The following was written in support of the great works being done by all at the convention, on the floor and on the platform. I am proud of our Resolutions Committee and of our messengers, real proud, and I stand fully behind the resolutions, including the upcoming Resolution on Alt-Right White Supremacy:
While I skipped the Southern Baptist Convention in order to
polish an overdue essay responding to my recently deceased friend, the Reformed
theologian John Webster, my heart has been unable to escape the profound events
occurring in Phoenix, Arizona. So many of my living friends and colleagues in
ministry are there, and I have watched them with love and concern, exchanging messages
with good people who are under both public and personal pressure to do well. With the incredible responsibilities placed on their shoulders, I want them to know they
are doing well in spite of the heartache and disappointment all around. The
churches of the Southern Baptist Convention are working together slowly but
carefully toward the future that God has planned for them. And the men leading
the way are in a pressure cooker, and it hurts.
I have one word of advice to the leaders of the SBC and to
every convention messenger and every spectator. It is an idea that could be
taken contritely as a mere mantra were it not central to everything occurring this
year: The Cross is at the center of everything the SBC is doing. But we may be somewhat
oblivious to it. Some have glibly dismissed the resolution on the atonement that
Owen Strachan and I offered as so much window dressing, but that is utterly wrongheaded.
The Cross of Jesus Christ is at the center of everything that the SBC is doing
this year. The Cross makes sense of the other significant resolutions, such as
the ones on the Alt-Right and on Planned Parenthood. The Cross makes sense of
the mission board reports and of Steve Gaines’s proposed task force. The Cross
is everything!
As Leon Morris and John Stott demonstrated years ago, the
Cross of Jesus Christ provides the meaning of the biblical text. The Cross is
both center and circumference; it is both pervasive and without parallel; it is
both paradigmatic and problematic. Open any New Testament book and before long,
the Cross will dominate the discussion. For Paul, a highly educated Biblicist
with pristine religious credentials, the Cross which was earlier a scandal to
him subsequently became so big that he could see nothing else. In Galatians
6:14f, he stated,
But as for me, I will never boast about anything except the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world has been crucified to me through the
cross, and I to the world. For both circumcision and uncircumcision mean
nothing; what matters instead is a new creation (Christian Standard Bible).
Paul, the inspired apostle, finally learned not to boast
about how faithful he was to God’s law, or how many converts he made, or how
many disciples enrolled in his ministry program. Success for Paul was upended
entirely, such that he could boast in nothing, nothing except for the Cross of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Boasting in anything else was at an end. He did not
boast about how pristine his doctrine was, though it was now. He did not boast
about how other ministers looked up to him, for many did not, but he no longer
cared. He did not boast about what his political party was doing, or not doing.
Christ and the Cross of Christ were everything to Paul; the
world carried no ultimate meaning for him anymore. The world itself—the world
with all of its physicality and its spirituality, with all of its culture and
its intelligence, with all of its blessings and failures—the world was nothing. It had been put upon the Cross and had
died in his eyes. “The world has been crucified to me through the cross, and I
to the world.” When the Cross of Jesus Christ becomes the only filter by which
you can think, speak, or act, everything else dies. And only in such a death
lays the potential of life.
The Cross of Christ is utterly different from the priorities
of this world. It is antithetical to our very way of thinking. The atonement
resolution was necessary because without penal substitution, the other
important doctrines that undergird our entire worldview collapse into chaos, as
seen in the cultural crises enveloping the West today. Without penal
substitution, our God becomes an unholy, sentimental, and unjust weakling while
fallen men are deluded into conceiving their own righteousness. Without the Cross, there is no salvation for fallen men—there is no reason whatsoever to
consider sin or its solution. Without the Cross, there will be no human
flourishing and no evangelism. Without the Cross, there is no reason for the
divinely created churches to meet, much less a humanly created denomination.
Without the Cross, our social and political thoughts recede into mere vain and
fleeting opinions.
But with the Cross of Jesus the Jew, the Alt-Right is seen
for what it is—a worldly and deadly way of thinking. For the Alt-Right is
concerned about preserving a dying culture, the culture of white supremacy, a
culture that benefited many even as it denigrated others. The Alt-Right is the
antithesis of the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Alt-Right says that one man’s
culture is superior to another and the other must submit to me, but the Man on
the Cross says that, though He is superior to everyone, He will submit to death
for the other. The Cross is the antithesis of culture war. And we all know that cultures are at
war with one another today—Islam versus the West, Sunni versus Shia, Secularist
versus Religious, Liberal versus Conservative.
Cultures tell men and women that they must dominate the
other in order to survive, but the Cross invites men and women to die with Christ and serve the other. Cultural preservation encourages people to bear the sword
against the other, but the Cross encourages the sacrifice of oneself on behalf of
the other. Planned Parenthood tells women they must kill the child in
order to flourish, but the One on the Cross tells women they must embrace their own
crosses in order for both them and their babies to flourish. Racists tell their
races they must dominate the other races in order to flourish, but the One on the
Cross empties the races of all their importance.
When Paul said circumcision means “nothing,” he was
speaking about his precious culture, to which he previously gave so much of
his life. He had fought for and killed for the preservation of Jewish culture,
but then he found that his precious culture was nothing. “Circumcision,” the
defining external mark of Jewish cultural identity, no longer mattered to Paul. His
birth culture no longer mattered. But neither did his missionary culture. “Uncircumcision”
no longer mattered to Paul either. He didn’t stop being a Jew in reaching the
Gentiles, and neither did he become a zealot for Gentileness. His previously misguided zeal for culture was
transformed, for he learned that cultures are ultimately “nothing.” If he were
in Phoenix today, he would cry out, “White culture is nothing!” Then he would say,
“Black culture is nothing!”
Well, if the cultures are nothing, then what is important?
If all of our languages and customs and practices and arts and sciences are
nothing, then what matters? For Paul, human cultures are no longer germane, for now
there is a “new creation.” God was making something new and unitive out of the old and divisive. In Ephesians 2, he spoke of a new humanity made out
of warring cultures, a humanity refashioned in Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Jewish messiah who
died for both Jews and Gentiles; He is the God who died for all human beings. It is His Cross that we preach and follow.
As a pastor, I went home after the 1995 resolution that was
spearheaded by the old ERLC leadership and defended it. As a professor and
Bible teacher, I will go to my church and my seminary after the 2017 resolution that
is advocated by the new ERLC leadership and defend it. In my old church, the
first resolution was not appreciated by some; in my new church, this latest
resolution may not be appreciated by some. (
Anyone who doubts the problem of racism is in the SBC should read of my own experience here.)
Whatever the opposition, we as Christians must do what is
right. Why? Because we must embrace the cross, including the suffering of shame
for not speaking when we should have (as in 1845), or the suffering of broken
relationships with those who refuse to repent (as we may now). Well, you get the idea,
the Cross of suffering is not only our only way of salvation in the world to come, the Cross of
suffering is the true Christian’s only way of life in the world today. Grow up and embrace the
cross, Christian! Have that baby, my sister, even with the suffering a child may
bring, though honestly children are really blessings! Reject your inbuilt
racism, my brother, even if it means you have to walk back some of your words
and your ways, and your politics.
I stand fully with my brothers and sisters at the 2017
Phoenix meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, and I urge them to embrace
the Cross, and embrace all of these resolutions with all their heart. If we do
that, then we may be ready to see a revival, a revival to which our President,
the wonderful pastor and evangelist Dr. Steve Gaines, is calling us. We need a revival, a revival
that compels prayer and evangelism. But here, too, we will not have a revival
in witnessing and resultant baptisms until the Cross, the only way of
salvation, means everything to us, everything.
The Cross is absolutely necessary to our doctrine, to our ethics, and to our mission. The Cross must no longer merely be the center our
message; the cross must also be the paradigm of our life. The world is nothing; the cultures
are nothing; the politics are nothing; personal status is nothing; personal comfort is nothing; my life itself is
nothing. These things are crucified to me. My brothers and sisters (adelphoi), look, look there at the Cross, for THE CROSS IS EVERYTHING!
