Truth Unites - Is Same-Sex Marriage an "Agree-to-Disagree" Issue?

Episode Date: October 8, 2023

In this video I respond to recent comments by Andy Stanley in the wake of the Unconditional Conference regarding whether same-sex marriage (and other related matters of human sexuality) are an "agree-to-disagree" issue. See the Sean McDowell and Alan Schlemon video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x5FUG1kxvI See Sam Allberry Christianity Today article: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/october-web-only/andy-stanley-unconditional-conference-theology-lgbt.html Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Hey, everybody. I want to do a video addressing the Unconditional Conference recently held at North Point Community Church, pastored by Andy Stanley. I also want to talk about his follow-up sermon. The conference website states that it was for parents of LGBTQ plus children and for ministry leaders seeking to support them. There is a reference to the intention to approach this topic from the quieter middle space. Now, this is not a topic I've addressed a whole lot in the past, but I feel compelled to join with others who have shared some concerns because I think clarity about this topic. topic is really needed in our time. I've written a book on theological triage, which means ranking different doctrines. One of the questions I've wrestled with is where in ranking issues do we put some of these pressing issues in our culture about human sexuality, human identity, and I've come to feel that clarity is so important in maintaining the conviction that sex is designed only for marriage between one man and one woman, and that that is not sort of agreed. to disagree issue. So in the first half of this video, I just want to describe Stanley's teaching,

as I understand it, especially from his sermon on Sunday, and then share five observations and concerns by way of direct response. And then in the second half, I want to kind of flesh that out by giving a brief theological case for why this is not an agree-to-disagree type issue. So first, after the conference on October 1st, 2003, a couple days ago from my recording this, Stanley addressed various questions about North Point's decision to host the conference. It was a long sermon. There was a lot that I appreciated about just some of the things he's saying. I think, for example, the call to compassion and sensitivity in creating safe environments. I could go on for a long time about just how much I think that's right and good and important. And I actually think a lot of more conservative churches

need to be challenged on that, just in terms of understanding what, say, teenagers right now are going through, what they are experiencing on a topic like this, how to have, sensitivity and conversation, practical things about how we engage in create environments for dialogue and so forth. There's a lot that we can learn, be challenged by, you know, that call to compassion. You think of Christ. He was a friend to sinners. People need to feel that from us, you know. Any kind of person needs to know they can come to us and they're going to be treated with respect, with dignity, with love, and so forth. So much to the good there. Unfortunately, for Stan all of that seems to build up to these closing moments in the sermon that I think undermine what a biblical

approach to compassion is. Many are convinced that traditional marriage is not an option for them. So they commit to living chaste life, an old-fashioned word. And for many men and men, women who put their faith in Christ, they just decide, okay, I'm just going to buckle down, I'm just going to, I'm just going to bear down, I'm just going to be by myself, I'm not going to have family, I'm going to be sexually pure, and many, many, many, many do that for long seasons of time. And for some, for some, it's, it's their whole life. But for many, that is not sustainable. And so they choose a same-sex marriage.

Not because they're convinced it's biblical. They read the same Bible we do. They chose to marry for the same reason many of us did. Love, companionship, and family. And in the end, as was the case for all of us, and this is the important thing I want you to hear me say, it's their decision. Our decision is to decide how we respond to their decision. Our decision as a group of local churches is how are we going to respond to their decision?

And we decided 28 years ago, we draw circles, we don't draw lines, we draw big circles. If someone desires to follow Jesus, regardless of their starting point, regardless of their past, regardless of their current circumstances, our message is, come and see and come sit with me. And this is not new. This is who we are. It's who we've always been. And this is why I love our church. And this is why I'm so extraordinarily proud of you. We aren't condoning sin. We are restoring relationships. And we are literally saving lives. Okay, five observations. Number one, most basically here, this does seem to amount to an affirmation of the legitimacy of same-sex marriage as a Christian option. Okay. That seems baked in here, both from the fact that the conference

platformed speakers who reject a biblical definition of marriage. Stanley referred to them as two married gay men who are Christ followers. So there's that kind of background. Lots of people have talked about that. But also just in the appeal you heard in that sermon clip, this language that is their decision, but our decision is how we respond to their decision, this seems to be effectively making it an agree-to-disagree issue. It's putting all the onus upon us to just respond in a loving manner. but they're basically, I mean, just to state, I guess I could state my main concern right up front and then I'll come back to this and kind of flush this out in the second half of the video, we who are Christian leaders and teachers and pastors have absolutely no authority to affirm

that which God has declared to be impermissible. We cannot and must not and dare not give approval to that which God calls us to turn away from and follow him. And, you know, I think I would say anybody could see that logic in principle if we just put in a different topic. Like, if we were to take a topic that I assume Andy Stanley and I would agree is wrong, like pornography. And we were to apply this logic to that. We could all see that the logic is valid. Like if someone said to us, you know, some people just don't feel that going, living a single life and not watching pornography or whatever, whether you're single or not,

Some people just don't feel it's sustainable to not watch pornography. And so they choose to indulge in that. Doing that is their decision. Our decision is how we respond to their decision because we don't draw lines. We draw circles and so forth. I'm not trying to poke fun at that logic. I'm just trying to show that if you just substitute that for a different issue, we all see the problem here, that if we spoke like this, we'd be giving allowance for unrepentant sin as a legitimate Christian option.

And we can't do that. Now, it's different if it's repentant sin. That's totally different, as we'll talk. about. But we have no authority to treat an unrepentant sin as an agree-to-disagree issue. That's the main thing, more on that in the second half of the video, to kind of support that theologically. Second observation, the appeal that Stanley is making here appears to be happening in a subtle and kind of subversive way, and I'm all the more concerned for it for this reason. Essentially, he's introducing a significant theological change while claiming that

this isn't about theology at all. It's just about pastoral care. My friend, Sean McDowell, put out a really helpful video on this with his guest, Alan Schleeman. And Alan was at the conference. I was not at the conference. But one of the things, I'm going to link to their video. I thought it was a very helpful discussion. Check it out. One of the things Alan mentioned is that the repeated line at the conference is we're not trying to change your theology.

Right. So the emphasis is upon this is we're trying to have a pastoral response rather than a theological response. But I think it's naive to think you can separate those to address something pastorily you're going to have some kind of working theological framework. Even the statement that we need to be pastoral rather than theological reflects a theological approach to this issue. And so I worry that this is simply a way of kind of sneaking in under the radar a particular theological approach, more subtly like that.

And I think that's what you see with this appeal of Jesus drew circles rather than lines. I don't, there's a lot that I feel concerned about about this imagery. Number one is the irony is that that statement itself is a line. There's a distinction being made. The circles are here. The lines are here. Draw a line between them, right? He did this rather than this. That's a distinction. That's a boundary. That's a line. I think drawing lines is absolutely unavoidable. I think everybody is going to draw lines. They're going to say, this is wrong and this is right. And that's not wrong. do. In fact, drawing lines helps people, having clear boundaries. And again, if you just substitute a different sin or a different issue in, then you can see that right away. I won't even give,

I don't want to be too provocative with examples, but hopefully the point is clear. And I would just say that drawing lines is a good thing to do, and Jesus very clearly drew lines. He said there's the sheep and there's the goats, and there's a line between them. In the sermon on the mount, as we'll talk about, he very clearly drew lines. Drawing lines is a pastorally loving thing to do. That leads to my third point. I worry that there's a confusion of being inclusive in our invitation of the gospel with a kind of unconditional inclusivity for people after they hear the gospel.

So I hope I worded that okay to make that clear. Here's a simpler way to put it. There's a difference between saying come as you are and saying be as you are or stay as you are. Those are two very different things. Jesus says, come as you are. He doesn't say stay as you are. At the end of the sermon, Stanley quoted Matthew 1128, and he said Jesus drew big circles and he had the word all emboldened. And then in the section that I played, he says that North Point has taken the position that it will welcome people regardless of their starting point, regardless of their past, regardless of their current circumstances. Our message is come and see and come and sit with me. Now, again, there's, you know, certain

elements of that that are wonderful in terms of just being inclusive in how we welcome people. And yes, it's gloriously true. Jesus calls all people to himself, come. You know, anybody can become a Christian. But I worry that this is being subtly confused with the idea that basically people can remain in a certain pattern of behavior. The language there, come and see and come and sit with me is a great starting point, but eventually we have to get to how Bonhofer put it. When God calls a man, he bids him come and die. So we want to make the call of the gospel clear to our friends. You know, to put it in the words of Christ, he said, take up your cross and follow me. And with respect to sexual sin in particular, he says, if your eye causes you to sin,

gouge it out. So in other words, yes, let us show the invitation is to all, but let us be clear about what that invitation is unto. And it is a call to repentance and faith. So I'm trying to kind of hit that as a category of just making a clear distinction there as we keep working through this. I understand that doesn't address everything just that point of itself. I'm trying to highlight that for people to think about. The fourth is related and stems out of that. And that is I worry about an ambiguous definition of love. So amen to the call for compassion and love.

And seriously, I don't just say that glibly. I mean, we really need to take that to heart and at times do some repenting and reflecting and listening about that. of things. And same with creating a safe environment for people to come and receive the gospel. But what does it mean to show love to people? I worry that a lot of people will respond to Stanley's sermon thinking that maintaining the traditional view of sexuality is unloving. Okay, there's a couple reasons for that. But to say my main concern right here, for those of us who are teachers of scripture, we must understand that giving people clarity about what God commands is loving. And giving them ambiguity or error about what God commands is unloving and unkind, and it isn't

compassion. You see that in Jesus' teaching on the sermon on the Mount. I'm preaching through the sermon on the Mount right now. It's lurid and intense. It's bracing. Every Sunday I get up there and I say, look, I got to read our passage and it's going to be a wrecking ball from the Holy Spirit. just demolishing our pride.

I mean, the sermon on the mount is so intense, and yet it comes from a loving Savior because he's telling us this is what you've got to do. Christianity is not easy. Christianity is hard. It's a call to come and die. It's not something we're capable of. You know, it's like a camel going through the eye of the needle.

Only God can do it. It's supernatural. So point here is simple. When eternity is at stake, the loving thing to do is be out of, absolutely crystal clear about what scripture teaches. At least to my fifth point, there appears to be an assumption in Stanley's teaching that lifelong chastity is simply not realistic for some people. It's not sustainable, was his term. He seems to be legitimizing that

when people draw that conclusion. Now, my friend Sam Albury has a fantastic article in Christianity today that I'll link to. I encourage you to read it. He points out some of the problems with this. I'll just put up his statement here that basically when any leaders, suggest to me that chaste obedience to Christ and singleness is not sustainable. He is saying the very same thing to me that the devil says. That's a temptation that he might whisper in our ear, but it's just not biblical. I would point us to 1 Corinthians 7. Paul clearly has a category for some Christians being called to lifelong singleness. And he doesn't seem to think that that's unsustainable. In fact, he says, I wish that all were as I myself am, even while he acknowledges that not everyone is

called to that, and that's fine. Nonetheless, it's certainly not unsustainable. That doesn't mean it's easy. I mean, I think we can acknowledge for every single one of us, whatever our temptations are, for every human being without exception, Christianity is hard. And especially in terms of this area of our lives, there was an early Christian who said, basically, being chased is harder than martyrdom. I'm paraphrasing him.

I think there's a lot of truth to that for many of us. Sometimes it might be easier to have your head chopped off and become a martyr than it is to follow Jesus in this area of your life. So we can acknowledge that. This is not easy. The path of discipleship is like, you know, you're dying to yourself every single day. It's all consuming. But God is good. Jesus is worth following.

Whether he calls you to be a martyr or he calls you to be single and chased, he's worthy of that level of a person. he's worthy of that level of obedience. He gave his all for us at the cross. He is worthy of us giving all of ourselves back to him. That includes our sexuality. That includes every single nook and cranny of our heart. There's nothing we can hold back from him. We give it all to the Lord.

And that actually is the pathway to joy and eternal life. Now, second half of the video, why is this not an agree-to-disagree issue? I've canvassed some initial categories of thought there. I wanted to put that first for conceptual clarity, but that doesn't fully resolve all this. Not every one of those things I just said is applying directly to the question here of, okay, what are those parameters of Christian discipleship? Is it true that all sexual behavior outside of the marriage covenant between one man and one woman is wrong?

Is that true? And is that so important that it's not an agree-to-disagree issue? Well, I'm saying yes. and let me just explain why real quickly. In my book on theological triage, I pose four questions that we can use to rank a particular doctrine. How clear is it in the Bible? What is its logical relation to the gospel? What is the historical testimony of the church? And what is the practical effect upon the church today? So scripture, gospel, history, church. Those aren't the only ones I cover actually, but in a pinch, that's a good starting point. All four of those criteria, strongly commend the conviction that sex is only designed for within marriage between one man and one woman. I'll come to the scripture in a second, but first just to observe regarding church history, it seems to be that a testimony in favor of that view is absolutely unanimous everywhere and at all times, in every tradition, east and west, in every century, always until very recently in the west.

and we need to reckon with the fact that our modern Western culture is historically eccentric. We can't just trust our instincts and how we might feel about it because we have cultural blind spots. Something might feel okay to us, but still be wrong. And our feelings about it, we need to have the humility to recognize not everything we feel is right. And basically our instincts are different as a culture from basically all non-Western pre-moder, and pre-modern humanity, not just Christian, not just church history. The modern West, we have an eccentric approach to these things. The simple way to put it is, I think that our culture has made sex into an idol,

and other cultures have done that too. My friend Josh Howardton put up this tweet, quoting J.R. Vassar, sexuality is to our culture what wealth was to the rich young ruler. I think that is right on the money. I'll give an example. lately I've been noticing how trendy it is to criticize purity culture. And I am very sympathetic to some of those criticisms. I'm all for opposing shame-based teaching or teaching that acts like sex is bad or teaching that is just damaging to people in ways, maybe hypocritical, legalistic. We can think of lots of problems.

But sometimes these criticisms of purity culture are very uncharitable and unfair. And more basically, sometimes what is being put forward as an alternative is completely unrecognizable in terms of historic Christianity. If you think evangelicals in the 1990s as a general group are too harsh about sex, read the church fathers. They were incredibly rigorous. You can read through the councils, the early councils and some of the canons. You know, if you had an affair, you could be a penitent for 20 years. If you were engaged in an unconstitutional. unbiblical divorce. You could be barred from the Lord's Supper for life, okay? Not even on your deathbed. Would you get the Lord's supper in such a circumstance? If you read through going into the medieval

era, you read through Anselm's meditations, basically these are designed to induce repentance, and one of them is about sexual sin, and it's just, I won't even read it to you. It's so kind of lurid. And I'm not saying church history is infallible and perfect, and there's no, nothing to critique, but there's something to learn. And it can be a correct. to us where we're lunging and kind of tilting in the opposite direction because Anselm's just going on and on basically saying, hey, you need to see that this is a big deal and you need to repent of this because this is a problem in the sight of a holy God. And the simple fact is that sexual sin is very serious and that's very clear in scripture. For example, the Bible teaches that sexuality is a form

of spiritual union. You see this in 1st Corinthians 6 where sexual sin is singled out from other forms of sin. Genesis 2 is quoted, and the statement of verse 16 is that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her. There's a kind of spiritual union that happens through sex. And you can feel the urgency of Paul's tone here. I mean, the logic is so crushing for any of us who have struggled with sexual sin. And it's like you've got to do with it what Anselm is doing, where he's trying to kind of force himself to see the seriousness of the problem. So he repents sufficiently, right? And, you know, so you see this in verse 15. I don't think I could put the urgent tone here any better than just to read the bare words. Paul says, shall I then take the

members of Christ and make the members of a prostitute? Never. He's trying to warn us of the seriousness of sexual sin. Now, someone's going to say, well, that's just talking about sleeping with a prostitute. But just a few verses earlier, Paul has listed examples of unrighteousness that exclude people from the kingdom of God and practicing homosexuality is among them. The words do not be deceived here imply that it's possible to be deceived. We're naive if we think we'll always just know the truth in our natural instincts. Christians can get deceived and the particular deception here seems to be the belief that we can live complacently in sin while still inheriting the kingdom of God. And Paul saying, don't be deceived. That's not true.

Furthermore, in Revelation 220, Jesus himself says to an entire church, if you tolerate this teaching that in effect is seducing my servants into sexual immorality, I have a big problem with that. You can see what he says in Matthew 5 in the sermon on the Mount about the necessity of putting to death sexual sin as well. The point of all that is simply to say that sexual sin is serious and we need to take it seriously. And if we want to say, oh yeah, well, we're going to alter the boundaries that have existed. universally for 2,000 years about what kind of sexual sin falls, what even is sexual sin? That is a major problem.

And we need to have way more humility to say, wait a second, we're probably missing something if everybody thought differently throughout all of Christianity, everywhere, and at all places. So I'm very burdened about this because I think a lot of people just need to be exhorted on a topic like this. and I'll finish by saying, there is grace for every person. Jesus is kind, he is compassionate. No matter how you have sin, no matter what you have done, he will forgive you when you repent. But in order to repent, we need to have a clear understanding of what to repent of.

If the boundaries get made murky, we're not helping people follow Jesus. Christianity is hard, but it is so worth it. It is so worth it to follow God, but it's not easy. And we need, we don't want to make it any harder for people by, making unclear what God has revealed pretty clearly in his word. Let me leave us with just kind of an image of hope here for anybody watching this video who might feel a sense of, I know that, believe me, I'm not addressing this out of a sense of a lack of sensitivity to the pastoral implications. I've walked with a lot of young men through issues like this before. I really aspire to be a friend

to those who are struggling. And I make a huge distinction between someone who denies something is sin, on the one hand, versus on the other hand, acknowledges that it is wrong, and sins, struggles with sin, but is fighting that and putting that to death in their life. You can't even do that if you don't acknowledge that it is sin, and that's the burden behind this video. But let me leave us with Anselm again.

I mentioned him before. Okay, for all the rigor in a historic Christian view, it is not without kindness and grace and love along the way. Toward the end of Anselm's first meditation right after he's bewailing his sins and going on and on about, you know, just today a lot of people would say he's going too far, but we can learn because we don't go far enough. But anyway, he's bewailing how serious his sin is, and then he says, but it is he himself, he himself is Jesus. The same is my judge, between whose hands I tremble. Take heart, sinner, and do not despair.

Hope in him whom you fear. flee to him from whom you have fled. Jesus, Jesus, forget the pride which provoked you, see only the wretchedness that invokes you. Dear name, name of delight, name of comfort to the sinner, name of blessed hope. For what is Jesus except to say, Savior? So Jesus, for your own sake, be to me, Jesus. Do you feel how much he loves Jesus? Do you feel those words? When you say the word Jesus, does it bring up delight? Is it a name of delight and comfort? Does the very word Jesus give you comfort in your heart? This is, you know, the purpose of my channel is to give people assurance in the gospel. In order to have assurance in the gospel, we need to have clarity about the gospel. That's the heart posture behind making a video like this to help or to shepherd people

to think about this. And what I want to encourage people to know is the very one who takes our sin most seriously and whom we should fear the most is the one who's most compassionate. We can go directly to him and appeal to his mercy. He's more kind than you can possibly fathom. And he gives so much kindness and grace along the way. his cross, his death on the cross, forgiveness, through his resurrection from the dead power to change so that you're not stuck, you know, that when that reality floods into your heart, it does bring delight. It does bring comfort. It'll become so wonderful to you that you won't even have words to express how much Christ means to you. And that's what I want people to experience. In order to

experience that wonderful love and forgiveness, we need to have clarity about what we need to be forgiven from. So I'll leave us with these great words. I love this hymn. What Love could remember no wrongs we have done. Omniscient all knowing, he counts not there some. Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore. Our sins, they are many. His mercy is more.