I went to church today, Oakhill Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan, oh boy . . . the English Army had just lost the war.
"The church is incredibly confused about grace" the pastor said.
"The law is scary stuff" he said.
Everywhere we turn in today's society, he had started, all we see is law and legalism. "Grace is above the law" he ended, as if that meant paraenesis were secondary, or the law so dangerous that it must be kept locked up in the ark against its purpose. The man obviously never contemplated the Lutheran demand for Law and Gospel, the letters of Paul, a mezuzah, or teffilin.
"[D]o 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, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God." -- 1 Cor.6:9f.
We have millions of dead in our country from abortion. Do Christians need to reminded that this is murder? They lose themselves in an hour of praise in a church with daring hands held high to God when they should be lying prostrate in sackcloth and ashes.
Millions are in defiance of God's law of marriage, even in the church which blesses broken union after broken union while they eat bread and wine. Do they need to be reminded that divorce is against God's law?
Millions support the right, the right, to live in sexual immorality, as if that had something to do with what the founders of the country meant. Do they need to be reminded that this was not their intent, that the founders accepted the moral code of the Bible and thought our constitution would not survive without a Christian population?
Millions now support homosexuality, unimaginable just a generation ago. Do they need to be reminded that this is against nature and nature's God? And yet this pastor calls it a law-oriented society, when it is fast becoming nothing but a nation of greater and greater lawlessness.
If ever there were a time for grace, this is not it. It is instead a time for condemnation, repentance, separation and woe. A time for Christians to flee from the wrath which is surely coming.
