Unpop Culture

Those who compare the New and Old Testaments can walk away scratching their heads, wondering if the two are equally valid products of the same God. The words and actions of Jesus seem infused with love and forgiveness, whereas the words and actions of God in the Old Testament can seem more focused on wrath and judgment. How do we reconcile the two? Should we reconcile the two? Yes, I believe they can be reconciled—but not by ignoring or dismissing their differences. The truth is, there are plenty of apparent contradictions in Scripture. To ignore them or pretend they don’t exist would be intellectually dishonest. However, as I explained last week , one thing we shouldn’t do is use the words of Christ to somehow disprove all the potentially controversial words of God in the Old Testament. Such an act might possibly be based on good motives, but it is nonetheless misguided. In order to deal with the narrative and theological tensions that do exist, it does us no good to creat...

My wife and I didn’t kiss each other until the week of our wedding. It wasn’t that we were scared of physical intimacy (far from it!). It was based on a desire to avoid temptation and pursue purity (2 Tim. 2:22). We know not every Christian couple has followed the same practice. That’s because God hasn’t laid out all the specifics regarding how we are to pursue romance and marriage. Where Scripture is unclear or silent, we need to exercise wisdom and discernment in our choices. In such cases, if our desire is to glorify God—and not to get as close to the line of compromise without actually crossing it—God will, I think, be honored in our differing practices. Some proponents of purity seem to disagree. I recently read an article about an upcoming documentary on virginity. The film’s protagonists appear to elevate certain extra-biblical practices to the status of universal Christian principles. These practices include no kissing between a man and woman until their wedding day...

Did Jesus use a double standard when dealing with people? It almost seems that way. Generally speaking, He reacted harshly to the scribes and Pharisees while showing tenderness to the promiscuous and delinquent. It isn’t because only one of the groups was in the wrong—they both were. Hypocrisy and debauchery are both sins, so why treat some sinners with force and others with gentleness? The answer is the distinction between law and gospel . To quote an article in the Lutheran Study Bible , “ One of the principles of Law and Gospel is that the Law is used with unrepentant sinners and the Gospel is used with repentant sinners.” Or, to use the words of Martin Luther, “For this also must be noted: that as the voice of the law is brought to bear only upon those who neither feel nor know their sins…so the word of grace [i.e., the gospel] comes only to those who are distressed by a sense of sin and tempted to despair” ( Bondage of the Will ). The law’s purpose is to awaken a dead—or,...