God’s Glory

In a well known Sermon from the greatest American Theologian and perhaps the greatest mind ever produced by America, Jonathan Edwards, addressed this is a classic Sermon entitled, “Dissertation on the End for which God Created the World.” In a sermon that could not be preached today in most Churches because of how involved its argumentation is Edwards wrote,

“All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works, is included in that one phrase, “the glory of God;” which is the name by which the ultimate end of God’s works is most commonly called in Scripture; and seems most aptly to signify the thing.”

Jonathan Edwards
The End For Which God Created the World

And so right from the state we offer that God does all He does for His own Glory. Edwards was not alone in this thinking. Calvin himself offered,

“God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.”

We see that Edwards is consistent with Calvin. Calvin held that the Salvation of man had as its chief end “God’s Glory.” Edwards merely expanded that thought to insist that not only man’s salvation but all that God did has as its end God’s glory.

For Calvin this whole world, moved by God’s providence, was a “theater of God’s Glory.”

If we are going to pursue the idea that God does all He for His own Glory we should have a operating idea of what we mean by the word “Glory.”

We might offer that God’s Glory includes the quality of His activities, His attributes, and perfections. We would talk about the Revelation of Jesus Christ who, Scripture says was the “outshining of God’s glory.”

The OT word for “glory” comes from the Hebrew Word for weightiness, or heaviness. What that is communicating is the idea of substance and import. We see an example of the use of the word “glory” in this direction when we read of Joseph’s revelation of himself to his brothers. He tells them,

“So you shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that you have seen; and you shall hurry and bring my father down here.”

Joseph desired that his weightiness as seen in his position, status, and wealth to be conveyed to his Father.

In the NT the idea of “glory” points to much the same idea. It is that which is true about a man that is praiseworthy.

Matthew 6:2, “Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.”

“Glory” here is what effects praise from men because of the quality and character of the action.

So when the Bible speaks of the glory of God it is speaking of that which is praiseworthy about Him … it is speaking of His worthiness, honor, and exalted Character. When “glory” is used of God it is His supreme Majesty that is in view.

When we suggest then that God does all He does for His own Glory we are suggesting that God’s primary motivation for all His doing His is Glory … is His own Majesty … is His own Supremacy … is His own Exaltedness … is Himself.

We might ask here what other motivation could God find for doing all His doing except Himself? If God were to pursue anything else as His primary motivation, besides Himself, God would at that point be making that other lesser thing, whatever it was that was motivating Him, to be something higher than Himself. That something else would become God to God.

Example — If God’s motivation was Human happiness and as such God was motivated in all He does by human happiness than the chief end of God would be to glorify Human happiness, and if the chief end of God would be to glory human happiness then human happiness would be God’s god. But God’s motivation does not terminate on human happiness, but God’s chief end is Himself.

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:36)

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:16)

Now this does not mean that Human happiness and God’s glory are in Contradiction. Clearly the overflow of God’s glory is the happiness of God’s people.

The understanding that God does all that He does for His own Glory has made a difference in the way Theologies have been crafted as many have noted in Church History. Some Theologies have been crafted so as to find their center terminating on man’s rescue and so on justification. As noble as that theme is if we terminate God’s motivation on man’s justification as if that is God’s chief end, then we end up with a theology that is anthropocentric. Reformed Theology saw a different center…. a different end that God was pursuing even in Justification so that Justification was not a ultimate end but only a proximate end of God pursuing His glory.

Here Robert Letham offers some words that hits upon what I am aiming at here,

“Perhaps most striking is the difference in emphasis on justification between Luther and Lutheranism on the hand and Reformed theology on the other. For the former, justification is central to the whole of theology. It is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It functions as a kind of critical methodological tool by which any aspect of theology, or theology as a whole is to be judged….However, there is hardly an instance in Reformed theology placing justification in the center. Not that Reformed theology opposed justification by faith alone, or salvation by pure grace. On the contrary, they saw salvation in its entirety as a display of the sovereign and free mercy of God. The explanation lay in the fact that, for Reformed theology, everything took place to advance the glory of God. Thus the chief purpose of theology and of the whole of life was not the rescue of humanity but the glory of God. The focus was theocentric rather than soteriological. Even in the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), where soteriological concerns are more prominent (one of its authors, Zacharias Ursinus [1533-1587] was formerly a Lutheran) the famous first question ‘What is your only comfort in life and death?’ is answered w/ reference to the action of the Trinity, beginning, ‘I am not my own but belong… to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.

Following from this was an attempt by Reformed theology to grasp the unity of creation and redemption. The whole of life was seen in the embrace of God’s revelatory purpose. With the covenant at its heart, the whole of life was to display God’s glory….

Robert Letham
The Work of Christ — pg. 189-190

God’s people understood the idea that God did all He did for His own glory. The appeal in their prayers throughout Scripture demonstrates that they understood that they were to pin their hopes upon the Character of God as being the motivation for God to answer their requests,

Here we are going to spend some time looking at that idea.

That God’s glory was the basis upon which God’s people prayed is seen everywhere throughout Scripture

That God does all He does for His own Glory was understood by God’s people in the Scripture and was the foundation upon which they made their appeals to God.

(Appeal to God’s Glory)

Exodus 32:12 — (Context — Moses comes down from the Mountain and finds the children of Israel in the midst of
Idolatry and God threatens to wipe them out.)

Listen for the foundation upon which their Appeal to God is made for not destroying Israel

12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.

Numbers 14:13-19 (Context — God is threatening to destroy Israel because of their complaint about the prospective
of their being crushed by the inhabitants of the Promised Land.)

Listen for the foundation upon which their Appeal to God is made for not destroying Israel

13 And Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;)

14 And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou Lord art among this people, that thou Lord art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night.

15 Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying,

16 Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness.

17 And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying,

18 The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

19 Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.

Joshua 7:9 (Context — Israel has been defeated at Ai over Achan’s disobedience. God threatens to destroy Israel. Joshua intercedes in prayer)

Listen for the foundation upon which their Appeal to God is made for not destroying Israel

9 For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?

II Samuel 7:26 (Context — God has given David permission to build a house for God to reside in)

Listen to David’s chief desire for this proposed house,

And let thy name be magnified for ever …

I Kings 8:43, 8:60 — (Context — Solomon dedicates the Temple)

Hear Solomon’s chief desire in the establishment of the Temple that God’s glory might be known

“that all people of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee …”

“That all the people of the earth may know that the Lord is God, and that there is none else.”

Parallel account — II Chronicles 6:32-33 — (Context — Request that prayer might be heard @ the Temple

“… in order that all peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you.”

I Kings 18:36-37 (Context — Contest on Mt. Carmel — That God might be vindicated over Baal)

Hear the appeal to God’s Glory in that God might be known

“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel… that this people may know that thou art the Lord God…”

II Kings 19:19 — (Context — Threats of destruction to King Hezekiah by the Servants of the Assyrian King)

Hear the appeal for deliverance on the basis of God’s reputation … (His glory) being known.

19 Now therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only.

Parallel account

Isaiah 37:20 — (Context –Hezekiah’s prayer for deliverance from Sennacherib, King of Assyria)

Now therefore, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord …

Jeremiah 14:7, 21 — (Context — Relief from famine)

Jeremiah’s prayer — Pinned upon God’s Glory

“do thou it for thy name’s sake”
“Do not abhor us, for thy name’s sake, do not disgrace the throne of thy glory: remember …

A theme we find in the Psalms on the lips of David

Psa. 25:11 — Context — for the pardon of guilt

“For thy name’s sake”

Psa. 31:4 — Context — request for leading and guidance

“For thy name’s sake”

Ps. 79:9 — Context — For help and deliverance

“For the glory of thy name … for your name’s sake”

Ps. 109:21 — Context — Deliverance

“For your name’s sake”

Daniel 9:16-19 — Context — Prayer for God to have mercy on the Exiles of Israel and to restore them

“… For your own sake … because of your great mercy … for your own sake … because your city and your people are called by your name.”

I Chronicles 17:19, 21, 24 — Context — Prayer that God would do as he had promised to David

“… and your name will be established and magnified forever.”

II Chronicles 4:11 — Context — King Asa’s prayer going into battle against Zerah the Ethiopian

“…Let not man prevail against you…”

II Chronicles 20:9 — Context — King Jehoshaphat’s prayer for deliverance from enemies Moab & Ammon

“….your name is in your house…”

Now what is the implication of this?

One sure implication of this is that we cannot center ourselves upon God and His glory without Knowing God and His character. If we pin our hope in our prayer life upon God and His glory and then have wrong understandings of God then we are bound to go amiss. We will inevitably have zeal without knowledge.

As such, if we are to live in keeping with God’s glory we have to know the mind of God and the only where we can find the mind of God is in Holy Writ.

Ann Elizabeth Jagt — Requisiet in Pace

60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit[e] and life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. 65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Ann was and remains a Christian. And when we speak of her we would do well to remember that truth first and foremost.

To have been called to be a Christian means ultimately there is an understanding that, having been bought with a price, one’s life is not one’s own, and so all is life is lived under the authority of the Lord Christ who gave Himself as a Sacrifice for His people.

You see in being a Christian one is given the understanding that they are accountable to the God of the whole cosmos and so they fashion their life in keeping with His Word.

This confidence on Ann’s part of the fact that Christ died the just for the unjust so that His people might have Peace with God … that Christ loved Ann and gave Himself for her becomes then the explanation for who God created her and called her to be.

So deeply was this sense of abandonment to Christ owned by Ann that Ann found the passage in John we just read particularly comforting during her long battle with Cancer. In context the Lord Christ had been spoken truths that were hard to accept and as a result fair weather followers begin to peel off from following Christ. Jesus queries His core of 12 disciples if they were going to leave also and they respond with words that speak both of a divinely given understanding and of resolve.

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

The disciples understood here that no matter how difficult the Words of the Lord Christ might be it was simply the case that all other Words were empty words.

Ann embraced this passage because as freely purchased with the blood of Christ she understood that no matter how difficult the path may be it was simply the case that Christ was the answer. Where else could she go with this Cancer? Christ alone had the words of Eternal life. Embitterment was not an option because Christ alone had the words of Eternal life. And so she entrusted herself to Christ and the Providence of God and not only refused embitterment but refused Fear.

One of Ann’s favorite Scripture was

“God has not given us a Spirit of Fear but the power of love and of a sound mind.”

In light of this Word from God Ann did not give into fear and relentlessly taught her children not to give into fear. This, of course is a Christian virtue itself given by the God of all grace. As Christians we are called to fear only God and when we offer up our fear to anything that is not God we, at the same time divinize what ever it is we fear other than God and so become idolaters.

There are many virtues we can rightly speak of regarding Ann but we should recognize that any virtue we speak of says more about the magnificence of the Creator than it does about the Creature.

It was the Gospel of Jesus Christ for Sinners that crafted and shaped Ann. It was Biblical Christianity that explains her family-centric orientation where she submitted to her husband and poured herself into her children. It was the Christian faith that explains her fierce loyalties to friends. It was nothing but the finished work of Christ and the confidence in God’s undeserved love that found her optimistic and cheerful in her living and dying.

This is what the Christian faith does. It takes people, who are remarkably unexceptional in and of themselves, like all of us who call upon the name of Christ, and by the Hands of the Sovereign craftsman it shapes, molds, hammers, and refines so that the result is a person who shines like a star in the Universe. The explanation for a life well lived then is not found in mortals for there is nothing in us that recommends us to God’s favor. The explanation of a life well lived is found in God’s favor as revealed in Christ’s work on the Cross and as then fashioned by the Master’s hands. The explanation in a life well lived is the truth that Grace restores nature.

So, considered proximately the legacy of Ann is her role of wife and mother but ultimately the legacy of Ann is that Her Savior, even in the context of what we might count as severe Mercy, was Faithful to Her.

She lived in confidence of the fact that He alone had the words of Eternal life and she is now at rest in the one who loved her and gave himself for her.

The War On Boundaries

“Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.”

Christianity is a faith characterized by boundaries, hierarchy, and distinctions. The God of Christianity is a God who assigns roles, who segregates (day from night, land from water, sun from moon, female from male, etc.) and whose existence is the means by which all differences are defined.

Perhaps the greatest boundary in Scripture is the one known as the Creator Creature boundary. It is the boundary that the Serpent and our first parents sought to remove. Not satisfied with a creaturely role our first parents aspired to erase the Creator Creature boundary and transcend so to be as God knowing good from evil.

Since that time the temptation for fallen man has been to transcend the boundaries set by God, in order that, by their own fiat word, they themselves could dictate their own boundaries and so create a reality where they erased Gods’ boundaries and set their own, or at other times merely attempt to erase all boundaries so that “all colors bleed into one.”

We live in such a time when the sin du-jour is the war against all boundaries. Man cannot be limited by his race, his ethnicity, his gender, any transcendent ethic, or any ordained status or definition. This mindset is so ubiquitous that by my usage of the pronouns “his” in the last sentence I have already revealed how insensitive I am to the modern demand that a pronoun boundary that prefers the masculine pronoun is an example of the lack of respect for the erasure of the old boundary once characteristic of the English grammar.

According to our Brave New Egalitarian Boundary-less world man must be allowed to make himself over and over again according to his own fiat word and according to his own template. No boundaries can be allowed to stifle or limit man. Gods after all, by definition, may not be limited.

The evidence of the assault on the idea of boundaries is everywhere, but unfortunately it is getting so common that we no longer have the ability to see it given how close we are to the boundary-less state of affairs. On this subject we have arrived at the proverb, “if you want to know what the water is like don’t ask a fish.

Still the evidence is omnipresent,

1.) The US government, in collusion with the National Chamber of commerce and leftist Marxists are currently literally trying to erase the southern border with Mexico.

2.) It is all the rage among judicial tyrants, by the means of legal fiat, to erase a boundary that has been set in place for millennium in Western Civilization which insisted that marriage requires one from each sex. Judges from Indiana to Utah are telling us that the Christian and historic boundary that defined marriage is now passe.

3.) It was just announced that the Speaker of the House is taking the POTUS to court to sue him because he is not honoring the Separation of powers (Boundaries). It seems that the man who is allegedly POTUS doesn’t care for the boundaries that define his position and role. He will erase those boundaries and set his own.

4.) Recently Facebook went from the traditional two gender option (Male — Female) to a new offering of 51 choices. All previous gender boundaries erased. Man can create his own boundaries in terms of gender.

5.) New forms from the Government no longer read in such a way as to fill in names for “Father,” and “Mother,” choosing instead “Parent 1,” and “Parent 2.”

6.) Recently in Houston, Texas it was decided that public restrooms are now boundary-less.

7.) The fashion world is run by sodomites and so they give us female models who look like little boys with breasts. In such a way the boundary between desiring a woman with curves and desiring a little boy is eliminated.

8.) No ID required for voting. This is to eliminate the boundary between Citizen and non-Citizen. It has become so upside down that it is fast becoming more of an advantage to be a non-citizen than to be a citizen.

9.) Even in the Reformed Church there are those who insist that God requires the boundaries of cultures be extinguished. Such men are convinced that only in a cultural-less, boundary-less “Christian” world can God be glorified.

10.) The mantra is relentless which states that a family can be defined anyway one wants. The boundary that once defined a family as blood relation sharing a common faith has now been eliminated. We all understood that there would be exceptions at time to this truth but for generations we held that normatively, the boundary that defined family, was blood relation sharing a common faith.

11.) The next boundary under assault is between adult and child. Already organizations exist that are lobbying for the sex between adult and children.

12.) The Pulpit used to have a boundary around it by following God’s Word in allowing only Men as Elders. That boundary has largely fallen.

13.) With the rise of deconstructionism in literature the boundary between author and reader has been destroyed. The reader is now the author and the author has been eclipsed. This is the inevitable consequence to eliminating a transcendent Author of all reality. If one eliminates God eventually one must eliminate all other authors. Boundaries in literature fall readily.

14.) Sodomy is on the verge of being publicly recognized. Here is another boundary being erased. Heretofore the public understood that male parts went with female parts. That was a boundary. It is now a receding boundary. Whereas the former boundary said that men and women in marriage should work together to create life. The new boundary insists that the life found in man should be surrounded by death found in the male evacuation canal. The new boundary insists that two women should pursue sterility by rejecting men.

All of this destruction of boundaries is the consequence of Kant’s subjectivism and the subsequent rise of Kierkegaardian existentialism. Man cannot reach the noumena realm and therefore men are allowed to arrange the phenomena realm as they will. Wittgenstein reinforced all this with his language games and postmodernism has sealed the deal for the everyday man on the street.

The elimination of stable and shared boundaries can not help but lead to social order upheaval. No society can long withstand a boundary-less world in religion, morals, fashion, art, education, law, etc. Further the elimination of stable and shared boundaries means the persecution of those who do insist that transcendent boundaries exist. If Biblical Christians will not share in the Brave New Boundary-less world where the only boundaries will be the elimination of boundaries then Biblical Christians become enemies to the State God.

Anthony Esolen on this matter offers this insight on how God is a God who created a world with God given boundaries,

“When God made the world, He made things, with their characteristic boundaries. That is what the sacred author of Job insists upon. God said to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And, “Who shut up the sea within doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb,” and said, “to here shall you come, but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?”

Likewise in Genesis we see that God divides and distinguishes when He creates, not only when He divides the light from the darkness, and sets the firmament between heaven and earth, and orders the waters into one place so that the dry land may appear. He does so when He makes every living thing after its kind, a crucial phrase for understanding the whole. The kinds are so by means of boundaries: an apple tree brings forth apple blossoms after its kind; birds flock together and mate after their kinds. Man too is made after his kind, male and female; and it is characteristic of man to be made by God, for God: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

The sad thing in all of this is that when mankind tears down God’s ordained boundaries they at the same time tear down themselves. Man is not God and man cannot violate God’s order and boundaries without at the same time violating himself.

We live in a time and epoch where boundaries are being attacked. This time is not likely to end soon unless God is pleased to graciously visit us with judgment.

Morecraft’s Great Delight

“I gave a couple messages on Racism a few years ago — condemning Racism as blasphemous and all kinds of terrible things. And I got this letter, and this letter was, I guess, 15-20 pages long. This guy had spent a great amount of time and effort writing me this letter rebuking me and it wasn’t … I mean it was intellectual, it wasn’t nice, it wasn’t sweet, it was very nasty and uh I read the 1st paragraph and I saw where it was going and I threw it in the trash. I took great delight that this guy had spent hours writing this letter and I read one paragraph. He wanted me to respond and I’m here to tell you today he wasn’t worth it.”

Rev. Joe Morecraft
Recent Sunday Sermon

1.) I’m glad Rev. Morecraft is against Racism. Once the definition of Racism is agreed upon every Christian minister should be opposed to Racism.

2.) He says that the person who wrote this letter is not worth answering and then proceeds to answer him in this anonymous type fashion.

3.) If he didn’t read the letter, save the first paragraph, as he insists, then how could he possibly know it was “Intellectual?”

4.) Likewise, if he didn’t read the letter, save the the first paragraph, as he insists, how could he know it wasn’t nice and was “nasty?”

That must have been some kind of opening paragraph.

5.) I know of one person who sent Rev. Morecraft a 5 page open letter that was substantive, intellectual and engaging. I guess that was a different letter than this 15-20 page letter. Rev. Morecraft didn’t answer that one either … unless he’s confused the two letters and is answering it here.

What Do These Three Men Have In Common?

This from the book, “New Covenant Theology: Questions Answered.” — pg. 154

“Suppose that it were legal in our country for a man to marry his sister. If this were the case, and a man who attended your church wanted to marry his sister, would your church perform the wedding?”

Answer

“We need to get our initial shivers and our “yuck, ick, disgusting” first reactions out of the way. . . . In the New Covenant Scriptures no mention is made of the impropriety of marrying one’s sister. Although the practice is illegal in many countries, which makes it sinful for Christians living in those countries to do (Romans 13:1), it seems that if you and your sister are both believers and you live in a country that deems marriage between siblings to be a lawful practice, then your marriage would be holy in God’s sight.”

Rev. Steve Lehrer
Pastor — Lighthouse Baptist Church in Sussex, Wisconsin
Educated @ Westminster Seminary — California

——————————————————

1.) If one insists that the Mosaic covenant was a “covenant of works,” in a way, per the Republication theory, all kinds of bizarre stuff is bound to follow.

2.) Rev. Lehrer has made the State to be “God walking on the Earth,” since the state in his scheme is that agency which defines what is and is not sin.

3.) I also have shivers and a “yuck, ick, disgusting” reaction to Bestiality. Must I get over that also since the New Covenant Scriptures make no mention of bedding your favorite Heifer?

Now, I freely admit that New Covenant Theology might be sightly different than full blown R2K, HOWEVER, some of the R2K chaps who were educated at the same Institution that Lehrer was have said some similar things.

Here are two examples,

“Not being a theonomist or theocrat, I do not believe it is the state’s role to enforce religion or Christian morality. So allowing something legally is not the same as endorsing it morally. I don’t want the state punishing people for practicing homosexuality. Other Christians disagree. Fine. That’s allowed. That is the distinction. Another example – beastiality (sic) is a grotesque sin and obviously if a professing member engages in it he is subject to church discipline. But as one who leans libertarian in my politics, I would see problems with the state trying to enforce it; not wanting the state involved at all in such personal practices; I’m content to let the Lord judge it when he returns. A fellow church member might advocate for beastiality (sic) laws. Neither would be in sin whatever the side of the debate. Now if the lines are blurry in these disctinctions,(sic) that is always true in pastoral ministry dealing with real people in real cases in this fallen world.”

Rev. Todd Bordow — Reformed Minister
R2K Practitioner
Educated at Westminster West — California

“Although a contractual relationship denies God’s will for human dignity, I could affirm domestic partnerships as a way of protecting people’s legal and economic security.”

“The challenge there is that two Christians who hold the same beliefs about marriage as Christians may appeal to neighbor-love to support or to oppose legalization of same-sex marriage.”

Dr. Mike Horton — Reformed Theologian
R2K Practitioner
Professor at Westminster West — California

How long until people begin to realize that Westminster West –California is a serious problem?