He is Jehovah Tsidkenu ~ The Lord Our Righteousness!

Ed's Note: Jehovah Tsidkenu (or the Lord Our Righteousness) is one of the compound redemptive names of Jehovah-God.  God is and becomes the answer to whatever your needs are.  

...my Righteousness, my Provider, my Everpresent Help, my Creator, my Sufficiency, my Healer, my Banner (he even goes ahead of me), my Peace, my Owner, my Master, my Judge, my Lord of All, my Shepherd...

Related Posts:   
He is my Everything ~ The Compound Redemptive Names of God  and 
"I AM WHO I AM".

The Righteous Branch

1Woe unto the shepherds that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith Jehovah. 2Therefore thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, against the shepherds that feed my people: Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them; behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith Jehovah. 3And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and multiply. 4And I will set up shepherds over them, who shall feed them; and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be lacking, saith Jehovah.

5Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

6In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called: Jehovah our righteousness.

7Therefore, behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that they shall no more say, As Jehovah liveth, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; 8but, As Jehovah liveth, who brought up and who led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all the countries whither I had driven them. And they shall dwell in their own land.~ Jeremiah 23

The Nashville Statement ~ John Piper

Precious Clarity on Human Sexuality

Introducing the Nashville Statement

Article by

John Piper

Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org

In recent years, the celebration of attempts to transform oneself from male to female, or female to male, and the normalization of same-sex attraction, including so-called “same-sex marriage,” have reconfigured the global landscape of sexual ethics.

It is timely and hopeful, therefore, that the Nashville Statement has appeared at this time. With a focus on this new ethical landscape, the statement aims to help clarify Christian convictions.

Tragic Darkness, Beautiful Light

Last Friday, August 25, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) jointly hosted a gathering of Christian leaders in Nashville. The purpose of the meeting was to finalize and approve the Nashville Statement in the hope of providing a biblically faithful standard in our day on these particular issues of human sexuality. I read the statement with a kind of sorrowful joy, which seems inevitable when beautiful light is spoken into tragic darkness. I wrote the following endorsement when I received a copy of the final draft:

The Nashville Statement is a Christian manifesto concerning issues of human sexuality. It speaks with forthright clarity, biblical conviction, gospel compassion, cultural relevance, and practical helpfulness. There is no effort to equivocate for the sake of wider, but muddled, acceptance.

It is built on the persuasion that the Christian Scriptures speak with clarity and authority for the good of humankind. It is permeated by the awareness that we are all sinners in need of divine grace through Jesus Christ. It affirms with joy that no form of sexual sin is beyond forgiveness and healing. It touches the most fundamental and urgent questions of the hour, without presuming to be a blueprint for political action. And it will prove to be, I believe, enormously helpful for thousands of pastors and leaders hoping to give wise, biblical, and gracious guidance to their people.

The difference between the Nashville Statement and the Danvers Statement, produced in the late 1980s by CBMW, is that they deal with different issues. The Danvers Statement unfolded and commended complementarianism over against egalitarianism. The focus was on the meaning of manhood and womanhood as expressed in the marriage relationship and in church leadership. The main point was that God has called men to be the Christlike leaders in their marriages (Ephesians 5:23, 25), and to be those who bear the special responsibility of authoritative teaching and leadership in the church (1 Timothy 2:12–13).

Modern Manifesto

The realities of homosexuality and transgenderism dealt with in the Nashville Statement were barely on the horizon of the Danvers Statement. Rationale #5 of the Danvers Statement flagged “the growing claims of legitimacy for sexual relationships which have biblically and historically been considered illicit or perverse, and the increase in pornographic portrayal of human sexuality.” And the final affirmation (#10) prophetically affirmed, “We are convinced that a denial or neglect of these principles will lead to increasingly destructive consequences in our families, our churches, and the culture at large.”

Those “destructive consequences” have arrived. The Nashville Statement addresses them. I hope you will read it with care. We may pray that in this manifesto the world will hear a prophetic and gracious summons to submit to Christ, and that the church will hear a call to stand strong in the beauty and truth that God has given us in his word.

---

The Nashville Statement

Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his.
-Psalm 100:3

PREAMBLE

Evangelical Christians at the dawn of the twenty-first century find themselves living in a period of historic transition. As Western culture has become increasingly post-Christian, it has embarked upon a massive revision of what it means to be a human being. By and large the spirit of our age no longer discerns or delights in the beauty of God’s design for human life. Many deny that God created human beings for his glory, and that his good purposes for us include our personal and physical design as male and female. It is common to think that human identity as male and female is not part of God’s beautiful plan, but is, rather, an expression of an individual’s autonomous preferences. The pathway to full and lasting joy through God’s good design for his creatures is thus replaced by the path of shortsighted alternatives that, sooner or later, ruin human life and dishonor God.

This secular spirit of our age presents a great challenge to the Christian church. Will the church of the Lord Jesus Christ lose her biblical conviction, clarity, and courage, and blend into the spirit of the age? Or will she hold fast to the word of life, draw courage from Jesus, and unashamedly proclaim his way as the way of life? Will she maintain her clear, counter-cultural witness to a world that seems bent on ruin?

We are persuaded that faithfulness in our generation means declaring once again the true story of the world and of our place in it — particularly as male and female. Christian Scripture teaches that there is but one God who alone is Creator and Lord of all. To him alone, every person owes glad-hearted thanksgiving, heart-felt praise, and total allegiance. This is the path not only of glorifying God, but of knowing ourselves. To forget our Creator is to forget who we are, for he made us for himself. And we cannot know ourselves truly without truly knowing him who made us. We did not make ourselves. We are not our own. Our true identity, as male and female persons, is given by God. It is not only foolish, but hopeless, to try to make ourselves what God did not create us to be.

We believe that God’s design for his creation and his way of salvation serve to bring him the greatest glory and bring us the greatest good. God’s good plan provides us with the greatest freedom. Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it in overflowing measure. He is for us and not against us. Therefore, in the hope of serving Christ’s church and witnessing publicly to the good purposes of God for human sexuality revealed in Christian Scripture, we offer the following affirmations and denials.

ARTICLE 1

WE AFFIRM that God has designed marriage to be a covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman, as husband and wife, and is meant to signify the covenant love between Christ and his bride the church.

WE DENY that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous relationship. We also deny that marriage is a mere human contract rather than a covenant made before God.

ARTICLE 2

WE AFFIRM that God’s revealed will for all people is chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage.

WE DENY that any affections, desires, or commitments ever justify sexual intercourse before or outside marriage; nor do they justify any form of sexual immorality.

ARTICLE 3

WE AFFIRM that God created Adam and Eve, the first human beings, in his own image, equal before God as persons, and distinct as male and female.

WE DENY that the divinely ordained differences between male and female render them unequal in dignity or worth.

ARTICLE 4

WE AFFIRM that divinely ordained differences between male and female reflect God’s original creation design and are meant for human good and human flourishing.

WE DENY that such differences are a result of the Fall or are a tragedy to be overcome.

ARTICLE 5

WE AFFIRM that the differences between male and female reproductive structures are integral to God’s design for self-conception as male or female.

WE DENY that physical anomalies or psychological conditions nullify the God-appointed link between biological sex and self-conception as male or female.

ARTICLE 6

WE AFFIRM that those born with a physical disorder of sex development are created in the image of God and have dignity and worth equal to all other image-bearers. They are acknowledged by our Lord Jesus in his words about “eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb.” With all others they are welcome as faithful followers of Jesus Christ and should embrace their biological sex insofar as it may be known.

WE DENY that ambiguities related to a person’s biological sex render one incapable of living a fruitful life in joyful obedience to Christ.

ARTICLE 7

WE AFFIRM that self-conception as male or female should be defined by God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture.

WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.

ARTICLE 8

WE AFFIRM that people who experience sexual attraction for the same sex may live a rich and fruitful life pleasing to God through faith in Jesus Christ, as they, like all Christians, walk in purity of life.

WE DENY that sexual attraction for the same sex is part of the natural goodness of God’s original creation, or that it puts a person outside the hope of the gospel.

ARTICLE 9

WE AFFIRM that sin distorts sexual desires by directing them away from the marriage covenant and toward sexual immorality — a distortion that includes both heterosexual and homosexual immorality.

WE DENY that an enduring pattern of desire for sexual immorality justifies sexually immoral behavior.

ARTICLE 10

WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.

WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.

ARTICLE 11

WE AFFIRM our duty to speak the truth in love at all times, including when we speak to or about one another as male or female.

WE DENY any obligation to speak in such ways that dishonor God’s design of his image-bearers as male and female.

ARTICLE 12

WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ gives both merciful pardon and transforming power, and that this pardon and power enable a follower of Jesus to put to death sinful desires and to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.

WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ is insufficient to forgive all sexual sins and to give power for holiness to every believer who feels drawn into sexual sin.

ARTICLE 13

WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ enables sinners to forsake transgender self-conceptions and by divine forbearance to accept the God-ordained link between one’s biological sex and one’s self-conception as male or female.

WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ sanctions self-conceptions that are at odds with God’s revealed will.

ARTICLE 14

WE AFFIRM that Christ Jesus has come into the world to save sinners and that through Christ’s death and resurrection, forgiveness of sins and eternal life are available to every person who repents of sin and trusts in Christ alone as Savior, Lord, and supreme treasure.

WE DENY that the Lord’s arm is too short to save or that any sinner is beyond his reach.

Editor’s Note: Visit nashvillestatement.com to view a list of initial signatories and to sign the statement yourself.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Reading the Bible Supernatural

Five “Fake News” Stories That People Believe about Early Christianity ~ MICHAEL J. KRUGER

There’s been a lot of chatter about “fake news” in recent months.  Some stories, even though they have no basis in fact, are told so often, and with such conviction, that large numbers of people end up believing them anyway.

And some of these fake news stories even dupe legitimate political figures who repeat the story without realizing it is false.  And, of course, once a mainstream political figure repeats a story then it becomes even more entrenched in the national psyche.

While some of these fake news stories are rather harmless, others have become quite dangerous.  Most famous perhaps is the “Pizza Gate” incident in 2016 where a man shot up a pizza place thinking it was host to a child sex trafficking ring (thankfully, no one was hurt).

Given this rash of “fake news,” I thought it might be interesting to observe that an analogous phenomenon can be seen in the study of early Christianity.  There is quite a bit of “fake news” out there regarding the person of Jesus, the origins of the church, or the development of the Bible .  Even though such “news” as no factual basis, it is believed by an uncomfortably large number of people.

So, here is a sampling of some of the leading stories:

1. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.

Perhaps there is no conspiracy theory about early Christianity more sensational and more captivating than the claim that Jesus was married and had children.  It is not only fodder for books like The Da Vinci Code, but seems to pop up again and again in the mainstream media (see recent example here).

The problem, of course, is that this belief is patently false. There is no evidence Jesus was married.  For a fuller critique of this piece of fake news, see my article here.

2. The divinity of Jesus was not decided until the council of Nicea in the fourth century.

Another long-standing and widespread conviction is that Jesus was merely an ordinary human who was exalted to divine status much later in the history of early Christianity.  In particular, it is claimed, the council of Nicea decided that Christianity needed a divine Jesus and suppressed (and oppressed) all who insisted Jesus was merely human.

Again, however, the evidence for an early belief in the divinity of Jesus is overwhelming.  As early as the 50’s of the first century, Paul applies the monotheistic creed of Israel to the person of Jesus, declaring, “For us there is one God, the Father from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:6). And there is good evidence that Paul is drawing upon earlier tradition in this passage, indicating that such a belief was present at the very beginning of the Christian movement.

For more on the early divinity of Jesus, see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel.

3. Christians did not have a “Bible” until the time of Constantine.

Also making our top-five list is the oft-repeated claim that early Christians, at least for the first four centuries, didn’t have a Bible.  They were adrift on the theological sea, we are told, without guidance from Scripture and reliant merely on oral tradition which was itself problematic and ever-changing.  This problem wasn’t resolved until Constantine commissioned the production of a Bible in the fourth century (containing, of course, just the books he preferred).

While this is yet another intriguing conspiracy theory, it lacks any historical foundation.  We must remember, first of all, that the earliest Christians had a “Bible” from day one, namely what we now call the Old Testament.  For them, the OT was the undisputed word of God and they were deeply immersed in it and committed to its authority.  Moreover, from a very early point, Christians regarded their own books as scriptural and a core New Testament canon is evident by the early to middle second century.

For a brief discussion of this point see my article here.  For more detail, see my full-length volume The Question of Canon.

4. The “Gnostic” Gospels like the Gospel of Thomas were just as popular as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Ever since the discovery of the so-called Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi in 1945, it has been popular to insist that these “lost” gospels were really more popular than even our canonical ones.  During the first few centuries, we are told, Christians read the Gospel of Thomas with equal (if not more) regularity than the books that made it into our Bibles.

And, of course, this whole narrative has a clear purpose behind it, namely to convince people that all gospels are pretty much the same and that no gospel is more valid than another.

But, this narrative quickly evaporates when one looks at the historical data.  When it comes to nearly every line of evidence–frequency of citation, use as Scripture, number of manuscripts–it is clear that these apocryphal gospels were not very popular after all.  Indeed, all the historical indicators show that that our four gospels were, far and away, the most popular gospels in the early church.

For more on this point, see my article here, or check out Chuck Hill’s book, Who Chose the Gospels?.

5. The words of the New Testament have been radically changed and corrupted in the earliest centuries.

Rounding out our top-five fake news stories is the claim that the text of the New Testament has been so radically corrupted, edited, and changed that we cannot really know what the original authors said.  Made famous by Bart Ehrman’s best-seller Misquoting Jesus, this story has been repeated ad infinitum.

The problem, however, is that there is no evidence for this level of radical corruption.  Can we see scribal changes/mistakes in our New Testament manuscripts?  Of course. But, that is true for every document of antiquity.  The New Testament is no different.

If there is a difference, it is that the New Testament seems even more well-preserved than comparable documents in the ancient world.  After generations of careful scholarship, and a wealth of manuscripts at our disposal, we can have great confidence in the words of the New Testament.

For more on this issue, see the last chapter in my book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy, or my reviewof Misquoting Jesus.

In the end, these are five examples of “fake news” about early Christianity that get repeated so often that people believe they must be true.  But, just like in the political world, we need to be careful to examine the facts before we repeat the claim.