The Romans believed that their emperor was divine. So, proclaiming a new Caesar was not just like an announcement in a newspaper. It was given a formal name: “Euangelion,” the announcement of good news to all the people under Rome’s authority.

Christians understood that Caesar was not Lord. Only Jesus was. And for this, many gave their lives.

That’s why the New Testament’s application of the term for the arrival of a new emperor for the coming of the Messiah and Savior, Jesus of Nazareth, was so startling. The good news the early Christians proclaimed was that the Lord had, indeed, come. But He was not a political leader or iron-fisted military dictator. 

He was a skilled laborer from a tiny village. He marshalled no army nor led a political crusade. And He was crucified. In Roman criminal law, this was the most despised form of death. 

Jesus turned everything the Romans understood on its head: Instead of the grand worship received by an emperor, He was flogged, nailed to a cross like a piece of meat, and hung to die.

Christians glory in the cross. We know it as our means of redemption. On the cross, the true incarnate Lord became “sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (II Corinthians 5:21).

Jesus’s triumph over sin and death in His resurrection made the good news about His coming all the more glorious and astounding. Yet there’s something about what He did on Mount Calvary that sticks in the craw of some who claim to be His disciples.

It’s the icky thing called sin. Sin means not that we have made mistakes or sort of annoyed God. It means we have offended the Holy One infinitely. We have chosen to defy Him, to go our own ways, to assert that we know better than He, that His authority over our lives is not as great as our own. 

Hesitancy to Name Sin

Some professing believers seem a bit embarrassed by all of this. For them, the worst evil is not rebelling against the eternal King but not being nice. Hurt feelings are worse than denying truth. Causing emotional distress is more horrible than eternal punishment. And that’s why they are so squeamish about homosexuality and transgenderism.

The Bible makes it very clear that sexual intimacy is reserved for the marriage of one man and one woman. This is not a hateful or bigoted claim. It is the Creator’s gracious way of enabling men and women to complement one another and propagate the race.

There is no question that some people struggle with sexual attraction to members of the same gender. Being told they can never fulfill that longing and also honor God is hard. They merit support, friendship, and the same love a holy God showed the rest of us rotten sinners. 

But not to tell them that they are called to sexual abstinence is cruel. It is calling sin good. It diminishes the holiness of God and His right to declare what is right and what is wrong.

Of whom am I speaking? Any person who claims to be a follower of the good news about Jesus Christ, and denies that what He taught is sin actually is sin. Even more specifically, of supposed Evangelicals — people who claim to be presenting Good News — who affirm homosexual intimacy as compatible with God’s standards for those He has made in His image.

Why I Signed the Nashville Statement

This week, I signed the Nashville Statement along with many friends and colleagues. We believe in the unchanging truth and grace of God’s Word. That’s why the Nashville Statement affirms the orthodox Christian view of sexuality. It states nothing new. It affirms truth that is as old as the creation of the first man and woman.

It was drafted because of the massive and intentional confusion over human sexuality rampant in our society. This confusion is filtering through the Evangelical community. Thus, the need for a clear declaration of Gospel truth about marriage, gender, sex, and sexuality.

“We deny that an enduring pattern of desire for sexual immorality justified sexually immoral behavior,” the Statement says. “We affirm that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness. We deny that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.”

In other words, the Bible’s teachings about human sexuality are not non-essentials. Will Jesus come before, during, or after a literal seven-year tribulation period?  Should the Lord’s Supper be served every Sunday or only periodically? Should pastors wear clerical garb or brushed denim when they preach?

These are things about which earnest believers can disagree and still adhere to the core truths of Scripture.

“Woe to Those Who Call Evil Good and Good Evil”

Redefining sin should not evoke a smile, a shrug, and a hug. It disgraces the Lord Who experienced the eternal punishment for sin on the cross by saying, in essence, that what He affirmed as evil really wasn’t that big of a deal.

How irreverent, how man-focused, how self-serving! Who are we, our pre-Christian lives open graves of corruption, to tell the God of the universe He is mistaken. Who are we to say His self-disclosure in the Bible is obscure, and that 3,500 years of Jewish and Christian doctrine is too primitive for we, the enlightened?!

Persons who do this might be Christians. I don’t pretend to know their hearts. But they are not Evangelicals. The message they proclaim is not good news. Like those heralding a new emperor as the coming of a god, they are worshiping at the altars of misplaced compassion, human approval, and appealing lies.

I fear for them, recalling the words of one of God’s great prophets:

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” cries Isaiah, “who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (5:20).