiah is given 6 “woes” to pronounce against Israel. He names 6 specific sins they are committing. And then in chapter 6 we see him before God’s throne and he cries out, “woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips! And I live among a people of unclean lips!”

I confess, until the day Kelvin called me, I was a keyboard warrior calling out the sin of others. But I had never learned to say “woe is me.” I couldn’t see my own culpability, couldn’t see my own contribution (or lack thereof) in the lives of the peoples or churches I was so quick to criticize.

If you’re wondering what to take from this, here is what I have tried to put into place and found helpful: when I write online I do not write to others. I write to myself. I do my best to avoid saying things like, “people in the church these days just don’t know how to _____.” My most popular article on here is called Sin Doesn’t Die of Old Age. My sin doesn’t die easily. I wrote that article primarily to myself. Woe is me. You just happen to get to read it.

I’d encourage you to write online the same way. Whether you are writing whole essays or just dropping one line comments to others, start from a place of recognizing your own culpability. His words to me were, “If you haven’t mourned and repented your own sin, you aren’t in a place to call out others.”

Thanks Kelvin.

The best thing a leader can do is identify strong spiritual leaders, train them for a high position of leadership, and then release them. This is what we see Jesus do with the disciples, Paul do with Silas and Timothy, Elijah do with Elisha, and so on.

So how does a person recognize a potential leader?

What a Leader is Not

Let’s start with some common misnomers - things that are actually not good ways to identify leaders.

A Bible college or seminary degree does not make a great leader. I say that first of all, because I attended both and I know who some of my classmates were. But more importantly, because Jesus said, “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). Someone who is not abiding will not bear fruit. There’s no exceptions here for degrees, or deep Biblical knowledge. He doesn’t say “if you understand hermeneutics you will bear some more fruit.” Non-abiding people with high levels of knowledge are often mistaken for leaders.

Leaders are not necessarily charismatic or outgoing. Some of the best leaders say very little, but when they speak, everyone listens. Spiritual leaders guide people closer to the Saviour. If your Saviour is gentle and lowly, it is safe to assume great leaders can be too.

Leaders are not necessarily good businessmen. Being a great leader in business and being a great leader in the church are two unrelated things. Someone can be both, but that is like saying someone can be good at both playing the piano and playing soccer. They did not learn one by doing the other. Sometimes being a great businessmen is simply a mark of not knowing how to balance work and life. In some cases those who are financially savvy will prioritize all the wrong things, as though the church succeeds based on its marketing rather than on its discipleship and fellowship.

So how can you identify leaders?

By Character

A good leaders is a person of character. A good place to start is Paul’s qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3. “Ah,” you will say to me, “I am not looking for elders, I am just looking for regular old leaders in the church.” But the reason Paul wants elders in place is (among other things) for them to be role models for the rest of the church. This list is the kind of person everyone should be trying to be. This is why he opens his list by saying the job is worth aspiring to (1 Tim 3:1)

The qualifications for an elder are almost entirely character based and not gift based. Arguably, the only gift-based attribute required is “able to teach.” This is because character is more essential to Christian life and witness than gifting. A church ought to be looking up to people of character on every level. You look up to your elders, sure. But youth look up to youth leaders and small group attendees look up to their leaders. At every level, a church should have people of good character. Be looking out for people of character. Those are future leaders.

How do I find someone of good character? By their reputation.

This is precisely how Paul identified his proteges in Acts. “Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived…The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him.” (Acts 16:1-2) People have good things to say about those who have conducted themselves well. Spiritual leaders don’t always stand out, because they aren’t always the most vocal or the most charismatic. But people who have a lifestyle worth mimicking will be well spoken of by those who are mimicking them. Want to know who the leaders in your church are? Ask people who they want to be like.

Have They Made a Disciple?

One of the best ways to distinguish between great leaders in the church and great leaders in the workplace is to ask whose life they have made a difference in. In my church, whenever we baptise someone, we ask if there is someone who has been a spiritual mentor in their life who may be willing to help in the tank. The person they point to is almost always a leader. Leaders make a difference in people’s lives.

As a pastor, it is not uncommon that someone will step forward and identify themselves to me as a leader. “We would like to host a group in our home,” or “I think I would do well teaching at youth.” But it’s hard to know whether this means, “we care about discipleship and spiritual growth of others” or just, “it would be more convenient for us if we didn’t have to drive for snacks and fellowship/I like the idea of me talking and people listening.” A good way to analyze someone is to look around the church and see if at least one person in the church would point at them and say, “I am who I am today because of the way this person has discipled me.”

Teachability

Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” (Matthew 5:3) and this prizing of humility truly flies in the face of the way we understand business leadership. No S&P 500 CEO is “poor in spirit.1” They’re generally confident, affirming and assertive. But if His “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9) then great leaders in the church are weak people.

Weak people? What does that mean? That they roll over easily? Certainly not, or they wouldn’t be able to stand on guard and protect the church from false teachings and wolves in their midst (Acts 20:29-31). Spiritually poor people are ones who recognize their own desperate need for God’s help. Wolves are self-confident. Spirit-led people sing “Lord I need you, every hour I need you.” The lack of qualification is the qualification.

In the life of a leader this often means they are obedient in the face of daunting tasks that they feel unqualified for. A great example of this would be sharing the gospel with an unbeliever. Someone who is poor in spirit will say “yes Lord,” even though they are both afraid and feel unqualified.

Being poor in spirit comes out in potential leaders as teachability. People who are aware that they are not sufficient to accomplish everything for the Kingdom are great future leaders. They know they have much to learn. Look around your church for people eager to learn. Those are your future leaders.

Leaders Hide in Plain Sight

Because almost every leadership book highlights men like Steve Jobs and Winston Churchhill, leaders in the church can often be hiding in plain sight. Existing leaders struggle to identify potential future leaders, because they don’t see anyone dynamic who people want to listen to.

They’ll say, “Oh that’s just Joe. He likes to help with maintenance at the church.” Ok, but did you notice when Joe signed up for maintenance, 4 other men also did immediately afterwards? He serves with consistent humility, and other men in the church, quiet like he is, are now doing the same. Joe may have nothing in common with Steve Jobs. But he is a leader.

The gospels recount a story of a temple tax collector who approaches the disciples and asks if Jesus is going to pay the two-drachma tax. Jesus talks about how sons of kings don’t pay taxes, and He says, “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”

While coin conversions can be tricky, a drachma is usually considered a day’s wage, meaning the fish had quite a bit of cash in its mouth. What a provision! What a miracle!

Losing that four-drachma coin was someone’s worst day.

Of course, we know nothing of this person, but I like to imagine their panic and disappointment realizing they had lost 4 days’ worth of work. Perhaps they madly started praying, “God, please help me find that coin.” I don’t know, and I don’t really enjoy adding details where the Bible does not. Someone lost that coin. And their individual loss was the kingdom’s gain.

The Verse in Question

Paul says, “for those who love God all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28), and this can often be taken to mean that God will do things that benefit me. The words “for good” can easily be thought of as “for my good.” And the word “good” can quickly be interpreted through my own human desire to avoid anything uncomfortable. And just like that, a verse about how God is in control of the universe can be understood to mean that my well-being is at the centre of the universe.

It is essential when speaking about God working things for good to remember:

1. Good is defined by God, and therefore does not necessarily include comfort or material prosperity

2. God always has a purpose and a plan, but not every individual gets to see or understand why things happen the way they do

Losing a Life

In Acts, we are told, “It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword (Acts 12:1-2). James (presumably the disciple, the son of Zebedee) gets martyred. The next day, Herod arrests Peter, evidently intending to have him killed as well.

“The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists” (Acts 12:6-7).

Peter, in the same chapter James was killed (perhaps even in the same cell), experiences miraculous deliverance from an angel. Why did Peter receive miraculous rescue when John did not? Because good is defined by God, and therefore does not necessarily include comfort or material prosperity, and God always has a purpose and a plan, but not every individual gets to see or understand why things happen the way they do.

Peter went to the church. They were praying in the house of the mother of the man who had just been killed. Roda, the servant girl, met him at the door, but the others did not believe Peter had been rescued. When they were eventually reunited with him, they all learned a valuable lesson about believing your prayers can be answered. That lesson was passed to us, and for two thousand years, we have been celebrating what God did to rescue Peter.

And James is still dead.

God’s plan to see the gospel advance from Jerusalem to Samaria and to the ends of the earth continued. If anything, it was spurred on by the death of James. All things worked together for good. It just wouldn’t have felt that way for his mother.

Sometimes the reason you lose a 4 drachma coin is so that someone else can find it in a fish’s mouth and recognize the Saviour. All things are worked together for good; and glorifying the Saviour in the temple was more good than whatever you or I could have done with 4 days’ wages. All things worked together for good, and James, at least in this life, never got to see how.

Every good chess player sacrifices pawns, and God is masterfully playing chess with the universe. We have a promise that someday we, as pawns, will be resurrected into queens at the end of the board. Until then, some days you’ll lose a coin - or your life - and just have to trust that God knows what He’s doing.

A teacher enters the classroom with large knowledge. They have gone to school, sometimes for many years, and are well acquainted with Shakespeare and algebra. But the greatness of a teacher is not measured by the vastness of their knowledge, but by their ability to communicate it to somebody with significantly less knowledge. Great teachers are ones who can get on one knee and speak in the vocabulary and at the level of their student. They have ‘entered their world’ so to speak. Though they know Shakespeare, they are not quoting him. Instead, they are rehearsing letters and sounds and teaching words. The child may someday read Shakespeare, but only because first someone with vast knowledge laid their learning aside, stooped down to their level, and introduced something in a way they understand.

When God wanted to introduce His infinite self, He did not display His characteristics in all their glory, nor answer all our questions in their entirety. Instead, He took that which was large - His knowledge of Himself - and He stooped down into the world of the small. He ‘got on one knee,’ so to speak, and He taught the alphabet of His love to a people that would not read Shakespeare until eternity.

When Christ came and endured poverty, pain and death, He was speaking in a language we understand. The Great Teacher, who had much knowledge about God’s love, introduced the concept in the same way a teacher introduces the alphabet to a student. The one from a big world stepped down into the world of the small.

Moses saw God walking on lapus lazuli (Exodus 24:10), and John saw God appearing like jasper and surrounded by a rainbow (Revelation 4:3). They glimpsed God in infinite splendour. They glimpsed His ‘big world.’ Even this, I suspect, was a subdued glimpse; one their small minds could comprehend. But when God wanted to show His love to the world, He humbled Himself even further. He didn’t just show Himself in a way that we could understand His splendour. He became that which we can understand; He became a man.

When God was a man, He healed the sick, He calmed storms, and He forgave sin. He didn’t overthrow the Roman Empire or reorganize the continents. He showed His power over sin in individual instances and in individual lives. This was how He taught us what love is. Our examples of how to love our neighbour are strikingly ordinary; Christ dined with people, He spoke to those no one else spoke to. Our examples of how we are loved are strikingly individual. He looks at one person at a time and says, “Your sins are forgiven” (Matthew 9:2).

The one large has stepped down into the small.

In Ephesians, Paul writes, “for you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light” (Eph 5:8-13).

Sin, much like trolls, can not be defeated in darkness. It must be brought into the light. What does that mean in practical language? It means if you want to defeat sin you will need to confess it to someone else.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote this:

“Confession in the presence of another believer is the most profound kind of humiliation. It hurts, makes one feel small; it deals a terrible blow to one’s pride. To stand there before another Christian as a sinner is an almost unbearable disgrace. By confessing actual sins the old self dies a painful, humiliating death before the eyes of another Christian. Because this humiliation is so difficult, we keep thinking we can avoid confessing to one another. Our eyes are so blinded, that they no longer see the promise and the glory of such humiliation.”1

By confessing sin, the old self dies. It dies a death of humiliation. Humiliation, in English vernacular, is almost always associated with death. We describe embarrassment as “mortifying,” and nothing is more mortifying to our flesh than confession. When one is honest with another believer about who they really are, they expose their old self to the light, and much like a troll, the old self is defeated.

Bonhoeffer also wrote,

Those who confess their sins in the presence of another Christian know that they are no longer alone with themselves; they experience the presence of God in the reality of the other. As long as I am by myself when I confess my sins, everything remains in the dark; but when I come face to face with another Christian, the sin has to be brought to light.

We are far more prone to exposing the sin of others than to exposing the sin of ourselves. But in Ephesians 5:12, Paul writes, “It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.” Paul talks about exposing sin in verse 11, but in verse 12 he clarifies he is talking about your sin. There’s a really common tendency to say “look at this horrible thing other people are doing. Have you heard about the immorality of our culture?” And Paul says “we are not worrying about what happens in the darkness over there. We are dealing with the darkness in you.”

The lie we naturally believe is that vulnerability will destroy our reputation. Instead, what we do is point out the darkness in others, to give ourselves the appearance of being more pure than we really are. The reality is that Christians who can see each other’s flaws and still pursue Christ together will have built a stronger community than can otherwise be imagined. Bonhoeffer again:

For the pious community permits no one to be a sinner. Hence all have to conceal their sins from themselves and from the community. We are not allowed to be sinners. Many Christians would be unimaginably horrified if a real sinner were suddenly to turn up among the pious. So we remain alone with our sin, trapped in lies and hypocrisy, for we are in fact sinners. However, the grace of the gospel, which is so hard for the pious to comprehend, confronts us with the truth. It says to us, you are a sinner, a great unholy sinner. Now come, as the sinner you are, to your God who loves you.

In Ephesians 5:13, he writes, “everything illuminated becomes a light.” In Middle Earth, there are some stone trolls, still standing, still petrified. For the next couple centuries when people walk by that place, they will know that something happened in that place. An enemy was defeated. The sin Christ conquers in your life will become the greatest testament to His work in you. Everything illuminated becomes a light.

In James 3:4-5, James tells us that words can set the direction of one’s whole life, much like a rudder sets the direction of a ship. But then he clarifies that is doesn’t just set the course of your life (something that could be positive), it sets the course of your life on fire (decidedly negative).

Words can rip apart relationships, can destroy churches, can end marriages. Fights don’t ever start with fists, they start with words. Words create fires, and your tongue is set on fire by hell.

You may expect him to say something more constructive, like “choose your words carefully,” but he goes with a blanket condemnation. He doesn’t say, “bad words are bad.” He says, “your tongue is set on fire by hell.”

But how can this be? Surely a person could choose their words carefully and be exempt from this condemnation.

There is a difference between a socially controlled tongue and a spiritually controlled tongue, just as there is a difference between social good and spiritual good. The root of sin is pride; self-love and self-sufficiency are a part of all sin. Our tongues are a rudder and they may not always lead us into arguments and division, but what they do always lead us into is a focus on self. A focus on our own abilities, our own accomplishments, our own problems, our own feelings. This can be either positive or negative, i.e. “look how great my life is,” or “look how awful my life is.”

Humans were made to glorify God and to live for Him, but we use our tongues to find ourselves work and relationships that benefit us. We use our words - or don’t use our words - according to what makes us comfortable and secure and feeling loved and accepted by those around us. We shield ourselves and defend ourselves and present ourselves a certain way basically non-stop. We use our tongues to build relational networks that benefit us rather than to glorify God.

And so he says our tongue is set on fire by hell. Hell is the experience of God’s justice and holiness without His love and mercy. Heaven is filled with praises to God, but hell is devoid of verbal praise or worship. What that means is that our words typically lead us towards showcasing a life that is not marked by God’s love and mercy, and is not consumed with praise and adoration of God.

God says, “be merciful for I am merciful,” He says, “love others as you have been loved,” but every time I am cut off in traffic, my tongue reveals judgement and absolutely no mercy or grace. My life is meant to be reflective of God’s goodness, but the tongue makes it reflective of hell; a place that has judgement but no grace.

‘Judgement but no grace,’ is also the way we most often speak of our own pasts.

There are certain experiences in nature that lead us to praising to God, like seeing a sunset. But the vast majority of experiences in life lead not towards praising God, but towards focusing on self. My worries, my pains, my problems. Whereas heaven is filled with attention and praise and worship directed at the Triune God and proclaiming who He really is, our words here on earth are generally directed towards making much of ourselves. Our whole body is corrupted.

Whether you are someone who talks a lot or a little, you were built to praise God with your whole being, and this little Firestarter in your mouth leads into a life that does not reflect your created purpose.

Redemption for the Tongue

In the death of Christ Jesus God has offered to take our record of wrong and erase it and to take the perfection and goodness of Jesus and credit it to us. Those who place their faith in Jesus are seen as perfectly righteous in the eyes of God. He is the substitution both in penalty and in reward. When God judges sin, Christ offers Himself as the substitute. When God rewards the faithful, He offers Himself as the substitute.

What that means for our tongues is this: everything that you’ve ever said (whether it condemns you or not) has been wiped clean by the blood of Jesus. It also means that everything that Jesus said, every record of His perfect speech has been given to you. When God looks at a person who has placed their faith in Jesus, He does not see (or in this case does not hear) any record of wrong, but instead only hears the goodness of the words of His Son.

Christ has given His followers new tongues. And here is the great mystery of the ages: He has not only cleaned your record and allowed you to live anew. He has made you a herald. He has entrusted you to proclaim who He is to the world. What a mystery! God could have made us mute and given sinless angels the job of praising His name. He could have given us the inerrant Scripture and just told us to read it. But He gave us, flawed and imperfect humans, people whose tongues are set on fire by hell, He gave us the job and the privilege and the duty of making His name known. Telling the earth of God’s goodness, proclaiming the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Another Kind of Fire

The tongue is a fire. One match can start a bonfire, which can start a forest fire, which can burn down entire cities. You can devastate the world and those around you with your tongue. But there is another kind of fire that you have been given to carry.

When Jonah went to Nineveh and preached, the whole city repented before the end of the first day. The news of YHWH ripped through Nineveh faster than flames through the dry woods. Jonah was a one day journey into a city three days wide, and the whole city was talking about sackcloth and ashes. His preaching travelled like a fire on dry brush.

When Peter preached a Pentecost, there was a fire that came down. A power from God, given to the church. And the gospel tore through Jerusalem. 5000 came to know Jesus. If you know Jesus, YOU have been given this same fire. A gospel that can grab hold of a life and transform it in an instant, that can leap from person to person and transform a city in a day.

If you know Jesus, you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, baptized in fire, equipped with the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus which is sufficient to blow apart the defenses of darkness.

By default, your tongue is set on fire by hell. But in this life, for this time, God has given you a tongue that can carry a different fire.

Often when a person struggles with sin, they will draw themselves up straight and look at themselves in the mirror and say, “no! this has to stop! This is wrong!” And then they do their best to practice some self-discipline. But you have to understand that this is not the gospel. This is dealing with sin using the power of the law.

You’re giving yourself an understanding of right and wrong, perhaps a fear of God’s judgement and then working to keep the law before you. That is what the law was. But we are not under the law, we are under grace. Living under the law is precisely what Christ rescued us from. He came to make you into His holy people.

“The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. [Other people] hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or – if they think there is not – at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

The Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. The impurities of sin in my life are burned out by God, and the reason He can refine me at all is that He has breathed life into my heart where life was not before. If you are not made into a new person, you will not win the fight against sin. If you are fighting against sin by yourself, you are trying to make yourself into a new person. And that is His job.

The fight against sin begins with Christ making us new. And the fight against sin is carried on by truly coming to understand the power of the resurrection that gave us that new life. The greenhouse becomes bright because the sun shines on it, and it remains bright because the sun continues to shine on it.

When it comes to fighting sin, Jesus doesn’t say, “do more.” He doesn’t say, “develop better self-control,” He says, “Think of yourself as what I have made you.” Or more specifically, “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Rom 6:11

When freedom from sin is driven by self-effort and motivated by God’s judgement, this is not the gospel. That is the law.

When it comes to fighting sin, the key is crucifixion. This is true in two ways.

First of all, because it is in the crucifixion of Christ that we find not only the mechanism by which God has destroyed all sin, but also the power that God has placed within us to defeat sin. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). You can not refine something that does not have a base of gold. If Christ has not first remade you, then the work of putting to death individual sins is not spiritual progress; it is an attempt at salvation by works.

Secondly, crucifixion is the key to fighting sin because it is how we treat our sinful selves. In order to experience the power of His resurrection at work within us, we must first experience the power of His crucifixion, putting to death our very self. “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5). Understanding how our self can be united with Christ in His death is essential to fighting sin, for only “one who has died has been set free from sin” (Romans 6:7).

To understand just how much we need to put to death the deeds of the body (Romans 8:13), it is helpful to understand what putting to death the deeds of the body does not look like.

What Putting Sin to Death is Not

1Ceasing to do a sin is not putting to death sin. A person can outwardly abandon the practice of a sin without putting it to death. He has not got a new heart, he has just developed a more disciplined flesh.

Sin is not put to death just because its attention has been diverted or its appetite has been sated. A man could burn with lust, become married and control his passions each day by sleeping with his wife. His sin is not crucified; his attention is just diverted. It still burns hot as ever; he has just found a way to manage it.

Putting to death sin is not the same as becoming aware of the consequences of sin. A person could have their sin discovered or called out. Or perhaps they begin to experience the consequences of their sin when it destroys a relationship or a ministry. We know that “godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Cor 7:10). Worldly grief can prompt someone to pause from sinning for a time, to reflect on its consequences, and to feel bad for their actions. While becoming aware of the consequences of sin can lead to godly repentance, it can also lead to simply a heightened fear of consequences. Avoiding sin because of the awareness it brings death is not the gospel; it is the law. And living according to the law produces no power by which a person can put to death sin.

Putting to death sin is not the same as practicing self-control. Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. It comes when the Spirit is present. Trying to produce it in order to fight sin is altogether backwards. The Spirit must be present; He must produce it in order for sin-defeating self-control to be present. A person is capable of mustering up a kind of self-made self-control. They can self-discipline to stop a certain sin habit the same way a person self-disciplines when on a diet. When their effort stops, their craving returns, because the sin has not been put to death.

Sin Does Not Die of Old Age

It is often said that the place where extramarital affairs most often take place is at high school reunions. This is an anecdotal statement (it’s not something anyone ever has, or could, keep real stats on), but it’s an anecdote with a strong history.

Sin doesn’t die of old age. A person can burn with lust at 16, then graduate from high school, and the object of their desire is no longer before them. They no longer feel the burning of lust. They might get married, have kids, and develop a career. Their sexual appetite may change as their hormones do. Their level of self-control in the area of lust may improve. But all the while, the original lust still exists in them. It is not dead, it is just dormant.

And then they go to a reunion. And they rediscover the original lust, lying like a hot coal. And when the right person speaks to them, it instantly reignites. It was never dead. It was just unfed for a while.

Sin does not die of old age. This is not merely true of sexual sin, but all sin. Envy can lie dormant. Hate can lie dormant. Anger can lie dormant. And they will sit, like unfed hot coals in the bottom of your heart, unnoticed because they are not currently doing damage. But given the right circumstance - interaction with the right person or even the right thought - and they will flame to life again.

The only way for sin to be defeated is for it to be put to death. It will not die of old age.

What Putting Sin to Death Is

Putting to death sin is the daily duty of someone who has been born again. Sin easily entangles. It crawls back quickly. And it is the job of a person who has been given a new heart to put it to death before its joy-stealing tentacles steal away our gospel-usefulness and our God-given joy. Trying to put to death sin without first having been given a new heart is to be a slave of the law and not of the gospel.

Putting to death sin is a joint work between God and man. Crucifying sin is God’s work. Only He can accomplish it. But it is man’s duty. Only He can allow it. It is as though God stands ready, sword in hand, to slay our besetting sins. But we must unwrap our hands from around them, we must stop standing between Him and them. We must allow Him to do His work.

Putting to death sin is the act of repenting and being made new. It is the daily activity of participating in the same activity that brought salvation in the first place. When I first came to Jesus for salvation I did not understand fully that I was volunteering to be “crucified with Christ” (Rom 6:6). I understand it now. Putting to death sin is volunteering to have Him redo the work He did in me at first - not to accomplish salvation again, this is already done - but to see sin repentance brought to its full end.

Putting to death sin usually involves confession of sin to a godly person. John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). And Paul writes, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Eph 5:11). Sin must be exposed, and this usually requires confession to someone else. As Bonhoeffer once said,

“Confession in the presence of another believer is the most profound kind of humiliation. It hurts, makes one feel small; it deals a terrible blow to one’s pride. To stand there before another Christian as a sinner is an almost unbearable disgrace. By confessing actual sins the old self dies a painful, humiliating death before the eyes of another Christian.”2

How Do I Know My Sin Dead?

The one - and perhaps only - thing Christ and sin have in common is that both are very good at resurrecting. Sin will keep coming back, and it must continually be put to death. John Owen compares crucifying sin to crucifying a man. He writes,

“As a man nailed to the cross first struggles and strives and cries out with great strength and might, but, as his blood and spirits waste, his strivings are faint and seldom, his cries low and hoarse, scarce to be heard; when a man first sets on a lust or distemper, to deal with it, it struggles with great violence to break loose; it cries with earnestness and impatience to be satisfied and relieved; but when by mortification the blood and spirits of it are let out, it moves seldom and faintly, cries sparingly, and is scarce heard in the heart; it may have sometimes a dying pang, that makes an appearance of great vigor and strength, but it is quickly over, especially if it be kept from considerable success.”3

Paul writes, “But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light” (Eph 5:13-14). In other words, the areas of life where God has most definitively put sin to death become the areas of greatest testimony. Experiencing grace and new life where there once was only struggle is an incredible light.

A good test of whether a sin is dead or merely dormant is to ask whether it is yet a light. Let us go back to the anecdotal statement that most affairs take place at a high school reunion. Now imagine two people: the first thinks back on their time in high school and abashedly says, “I used to simply burn in lust, but all praise to the grace of Jesus Christ, He has set me free to live for Him, and He can do the same for you.” The second person looks back on their time in high school, and they hesitate. They also know Jesus and love to follow Him, but when they think back on those days, they feel ashamed. They know they used to burn with lust, and even thinking about that makes them start to feel condemned. They don’t want to talk about those days; they want to talk about what God is doing in their life now. The first knows what it means that “anything that becomes visible is light.” The second may still have a dormant coal of sin burning deep within.

The first man will probably hear his sin cry out again at some point, just like a dying man on a cross. But he can testify to former darkness, and by so doing offer hope to others. Old sin that has not yet become a light is probably not dead; it is just dormant. And sin does not die of old age.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).

In 2022 when Robert Pattinson started saving Gotham, you could barely see him. Forget the bright colours or cartoonish villains, now the bad guys look an awful like real ones: they launder their money in clubs and bring terror by planting IEDs.

The difference in style and tone of these films tells us a great deal about the shifting cultures they were released into. In the 60s the world wanted fun movies, and comic books were bright and they said “pow” next to every punch. By 2022, the world felt both depressing and also ‘fake’ with a stream of manipulated social media images. Audiences were hungry for shadows and gravelly voices, and the box office numbers prove that. How people want stories to be told has shifted.

In fact, if you line up all the batman movies that have been released, you can actually track the slow replacement of bright colour for dark shadows, with each installment having darker tones than the one before. We’ve progressively moved from campy to gritty.

Cultures have always been telling stories, and then retelling the same ones to the next generation with a slightly different ‘feel.’ Robin Hood has been retold slightly differently for centuries. You can trace the changing tone most easily by rewatching movies, but if you were to reread the poems, epics and ballads throughout the ages, you would also notice a slow change in tone. King Arthur has gone through similar changes. Sometimes King Arthur’s right-hand man was Lancelot, sometimes it’s Merlin, sometimes it’s Gawain.

Sometimes the retelling can dramatically change the meaning of the original. Robin Hood, for example, usually steals from the rich and gives to the poor; the original anti-capitalist. But in the 2018 film, he does not steal from the rich; he steals from the Sheriff. He is no longer an anti-capitalist, but instead an anti-authoritarian.

Bible Stories

The natural tendency to tell stories slightly differently as the audience changes matters because most Bible stories are told verbally. Think about it; when was the last time you either heard or told the story of David and Goliath? From a Sunday school teacher? By reading a children’s Bible to your kids? Watching a movie? Protestantism may prize Sola Scriptura, but for better or for worse, the simple fact is that most Bible content comes to us as repeated information. This is doubly true when dealing with the Old Testament, and doubly true again when dealing with children.

I’m willing to bet that for most people, the last time they heard the story of David and Goliath, it wasn’t a strict reading of 1 Samuel. In fact, most kids growing up in Christian homes probably 1) know Bible stories well and 2) have never (or rarely) heard them read straight from the Bible. What they learned the Scriptures from are primarily retellings. And when stories are retold, some characters and details get more or less emphasis; the tone shifts, depending on who is telling the story.

How much change an audience is willing to put up with since the last time they heard the story changes as the culture does. Today, we are far more obsessed with realism and historical accuracy, whereas generations before us preferred to show a sharp contrast between good and evil. In the 30s and 40s, they were far more inclined to make their good characters unbelievably good, with not even a hint of badness in them. Characters like Flash Gordon (1940s) are often so stunningly good that they’ll never face anything that even remotely resembles a moral dilemma. They are shining beacons of only what is right. Today’s audiences can’t stand characters like that. We don’t want heroes that are only ever good - we want people flawed like we are.

This is why Away in a Manger includes the line “no crying he makes,” but churches today are so hesitant to sing this line. The writer knew full well that baby Jesus was human, and therefore cried. But previous generations wanted Jesus - the sinless Saviour - to be good. So good - good in every way - that He wouldn’t even cry. He had to be even more perfect than Flash Gordon. That’s why art often has a halo behind His head. Not because they thought He actually had one - they just wanted to depict Him as unattainably good.

Today, audiences prefer realism. The Passion of the Christ has a similar amount of grit to the Batman movies that came out around the same time. And The Chosen shows Jesus hesitating, fumbling, nervously working through multiple drafts of the Sermon on the Mount with Matthew. And people either love it (“he’s just like us) or they hate it (“this isn’t historically accurate”). But there’s little appetite for depicting him with a permanent halo behind his head (“he is unattainably good”) like in previous decades.

What About Movies?

Every year or two, we get a new Bible movie in the theatre. A portion of Christians get real excited; the rest don’t care. This idea of a dramatic and lengthy retelling of a Bible story is not new.

In 1667, John Milton published Paradise Lost, a lengthy epic poem re-imagining the story of the Garden of Eden, Satan, etc. He was doing what writers of that day often did - taking an old story, expanding and reworking it to highlight the virtues and qualities he felt were worth highlighting.

It’s not that different from what is being done with the TV show The Chosen. They are reimagining and expanding familiar stories to highlight what they think is worth highlighting. But they face controversy when Jesus turns to Matthew for help with his sermon writing. The showrunner claims he is highlighting Jesus’ humanity, while many viewers took this as a diminishment of His divinity. It is the same problem Disney faces every time they make a live-action reboot of a cartoon: you can either expand a story or stay true to the original, but it is challenging to do both.

Christians then, and now, have to decide how much change in a retelling is acceptable. Unless you’ve memorized the Scripture and are reciting it to your Sunday School class, some change is inevitable. And even if a movie is quoting the Bible word for word (this has happened), some change is inevitable. But how much matters immensely.

I think minimum change means maximum power. Adding or removing content from a Bible story changes it from being a soul-shattering reality to being a nice story that accomplishes little. Before you disagree with me, tell me how many people you have baptized after they watched the Veggie Tale’s Jonah movie in a theatre as a child. When more changes are made, like in Paradise Lost, the ability to discover who God is, who man is, and the relationship between them is lost.

Stories are how we communicate morals, ethics and the importance of certain traits, values and virtues. Good, clean entertainment with any amount of Biblical worldview leaking through is good for a culture. It is very unusual that it contributes at all to the salvation of souls.

It is possible to change so much in a Bible story that it moves from being ineffective to being downright detrimental to the faith. Noah, and Exodus: Gods and Kings, both directed by Ridley Scott, fall into this category. God is portrayed as petulant child; this crosses a line.

As far as I can tell, the David movie crosses no lines. It just amplifies some characters and story moments. And in doing so, loses all power and becomes strictly entertainment. Good, clean entertainment with good morals. But just entertainment.

Bible Stories and Batman

The Bible being used as entertainment is not inherently wrong. Idolatry, blasphemy, and misrepresenting Jesus: all these things are bad, no matter how accurately you depict Jesus. There is a morally neutral reality that cultures change and do storytelling differently. As that change happens, the way Bible stories are told changes too. It has happened for hundreds of years, and if the Lord tarries, a hundred years from now, both Bible stories and Batman films will have a whole new feel to them again.

The Biblical text remains unchanged. Each week, Sunday school teachers make choices, like whether to tell a story or show a film. The kind of Batman movie you like is the style in which you are inclined to tell Bible stories. The interestingness of the Bible stories may change depending on how they are told, but their efficacy depends on your adherence to the original, inspired truths.

Some Sunday School teachers want to tell their stories with fun. They’re looking to get kids laughing and have a memorable lesson. It’s very 1960s Batman. It may be fun, but it will only be as powerful as it is accurate to the original. Some Sunday school teachers want kids to understand the true history. They’ll bring props and show some archeological photos. It’s very 2000s Batman. It may be educational, but it will only be as powerful as it is accurate to the original.

Bible movies are going to keep coming out. Some will be made by Christians, some will not be. They will mostly cater to whatever is going to make money. They will only be as powerful as they are accurate to the original. And for the most part, this means they will be culturally helpful and evangelistically neutral.

The words in the Bible are inspired. The details, the progression, the amount of time given to explaining each story beat - it is all inspired. The grit, the lack of grit, the nuance, the character development, the moments of moral ambiguity, the moments of moral certainty; it is all inspired. You’re likely to come to the Biblical text looking for more of something - whether it’s more detail on a certain event or more evidence historically - but all you are given is what the Bible has.

And what the Bible has is alive. It is a sword, and it pierces. Having Bible stories re-told is inevitable. But the re-telling is powerful only to the degree it still looks and sounds like the Sword it is based on. And so it’s worth knowing your storytelling tendencies. And to know your storytelling tendencies, it is worth knowing which Batman film is your favourite.

A+ (Everyone should read these)

Mere Christianity

Profound and yet accessible, rife with imagery that makes the arguments not only easy to understand but easy to re-articulate, this book is Lewis at his best. It starts with an argument for natural law and gives a great description of what Christians believe. While it is slightly disjointed (originally 3 different works put together), it soundly reasons out so many doctrines that Christians and non-Christians are quick to question.

Screwtape Letters

A series of letters written from the perspective of a senior demon to an inferior. Perhaps one of the most articulate descriptions of common pitfalls and regular errors that Christians make. If everyone read this and Christians were made aware of some of the areas they easily slip into, the church would be in a stronger place.

A (Very good, worth your time)

Weight of Glory

A collection of 8 (generally) unrelated essays. My favourite was Learning in Wartime, which I have written about here. Each essay, to varying degrees, contains some points that will make you stop and think. I didn’t think I loved this one at first, but as the months have stretched on, I find this is the book I refer back to the most.

A Grief Observed

Reads like a diary as Lewis reflects on the passing of his wife. It is as honest as it is hopeful. This book is certainly not counselling of any kind, but if you are just looking for someone to share tears with you, this is great.

Pilgrim’s Regress

The only “pure” allegory Lewis wrote, in a similar style to Pilgrim’s Progress, but more closely matching Lewis’ own testimony. This is Lewis at his least charitable (which he admits in the epilogue); the pilgrim encounters just about every worldview imaginable, and Lewis gives a plain, blunt assessment with no attempt to persuade someone of that view. The first three chapters on their own are worth reading.

A- (Worth Reading)

The Abolition of Man

Similar to the first section of Mere Christianity, but a far more academic argument for natural law. Great insight into our current culture. The dense language and lack of his typical imagery make this book less accessible, but for those who don’t mind wading through a book page by page, there are many lessons to glean in here.

The Problem of Pain

A thoughtful apologetic and articulate answer to the problem of pain. I think his answer is good, but not earth-shattering. Does a great job of addressing what would have been his own accusations against Christianity, but probably unsatisfactory for the average atheist today.

Till We Have Faces

A rewrite of the Cupid and Psyche myth. This was my (and Tolkien’s!) favourite fictional novel by Lewis. It (like most myths) doesn’t really have a linear plot, but I really enjoyed the characters and their journeys.

The Discarded Image

An exploration of medieval literature. Here, Lewis tackles what the purpose of most writers in history has been: expression of virtue, retellings of heroism, etc. It really gives great insight into the creation of the works both Lewis and Tolkien are most famous for. If I were going to read all of Lewis’ books again, I would start here.

B+ (Good but not life changing)

Magician’s Nephew, Lion, Witch & Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, Horse and His Boy

I enjoyed these as a kid, and I can see why. The Christian imagery is rich but not overwhelming, and the stories are fun and engaging.

Miracles

One of Lewis’ densest books, it is the most thoughtful response to some of the criticisms he had as an atheist, such as the idea that Christianity is just a reimagining of many pagan myths. Also gives a great answer to the God of the gaps theory, something I wrote about here. This book’s content should place it higher on this list, but it is so hard to read, it lands at a B+.

The Great Divorce

“The doors of hell are locked on the inside” is a statement from the Problem of Pain, but here is a fictional imagining of hell’s inhabitants continuing in the same stubbornness and refusal to repent they had while alive. Great insight into man’s sinful nature.

The Four Loves

I listened to this as an audiobook read by Lewis himself (very cool!). He essentially argues that the word love in English is too broad and needs further categorization. The thoughts of this book have actually been so widely accepted since its publication, and many of its arguments overused to the point where Lewis wouldn’t even agree with them anymore (such as “agape means God’s unconditional love”) that it holds less relevance than it would have when it first came out.

The Dark Tower

This is a collection of unfinished manuscripts. The first (The Dark Tower) would have been part of what became the Space Trilogy, and if it had ever been finished, I think it would have been one of my favourite Lewis novels. The other unfinished works and short stories make up the second half of the book, and I didn’t really care for them.

Surprised by Joy

A retelling of Lewis’ testimony and conversion to Christianity. Wonderful and profound. It contains an extended period in the middle explaining the hierarchy and inner workings of English private schools, which really doesn’t serve its overall purpose very well. Without these chapters, the book would be higher on this list. I wish he had taken the last two chapters and written a hundred more pages for each.

That Hideous Strength

The third book in the Space Trilogy (could be read as a stand-alone) and easily the most action-packed. I’m not really sure if or where there is any Christian imagery in here, and I feel like that is what most people read Lewis for. But I had a fun time reading it.

B (Enjoyable if you have the time)

Out of the Silent Planet, Voyage to Venus

The first two fictional novels in the Space Trilogy. The strongest Christian imagery in any of Lewis’ fictional novels, but the stories themselves are slow. Great theology, mediocre science fiction.

The World’s Last Night

A collection of essays in the style of The Weight of Glory. The Efficacy of Prayer and Religion and Rocketry are both worth reading. Screwtape Proposes a Toast was in here, but I had read it at the end of Screwtape Letters, so that meant this book was 2 great essays and 3 that were skippable.

Preface to Paradise Lost

Primarily a reflection on medieval epics. Insightful as a literary book, but not really any theology. It inspired this post about Beowulf.

C (I would not be bothered to read again)

Silver Chair, Last Battle

Last Battle is often panned for its supposed universalism, something I wrote more on here. But I just found both of these uninteresting as stories. I apologize in advance to everyone who is angered by this.

Reflections on the Psalms

Lewis opens by acknowledging he is neither a Biblical scholar nor a commentator. He then gives a number of thematic and overarching observations on the book of Psalms. A handful of gems in here, but nothing life-changing.

Letters to Malcom: Chiefly on Prayer

I thought C.S. Lewis writing on prayer would be my favourite. Alas, the most memorable thing in here was his defence of purgatory. This book also contains a pretty good description of whatthe church ought to be. But more than anything, these letters showcase the genuine love and care he had for a friend. It’s not profound arguments meant to be read by an outsider (me).

D (This kind of stunk, if I’m honest)

George Macdonald

365 collected sayings from Lewis’ favourite writer, meant as a devotional book. I found most of the quotes disconnected and unhelpful.

They Asked for a Paper

The second half of this book is The Weight of Glory, so this rating only reflects the first half, which is a collection of essays about classic writings. If you are a Shakespeare or Walter Scott scholar, you may enjoy this. I just felt too dumb to understand or appreciate most of it, and it held no relevance to me.

Psalm 133: A Psalm of Ascent. Of David.

How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!

² It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
³ It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

Verse 1 says, “it is good and pleasant when God’s people live together in unity.” This is just a non-controversial statement of fact. You understand this one immediately If you’ve ever seen a church, or a marriage, or a workplace, where there is disunity, it is unpleasant. It is pleasant when God’s people get along.

The first simile comes in verse 2. “Unity is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe.” Oil would have used to offer refreshment when someone comes in from the dry, dusty desert, back into a home. They would have put some oil on their skin.1 It’s refreshment after being beaten by the elements.

What the Psalmist is saying is that unity is refreshing. The world is hard, and full of thorns, both literally and metaphorically. Stepping from a divided, broken world into a church united around truth is a source of deep refreshment. The first part of verse 2 could be taken as though it is saying unity is like taking a long shower after a long day at work. It is refreshing.

The second part of verse 2 speaks about Aaron’s robe and beard. Aaron was the first priest, the brother of Moses. When someone was chosen for an office or a job, they would put some oil on their head to show they now belong in their new job; this is an image that appears throughout the Scripture. So Aaron would have had a beard and a priestly robe, and He would have received a very clear appointment, a job given to him by God when oil was put on his head.

This kind of appointment reminds me of something that happens in sports drafts. All these teenagers sit in a theatre surrounding the stage where a manager or owner comes up and calls the name of the kid who they would like to play on their team. And that person gets to stand up in front of everyone, and he is given a jersey, which he puts on over his suit.

And it is this clear, outward declaration, “I now belong to this organization.” That is essentially what happened when oil was put on Aaron’s head. Moses and the Israelites were saying “this is your job, your place, your appointment.”

This is what Christian unity is like. A church that is living in unity offers a place of belonging. You will find yourself serving as a member of a body; not just an outsider looking in, but an integral part of an important machine. When there is unity, you will feel a sense appointment, calling, and belonging.

Verse three says “It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.” I feel it is my personal mission to tell them that Google maps is a helpful and acceptable tool in a Bible study. If you don’t know where these two places are, Google maps it! These are two mountains, 283 kms apart. A 3 day walk. Zion is the name of the mountain that Jerusalem is built on. It is relatively dry, especially during certain seasons. Hermon gets quite a lot of rainfall.2 So he says unity is like leaving one unpleasant climate to experience a pleasant one. To put that in contemporary terms, it as if you left Ontario in January and went to Costa Rica.

While the terminology and similes of Psalm 133 may at first seem unfamiliar and odd, what it teaches is still true, helpful and relevant. If we were to read this Psalm with modern terminology, we would say: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It Is like a long shower after a day at work, it is like being given a place by a team in the NHL, it is like leaving Ontario to go to Costa Rica in January.”

Similes, Metaphors and Imagery

One of the most striking things about Lewis’ works are his analogies. The man simply had a metaphor for almost everything he said. In Surprised by Joy, he says his mother came from a family that enjoyed happiness. They, “went straight for it as experienced travellers go for the best seat in a train.”1 I quote this example because it is a good example of a metaphor being used when it is unnecessary. If a writer said “my mother laughed a lot” a reader would have no further questions. Lewis has to include a metaphor.

His imagery helps us grasp difficult things. In Mere Christianity, he argues that human ethics are much like a group of boats sailing together. In a boat, the main rules are “don’t hit the shore or other boats,” and in life, a main ethical principles is social harmony, or “don’t hurt others or the world around you.” Boats, like people, must have individual integrity. But there is another question that fundamentally challenges the “rules” of a boat, which is, “who owns the boat?” Boats, like people, have intrinsic purpose. It’s no good if you avoid hitting anything if your boat ends up in New York when it was meant to be destined for London. Likewise, a human can hardly be considered moral for living a ‘good’ life if their body turns out to be made by a God they have no awareness of.2

This is an analogy that takes a fantastically heavy concept and makes it so a child can understand. But Lewis does not merely illustrate the complex or the profound. He illustrates everything.

I think this tells us, first of all, that he is a poet before he is anything else (this was, in fact, the position he applied for before becoming professor of medieval literature). Secondly, I think it is part of the reason his essays on Christianity are so helpful, captivating and enduring. If sermon illustrations are the grocery bags that let you take home the exegetical groceries, Lewis has given us one bag per thought in most of his essays. No wonder preachers love him.

What did I learn? The value of a good illustration. The operative word here is ‘good.’ Lewis never tells a funny story for a laugh. He gives simple, meaningful images that help his thesis stick. He wrote in one of his books (I can’t find it now) about how the measure of a great mind is not his ability to explain things to another great mind, but to a small one. There’s no better way to communicate profound truth to small minds (my own included) than with vibrant imagery.

Natural Law

I am convinced that if Lewis could have, he would have started every book he wrote with an argument for natural law. Mere Christianity, divided into 4 parts, begins with “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” It is noteworthy what it does not begin with. It does not start with any Bible verses. Lewis, given the opportunity to defend Christianity on the radio post-WWII did what almost no preacher would do; he left his Bible at home. He started by appealing to the fact that all people in all ages and cultures have a similar notion of right and wrong, and that all people in all ages and cultures do not keep their own standards for right and wrong. From this, then, he argues for both a moral law giver and the need for forgiveness, since we already acknowledge our own lack of perfection.

In both The Abolition of Man and Miracles, he also includes an argument from natural law (though three different arguments in the three books). And, while he uses Biblical wording and themes, he never quotes direct Bible verses in these books the way you would be accustomed to seeing in almost any other Christian book.

What did I learn? Just how and why so many contemporary Christian arguments fall on deaf ears. “It is not in line with God’s design” is a pretty poor argument against ethical principles in a post-Christian naturalist society. Appealing to the morals that are naturally wired within the human heart is a better starting place.

The Romantic Reimagining

If you are thinking of reading every Lewis book, I would suggest starting with The Discarded Image (ironically, the last book he wrote). It is a book about medieval literature, and in it, he writes of how storytellers would tell and retell old stories with their own spin on things. The idea of plagiarism, or intellectual property, he argues, would have been wholly foreign to the medieval writer. The reason for retelling stories? To highlight and re-highlight the virtues that matter most to the writer.

He writes, “If you had asked Lazamon or Chaucer ‘Why do you not make up a brand-new story of your own?’ I think they might have replied (in effect) ‘Surely we are not yet reduced to that?’ Spin something out of one’s own head when the world teems with so many noble deeds, wholesome examples, pitiful tragedies, strange adventures, and merry jests which have never yet been set forth quite so well as they deserve?’ The originality which we regard as a sign of wealth might have seemed to them a confession of poverty.”3

Modern audiences tend to roll their eyes when Hollywood tells and retells the same stories, but this is precisely what Lewis believes the greats of medieval literature - he even includes Shakespeare here4 - are doing. Ironically, the thing modern audiences hate most - bringing classic stories into a contemporary setting - is precisely what was most common. This is why we picture King Arthur in shining armour and a castle, even though the earliest stories place him in the 5th century, some 400 years before castles and 900 years before shiny plate armour. When his story was told, it was told centuries later by men who placed him in a contemporary setting. And why was it retold? Because the original Arthur - whether he was real or fictional - was brave, and that kind of bravery was worth celebrating.

In both The Discarded Image and They Asked For a Paper Lewis argues that the way we divide history - most notably which period we call ‘medieval’ - is arbitrary. He would far prefer to see ‘medieval’ as a term that encompasses anyone who retells stories - historical or fictional - with an aim to highlight important virtues. Knowing how Lewis understands medieval literature helps make sense of why he wants to rewrite the story of Cupid and Psyche in Til We Have Faces, in an updated (though certainly not modern) setting. It also helps us understand the thought process behind Narnia. While Narnia is often taken as an allegory (he find the term ‘supposal’ more accurate), Lewis, more than anything, wants to honour and exemplify certain virtues and characteristics. He wants his kings and queens to be brave, fair, just and kind. These are the virtues he wants celebrated, just as he sees these celebrated in some of his own favourite stories, such as Gawain and the Green Knight.

What did I learn? Telling old stories, whether historical or fictional, of men and women with exemplary characteristics is incredibly powerful. An author’s worldview shines through their writing, and the way we tell stories of people matters. Stories tell tales of good versus evil, and so they reflect a writer’s understanding of what good is. When stories contain romance, they reflect the writer’s idea of what love is. Christians writing stories communicate far more about Christian virtues than we perhaps realize. And in a day where most Christian fiction writing is trying to overtly tell us its message in a way that is so over the top that it is cheesy and cliché, I learned the value of a book like Prince Caspian, which may not have a clear “gospel” but which celebrates good, just, Biblical qualities in its characters.

Pagans, Myths and Hell

One of the most problematic and currently criticized elements of Lewis is his view of hell. Specifically, a soldier in The Last Battle whom Aslan welcomes, and accepts his worship of Tash, a foreign god as worship of Aslan. I wrote in another article about The Great Divorce and how Lewis is often unjustly accused of denying eternal conscious torment. The reality is that he defends both hell’s existence and the fact that it is moral in The Problem of Pain.

Lewis was obsessed with the idea that all myths, all theologies, all ancient forms of worship were imperfect stories that were pointing towards Christ. You may recall he was converted after being persuaded by Tolkien and Dyson that Christianity was not a myth but the myth, and a historically factual one. And thus, all myths pointed humanity towards the death and resurrection of Christ.

This is most fully fleshed out in Miracles, when he talks about a common pagan myth of the corn god. The corn god was a god that died every fall, along with the crop, and resurrected in the spring when the corn grew again. It was a pagan way of processing the death and rebirth of the foliage that occurred through the changing seasons. This myth had appeared and reappeared (see thoughts on medieval literature above) throughout history. Lewis, as a young atheist, believed Christianity was another retelling of the corn god, but later came to believe the corn god was a pre-telling of Christianity.

Thus, in They Asked for a Paper, he writes, “Christians and Pagans had much more in common with each other than either has with a post-Christian. The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as that between those who worship and those who do not.”5

Romans 1 says that “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen” (Rom 1:20). Lewis was certainly not a universalist. But I suspect his reading of Romans 1 may not have sat well with many evangelicals.

Did he actually believe that worship of a foreign god would be taken as worship of God? No, I don’t think he did. But what you see in The Last Battle is at least something he wants to be true. In The Problem of Pain, he defends the existence of hell, but not before first saying he wishes it were not real, and would eliminate the whole doctrine if he could.

What did I learn? Even more about natural law, and why natural law leads humans to tell and retell the same stories. We love - even to this day - the hero’s journey, where the mentor dies so that the hero can be inspired to live valiantly. It’s a poor, shadowy telling of the gospel story, but it is a story ingrained in our DNA. It is a story every human so deeply yearns for that we immediately understand why Obi-Wan’s death sets Luke up for victory. It’s a small, pathetic telling of what we truly long for, the righteous dying that the sinner might find true victory.

Evangelical Camp

One of the most surprising things I learned from reading Lewis (again, I hadn’t read much before this year) is how much he says that probably wouldn’t sit well with modern evangelicals. I am most familiar with him because I’m used to hearing this group quote him in cutesy little soundbites. In Letters to Malcom he defends his belief in purgatory. In several books, but most notably in The Problem of Pain he references his belief in evolution (though I am told he began to recant some of this in his later years). In Mere Christianity he addresses the question of penal substitutionary atonement and essentially shrugs his shoulders, and calling theories like this “quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us.”6

Evangelicals right now are heavily affected by ‘side syndrome,’ the desire to be entirely and exclusively in one ‘camp’ and to reject anyone who isn’t entirely in their camp. If John Mark Comer and Tim Keller are dissected and rejected as often as they are, I can’t even imagine what would happen to Lewis today. In Surprised by Joy he calls homosexuality a sin, and then says he won’t criticize others for it because it isn’t something he has ever struggled with. I think for that alone, he’d be tossed out by both the liberals (for calling it a sin) and the conservatives (for not calling for condemnation).

So why is Lewis as widely celebrated as he is? The way I see it, Lewis saw himself as a former atheist who became a Christian, and he was writing for others who may be on a similar journey. Many in my circles are surprised to learn he was a high church Anglican, but I think this is due to the fact that in all his defenses of Christianity, he never offered a defense of Anglicanism. In fact, I don’t think he ever wrote on any issues of church polity at all. He would not be interested in an essay by a Pentecostal turned Baptist encouraging others to consider the same. He was interested sinners turning to the Saviour. Did their means of worship matter? He rarely touches on his preferences.

In Pilgrim’s Regress, John, the pilgrim, does not find the path to Christ through the church (in the book called Mother Kirk), but by taking the long road around. He writes in the afterword, “my own progress had been from ‘popular realism’ to Philosophical Idealism; from Idealism to Pantheism; from Pantheism to Theism; and from Theism to Christianity. I still think this a very natural road, but I now know that it is a road very rarely trodden.”7 Lewis wrote to people on this path. I don’t think Lewis had the slightest interest in someone on the path from pedo-baptism to credo-baptism or from eternal conscious torment to annihilationalism. I’m not sure he even cared what ‘side’ or ‘camp’ he was in. And this is precisely why he is so endearing to Christians of all denominations; you can see in his writing a path that leads to Christ, even if it may be a path laden with teachings you disagree with.

What did I learn? That I have so much to learn and appreciate from an Anglican who believes in purgatory (these two are, at least officially, contradictory, if you are wondering). Am I on the same ‘side’ or in the same ‘camp’ as Lewis? We are both on the side of Christ, and we both have a heart to see those who do not know Jesus come to know Him. If these are the kinds of radio broadcasts that can be made by someone I disagree with, maybe I ought to be more charitable to some who I disagree with.

Amongst his instructions on how and why Christian community forms, Bonhoeffer highlights a few things that will kill community. While the book primarily says “do this,” often not much is made of what he says not to do. I wanted to highlight Bonhoeffer’s “do nots.” I felt some of these were worth quoting in full and giving some brief commentary on.

These are six things Dietrich Bonhoeffer identifies as “community killers:”

1. Longing for belonging rather than Christ

“Those who want more than what Christ has established between us do not want Christian community. They are looking for some extraordinary experiences of community that were denied them elsewhere. Such people are bringing confused and tainted desires into the Christian community. Precisely at this point Christian community is most often threatened from the very outset by the greatest danger, the danger of internal poisoning, the danger of confusing Christian community with some wishful image of pious community, the danger of blending the devout heart’s natural desire for community with the spiritual reality of Christian community.”

Humans want to belong. If you are longing to be welcomed, accepted and loved by other people more than you are longing to know Jesus Christ, you will always be unsatisfied with the community you are in.

“Many persons seek community because they are afraid of loneliness. Because they can no longer endure being alone, such people are driven to seek the company of others. Christians, too, who cannot cope on their own, and who in their own lives have had some bad experiences, hope to experience help with this in the company of other people. More often than not, they are disappointed. They then blame the community for what is really their own fault. The Christian community is not a spiritual sanitorium. Those who take refuge in community while fleeing from themselves are misusing it to indulge in empty talk and distraction, no matter how spiritual this idle talk and distraction may appear. In reality they are not seeking community at all, but only a thrill that will allow them to forget their isolation for a short time.”

It is worth noting here that Bonhoeffer’s main argument is that community forms around the person of Jesus Christ; to pursue an end to loneliness is to take one’s eyes off of Christ and place them back on ourselves.

2. Trying to recreate a previous community

A sure fire way to kill any community is to come with a clear image in your mind of what that community ought to look like. We are most guilty of this after moving, and fondly remembering the community we came from.

On innumerable occasions a whole Christian community has been shattered because it has lived on the basis of a wishful image. Certainly serious Christians who are put in a community for the first time will often bring with them a very definite image of what Christian communal life should be, and they will be anxious to realize it. But God’s grace quickly frustrates all such dreams.

Each Christian body is different in just the way all bodies are different. When you enter a Christian community desiring the specific practices you experienced in a previous community, you will quickly become frustrated.

3. Loving for the sake of self

The third community killer is to love people with an emotional love that is self-generated, rather than one that comes from Christ.

There is, likewise, a “merely emotional” love of neighbor. Such love is capable of making the most unheard-of sacrifices. Often it far surpasses the genuine love of Christ in fervent devotion and visible results. It speaks the Christian language with overwhelming and stirring eloquence. But it is what the Apostle Paul is speaking of when he says, “if I give all I posses to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames” (1 Cor 13:3) - in other words, if I combine the utmost deeds of love with the utmost of devotion - “but do not have love (that is, the love of Christ), I would be nothing” (1 Cor 13:2). Self-centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ.

It will sound like blasphemy to some to speak of a love that “surpasses the genuine love of Christ in fervent devotion.” But he clearly speaks here of a self-centred love. Self-centred love can be incredibly passionate, sacrificial and can appear quite sincere. True love is poured into us by Christ, through His Spirit and pours back out of us and into others.

4. Being Led by Spiritual Experiences

If community is formed specifically around Jesus Christ, then individuals seeking to form around spiritual experiences will actually pull away from a truly Christian community.

Moreover, we will see at this point whether Christians’ time of meditation has led them into an unreal world from which they awaken with a fright when they step out into the workaday world, or whether it has led them into the real world of God from which they enter into the day’s activities strengthened and purified. Has it transported them for a few short moments into a spiritual ecstacy that vanishes when everyday life returns, or has it planted the Word of God so soberly and so deeply in their hearts that it hold and strengthens them all day long, leading them to active love, to obedience, to good works?

This is a great test for determining if a word, saying, or experience comes from God or from self: what does it produce in the real world? Relying on spiritual experiences or revelations from God for direction can kill any community that desires to be faithful to Scripture.

5. Not Listening

Our fifth and final community killer is trying to offer service instead of simply learning to listen.

So often Christians, especially preachers, think that their only service is always to have to “offer” something when they are together with people. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

Subscribe now

I love the idea of re-reading the theses every October 31st, and I often try to. But the truth is, the value for today can be hard to see at first. It’s clearly a strong denunciation of indulgences. And if you personally aren’t buying, or thinking of buying any indulgences (and I don’t know anyone who is), you may find yourself asking, “what is here for me?” In fact, some of what he is arguing against has been removed from practice by the Catholic church, in part because Luther’s work was well received.

But Luther’s success only causes me to double down on the question, “what is here for me?” So, on the 508th anniversary of the 95 theses, I’ve gone about trying to answer that question for you.

I have gone through the 95 theses and selected 18 that I believe contain universal, timeless truths for us today. While the argument against indulgences may not feel specifically relevant to you, I’ve highlighted a section that I believe is. If only the word “indulgence” remains un-highlighted, consider it a blank you could fill in with any number of things.

1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ``Repent’‘ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

2. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.

3. Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward mortification of the flesh.

4. If remission of all penalties whatsoever could be granted to anyone at all, certainly it would be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to very few.

5. It is certain that when money clinks in the money chest, greed and avarice can be increased; but when the church intercedes, the result is in the hands of God alone.

6. Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church; and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.

7. It is very difficult, even for the most learned theologians, at one and the same time to commend to the people the bounty of indulgences and the need of true contrition.

8. A Christian who is truly contrite seeks and loves to pay penalties for his sins; the bounty of indulgences, however, relaxes penalties and causes men to hate them -- at least it furnishes occasion for hating them.

9. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better deed than he who buys indulgences.

10. Because love grows by works of love, man thereby becomes better. Man does not, however, become better by means of indulgences but is merely freed from penalties.

11. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a needy man and passes him by, yet gives his money for indulgences, does not buy papal indulgences but God’s wrath.

12. Christians are to be taught that, unless they have more than they need, they must reserve enough for their family needs and by no means squander it on indulgences.

13. Injury is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or larger amount of time is devoted to indulgences than to the Word.

14. It is certainly the pope’s sentiment that if indulgences, which are a very insignificant thing, are celebrated with one bell, one procession, and one ceremony, then the gospel, which is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies.

15. The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.

16. Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ``Peace, peace,’‘ and there is no peace! (Jer 6:14)

17. Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell.

18. And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace (Acts 14:22).

    Share

    

    Thanks for reading Kevin Deane's Blog Posts! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I learned to say “one person can change the world” from my Sunday School teachers when they taught me about Brother Andrew, William Carey and Martin Luther. I also heard that line from my public school teachers when they taught me about Terry Fox, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

I’ve always aspired to be the one person who changes the world. I’ve always wanted to be like Hudson Taylor. As a result of his life, millions know Jesus. I’ve always wanted to be like Oliver Cromwell. As a result of his life, millions are free from slavery.

You don’t have to change the world.

We live in a world and in a culture that has a lot I would like to change. There are moments where every Christian feels a little like Noah, preparing for the judgment of God while being ridiculed on all sides. Surely, God wants me to be the one person today who stands up and changes everything. But God’s commands to people who live in anti-Christian nations don’t usually sound anything like the mission I keep trying to assign myself. When the Israelites were exiles in a land that did not know or love Yahweh, God told them to do seven things in Jeremiah 29:1-14:

• Build houses and settle down (Jer 29:5)

• Plant gardens and eat what they produce (Jer 29:5)

• Marry and have kids (Jer 29:6)

• Seek the welfare of the city you are in (Jer 29:7)

• Pray (Jer 29:7)

• Do not be deceived by false teachers (Jer 29:8-9)

• Seek the Lord (Jer 29:13)

In fact, this list is precisely what we find Daniel and his friends doing when they are asked by their government to disobey God (Daniel 1:8-1:16, 3:1-17, 6:3-16). They aren’t loud or showy. They don’t organize any protests. In fact, in obedience to Jeremiah’s words, Daniel has his own house (Daniel 6:10), he seeks the welfare of the city (Daniel 5:12, 17), and he prays (Daniel 6:10). And by being faithful to God’s commands where he is, he does change the world, without even trying to.

Kevin DeYoung says this very well in his book Impossible Christianity:

“One of the great disservices we have done the church is to let people think that getting married, having children, staying married, taking those children to church, teaching those children about the faith, buying shoes, and training those children to be kind and courageous Christian adults is something other than radical discipleship. If we too are exiles (1 Peter 1:1), then Jeremiah’s counsel to the Jews in Babylon is good advice for us as well: settle down, raise a family, and seek the welfare of your temporary home (Jeremiah 29:4-7). When we follow Jesus by loving others, discipling our children (whether biological or spiritual), getting involved in a good church, and sharing with others our faith and our resources – when we do all that, we are most definitely doing something.”

When the world looks like it is falling apart, when sin rears its ugly head, or when we become aware of the great global need for the gospel, it can feel like we need to be doing more. Jesus tells a story where a master says to his servant, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). We are deceiving ourselves if we think that more is required of us than what was required of the Israelites in Babylon. You don’t need to try and become the one person who changes the world. You need to be faithful where you are. This is world-changing. The parable in which Jesus says “well done good and faithful servant” involves a master giving a different number of coins to his servants and having them invest them. All you are being asked to do is to do a great job investing what you have been given.

Hudson Taylor was faithful with what God gave him, and millions came to Christ. You may not lead millions to Christ. But you can be faithful with what God has given you. If you ever feel burdened for the millions who do not know Jesus, praise God for a sensitive heart, and then start by discipling one. You don’t need to take on millions by yourself. But you do need to take on what you can.

Share

As a pastor, I have the privilege of doing a lot of funerals. When I look down at the casket of an elderly, faithful saint, who loved their spouse to the end, who so joyfully explored God’s Word every day, I have never doubted Christ’s willingness to say to them “well done, good and faithful servant.” But when I think of my own death, I find it far harder to imagine Christ saying that. “Surely I’m not doing enough,” I say. “I could be reading more. I could be praying more. I could be sharing more. I could be sinning less.” We are the harshest critics of ourselves.

Christ says to the one who invested well, “well done, good and faithful servant.” Be good. Be faithful. Be a servant. For some, that should be a call to action. But for many of us, it’s a good reminder that we bear fruit when we abide, not when we labour. You don’t have to change the world by yourself.

Civil marriage doesn’t sound like a very gripping topic for an article. But I think it’s important.

It matters for two main reasons:

1. We need to know if it is necessary for a couple to do. This comes up most commonly when two people of different citizenships get married, and they don’t have permanent residency in the same country. In that case, they often can’t do a civil marriage - does that matter? Do they need to?

2. There’s the question of whether evangelical pastors will be able to do civil marriage on the long term. Right now, ordained pastors are granted power by the government (in Canada, at a provincial level) to pronounce couples married. But what if the government stops granting this office to pastors who believe marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman? (Just for the record, this is not something specifically being threatened at the moment, but the possibility is always worth discussing.)

Do we even need to do the signing-government-paper thing in a wedding? Or, in the reverse, could a couple go to the court house and sign those papers without doing all the rest of the wedding ceremony?

To answer this, we must answer the question of what marriage actually is. What is the fundamental ingredient that makes a couple married versus unmarried? To put it another way; if a couple is saving sex for marriage, what all do they need to do before they are ‘okay’ to sleep together?

Since the time of Christ there have essentially been three aspects of a wedding ceremony that have variously been considered to be what mark the beginning of a marriage: the covenant, the consummation and the civil signing. We will look at each of these in turn before returning to discuss how important civil marriage actually is.

Covenant

Since at least the eighth century BC, marriage has been regarded as a covenant.1 Early Christians appear to have adopted their marriage practices from the Jews, whose covenants were reflective of the divine-human covenants between God and the Israelite people. Tertuallian formalized many of these practices, clarifying that while Roman rituals could be done privately, Christian rituals should not. He also argued that marriage must start at a decisive moment and could not be something one drifted into.2 While the specifics of the wedding ceremony have changed through the centuries, the idea of marriage as public covenant has remained the core.

While it’s difficult to claim that Adam’s words “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23) are strictly covenantal (despite the vast majority of wedding sermons I hear arguing this very thing), the absence of anything besides a verbal statement at the first wedding ceremony would certainly indicate this is all that is necessary. While ‘marriage as covenant’ is perhaps not explicitly spelled out in the Bible, Paul articulates a clear correlation between the way Christ loves the church and spouses are to love each other. “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church” (Eph 5:29). If Christ is in covenant with the church, it makes sense that spouses begin their marriage by forming a covenant with each other. As Hegel wrote,

[Marriage] comes into being and has compelling force only when the individuals formally and expressly consent to the terms of marriage, when they self-consciously acknowledge their entrance into the institution and its norms of behavior…in the announced presence of the community that determines those terms and norms.”3

Marriage begins with the formation of a covenant. Whatever else may be included in a wedding ceremony, this is the foundational event.

Consummation

It isn’t known where the idea of marriage beginning at consummation comes from, but it probably predates Hammurabi’s code, which, in 1750 BCE, contained laws governing sexual relations and marriage.4 By the sixth century CE, two types of wedding rituals are discernible, one based in Gaul, the other in Italy. While the Italian ceremony was based around the church’s involvement in the couple’s exchanging of vows, in Gaul the ritual always seems to have included the blessing of the couple as they lay in bed. For the church in Gaul, the sexual relation itself was the sacrament.5

Throughout history, marriage was often used as a means to form strategic alliances, and in many cases involved the exchange of goods or livestock. This led to many unwilling marriages between children of powerful parents, and by 1140 the Benedictine monk Gratian wrote in his book on canon law, Decretum Gratiani, that consent was a necessary part of marriage. The Decretum required couples to both verbal consent and to consummate their marriage in order to both show their consent and to forge a marital bond.6

While the practice of having the priest bless the marriage bed had begun much earlier, it rose to prominence in the twelfth century. To this day, if a couple can prove that their vows were non-consensual or that their marriage was not consummated, the Roman Catholic Church is willing to annul the marriage.7 To the Roman Catholic Church, it is consent, marked by sexual union, and not verbal covenant or the church’s involvement that makes a couple man and wife.

This is problematic for a few reasons, most notably because the Bible says, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Heb 13:4). While there is no doubt that ‘two becoming one flesh’ is paramount to a marriage, the order of covenant first and consummation second is necessary to avoid teaching that violates Hebrews 13:4. Adrian Thatcher, for example, argues that “consent makes the marriage, even when the marriage is not ratified by church or state.”8 This then leads him to the dangerous conclusion that common-law marriage is an acceptable form of marriage. The Bible condemns sex before marriage, but in his view, if two people are cohabiting, they have both consent and consummation, and therefore, this is simply sex before ceremony.9

It is far better for the church to view the covenant as the beginning of a marriage, and consummation an important step that follows shortly after. “But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband” (1 Cor 7:2). It should be understood from this verse that the only way to avoid sexual immorality is to reserve sex exclusively for a marriage union, one ratified by covenant.

Civil

So now that we have those two settled, what the heck is civil marriage and why do we do it?

After the reformation, both Protestants and Catholics were forced to rethink the relationship between the church and the government. Because changing theology often meant riots and destruction of property,10 governments had a strong interest in religion. It was during this time, at the Council of Trent (part of what is called “the counter-reformation”), that the Roman Catholic Church began to observe ‘canonical marriage.’ This was still covenant-marriage, but with more formalities in the church, and because the government was so interested in religion, this meant more formalities relating to the state.11 State-run churches would be the norm for some time, and consequently, civil magistrates would play a strong role in both Protestant and Catholic marriages.12

However, it wouldn’t be until 1792, during the French Revolution, that the first government-issued civil marriage was introduced. During this time, everything was placed under the rule of law, including marriage. The idea of marriage being done in a church and by a pastor or priest was relegated to the background and stripped of civil and therefore cultural validity.13 The practice spread throughout Europe as Napoleon’s domain increased, and then quickly spread to Europe’s new American colonies.

Why have civil marriage?

That brings us to today. In the twenty-first-century Western world, civil marriage is a staple item of any wedding ceremony. But it is worth remembering that such a concept is not biblical. Marriage is a covenant which leads to physical unity. Adam and Eve, the prototype of marriage, experienced both of these things, in this order, with no civil paper signed.

So why is civil marriage such a common part of a Christian wedding ceremony? Civil marriage takes the commitment from being one that is deeply personal to an individual human being, and gives it a formality recognized by every citizen of the country. This makes it a communal, highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity and family.14 It is also an opportunity to participate as a good citizen under a government authority (1 Peter 2:12-14).

According to the reformers, the role of the state was to restrain transgressions. As Luther understood it, the devil reigns freely on the earth, and so God has ordained emperors and magistrates to prevent men from wholeheartedly pursuing the desires of their depraved minds.15 Even if marriage is simply a covenant, the making of that covenant takes place at a public ceremony, involves commitments to a societal norm and is regulated and regulated by an ethical authority.16 If the state is to restrain sin in the world, it has an inherent interest in both establishing social norms and in being a regulating ethical authority. Since marriage is so deeply embedded in a dense set of social expectations, it may not make sense for the state to control marriage laws, but it certainly makes sense that the state wants to.17 And for the Christian, it makes sense to participate in this - it helps us acknowledge and affirm one legitimate, God-given institution that the government is also acknowledging.

Could this change in the future if our government changes, or its definition of marriage changes? Yes. But for now, despite all the additional (unbiblical) ways they define marriage, they do still acknowledge the permanent union of marriage between a man and a woman. And so, for now, we celebrate and include civil marriage in a Christian ceremony.

Conclusion

So let’s ask our original two questions again: Do we even need to do the signing-government-paper thing in a wedding? Or, in the reverse, could a couple go to the courthouse and sign those papers without doing all the rest of the wedding ceremony?

Do Christian couples need to sign the civil marriage license? No. But it’s good to - it helps affirm a good, God-given thing recognized by our government, whose job is to restrain transgression. But when getting a marriage license becomes difficult or impossible - like in the case of two people of different citizenship - it’s not essential. Marriage is a covenant between the couple and God. The government doesn’t need to play a role.

Could a couple just go to the courthouse and sign papers? Not unless that is also accompanied by a formal making of vows. Most courthouse marriages do include some form of vows, but as a pastor, I think its important that people understand what they are actually doing. Marriage is a covenant followed by a physical union. The signing of the paper is not the start of a marriage.

One of the most noteworthy characteristics of epics is that they were written to be read out loud. Lewis explains how the writing style is reflective of this:

“It is a prime necessity of oral poetry that the hearers should not be surprised too often, or too much. The unexpected tires us: it also takes us longer to understand and enjoy than the expected. A line which gives the listener pause is a disaster in oral poetry because it makes him lose the next line.”2

Oh, how helpful this is in preaching! I’m not sure I had ever considered before just how different the medium of oral address is from the written form. It explains why many brilliant scholars struggle with public speaking. It also explains why so many brilliant preachers are mediocre writers. The two mediums are completely different; repetition is what makes oral address memorable and also what makes the written word unbearable.

Lewis writes, “In Beowulf’s last speech to Wiglaf ‘stock’ expressions occur six times in twenty-eight lines - again, they are about a quarter of the whole.” It is no coincidence that most preaching books contain an exhortation for “repetition that provides clarity and emphasis.”

Young preacher, don’t write a sermon the way you write anything else. Write it the way Beowulf was written - write it for verbal recitation, which at times means repeating yourself six times in twenty-eight lines. Lewis, speaking of poetry, says, “good poetry means not the poetry men like composing, but the poetry men like to listen to or read.” Good sermons are not the ones you enjoy writing; they are the ones people can understand, remember and apply.

Lewis speaks of how the authors of oral poetry used “stock phrases.” In the Iliad, for example, Homer calls the sea the “wine-dark sea” nearly every time he refers to it. Isn’t this kind of repetition precisely what our English teachers tried to beat out of us? And this is precisely the problem with most young preachers (myself included): I spent more than a decade in school learning the art of writing, but never the art of speaking. As a result, I’m prone to write a sermon like I would an essay, and preaching ends up being a recitation of a verbal argument with great attention put to what I’m saying and very little thought put to how it sounds.

Sunday school teacher, when you tell a story, use the same phrases, not new ones. If you’re going to speak of Moses parting the Red Sea, you can use the same adjectives to describe the sea every time. In verbal storytelling, this is good.

Perhaps no one needs to understand this more than those who make announcements. You gave information once, out loud, from the front? A whole bunch of unrelated new information in one announcement after another? May I remind you of Lewis’ words, “The unexpected tires us: it also takes us longer to understand and enjoy than the expected.”

A Sunday morning church service is almost entirely an oral affair (reading the Bible may be central thematically, but it does take less time than almost everything else). Treat your part in it like epic poetry, not like creative writing. Repeat, repeat, repeat. This isn’t about glorifying ourselves - it's about making the most of our words. It’s about using our God-given voices to communicate in a way that makes sense to our God-designed congregants. The author of Beowulf would have done well in a Sunday morning service.