“You Cannot Be My Disciple If”: You Disagree With Jesus on Marriage

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!

-2 Corinthians 13:5 (ESV)

What a time to be alive. We are truly blessed to live in the Pax Americana, an age of unparalleled theological enlightenment. At no other point in human history have so many people been blessed with an intimate knowledge of the person and work of Jesus. Every day there are hordes of celebrities, authors, bloggers and crunchy moms that routinely enlighten us with the revealed mystery of Who Christ is and what He thinks of the issues facing us in Donald Trump’s America.

It almost seems too good to be true. I mean, isn’t it a fantastic coincidence that Jesus seems to love and hate all of the same things that our culture loves and hates? Isn’t it interesting that Jesus has blessed so many people with fame, popularity and success when He actually promised that His followers would be persecuted because they followed His teaching? Isn’t it strange that He commanded His followers to not be ashamed of Him? How could we possibly be ashamed of Him if He is so accepting and tolerant?

It’s either a fantastical coincidence on the same level as entering Narnia through the wardrobe, or it’s not true. The simple fact is that not everyone who claims to be a Christian actually is a Christian. Jesus says as much in the Gospel of Matthew:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day 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 then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

-Matthew 7:21-23 (ESV)

Jesus couldn’t be any clearer. There are individuals who think that they know Jesus and will experience the worst tragedy imaginable. They will appear before Jesus at judgement day and Jesus will tell them that He doesn’t know them. In light of this, we have to ask ourselves: How do we actually know if we are following Christ? How can we determine who really knows Jesus and who doesn’t?

While it’s true that only God can see the depths of our hearts, it’s also true that Jesus and the other New Testament authors were very precise when it comes to the beliefs and behaviors of those who genuinely know Jesus. We have the very words of God contained within the pages of the Bible, therefore we need not consult anyone else. Rather, we can know what Jesus has said about Himself and are able to test others claims about Jesus accordingly.

I believe that there are five lies about Jesus and what it means to follow Him that have become popular among those who claim to know Him. I believe each of these lies are pernicious and, if not confessed and repented of, will lead people away from Christ and into eternal damnation.

That is not hyperbole. Jesus has told us that He is “the Way, the Truth and the Life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him”. (John 14:6) There is nothing more important than ensuring that we are in relationship with the real Jesus and not simply a figment of our imagination. In the coming days I will be releasing a series of blog entries, each devoted to a popular lie that people believe about following Jesus. Today we’ll start with what is currently the most popular lie in our culture:

#LoveisLove. Committed LGBTQ+ relationships can honor Jesus just as much as committed heterosexual relationships.

Let me be as clear as humanly possible:

You can not follow Christ and believe that the LGBTQ+ lifestyle is holy and pleasing to the Lord.

I know that infuriates some of you. Some really sweet, nice people have lied to you. They told you that Jesus never spoke out against homosexuality, so it can’t be sinful. This is what nice people do when they don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. Fortunately Jesus isn’t “a nice guy”, He loves us too much to lie to us.Jesus is love and He cares more about your soul than your feelings.

Don’t believe the lie that Jesus never spoke specifically about homosexuality so that gives us carte blanche authority to marry or have sex with whoever or whatever we want. The simple fact is that Jesus did speak about marriage and reaffirmed the Old Testament framework of a heterosexual lifelong union:

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”He answered, “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‘? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

– Matthew 19:3-6 (ESV)

Did you catch that? When asked about marriage (specifically divorce, which God also hates, see Malachi 2:13-16) Jesus reaffirms that marriage is one man and one woman coming together as one flesh. Yet somehow, we’re supposed to believe that Jesus was mysteriously silent about the issue when He walked the earth 2,000+ years ago, but now, in 2017 he’s a huge advocate for gender fluidity and LGBTQ+ relationships. He could have responded that “two individuals” become one flesh, but He didn’t.

You’ve been lied to. It’s a lie that Jesus didn’t speak about what a marriage is. It’s also a massive lie that changing the definition of marriage is an isolated issue and isn’t that big of a deal. Marriage is a huge deal because God created men and women in His image and he designed marriage to be a visible and tangible reflection of His character and goodness to the world. 1 John 4:8 tells us that “God is love”, therefore, to change the definition of marriage is to change the definition of love, which is to change the definition of God. Marriage isn’t an isolated issue that doesn’t matter, it’s integral to our understanding of the character of God. (For a more detailed look at this concept please read my blog article “Not Something to Be Grasped“)

This means that you and I get to choose: who will we believe? Jesus or your next door neighbor with the coexist bumper sticker on their Prius? That’s up to you but I’d submit that your neighbor who couldn’t find their car keys last week probably doesn’t know more about Jesus than Jesus does. The same goes for Rachel Held Evans, Jen Hatmaker, and anybody else who contradicts the words of Jesus. Consider Paul’s warning to the Galatians:

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

-Galatians 1:6-10 (ESV)

There is no other Gospel. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar and a heretic. They care more about your feelings than your soul. The Gospel is offensive. It’s offensive primarily because it proclaims to each of us that we aren’t ok. We’re not good people who need Jesus’ help to be better people. We are dead corpses who need to be resurrected. You can and should come to Jesus as you are, but if you stay that way that means you haven’t actually come to Jesus.

How do we know if we truly do love Christ? Jesus tells us plainly in the Gospel of John:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

-John 14:15 (ESV)

Here’s a neat fact: if you study the greek, this verse actually translates to “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”. It may not be easy, but it’s not complicated. That may come as a shock to you since you have probably heard that Jesus is super chill and cool with anything and everything. You might have also heard that we can essentially ignore the Old Testament Law now that Jesus has replaced it, which conveniently means that there are a whole host of sins that are no longer sins. Not to worry, however, Jesus had something to say about those lies as well:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

-Matthew 5:17-20 (ESV)

The bottom line is that Jesus may not be who you think He is. During His earthly ministry Jesus reaffirmed the Old Testament framework for what constituted a marriage. You can disagree with Jesus about the definition of marriage or you can humble yourself, submit to His commands and follow Him. What you can’t do is disagree with Him and still claim to be following Him.

So, what can you do? Repent of your sin and really, actually follow Jesus. What makes the Gospel so incredible is that we get to give up our nothing and in return we receive Christ’s everything. The Gospel calls us to lay down our brokenness and sin and to follow Jesus. Jesus offers us a better way, but it’s only for those who recognize and admit that their way leads to death. After all, Jesus is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”.

Who will you listen to? Who will you follow?

The choice is yours, but know this, when it’s all said and done it’s far more important to be on the right side of eternity than the right side of history.

(Stay tuned for the next entry in the “You Cannot Be My Disciple If…” series which will focus on social justice)