Thursday, March 11, 2010

Believing the Gospel for Everyone...

This blog post by Dr. Russell Moore has been making the rounds in the blogosphere for the last two days; he's answering a question a young woman asked about how much of a potential spouse's sexual history she should need/want to know.

What I so appreciated about his response is that he goes straight to her heart. And regardless of the past or present sin of a spouse (or anyone else), he hones in on our propensity to make relationships performance-based instead of grace-based. Which is not how God receives us, and it's not how God calls us to receive each other.

Here's the best part of the answer (imo):
If he is repentant, seeing his past sin as hell-deserving but crucified, then you should receive him (all else being equal), just as you have been received.

You are not “owed” a virgin because you are. Your sexual purity wasn’t part of a quid pro quo in which God would guarantee you a sexually unbroken man. Your sexual purity is your obligation as a creature of God. And you have rebelled at other points, and been forgiven. If you believe the gospel, you believe the gospel for everyone, and not just for yourself.

If your future husband is repentant, and forgiven, and yet you are “tortured” by the thoughts of his past, then the issue for you is one of personal pride and a refusal to see oneself as a gospel-forgiven sinner.

I pray that, more and more, God frees me from my pride and helps me to see other sinners as being just as covered by the blood as I am (and give them as much grace in their shortcomings as I give myself).


On an entirely different, much more delightful note, we had dinner tonight with church friends who were telling us about a discipleship-type meeting that they'd had with some very distinctly not-churched folks at our church. What was remarkable to me was that the non-churched folks admitted to our friends that they had expected to feel judged when they came, but they felt very much welcomed and not-judged. Praise God, and what a goal to aspire to!


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