Preaching on grace is vital, but grace without sin is a solution in search of a problem, and grace without hell is meaningless.  If the good news of the gospel is segregated from the ugly truths of human existence, it ceases to be good.

In recent days, my daughter’s reading tastes have begun to shift from tween lit to young-adult fiction.  Though I’m not sorry to say goodbye to the likes of Dork Diaries, this shift also awakens some unease in my wife and me.  We know that YA fic has become increasingly racy in recent years, and in any event, it won’t be long before the advent of physical maturity exposes both of my children to the temptations of pornography.

To say the least, the struggle against porn has not gone well for God’s people over the past several decades.  Few indeed are the Christian men these days who haven’t had problems with porn.  Increasingly, though, smut salesmen have figured out how to peddle their wares to women too.  Take, for instance, the hot new Netflix series Bridgerton, which is perhaps best described as pornography dressed up like Jane Austen.  Men are hardly the target audience there!

In the face of this onslaught, the old standby argument of lust-is-a-sin-so-don’t-use-porn, though true, has proven inadequate.  If we want to safeguard ourselves and our children from pornography, we have to arrive at a more profound understanding than that.  Porn use isn’t merely a problem because it violates a thou-shalt-not.  It’s a problem because it subverts and corrupts God’s intent for human sexuality.

We should pay much more attention than we do to the fact that in Ephesians 5:31-32, Paul by the Holy Spirit compares the one-flesh relationship between husband and wife to the relationship between Christ and the church.  It’s commonplace for ministers performing a wedding to describe marriage as sacred, but most Christians, even married Christians, don’t want to contemplate the sacredness of marital intimacy. 

Like all of God’s handiwork, it is nourishing, affirming, and life-giving (in many senses).  As husband and wife grow spiritually and in their relationship with each other, their delight in coming together grows too.  In the affection, understanding, and trust of the marriage bed, we expose ourselves completely, body, heart, and soul, and we rejoice to find ourselves known and loved regardless.  This is perhaps the closest we can come on earth to experiencing what it is like to be seen and known and loved by God.

Godly sexuality is one of His most beautiful creations, so we should not be surprised that Satan hates it and yearns to destroy it.  His malice is evident in unhappy marriages, in sexual immorality, and increasingly in enslavement to pornography.  Like all that Satan does, these things are counterfeits of the original, having the appearance of God’s good work without its reality.

This is most obvious with porn.  Immorality at least involves a one-flesh experience with somebody, but porn use doesn’t involve anybody.  Pleasure is present, but intimacy is always, devastatingly, absent.  Porn does not create, for it is sterile.  It does not enrich, for it is empty.  It does not unite, for it is lonely.

Pornography certainly existed 2000 years ago (witness the frescoes that have been unearthed in the brothels of Pompeii), but Paul never could have used it to illustrate the relationship between Christ and the church.  That relationship is fundamentally selfless.  Christ surrendered everything to His bride in death; she surrenders everything to Him in life.  So too, God intends for husbands and wives to surrender everything to one another in the intimacy of marriage (of which sexual intimacy is both a part and an analog). 

By contrast, porn is selfish.  You have no thought for anyone else; it’s entirely about you.  Thus, the porn user falls prey to the great paradox of selfishness.  There is great joy in serving others, but there is no joy in serving the self.  Instead, selfishness hollows us out like a worm in an apple.

There are no happy, contented, flourishing porn users.  No one returns repeatedly to that first picture, that first video, finding it ever more fulfilling than it was the first time.  Instead, the pleasures of porn swiftly begin to pall.  What was once captivating quickly becomes boring, and so the porn user (or, by this time, more properly “porn addict”) begins a futile, frantic search to rediscover what they have lost. 

Over time, they turn to depictions that are ever more shocking and extreme, but more and more, those things offer less and less.  They learn that the hardness of heart caused by sin is most of all a problem for the sinner.  Eventually, the greatest depravity that the Internet has to offer elicits scarcely a quiver, but still the addict continues, miserable but hoping desperately that what they find with the next swipe, the next mouse click, will help them feel something again.

Sadly, the addict becomes insensible not only to evil but also to good.  In training themselves to focus on seeming rather than substance, they lose the ability to appreciate union with their spouse.  In marriage, physical attraction is only the tip of the iceberg, but if all you care about is physical attraction, no flesh-and-blood spouse can compete with the airbrushed impossibility available online.  Living waters flow from following God’s design in marriage, but the addict returns futilely to the broken cistern of pornography, hoping to find there what it never can offer.

Such a combination of misery and enslavement always has a diabolical origin, but anyone who truly wants to be free can conquer through Christ.  The road out of porn addiction, as with any addiction, is long and difficult, but escape is possible.

It is far better for all of us, though, to learn to see the trap surrounding the bait before we take that first bite.  We need wisdom to avoid the snare that Satan has laid, and we also need courage to teach others about it.  Sex is nobody’s favorite topic in Bible class or at the dinner table, but the more we emphasize the joys of obedience and the dangers of sin, the more likely we are to evade temptation.

This article originally appeared in the March issue of Pressing On.

I few days ago, I posted a bulletin article about Galatians 3:23-25 and Paul’s proclamation that we are no longer under the Law of Moses.  In particular, I applied this to the use of instrumental music in worship and explained that the use of the instrument in Psalms and elsewhere is not relevant to our practice today.

Not surprisingly, this generated a fair amount of spirited, though civil, discussion.  I replied to most commenters inthread, but there was one that I thought deserved a longer response.  This commenter said, “Seems like strange logic to say ‘you are no longer under a guardian’, therefore you have these new restrictions (no instrumental music), even though those restrictions were never actually given. Being no longer under a guardian implies more freedom, not more restrictions.”  I asked for and got permission from him to address his comment separately.

I think this comment gets to the heart of what it means to follow Christ instead of following Moses.  Because we are justified by faith instead of justified by works, our motives for obedience are different.

Let’s start with the justification-by-works side first.  Justification by works is necessarily minimum-seeking.  If you agree to work for someone for eight hours to receive a given amount of money, you go home when your shift is over, and they pay you no more than they had promised.  Everybody involved meets the standard (if they are just people), but no one exceeds it.  To work longer or pay more would be an act of mercy, not justice.

Justification by faith is different.  In the spiritual realm, none of us want what is due us!  We don’t want justice.  We want mercy, and we receive it through faith in Christ.  He justified us when it was impossible for us to justify ourselves.

At this point, we encounter the rhetorical question of Romans 6:13.  Should we sin because we are not under the Law but under grace?  In other words, if my works are not contributing to my justification in any way, why continue to work?  In the remainder of the chapter, Paul replies that simply because we have been freed from the Law does not mean that we can do whatever we want.  Rather, we have become slaves to righteousness.

However, the mode of slavery is different.  We are not like the “wage slave” of the system of works.  We don’t work because we want to earn our wages.  Instead, we work because of the gift that has been given us.  As per 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, the love of Christ compels us.  He died for me, so I must live for Him.

This kind of slavery is far more profound than the other.  When it comes to Jesus, I don’t ask, “How long must I work?”  I ask, “How much can I give?”  Nothing is too much for the One who rescued me from hell by a single transcendent act of mercy!  Indeed, nothing is enough.

This transforms the way I read the Bible too.  I don’t turn to the Scriptures to figure out what I can get away with.  I turn to them to figure out everything that I can possibly do to please my Lord. 

This makes the instrumental-music question easy.  I know for certain that singing praises to Jesus pleases and honors Him.  I don’t know that adding the instrument to my worship pleases and honors Him.  There’s no evidence that it does. 

At this point, I could lawyer and weasel and say, “Well, Jesus never told me not to!”  That’s true, but it’s irrelevant.  In real life, I’m not bringing in the instrument for Him (no evidence, remember?).  I’m bringing it in for me.  I’m taking the life that He bought and paid for, and I’m trying to reclaim some of that life for myself. 

That’s not who I am.  That person died in the waters of baptism, and I’m determined to make sure he stays dead!

So it is that in Christ, we are freed from the Law and the need to justify ourselves, yet we also are enslaved in the most complete bondage that a human being can experience.  Every action, every word, and even every thought must be taken captive to the obedience of Christ.  As part of that obedience, until somebody can show me that instrumental worship is about serving Jesus instead of serving the self, I’m not interested.

DISCLAIMER:  I am a huge dork.  Do not feel the need to inform me of this because of this post.  I already know.

The other day, I found myself explaining the intricacies of Dungeons & Dragons to a couple of Christians who had never played before.  Among other things, we discussed D&D’s alignment system.  In D&D, every character has one of nine alignments.  These describe their attitude toward good versus evil along one axis and law versus chaos along the other. 

As I was setting this out, one of these Christians asked me to explain the difference between the Lawful Good alignment and the Lawful Neutral alignment.  I told him that Lawful Good characters view the laws of society as a tool for bringing about justice and benefiting everyone, whereas Lawful Neutral characters look on law as an end in and of itself.  You follow the law Just Because.

He replied, “Oh; so Lawful Neutral is the way that some people think the church is.”

The more I thought about that, the more I decided it was worth exploring.  Indeed, I would go so far as to say that Lawful Neutral Christianity is not merely a perception of the church that others hold.  Instead, it represents a trap for us.

On the D&D moral axis, our lawfulness is undeniable.  “Do all in the name of the Lord,” we say, and we proceed to explain that in the context of Colossians 3:17, “name” means “authority”.  From that, it is easy to conclude that obedience to the authority of Christ is all that matters.  Thus, we need to marshal our arguments in such a way as to compel even the unwilling to obedience.  Every i must be dotted; every t must be crossed, whether you want to or not.

The problem is, though, that the New Testament doesn’t present itself as a Lawful Neutral system of ethics.  What underlies the law of Christ is not obedience, but love.  As Paul says in Romans 13:9, every commandment can be summed up in, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Rightly understood, every ordinance of God is an expression of love for somebody.  They exist not because God’s call to love is inadequate, but because our understanding of love is.  We are foolish and easily deceived, so we are prone to mistake selfishness for love.  By leading us to reject behavior that appeals to us but really is unloving, the commandments keep us on the path of godliness.

Because Christianity’s moral code is love-dependent, in the absence of love, it falls apart.  If you take love out of Christianity, you end up with Pharisaism or even worse.  Thus, Christian ethics always must be accepted internally rather than imposed externally.  If we make somebody go through the motions of loving God and others when they don’t share that love, all we have done is to create a hypocrite.

Lawful Neutral Christianity is seductive.  All of us have known the desire to compel someone else to be righteous, to beat them over the head with the Bible enough that they give in.  However, unless love is present, righteousness never will be.  The gospel cannot penetrate the hard hearts of the unwilling, but in those who desire to follow Jesus, it will produce not merely lawfulness, but goodness.

There are few evils that appall the soul more than the sexual abuse of children.  Most Christians find the thought so monstrous, so incredible, that they struggle to entertain the possibility that someone they know, someone they worship with, someone they think is a decent human being, might do such a thing.  Sadly, the problem is all too real.  As is true in any church, indeed in any organization that brings adults into contact with children, sexual predators have preyed on children in churches of Christ.

Sometimes, congregations have handled sexual abuse appropriately.  Too often, they have not.  Victims have not been believed because “Brother So-and-So would never do anything like that!”  Church leaders have tried to resolve the situation using the Matthew 18 process.  At its conclusion, they have required victims to continue worshiping with their abusers.  All of these errors have taken a toll of alienation, heartbreak, and too often continued predation.

Perhaps the root of the problem is that because we recognize sexual abuse as sexual sin, we presume that it ought to be treated only as sexual sin.  This is a mistake.  In every jurisdiction in the United States, sexual abuse is not only a sin.  It also is a crime. 

It makes for grim reading, but the penal code of the state of Tennessee clearly sets out every form of sexual abuse and exploitation of children as at least a Class C felony.  Thus, when confronted with an accusation of sexual abuse, we shouldn’t only be thinking Matthew 18.  We should be thinking Romans 13.

Romans 13 first applies to our duty to report.  I’ve been saying for years that preachers are mandated reporters, that we have a duty to report all credible accusations of child abuse to the proper authorities. 

In fact, that’s not true.  In Tennessee, everyone is a mandated reporter.  The Bible class teacher who hears a shocking story from one of her students, the church member who sees inappropriate contact, all must bring these things to the attention of the government.  God and Caesar have taken this decision out of our hands.

Indeed, even if the law did not require this of us, submitting evidence of sexual abuse to police investigation is the right thing to do.  This is true for two reasons.  First, although law enforcement is by no means perfect, they at least have been trained to conduct sexual-abuse investigations, which most of the rest of us have not.  They know what signs to look for and what questions to ask.

This expertise can protect the innocent as well as the guilty.  I’m aware of a case in which a well-meaning but clumsy and foolish ministry staff decided that they were going to go hunting for signs of sexual abuse among the children of their congregation.  In their ineptitude, they took a child’s innocent comment and transformed it into a claim of sexual abuse, putting a blameless family through months of suffering.

Can police investigations do the same thing?  Absolutely.  All human beings can fail in judgment and make mistakes.  The point of training, though, is to keep such mistakes to a minimum.

Second, having outsiders conduct the investigation limits the scope of the bias of the members.  When someone we know and love stands accused of despicable behavior, all of us will face a strong temptation to close our eyes to the evidence in front of us.  It is much easier to believe that a child is a liar than that a brother or sister in Christ is a monster.

In reality, only about 5 percent of accusations of sexual abuse are false.  Given the social cohesiveness of most churches of Christ and the crushing social penalties that would be meted out against those who have brought false accusations, I would imagine that the rate of such accusations in our brotherhood is even lower.  It is much more likely that even the preacher or the elder is a predator than it is that the child who has spoken up is lying.

After the investigation, after all the evidence has been brought to light, then it is appropriate to consider what spiritual steps ought to be taken against the accused.  Again, beware of bias!  We need to be honest enough to acknowledge that the Christian who has been convicted of sexual abuse almost certainly is a sexual abuser, even if we ourselves don’t see it.  I have shared some thoughts about the Matthew 18 process in such cases and its results here.

All of us would prefer to live in a world in which sexual abuse of children did not exist.  Tragically, that is not the world in which we do live, and the reach of the devil in this area extends even into the Lord’s church.  We cannot keep evil from happening, but we can keep it from flourishing.  Showing no tolerance for sexual exploitation and swiftly bringing it to the attention of the authorities is our best hope for protecting our children as much as possible.

NOTE:  This is an area in which all brethren of whatever doctrinal persuasion can and must agree.  If you would like to comment below on your own experience of sexual abuse, or to sit in mourning with those who have, that’s entirely appropriate.  If you would like to discuss the article or explore other ways to make our churches safe for our children, this is the place.  However, I will not allow the discussion to be derailed by ungodly or off-topic comments.