Joe Thorn

Wow.

Thanks, Joe, for your call for a humble and heart-broken engagement with our world. I appreciate your “words of grace” so often. At the same time, I note that Jesus himself was not above “crying out” in calling people to himself when it was necessary (e.g. John 7:28, 37; 12:44), and none of us should oppose earnestness born of a sense of danger and urgency (however uncomfortable it may make us). I suppose what we need above all is great discernment in these matters. Of course, I’m not saying that this is the kind of thing this fellow you saw was doing. I’ve seen my share of people “preaching” who were doing neither their hearers nor the Gospel any favors. But we should also avoid the fallacy of bifurcation (or a false dilemma), as if only one of the two options are available to us. There is a time to shout, and there is a time to sit down and talk. The occasion you mention here, it seems to me, might lend itself better to the latter, but would likely require speaking with a smaller number of men, perhaps over time instead of in a one-time encounter (a concept too many who think themselves “evangelists” seem to have missed [since “evangelism” only takes place in some Finney- or Graham-like mass crusade, they think]). At any rate, I identify with your heartbreak at the scene and long for that combination of winsomeness and faithfulness that looks like Christ.

And Jesse, … wow! I do think you’ve hit on some key motivators for the “offensive” behavior of a lot of folks who probably mean to do some good. Well said and worth saying. But I’m a little concerned about your statement that “…everyone will be held responsible for their choice regarding the truth that they were given, and no more.” I don’t know you or your theology, and I’m not making any accusations, but that “sounds” inclusivistic. Inclusivism readily admits Christ’s ontological necessity for salvation, but wavers (to one degree or another) when it comes to epistemological necessity of the knowledge of Christ. As Don Carson puts it, inclusivism holds that “[p]eople must respond in repentance and faith to whatever light they may have, and should not, it is argued, be held responsible for light that they do not have.” But the very urgency of taking the Gospel into all the world is the biblical conviction that apart from its truth content and the sole Object of faith that its truth points to, people will be without the means or hope of salvation at all. God’s justice, then, will be seen in impartially holding people responsible for their sin, if they are not found in Christ.

Also, your last remark about “a wrong perception of God’s character (’Fed up’ with humans and mad as h*ll VS. Just and intently interested in redeeming humanity)” sets up a false dilemma. In fact, Scripture reveals God, the just and redeeming God, at times fed up with people and mad as h*ll. I think, e.g. of Genesis 6:6 where we read that the Lord was not only “sorry that he had made man on the earth” but “grieved” as well, a word that indicates not just “hurt” but “offended” and “outraged”. Or I think of Isaiah’s string of prophecies concerning Judah and Israel (Isa. 7:1-11:16), which have a lot to say about the wrath and fury of God. Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon on “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” comes to mind too. As Ray Ortlund points out, Edwards preached as bluntly and graphically as he did on this subject because he meant to do all he could to wake people up to the danger of their natural sinful condition and convince them of God’s justice in condemning them eternally. Only then, he knew, would they be prepared to hear the gospel as good news! Unless people were first made sensible of their guilt and their deserved punishment for it, the gift of all-sufficient grace would be meaningless to them—something optional to be taken at leisure rather than the one thing essential to be immediately and altogether embraced.

Our generation has almost lost sight of the wrath of God, and the consequences of sin, and that’s one of the main reasons we have such a miserable grasp on, and fail to appreciate with much depth at all, what it means to be saved by the grace of God. We seem to think it’s all going to work out fine in the end if we just sort of piddle along, don’t get arrested, and live tolerably moral and religious lives and be sincere about the truth and light we have. It’s not! And that’s why Jesus speaks so solemnly about that day when “many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’” and he will say in response, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” What a day … a great day of a very many terrible surprises.

Well, sorry to get off preaching here, guys, but I’m truly impassioned about these things, and about precision in our thinking and talking about these things. God’s best, brothers.