Choosing between Truth and Love?

[redleghunter]

If I surveyed everyone from Non-Denominational, to Presbyterian, to Methodist to Roman Catholic and many more, I am sure we would all agree anyone is welcome to come to their church to hear the Word of God and hear the Gospel (1 Corinthians 15 and Luke 24).

However, welcoming all to hear the Gospel is much different than becoming a church member or partner. As the linked article (Please all read before commenting) quotes Tim Keller "the world is not divided into sinners and saints, but repentant and unrepentant sinners. The prerequisite for joining the family of God isn’t to clean yourself up, but to allow Jesus to clean you up. That means turning from sins, not clinging to them."

And this is "this requires a correct understanding of sin, of the church, and of Christ’s sacraments."

Therefore, the distinction I note is yes, all are welcome because we know "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17), but it is what happens after hearing which determines if one becomes part of the Body of Christ, His church.

The heart of the linked article below is whether or not churches should include unrepentant LGBT families to fully participate in the life of the church. We are not speaking of repentant celibate same sex attracted people, but LGBT who have entered into a union, some with children. Does your church allow this and if they do why?

http://www.breakpoint.org/2018/09/b...mail&utm_term=0_84bd2dc76d-e97e8b64e0-8592533

Final note: It is acknowledged even in the article that all sins condemn us. This is a matter of (1) if one even acknowledges their sin as sin and (2) repentance of, turning from, their sins.

 

[FireDragon76]

This is a loaded question.

 

[redleghunter]

This is a loaded question.

It’s pretty straight forward.

Churches either permit LGBT relationships and families to participate as full church members allowing baptism and communion (Lord’s Supper) or they don’t.

In the article one pastor believed he was being loving to permit membership and by extension sacraments to LBGT families. Do you agree with this pastor?

 

[FireDragon76]

It’s pretty straight forward.

Churches either permit LGBT relationships and families to participate as full church members allowing baptism and communion (Lord’s Supper) or they don’t.

In the article one pastor believed he was being loving to permit membership and by extension sacraments to LBGT families. Do you agree with this pastor?

But you said "unrepentent LGBT".

Contrary to what you assert, we do not preach antinomianism. We preach a message of responsibility tempered by personal moral agency. We encourage all people to live lives of trust, commitment, and responsibility in their sexual relationships. But that doesn't have to necessarily look like a particular culturally conditioned, patriarchal and heterosexual pattern of family life.

We still ask sponsors and individuals at baptism if they reject the Devil, after all. Of course, we believe in repentance, it's right there Augsburg Confession, the "New Obedience" (VI). It's in Luther's Small Catechism (which we still use). However, the new obedience is not the material principle of our religious movement. Lutherans don't go to church to learn how to be more morally correct in their lives, they go to receive the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.


Futhermore, the dichotomy between truth and love is phony. A truth that cannot account for the actual lives of real people, including their bodies and relationships, is no truth at all.

In the article one pastor believed he was being loving to permit membership and by extension sacraments to LBGT families. Do you agree with this pastor?

Most of us do, yes. There have been LGBT people in our congregation though we are not officially connected to ReconcilingWorks (a Lutheran, pro-LGBT advocacy group), we are generally tolerant people and we see the matter ultimately as a matter of personal moral agency and discernment. We don't peer into peoples bedrooms, nor would we want to. I'm sure there are some people in our congregation who are not so comfortable with this, some are quite old and come from a different time period, but they trust the pastor's judgment.

We have also had more than a few people that are couples that just live together because they are old or disabled and can't afford cuts to social security.

 

[redleghunter]

But you said "unrepentent LGBT".

Then your position is engaging in same sex sexual relations is not sin? If this be the case and your church agrees with you then they would allow full membership with sacraments.

Contrary to what you assert, we do not preach antinomianism. We preach a message of responsibility tempered by personal moral agency. We encourage all people to live lives of trust, commitment, and responsibility in their sexual relationships. But that doesn't have to necessarily look like a particular culturally conditioned, patriarchal and heterosexual pattern of family life.

On the bolded above...this is your assessment of New Testament morals?

In so many words I take the above to mean you and your church don’t view homosexual relations as unrighteousness and therefore does not require repentance?

If so how does your church teach the following Scriptures?

Romans 1: NASB
26For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and hatred. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents. 31They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless.

32Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things are worthy of death, they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them.

And

1 Corinthians 6: NASB
9Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Jude 1: NASB
5Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. 6And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, 7just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

 

[redleghunter]

We still ask sponsors and individuals at baptism if they reject the Devil, after all. Of course, we believe in repentance, it's right there Augsburg Confession, the "New Obedience" (VI). It's in Luther's Small Catechism (which we still use). However, the new obedience is not the material principle of our religious movement. Lutherans don't go to church to learn how to be more morally correct in their lives, they go to receive the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

This is a contradictory statement. If one rejects Satan they reject sin. Not asking the church to ignore or redefine what is or is not unrighteousness.

Now the Lord’s Supper is for those struggling with sin seeking God’s Grace. I think every Christian church teaches this. But this is a heart of repentance and not acceptance.

 

[FireDragon76]

Rebel, we think all relationships require discernment, not just gay peoples.

We do have gay people as full members, including active in ministry. Some of the most active people in our church are gay.

My pastor used to work as a district attorney trying some very serious cases. He has told me flatly there's nothing two gay men can do that can amount to the kind of evil he dealt with in his legal career. It's one of the reasons he became a pastor because he realized that Law can't respond effectively to evil.

As our hymn says, the Church is the place where "the outcast and the stranger bare the image of God's face". Everyone is welcome at our church, yes, we hold up the Law to show us we are sinners, but we don't aim to beat up sexual minorities in the process.

I think you want easy, simple answers and that's not how Lutherans do things, it never has been (so you object to my seeming contradictions). We aren't the big systematizers in Christian theology, generally. And I like that.

BTW, that's such a great hymn I think I am going to plug it. It really does sum up our church's ethos. It was also written for our church, though other churches also use it:

 

[Emli]

This is a loaded question.

It is loaded, but only because you have loaded it. It would be disarmed pretty quickly if we all focused on sound doctrine and sound reasoning based on truth, which would shatter the lies built up by the devil through society and Christians who present a corrupt gospel.

Then we could really begin helping people turn from sins and turn to Jesus. No one who is living in sin has known Jesus.

"No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him." 1 John 3:6

No one who keeps living in sexual sin will see Heaven, the Bible has made that clear. Revelation 21:8, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
And as redleghunter pointed out, you cannot say that you have rejected the devil if you are still holding on to sin.

"The one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil." 1 John 3:8

It's pretty clear, isn't it? It should be if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, and a new nature that is repentant and obedient to God. This doesn't have to be a loaded question, and it isn't if we understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God cleans us up, washes our sins away, renews us and transforms us, translates us from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God, once we believe, repent and are saved. If that hasn't taken place, one isn't saved, they never knew Jesus. It doesn't matter how much work they do for Him or how much they are involved with ministry. Everyone can do ministry, saved or unsaved, but not everyone is repentant. Matthew 7:22-23 you are preaching a work-based salvation, in which our faith is work that saves us and ministry is proof of salvation, and you have reduced grace to nothing, ignoring most of what Jesus taught us. No repentance, just proclaiming that one has rejected the devil yet still living like him. No transformation, just works that prove that you are a member of a religion. You have rejected Jesus and you condemn those who He sends to you to speak for Him.

 

[FireDragon76]

There's nothing corrupt about our Gospel at church. We preach the same message as ever, that God forgives sins on account of Christ's merits alone. It hasn't changed in 500 years.

The people I know at church don't seem to live like devils. I shake hands with them every week. They are kind people, that's probably why I have stayed around for so long. Salt of the earth type folks that serve their community. Many in our congregation are families with members who are police, firefighters, soldiers, and teachers- civil servants.

One recent visitor we had, an elderly lady who had just moved down from Wisconsin,who spoke with a great deal of dysphonia, was even from a WELS background (a conservative Lutheran synod), but she said she liked the pastor alot. I realized sitting around the table talking to her at coffee hour, that is where the Kingdom happens. People transcend these little tribes like "conservative" and "liberal" and they can meet in fellowship.

 

[Emli]

There's nothing corrupt about our Gospel at church. We preach the same message as ever, that God forgives sins on account of Christ's merits alone. It hasn't changed in 500 years.

The people I know at church don't seem to live like devils. I shake hands with them every week. They are kind people, that's probably why I have stayed around for so long. They don't wear religion on their sleeve, they are just good people. Including the gay people in our church.

If you distort the Word of God, you are presenting a corrupt gospel. I have read some of the teachings of Luther, and I have a very good friend and brother in Christ who is in a Lutheran free church. What you are saying is NOT the message he gaves us, but a corrupt version of it, that has removed repentance the work of the Holy Spirit in man.

The people in your church sounds like the rest of the world, who are kind people, including the gays. That doesn't mean that they are saved.

(Btw, no one is good but God. Mark 10:18)

 

[Emli]

Now, would you be willing to get into an actual Biblical discussion of what Jesus taught, or will you keep defending your false gospel with human reasoning?

 

[FireDragon76]

If you distort the Word of God, you are presenting a corrupt gospel. I have read some of the teachings of Luther, and I have a very good friend and brother in Christ who is in a Lutheran free church. What you are saying is NOT the message he gaves us, but a corrupt version of it, that has removed repentance the work of the Holy Spirit in man.

The people in your church sounds like the rest of the world, who are kind people, including the gays. That doesn't mean that they are saved.

(Btw, no one is good but God. Mark 10:18)

I know people by their fruits. I'm not saying the people are just pleasant to be around but they really care about other people. Jesus said that's what matters in his disciples.

 

[FireDragon76]

Now, would you be willing to get into an actual Biblical discussion of what Jesus taught, or will you keep defending your false gospel with human reasoning?

Biblicism is mostly just a pointless exercise in quote mining to confirm our own presuppositions. So I don't see how it could possibly be a fruitful discussion. Nobody who believes they are right has ever been persuaded by it to the contrary.

 

[Mountainmanbob]

They could drop in and visit our church but, they would not be able to take communion or become a member.
M-Bob

 

[Emli]

I know people by their fruits. I'm not saying the people are just pleasant to be around but they really care about other people. Jesus said that's what matters in his disciples.

But if they are still living in unrepentant sin, that would be the fruit of being unsaved.

Biblicism is mostly just a pointless exercise in quote mining to confirm our own presuppositions. So I don't see how it could possibly be a fruitful discussion. Nobody who believes they are right has ever been persuaded by it to the contrary.

What did Jesus tell us? Matthew 4:4? And what did Luther mean by sola scriptura?

 

[FireDragon76]

But if they are still living in unrepentant sin, that would be the fruit of being unsaved.

Who are you to judge who is, and is not, sufficiently repentant? Can you peer into peoples souls?

Jesus and Paul have shown us the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Love, patience, joy, peace, long-suffering, all that good stuff. Nowhere in that list do I see things like "heterosexuality".

What did Jesus tell us? Matthew 4:4? And what did Luther mean by sola scriptura?

Lutherans have never been Biblicists. We generally see the Bible as applicable in terms of faith, not in all matters of human conduct.

I have to question the point of this thread. Mainline and fundamentalist churches are coming from very different places in terms of our assumptions about how theology is done, and how ethics are done. I am afraid that meaningful dialogue is beyond the scope of a forum like this, if it is possible at all.

 

[Emli]

Who are you to judge who is, and is not, sufficiently repentant? Can you peer into peoples souls?

Jesus and Paul have shown us the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Love, patience, joy, peace, long-suffering, all that good stuff. Nowhere in that list do I see things like "heterosexuality".

I am a disciple of Christ, and He commanded us to judge righteously. Not by mere appearance like you are doing, but according to His teachings. It is easy to see if someone is repentant or unrepentant, you just have to ask them if they feel guilty over what God says is sin or not.

Lutherans have never been Biblicists. We generally see the Bible as applicable in terms of faith, not in all matters of human conduct.

I have to question the point of this thread. Mainline and fundamentalist churches are coming from very different places in terms of our assumptions about how theology is done, and how ethics are done. I am afraid that meaningful dialogue is beyond the scope of a forum like this, if it is possible at all.

You're avoiding the subject.

Luther never taught that sin was permittable. I love the writing "Freedom of a Christian" a lot, and I learned much of it. Luther agreed with Paul, and he never said Christians were free to live in sin, but rather that we inherit the righteousness of Christ. That means that we become righteous in Him, and He removes our sins from us, it does NOT mean that God sees Jesus' righteousness in us despite us living in sin.

 

[FireDragon76]

.. it does NOT mean that God sees Jesus' righteousness in us despite us living in sin.

Actually, it means just that. That's what we mean by the alien righteousness of Christ that is imputed to us. God reckons us as righteous despite the fact we are sinners.

And besides, all that stuff is just your limited interpretation of Luther (who is hardly our pope or guru, anyways). You aren't a called and ordained minister in my church and haven't the education, so your word on the matter isn't particularly persuasive.

 

[Athanasius377]

To answer the OP, our church does not allow any unrepentant unchaste person to participate in the full life of the church e.g. the Sacrament of the Altar, leadership etc. That includes those who either same sex attracted and those who opposite sex attracted. Since Jesus gave the definitive teaching on marriage that is binding on all christians we expect those who approach the altar to adhere Jesus' teaching.

ESV Matt 19:3–9
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

What is clear to me from reading this thread on the previous thread that was closed is there are folks that really have an issue with biblical, traditional christian sexual ethics. They use categories of people that are unknown from a biblical point (i.e. gay, transgendered) of view as though that somehow trumps the Lord's teaching. They use a term like "biblicist", which is a convenient dodge to avoid the Lord's teaching on sexual ethics but fails to explain why the same strategy cannot be used to explain away something like the Resurrection. What I suspect is really going on is that the world (at least in the West) has decided to change the teaching on marriage and sexaullity and therefore have adopted the world's teaching over and against what Jesus taught. Furthermore, it is not just "liberal" churches that have shirked their charge to teach the full counsel of God but also theologically orthodox churches as well. My wife went to a baby shower a few years back for the daughter of friend of ours that attended an theologically orthodox church. She was shocked to find out that not only was the daughter not married there was no intention of getting married in the first place. So it is not only theologically liberal churches are compromised on sexual ethics. Holding the line on biblical sexual ethics will neither be popular nor easy.

That said, that is not to say there is not a way forward through repentance and the forgiveness of sins. It will however mean that some folks will have to make harder choices to follow the Lord than others. Being chaste goes against the very being of our sinful nature but it is what we are all called to be.

 

[redleghunter]

Rebel, we think all relationships require discernment

Yes this is quite obvious in most churches as they have marriage encounter programs and youth services.

We do have gay people as full members, including active in ministry. Some of the most active people in our church are gay.

That pretty much answers the OP that you do have LGBT functioning in the life of the church to include sacraments. I take it this means your pastoral team does not see homosexuality as a sin needing repentance?

My pastor used to work as a district attorney trying some very serious cases. He has told me flatly there's nothing two gay men can do that can amount to the kind of evil he dealt with in his legal career. It's one of the reasons he became a pastor because he realized that Law can't respond effectively to evil.

Therefore, according to your pastor and by extension you the unrighteousness of heterosexuals disobeying God is justification to condone all unrepentant sin?