Audio Transcript
Welcome again to this new week on the podcast on this Monday. Nicely, 2023 ended with two large declarations that bought plenty of consideration on-line and led to a pile of emails for you, Pastor John. First, and most talked about, the pope mentioned Roman Catholic monks can now “bless” (so-called) same-sex {couples}, which is a transfer that confused and angered many Catholics and non-Catholics alike, as you’ll anticipate.
Based on the Vatican’s assertion, this blessing is “for {couples} in irregular conditions and for {couples} of the identical intercourse, the type of which shouldn’t be fastened ritually by ecclesial authorities to keep away from producing confusion with the blessing correct to the Sacrament of Marriage.” This so-called divine blessing is for “those that — recognizing themselves to be destitute and in want of [God’s] assist — don’t declare a legitimation of their very own standing, however who beg that each one that’s true, good, and humanly legitimate of their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit.” The pope is making an attempt very onerous to string a needle right here.
Extra bluntly, two weeks after this, Reuters reported that Burundi president Évariste Ndayishimiye referred to as on his residents to reply another way. “If you wish to appeal to a curse to the nation, settle for homosexuality,” he advised journalists. Then he mentioned, “I even suppose that these folks, if we discover them in Burundi, it’s higher to cause them to a stadium and stone them. And that can not be a sin.” This was an announcement made to his predominantly Christian nation, maybe drawing from a textual content like Leviticus 20:13. So, Pastor John, how would you reply to the pope and the president of Burundi?
Nicely, let me preface my thought with the truth that I’ve tried very onerous to know the pope and that needle that you just mentioned he’s making an attempt to string. I can’t fairly make sense out of it. It simply appears contradictory. However let me take it for what I do see.
I feel the New Testomony directs us away from the sort of blessing that the pope is endorsing and directs us away from the mob rule or the official capital punishment that the president of Burundi is endorsing. In different phrases, the New Testomony is pushing us away from each of these steps.
And I feel the New Testomony additionally provides Christians one other approach to disapprove and one other approach to love people who we expect are strolling in behaviors which can be finally and eternally damaging. So, let’s begin with the Outdated Testomony and the specter of the president of Burundi to stone those that apply homosexuality.
Excommunicate, Not Execute
Do the legal guidelines of capital punishment within the Outdated Testomony — for issues like adultery, dishonoring mother and father, having intercourse between two males or two girls — outline the way in which that the Christian church is to cope with these sins? And the reply is clearly no.
We’ve had a number of podcasts by which we attempt to unpack how the Outdated and the New Testomony relate to one another. And I say that with out denying the authority of the Outdated Testomony — with its validity for Israel on the time and its ongoing authority for Christians, with an consciousness of how the approaching of Jesus the Messiah has modified issues.
“While you curse others, you need them destroyed. While you bless others, you need them saved.”
When the New Testomony offers with immorality like adultery or incest, which might have been a capital crime underneath the previous covenant, the way in which it handles that sin — for instance, in 1 Corinthians 5 — is to excommunicate the sinner from the church reasonably than execute the sinner. Within the church, the brand new folks of God (which isn’t a political or ethnic or civil physique), excommunication has changed capital punishment in instances like this.
Blessing Sin?
After we flip to the directions of the pope that devoted Catholic monks might bless same-sex unions, we must be very cautious how we’re understanding the character of blessing.
I’ve tried, like I mentioned, to know the wording of the pope’s proposal, and I’ve listened to a Catholic priest defend the pope’s proposal, and I can not escape the impression that although the hassle is being made to not consecrate the so-called “irregular conditions” as marriage, nonetheless, the very effort to offer an official approach for there to be a blessing on a sort of same-sex togetherness, which the Bible warns is evil and eternally damaging, inevitably communicates that the pope doesn’t maintain that biblical view, no less than not with the identical final seriousness that the New Testomony does.
And the rationale I say that we must be cautious how we perceive the character of blessing is that the New Testomony does inform us a number of instances, very clearly,
- “Bless those that curse you” (Luke 6:28).
- “Bless those that persecute you” (Romans 12:14).
- “Don’t repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, however quite the opposite, bless, for to this you had been referred to as” (1 Peter 3:9).
- “When reviled, we bless” (1 Corinthians 4:12).
Now, none of these makes use of of the phrase bless is meant to suggest an official or unofficial gathering by which you deliver folks collectively who of their hearts are celebrating sin. That’s not what blessing means. Whether or not it’s two males having intercourse or folks celebrating fraud or celebrating witchcraft or celebrating slander or celebrating satan worship, regardless of the sin is, the biblical instructions to bless our adversaries, our opponents, our enemies will not be a command to carry a service by which you prolong a hand of blessing over those that are celebrating behaviors that result in their very own destruction and which God calls an abomination.
That gathering is not going to talk the biblical fact of heartbreak and hazard and warning. Should you made these risks and people warnings a part of the service of blessing, we all know the so-called couple would reject it. They might reject it. If the warning of hell had been made a part of the service of blessing, if the sin had been referred to as an abomination within the service of blessing, the couple wouldn’t have the service.
Eager for One other’s Good
The which means of blessing in Luke 6:28, Romans 12:14, and the others is that we search the temporal and eternal good of our enemies — or these we disagree with; they don’t need to be simply enemies, however simply anyone we disagree with. That’s what blessing means. We search the temporal and eternal good of our adversaries, each with phrases and with deeds, even when it prices us our lives. We aren’t anticipating the destruction of anybody. Blessing is the alternative of cursing. While you curse others, you need them destroyed. While you bless others, you need them saved.
We would like our phrases and our actions to rely for his or her good. It’s not a blessing to provide the impression of treating evenly one thing that God treats dreadfully. It feels type — it’s not type. It feels tender, however tenderness just isn’t love the place readability and firmness are wanted to save lots of life.
The shape the blessing takes in Romans 12:20 is that this: “In case your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he’s thirsty, give him one thing to drink; for by so doing you’ll heap burning coals on his head.” In different phrases, the goal just isn’t affirmation however contrition and repentance and salvation. We would like them to be our brothers or our sisters within the presence of God without end, forgiven and remodeled into the likeness of Christ.
Remaining Warning
And earlier than I am going, I feel I ought to conclude by warning Roman Catholics that they must be particularly involved about this pope, Pope Francis, as a result of this isn’t the primary time he has gone astray. He has espoused unbiblical considering in different methods, not solely on this matter.
I watched him in a video counsel a toddler — a couple of six- or eight-year-old little one — who had misplaced his father in dying. The kid mentioned that his father was an atheist — by no means went to church, didn’t imagine in God — after which he requested the place he was. And the pope mentioned that his father was in heaven. The pope mentioned that that was the case.
“It’s not a blessing to provide the impression of treating evenly one thing that God treats dreadfully.”
Now, that’s very opposite to what the Roman Catholic Church and all different Christian church buildings have taught. I doubt that this pope believes anybody will undergo eternally in hell. I may very well be improper about that, but when so, then the warnings of 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 — that those that apply homosexuality is not going to enter the dominion of God — lose their final seriousness for him. That’s the course our tradition has moved for many years, and that’s the place the pope seems to be shifting as properly.
So, by all means, allow us to bless those that curse us — however not prolong a blessing over a same-sex union.
