Newsletter — July 9, 2023

For the last forty or fifty years, Christians have fallen into the practice of not naming the name of Jesus when they speak out in the public square. Can you remember a politician or even a leading Christian ever saying, “Jesus hates homosexuality.” We know this because in Matthew 19 Jesus quotes from Genesis 1 and 2 where he says “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’” Jesus is absolutely clear. But Christians cop out using the name of the King, and instead refer to ambiguous and less specific terms like “The Moral Majority” or “Traditional Values” or “historical practice” or “biological science,” or use bumper stickers that say “God Bless America,” (not “Jesus Bless America”) etc. But nowadays the majority is not moral by biblical standards, and traditional values are two married men and two children in a family. Why do Christians shy away from using their Lord’s specific name? Because it puts a target on them of naming a historical person who taught clearly and took clear positions and who said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That’s exclusive, and it bothers people and puts them on edge; it says they are wrong to worship Buddha or Allah or themselves or pleasure or wealth, etc. But we must not shy away from naming the name of Jesus, because that is the Gospel: Jesus is Lord. To not mention his name as the foundation for all our thinking and living is to withhold the very salvation of man!