An Inkling
With power now restored after the hurricane, I am renewing my quest to post a daily blog on why our denomination has crossed a line toward unfaithfulness by removing our “fidelity and chastity” ordination standards. Today’s reason seeks to address the question “why make a big deal out of sex when there are more important matters?”
Good question. There are more important matters at risk in our larger church, such as the uniqueness of Christ, the nature of forgiveness, the authority of scripture, etc. But such huge matters don’t lessen the impact of this large matter. They only lend perspective.
You can make a good case that sins of the spirit are in fact more deadly than sins of the flesh. That is, sins of the spirit (like pride, racism, and contempt) burgeon in their ruinous effects over time, whereas sins of the flesh (like drunkenness and promiscuity) eventually do us in physically, and thus are self-limiting. You can only party hardy for a season before life collapses (think Amy Winehouse). But the effects of hatred and egotism multiply exponentially, to the harm of untold numbers (think Moammar Gadhafi). Reinhold Niebuhr made this case very well.
Too often the church has majored in sins of the flesh and ignored sins of the spirit. The old rhyme “I don’t smoke, drink, cuss, or chew, and I don’t go with girls who do” is a caricature of an all too real tendency to make piety all about avoiding sins of the flesh. Ironically the smugness of “I don’t smoke, drink, etc,” is often exceeded by the smugness of those condemning such smugness – a sin of the spirit! We sinners never have done very well fixing other sinners. We need a Savior.
We have a Savior. His intention is to save us body and soul, breaking the power of sin in our flesh and spirit. And to tell the truth, the distinction between the two is really only for discussion. They are inseparable. And in our day those who would redefine various sins of the flesh rely upon spiritual justification – “we must celebrate who God made us to be.” “We must liberate the oppressed.”
While the apostles knew that sins of the flesh were not the biggest thing, they recognized that they, too, were finally spiritual in their effect. Recall what proscriptions the Jerusalem council preserved even as they liberated the newly Christian Gentiles from many particulars of Jewish law: abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality… (Ac 15:20). If we mute our Christian witness in an area of great impact in people’s lives (the nature of marriage, fidelity in marriage, and chastity in singleness), an area in which a biblical ethic is increasingly counter-cultural, then we mute the impact of the gospel’s gracious and transforming effects – not only on the flesh, but on the spirit.
May our Savior give us wisdom and courage to proclaim the full gospel. We need it all.
Blessings,
Keith
