What Does it Mean to Bless Sinners?

 

With the Church of England now offering blessings to same sex couples as of last Sunday and now the Pope approving of the same, we need to ask what is meant by blessing something or someone.  Some will understandably take this to mean an endorsement of the relationship, while others will take it to mean what both Churches want it to mean (for now): a welcoming of the persons but not the relationship.  Neither the Church of England nor the Vatican has changed the definition of marriage as necessarily that between a man and a woman.  The Catholic Church still calls homosexuality a sin.

So, by ‘blessing’ we are supposed to believe that this is not approval.  Obviously, we are in the world of doublespeak.  According to Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.), ‘doublespeak’ is a kind of euphemism that intentionally obscures meaning and aims to misinform.  It ‘is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't. It is language that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable.’^[1]  As in, ‘I go around blessing sinners to make them believe that I approve of their sin when I do not.’  One might imagine a homosexual couple standing in queue to receive their inheritance of the Kingdom of God with others and, when they get to the front, being told ‘Didn’t read your Bible?  Those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.’[2]  When they reply, ‘But our Church blessed our relationship,’ the only answer that could be given is, ‘That was just a way of making the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or tolerable.’  The couple might then ask, ‘Well, does being told we do not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven mean something good?’  And the answer will be, ‘Actually, no.  We do not speak doublespeak here.  You have opposed God’s purposes in creation and God’s commandments.  You lived in sin.  Go directly to hell.  Do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect anything.’

For the time being, both Anglicans and Catholics tell confused homosexuals that they can get the Church’s blessing, but this does not mean that they are married, and the Catholics add, ‘And you are living in sin.’[3]  (They are still getting something right.  So, why the smiley pictures at the altars?)  A homosexual couple might be forgiven for asking if the Church now blesses sin.  The official answer is, ‘No’ because the purpose behind the blessing is said to be about putting on a happy face of welcome at the Church.  The welcome is not just of the individuals but also to the individuals in this ‘irregular’ (new word) relationship.  Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.

One of the many questions that arise with this doublespeak is whether the logic can be sustained for other sinful unions.  Both Churches regard pederasty and incest to be sinful, for example.  Yet if the participants are complicit, by the same logic, they ought to offer blessings for these ‘irregular’ relationships.  How about adultery?  Unmarried partners?  Incest?  The Church has always called these ‘irregular’ relationships sinful, but if one is now going to be blessed, why not the rest?  Seriously, why not? 

Would the logic sustain individuals practicing other sins?  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’  ‘Oh, good.  You are entitled to a special blessing.  Tell me the sin, and I will look up the blessing.  No more repentance.  No more penance.’ 

Has the Church a blessing for, say, an emperor massacring a population?  This is not a question out of thin air.  In about AD 390, Roman soldiers massacred civilians in Thessalonica during a riot.  Emperor Theodosius the Great was somehow involved, and so Bishop Ambrose wrote to him to say that he had to repent.  Until he did so, he would not be admitted to the Eucharist.  Recognising a sin as a sin did not call for a more welcoming face of the Church with a blessing back then.  It meant calling for repentance and forbidding Christian fellowship at the Lord’s Table.  Think of all the missed opportunities the Church has had to bless sinners through the centuries.  Indeed, Bishop Ambrose!

The BBC reports that a leading advocate of the conglomeration (can we finally agree that this is not a ‘community’?) LGBTQ in Catholic circles, Rev. (sic) James Martin, ‘celebrated the announcement’.  Why would he?  Does he believe blessing sinners in their sinfulness is a good idea, or does he believe that this little doublespeak is the door through which acceptance of homosexual marriage will eventually enter? 

One is led to suppose that doublespeak is not meant for Martin’s heretical faction but for the rest of us Christians.  The speech-act of Church blessings for sinners is meant to obscure the meaning of sin, of marriage, of ‘blessing’, of righteousness, of ‘Church’, and whatever else.  Under the smog of ecclesiastical confusion, doctrinal change creeps along.  The real agenda is full acceptance of this sinful relationship at some time in the future.  The Martins in the game will play along; you do not turn around a historical Church overnight.

Two Biblical texts come to mind as true Christians witness this charade.  First, God says,

Woe to those who call evil good

                        and good evil,

             who put darkness for light

                        and light for darkness,

             who put bitter for sweet

                        and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5.20, ESV).

Second, Jesus warned His disciples that, in the end times,

many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved (Matthew 24.11-13).

By ‘false prophets’, Jesus meant those claiming to interpret the will of God for people but misguiding them.  Only time will tell if the current crop of false prophets signal the end times.  We have seen such apostasy before.  God abandoned His people to the invading Babylonians for their flagrant rebellion against His commandments. Jeremiah the prophet says,

The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’

                        Those who handle the law did not know me;

             the shepherds transgressed against me;

                        the prophets prophesied by Baal

                        and went after things that do not profit (2,7).

The result of this apostasy was God’s bringing the punishment of the Babylonians on the Israelites and taking many into exile.

Apostasy is a perennial sin of many priests, teachers, shepherds, and prophets.  It just takes different forms in different eras.  Sometimes the Church withstands heresy, sometimes it succumbs to it.  Already in the 1^st c. AD, John the Apostle cut through the speculation about whether apostasy meant that believers were facing the ‘end times’ by saying that many antichrists had already come, and therefore we ‘know that it is the last hour’ (1 John 2.18).  Of course, some day there will be an end of the end times.  We may be at the end of the end, especially with the widespread apostasy in our day and with the new dimension of apostasy in rejecting God’s creational purposes themselves in sex and marriage.

If Christ is coming again for a bride without spot or wrinkle, a pure and holy Church awaiting His return (Ephesians 5.26-27)—and we know that He is—then a lot of the filth that calls itself the Church just because it clings to the faithful must be washed away.  We are unquestionably seeing this today.  It is time the bride took a bath.  Every mainline denomination has declared itself against our Lord in its theology and practices over the past fifty years.  From rejecting Scripture to rejecting the Gospel to rejecting righteousness to rejecting Christ Jesus the Son of God, they have affirmed the doctrinal and ethical heresies of the antichrist.  With such bold blessing of sin, the wolves in sheep’s clothing are boldly disclosing themselves for what they are.  Our first thought might be to bewail the state of ‘the Church’, but we should rather understand that the hideous distortion that has presented itself as the Church in this disguise and doublespeak is only the satanic imitation of God’s people.  We celebrate their declaring themselves as the anti-Church, for by doing so they show themselves not to be the Church.

Of course, if we continue to cling to this false Church, then we have only ourselves to blame for our own distorted witness to the world.  If, however, we let them go out from us, then it will be plain to all that they are not of us (cf. 1 John 2.19).  As long as the righteous bride of Christ keeps walking the streets with those dressed in the abominable teaching and practices of hustlers who mockingly bless one another in their sins, the world can fairly associate us with those selling the world's pleasures as though they were the Church's blessings.  The Church’s role is not to show how much like the world it can be but to show the world how much unlike it is from the Church.  The Church exists to witness, and if it does not witness to the truth, it has no purpose at all.  No matter how small the pure light is, it shines ever brighter in increasing darkness.  Indeed, as Paul urged the Corinthians,

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? (2 Corinthians 6.14).

What we note in this week's news is the sad truth that unbelievers are, as in Jeremiah’s day and again in John’s day, masquerading as believers, even in historic Churches like the Roman and Anglican Churches.  They have been overcome by the world.  Yet ‘everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.  And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith’ (1 John 5.4).  What does it mean to bless sinners?  It means to be overcome by the world rather than to overcome it with the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

---

[1] Cf. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780190491482.001.0001/acref-9780190491482-e-2469 (accessed 18 December, 2023).

[2] First Corinthians 6.9-11.

[3] For the Catholic Church, see the BBC news article at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67751600 (accessed 18 December, 2023).

The Garden of Grace

 [Foreword: This is a short, fictional story, written in response to a heretic in the Church of England who recently asserted that God's grace is so radical that no repentance is required.  Her implication is that the Church must not even bring up the subject of sin, no one has any need for repentance (though they may if they like!), and everyone should accept everyone else just as they are.  Most heretics in the Church of England deny that homosexuality is a sin, but this heretic wants to go one step farther in dissolving the category of sin because, she falsely claims, grace simply accepts everyone as they are.  Of course, this is an impossible reading of all the Bible, but it also rids the Church of the need for Jesus' death on a cross for our sins.  John ran into this heretic's forebears when he wrote in response to them, 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us' (1 John 1.9-10, ESV).]

‘Oh, you startled me!’ said Eve.

‘Terribly sorry—I did not mean to.’  The creature had the tail fin of a small fish emerging from its mouth.  With a quick slurp, the fin disappeared.

‘What are you, if I may ask?  You look vaguely familiar, but I must say you are a different creature from those I’ve met so far.’

‘I am a salamander, dear soul.  You might call me by that name.  I do look rather like the Snake that you met in the Garden, don’t I?’

‘You know about that?’!

‘Eve, I am the Snake of the Garden.’

‘What?  How?’

‘It does seem strange, doesn’t it?  In there, I am the Snake.  Out here, though, I am the Salamander.  In there, I am cursed to slither on the ground.  Out here, I have four legs to lift me above the dust of death.’

Behind her, across the water, the flaming swords of the angels that stood guard at the Garden’s entrance could still be seen in the distance—flashing lights in the grey of late evening.  To look in that direction brought a stab of pain.  She knew, of course, that ‘in there’ meant in that garden—the Garden from which she had been evicted with her husband, never again to enter.  ‘In there’ was also where she held an enlightening conversation with the Snake, who taught her that to follow one’s own definitions of good and evil is to be god to oneself.  The temptation was irresistible, and both Eve and Adam bit into the fruit offered by the Snake but forbidden by God.  This resulted in their expulsion from the Garden of God, but not before God had graciously clothed them from the starkness of their naked disobedience that had opened their eyes to sin lest the shame overwhelm them.

Now, outside the Garden, Eve had been collecting firewood and looking for something in which she might carry water from the lake while Adam was building a bivouac just inside the forest.  He could be heard breaking branches and releasing the occasional yelp as his tender hands took the piercing jab of some wood.  The pain was a new sensation, unpleasant, yet curiously interesting—as was the sight of the blood from his hands on the tree.  The shelter was coming along.  He had positioned a sturdy branch as a main beam between two trees.  As the trees were a little too far apart, he had cleverly tied a mid-pole vertical to the ground to give it support.  The mid-pole rose above the beam, and where they crossed, he had tied them together.  He had been testing the use of a sharp rock as an axe, and he used it to cut tree bark into long strips that he then used to tie his pole to the beam.  Something about the smell of the forest, the urgency of his work in the waning hours of the day, the axe, and his bloodied hands energized him.  He also instinctively felt a duty to protect and care for Eve, and the excitement of an adventure was restrained by this responsibility.

Eve, however, appeared to be getting along well enough without Adam’s efforts on her behalf.  She was now laughing freely and heartily at the Salamander’s wit.  He was every bit as charming as the Snake.

‘And what kind of a joke is that?’ she asked.

‘A pun,’ replied the Salamander.  ‘It works by giving meaning a slight twist that surprises and then delights.’

‘And the other one—the one you told first?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t really have a name yet, but I was thinking of calling it a Boundary Crossing.  The humour is in the shock the hearer has of crossing some boundary, some taboo, or some rule.’

‘Are there other types of jokes?’

‘Many.  There are jokes that work off of false assumptions, jokes that exaggerate, jokes that poke fun at others, and others still.’

‘Oh, tell me another one,’ said Eve, tossing her lovely black hair behind her and widening her deep, brown eyes in an abandonment to the pleasant intercourse that kept her from her duties.

‘Well, how about this one?’ said the Salamander.  ‘Why did God not give elephants wings to fly?’

‘Why?’

‘Could you imagine the poop falling from the sky?’

Eve was in stiches laughing.  She pretended to dodge elephant poop falling from the sky and laughed some more.  What made this so funny to her was not the childlike, crass humour itself but the new horizons the jokes opened up in her mind.  Here was a handling of the order of creation in a humourous way, probing its purpose, imagining alternatives, posing the possibility of some other ordering of existence.

Adam had come over to see what was making Eve laugh so.  He was drawn to her joyful, even life-giving spirit, but he was also a little annoyed that she would be laughing so while he laboured by the sweat of his brow. 

‘Oh, hullo!’ he said.

‘Oh, Adam, I want you to meet Mr. Salamander, a delightful fellow and a new friend.’

Adam looked around quizzically, then spotted the creature on a rock beside Eve.

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance.’

‘And yours.’

‘Have we perhaps met before?’ asked Adam.

The Salamander winked at Eve for their little secret.  ‘You might have mistaken me for the Snake.  All the animals do.’  Eve wondered why the Salamander did not tell Adam directly that he was one and the same, just altered in appearance outside the Garden.  Maybe this was a kind of joke, too—letting some people into the secret and leaving others out.  Maybe in the Garden, where God’s rules ruled, people lived simply with truth and falsity.  Here, outside the Garden, one could withhold information from others and leave them uncertain as to truth or falsity.  One could turn feeling in the tumbler of self-will so that it shone like the truth or polish opinion so fine with the cloth of rhetoric that it gleamed like fact.  The thought of having secrets, turning feelings into truths, and not giving others all the facts enticed Eve.  She and Mr. Salamander would have a wink between them, without Adam.

‘Ah, yes, you do remind me of the Snake in the Garden a little,’ said Adam.  ‘And snakes out here, too!  I’ve run into one while building the bivouac.  So many things out here are similar to things in there, but also a little different.’

‘Yess,’ said the Salamander, holding onto the last letter a little eerily.  ‘And in there is God’s Law, out here is God’s Grace.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Adam.

‘Well, think about it.  You are still alive, aren’t you?  In there, God said you would die if you disobeyed His Law.  What happened, though, was that He sent you packing into His land of Grace. And you are still alive.’

‘I see what you are saying,’ said Adam.

‘And would you rather live under Law or under Grace?’ pressed the Salamander.  ‘In there, you get cursed for disobeying God.  Out here, you disobey God and find grace.  In fact,’ the Salamander delivered his reasoning slowly in order to appear to be discovering a great truth, ‘our sin causes God’s grace to abound.’

‘Something seems a little off in that,’ said Adam.  Eve, however, thought that the Salamander was making another of his jokes and laughed.

Some further reasoning was needed, the Salamander could tell.  He would have to take them both further down this path.

‘Quite right,’ the Salamander said, looking into Adam’s eyes.  ‘How could that be so?  And yet, here we are, in God’s Garden of Grace.’  The thought of still being in a garden—in another of God’s gardens—cheered the exiles.  ‘And, Adam, you are right that things are a little different out here.  In there, there is Commandment, Sin, Punishment.  Out here, we have evolved.  We live not by Law but by Grace.  And where there is no Law, there is no Sin.  And where there is no Sin, there is no Punishment.  There is only Grace.’  Everyone was silent for a moment.  The reasoning seemed right, but not quite right.  Then the Salamander said, ‘I see you both have some work to do while there is still a little light in the sky.  Why don’t we talk more about this another day?  It has been good to meet you.’  And with their goodbyes, each turned to his or her own duties.

Around the campfire that night, Eve felt a little remorse for her secrecy with the Salamander without Adam.  She repented, telling him that the Serpent was the same as the Salamander.  She apologized, and he forgave her with a kiss.  She and Adam discussed their conversation with the Salamander further.  ‘I must admit that I am a little confused,’ said Eve.  ‘Well, I’m a little disturbed,’ said Adam.  ‘But what confuses you?’  ‘Well, it all makes a certain sort of sense, doesn’t it, but the conclusion seems to be wrong.’  ‘I agree,’ said Adam, ‘but the Salamander has a way with words that leave you dazed, as if you are sitting in the smoke of the campfire not seeing properly and without enough oxygen!’

‘It occurs to me,’ said Eve, ‘that in the Garden of Eden the debate was not over whether something was a sin or not but over who was to say what was a sin.  Out here, if the Salamander is right, we are no longer worried about something being a sin because everything is Grace.  But,’ and she paused a little, collecting her thoughts, ‘if it is Grace, then don’t you have to have sin first?  I mean, you can’t give someone grace if they don’t need it, right?  Grace doesn’t mean anything if someone hasn’t done something that needs God’s grace.’

‘I see what you are saying, Eve.  And we actually did receive God’s grace in the Garden of Eden, too.  First, His goodness was the foundation of all that He created.  We received it with thanksgiving, not as though we deserved it.  Then, He gave us the goodness of life together and life with a purpose and life in His presence.  And, when we sinned, He covered our shame.  Even being exiled from the Garden was an act of grace alongside judgement, because if we had remained there, eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, we would have continued forever in our sin.  Judgement for sin is a step in a larger act of Grace.’

‘And if that is so,’ said Eve, ‘then there must be some further act of Grace to come.  So, it is not that God cancels the Commandments.  It is not that there is no Sin.  It is not that there is no Punishment.  It is that, despite all that, there is also Grace.’

The Salamander had been listening in the darkness beyond the firelight.  He saw his slippery reasoning was being undone.  He emerged into the ring of the fire, surprising the couple again.  ‘I could not help overhearing,’ he said.  ‘Small world, isn’t it?’  The couple knew, however, that he had been eavesdropping, and they were not comfortable.  ‘If I may,’ he proceeded, ‘perhaps there is a deeper level of Grace than you are considering.  You may be right that sinning boldly does not shed a good light on our understanding of Grace.  Maybe that is a little twisted.  But what if there is a much deeper level of Grace in which there is pure acceptance?  What if Grace means accepting everyone as they are, no questions asked, no fingers pointed, no judgement, no need for repentance, no guilt in struggle with desire, no punishment for acts?  Would that not be, let’s call it ‘Deeper Grace’?’

The Salamander’s eyes glistened in the firelight.  He seemed to shining.  How very thoughtful, no kind, were his words.  They were welcoming, inclusive, even loving.  He crawled forward and sat by the fire, grateful for its warmth.

At long last, Adam spoke.  ‘If this is so, then God would have led us straight to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden after our sin rather than exiling us from it.  Or you actually need to posit two gods.  There is the God in the Garden of Eden, and a different God in this Garden of Grace.  But we know that that is not so.  So, we have to find a way to put this puzzle together so that we end up with only one God, not two.  And though all this thinking is exhausting after quite the day, I think you might be right and wrong about Grace, Mr. Salamander.’  His hands were sore, and he looked at them in the firelight.  They were bruised and bloodied from where he had pierced himself with the wood when making the cross of the beam and the pole.  ‘I think you are right that there is a deeper Grace, but I think you are wrong about what it is.  The deeper Grace must be the difference between Mercy and Grace.  Mercy is when someone forgives you when you deserve to be punished.  Grace is not a matter of doing away with calling anything a sin and just welcoming everyone whatever they do, though.  The deeper Grace we are trying to understand must be when God goes beyond Mercy to pay the penalty of Sin Himself and change us by His own work to become like Him once again.  Mercy is forgiving grace.  The Deeper Grace is Mercy and Transformation through God’s own bearing of our Sin.’

Adam looked at the Salamander.  He had drawn too close to the fire and burned his feet.  He excused himself quickly.  Unable to walk, he slithered into the grass.

Eve looked up at her husband with a smile.  ‘Adam, this might be a thought experiment of yours, but it is pretty profound.  And even if it is a thought, I have to wonder if you—if we—can think of a greater Grace than whatever is the Grace of God.  I mean, if we can think of this, then God’s Grace can’t be less, can it?’

‘Surely we can’t think of a greater Grace than God’s,’ agreed Adam.  ‘But the price of sin is death.  That is what God told us.  “In the day that you eat of this fruit, you will surely die.”  Somehow the deeper Grace of God must go beyond Mercy to payment for sin and transformation to a righteous life, not continuation in sin. If the wages of sin is death, somehow God’s Grace must bring eternal life.’  He studied his smarting hands, pouring a little water on them and wincing.  ‘A deeper Grace would call for a Righteous Man to die for the unrighteous.  Not a man like me.  A Second Adam in whom there is no sin.’

The couple sat looking into the fire and then at each other.  Finally, Eve said, ‘Adam, remember when I said something about not being able to think of something greater or more profound or better than the reality of God a little earlier?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, what if that Righteous Man dying for our sins not only shows God’s Mercy and Deeper Grace, as you say?  I can also think of something greater than that!’

Adam gasped.  ‘I thought we were already in the outer limits of theological speculation,’ he said.  He looked up at the brilliant sky and wondered if there was any limit to the universe.  Maybe the truths of God were limitless, too.  ‘Well?’ he said, looking at Eve.

‘I wonder,’ she began.  ‘I wonder whether imagining a Righteous Man will get us anywhere, Adam.  I mean, look at us.  We are sinners.  There is no Righteous Man.  But I can imagine a further level of God’s Grace where He—the Giver of Life—bears the penalty of sin, which is death.  Would that not be a Deeper Grace still?  Mr. Salamander’s notion of Deeper Grace is one that disregards sin and ends up being no Grace at all.  No sin, no repentance, no need for Grace.  But if Deeper Grace is God’s dealing with sin itself, it acknowledges sin as sin, it includes repentance and forgiveness, it reconciles us to God, and it transforms us into His righteous image.  And all that happens because He bears the penalty of sin for us.  Now that, Mr. Adam, that is a Deeper Grace than which there is no deeper.  Do you think God would do that for us?’

She looked at him.  She saw he was crying.  It brought forth her own tears.  This Garden of Grace was not the distortions proposed by Mr. Salamander but surely something far more profound.  It was not dismissive of sin.  It was not permissive, either.  Surely the same God of Eden was the God of the Garden of Grace and His Love was so deep that He, the only One who could, would pay the penalty of death for sin and restore righteousness and life to those who did nothing to deserve it.

Adam and Eve were exhausted.  They retired to their shelter.  Eve paused to look at it.  He had done a good job, and she was proud of her husband.  They stood at the wooden cross.  Eve could see bloodstains on it in the flickering firelight.  She took his hands in hers and looked at them.  They looked swollen and blistered.  She took some water and cleansed them.  Some of the water and the blood spilt on her as well.  She smiled at Adam.  ‘And what will wash away our sin, Adam?’ she asked.