2. We must stand up to the deception of our culture with the truth of God’s Word. I’ve never before seen the church and its leaders so paralyzed and timid on an issue than they are with homosexuality and gay marriage. To a large degree, the same thing is true with the entire issue of sexual morality, cohabitation and the biblical definition of marriage. As I mentioned earlier, one of the dilemmas facing us today as church leaders is how we can take a stand without sounding legalistic and hateful. The answer is actually very simple, exemplified in the greatest revolutionary in the history of the world: Jesus Christ.
Jesus came to a broken world just like ours and started a spiritual and cultural revolution that continues today. How did He do it? Thankfully, we have the playbook: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
The word glory basically means what you’re famous for, your premiere attributes. Jesus came to redeem the world from sin, and to do so He used grace and truth. It is His nature to show both attributes. But He was also full of grace and truth because hate and lies broke the world. Only grace and truth could fix it. You cannot separate the two. One of the church’s greatest failures today is choosing to focus on either grace or truth. The imbalance is deadly. Grace without truth is meaningless, just as truth without grace is mean-spirited. They must work together.
And grace must go first because everything God does must be based out of compassion. You’ll never reach, or desire to reach, a person you do not love. As you look at our broken world and the broken people in it, go beyond their behavior and realize they’re precious in God’s sight. Realize that much of what they do isn’t intentionally bad. A lot of the sin in people’s lives happens simply because they don’t know any better. They’re just trying to find a way to medicate their inner emptiness and pain.
It can’t be overstated: Ensure that everything you say and do is birthed out of compassion and grace.
But then comes truth. Without truth, grace becomes an enabler, allowing us to stay the same. Truth doesn’t mean law. Rather, truth is the knowledge that sets us free to live as God designed. Grace tells us the good news that we are loved by God without merit. Truth tells us the good news that God has a plan for our lives to make us successful and fulfilled.
I love gays. I love people who are cohabiting, who are sexually immoral like I was before I received Christ. But I love them too much to agree with them. They are not living in truth. And regardless of what they think about me or whether or not they will listen to me, I will lovingly stand for truth according to Jesus’ example. But my motivation is love for them and our society. I believe a person who tells you what you need to hear demonstrates greater love than someone who tells you what you want to hear.
3. We must speak up about marriage in our churches. Many churches have more divorce recovery ministries than ministries that build and support marriage. I believe in helping people who are hurting and recovering from divorce, but we must be marriage-building churches first. We must preach and teach about it, making marriage a prioritized, funded and featured part of the life and ministries of our churches. Virtually every healthy and growing church I know of is a marriage-building church. If you are a preacher or teacher, you might not feel qualified to speak about marriage for some reason. That’s pretty common. Never before have more resources been available to help leaders who want to prioritize marriage ministry and become marriage builders.
Jimmy Evans and his wife, Karen, founded MarriageToday in 1994. Since then, they have encouraged and coached countless couples in building rewarding marriages and healthy homes. With more than 50 percent of unions ending in divorce, they are committed to restoring the dream of marriage in America.
