The Hand that Signed the Paper

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk; A goose's quill has put an end to murder That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came; Great is the hand that holds
dominion over Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead
but do not soften
The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven; Hands have no tears to flow.

Dylan Thomas 1914-1953.

    The hand that signed the paper has often with the stroke of a pen changed the entire destiny of individuals and nations. Wars have been declared, death camps sanitised, racial prejudice legalised, religious crusades commissioned, political ideology imposed, and nation rebuilding rationalised, through the power of the 'five sovereign fingers'.
   Today a more subtle but equally sinister hand has signed the paper authorising a social reconstruction and redefinition of marriage. In the name of that all important cross party ideology 'Inclusivity', the Government has considered it necessary to change the whole meaning of marriage. Is it the responsibility of elected members of parliament to redefine what constitutes marriage?
    Marriage is sacred. It is an institution created by God that predates secular government. In Eden, the first marriage was between a man and a woman, who both reflected the image of God together. Adam and Eve were called, as joint image bearers to:

  'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

                                            Genesis 1 v 28

    Eve walking alongside Adam is the full expression of God's image, and a healthy reflection of that image to children growing up in the family. As two different but complementary image bearers, marriage defined this way becomes the primary foundation for a healthy society. This definition of marriage instituted by the Lord, preceded the introduction of government.
    Government is given as a gift of common grace after the Fall. It is part of the medicine that God injects into a fallen world to slow down the inevitable spread of sin and lawlessness. Sin is presented in the Bible as a spreading virus that will continue to mutate until the Lord's return. Paul spares no punches in painting a picture of what society will look like at that time:

   'But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.'

                               2 Timothy 3 v's 1-5.

   We are exhorted to pray for government and those in positions of civic authority in order that... 'we might lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour' (1Timothy 2 v's 2-3). God's desire is for government to endorse His principles for life as part of the restraining order on the spread of sin and lawlessness.
     The inclusivity card played by the Government in relation to gay marriage is beyond that jurisdiction. Civil partnerships protecting their liberties and human rights as citizens is permissible, but not the redefining of that which is sacred. The hand that signed the paper has bred a fever, one that will mutate into something far more destructive as the years of reaping what has been sown evolve. What price would you give me on us discussing the plausibility of legalised polygamy in five years time?
     Whilst concerned at what the Government has legislated, of greater concern is the acceptance of this new arrangement within supposed evangelical churches. I can understand an unregenerate politician playing situation ethics with God's design for marriage, but not someone from within the Body of Christ.
     The problem I think is in a misunderstanding of the nature of inclusivity. We can be in danger of seeing universal inclusivity as meaning the same as the universal, conditional invitation that Jesus offers to everyone to follow Him. That invitation is conditional to all, irrespective of sexual orientation. The popular strapline that people need to 'belong before they believe' is only true to a certain point. All are welcome in a local church, but belonging to a local church is not necessarily an indication that anyone is following Christ. Some of the conditions to following Christ as His disciple include the following:

1. We are called to repent.

'From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
                              Matthew 4 v 17. 

    Repentance is far more than a one off historic act in our conversion experience. In 1 John 1 v 9, we read: 'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' The word 'confess' is continual present tense, and conveys a posture of living continually under the renewal and cleansing of the blood of Christ. As we grow in grace we are sanctified through and through, and are grateful for the unlimited access to the Lord's mercy seat in Christ to ongoingly cleanse us from those attitudes, motives and actions that are not worthy of His Name.

2. We are called to take up our cross daily.

  'Then he said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.'
                                           
                                        Luke 9 v's 23-24.

    Paul spoke about carrying the death of Jesus in his body, in order that the life of Christ might be revealed through him ( 2 Corinthians 4 v's 10-12). Elsewhere Jesus spoke about entering the Kingdom of God through the narrow gate, 'for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.' He goes on to say that ' narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.'
     We are not promised an easy ride, and spiritual growth is often painful. It is not without reason that Jesus spoke openly about weighing up the cost before choosing to follow Him. David Pawson speaks of a number of things to look for in what he calls the 'normal Christian birth.' These include conviction of sin, repentance and regeneration, baptism in both water and the Holy Spirit, and a full and visible active serving in the Body of Christ. We can be far too hasty in accepting confessions of faith that are not genuine works of the Holy Spirit.

3. We are called to confess Jesus to others.

  'Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father who is in heaven.'

                               Matthew 10 v's 32-33.

  We are not called to some private hidden religion. Our faith is personal but not private. One of the ways of authenticating faith, is to go and tell people what the Lord has done for you. When you have met the Lord, you want to tell everyone about Him!
   In my own conversion, I can remember saying to my friend that I wasn't going to tell anyone that I had become a Christian, and neither was I going to church. Within a few days I was telling everyone who would listen, and the following Sunday began attending church. I had no church background, but when you have met with the Lord you want to tell others, and be around others who have experienced the Lord's grace.

4. We are called to change.

  'Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.'

                                  1 John 3 v's 9-10.

We shouldn't read into passages like this a striving for religious perfectionism. Pelagius was a British monk who wrongly taught that man can attain perfection through his own effort. Whilst most of us don't believe that, many of us still live as if it were true. What this passage means is that those who have become Christians will no longer have the primary desire in their life to sin, but rather to please the Lord. When we slip up it will be out of character with who we are. Living for sin is no longer the motivational drive in our lives, but rather living for the Lord.

5. We have to stumble over the offence of the cross.

'Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient, " The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone," and "A stone of stumbling And a rock of offense" They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed.'

                                    1 Peter 2 v's 7-8.

   Pride is the biggest obstacle to entering the Kingdom of God. All of us need our pride to be broken on 'the rock of offense'. The spirit behind the hand that signed the paper on redefining marriage is one of pride and arrogance. It is man effectively saying that we no longer need the Lord as our reference point, and that we have now come of age to go it alone without Him.

6. Entering the Kingdom of God is conditional on regeneration.

He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

                            Colossians 1 v's 13-14.

   This has already been touched upon. Entering the Kingdom of God is a supernatural act, a transferring out of the darkness of satanic bondage, and into a place of forgiveness and belonging to Christ (Acts 26 v's 17-18.) Universal unconditional inclusivity is a political and social construction, and not in my opinion, a Biblical one.
   Sooner or later we have to recognise that belonging to the Kingdom of God is conditional on repentance and belief, irrespective of our social standing or sexual orientation. We are called to respond to the invitation of Christ, and we can all freely receive or reject that invitation. This conditional universal invitation is wrongly being reinterpreted to mean unconditional universal inclusivity.
     The cross is God's great boundary statement, and we would be foolish to ignore the conditional 'ifs' of scripture on the call to discipleship. Jesus includes all in His invitation to follow Him, but few seem to choose to live up to that invitation and calling:

'For many are called, but few are chosen'

                                        Matthew 22 v 14.

  Unconditional inclusivity is more the fruit of a social reconstruction of Christendom than it is a calling to discipleship. The language and culture of political correctness seems to be the motivational drive behind it. The hand that signed the paper has sown a wind that will reap a whirlwind. Thankfully the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God, can't be felled by the hand that signed the paper. In all the present confusion, God will still have the final word.