Preston Sprinkle Quotes

But if we never hug a harlot, befriend a beggar, or forgive our enemy seventy times seven, then we confess grace with our lips but mock it with our lives.

Grace, on the other hand, means that God is pursuing you. That God forgives you. That God sanctifies you. When you are apathetic toward God, He is never apathetic toward you. When you don’t desire to pray and talk to God, He never grows tired of talking to you. When you forget to read your Bible and listen to God, He is always listening to you. Grace means that your spirituality is upheld by God’s stubborn enjoyment of you. Charis: God's Scandalous Grace for Us (p. 76).

You can’t make God love you. God loves you because of who He is and because of what Christ has done. His love is not based on what you do, or what you don’t do.

This is why your divorce, your addiction, your enslavement to porn, or years of sticking your finger down your throat to match up to some arbitrary standard of beauty can all be woven into the fabric of God’s plan of redemption. God doesn’t cause sin. He mourns it. He despises it. But through His gracious power, He’s able to use it. No one and no sin can outrun God’s grace.

God hijacks and bends evil to work peace and healing. If God were only a God of justice, He could punish evil but do no more. Only a God of grace can use our evil to work His good. God’s grace is so much bigger than our sin . Sometimes He’ll let us pursue our idolatry until it kills us. Then He will resurrect us and turn our evil into testimonies of God’s grace. Charis: God's Scandalous Grace for Us (p. 86).

Sometimes compassion without critical thinking can move you to do things that make a person feel good in the short run but cause harm in the long run.

is unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver.

The idea that there is an unconditional love that relieves the pressure, forgives our failures, and replaces our fear with faith seems too good to be true.

Grace is God’s aggressive pursuit of, and stubborn delight in, freakishly foul people.

Because Jesus came to set the captives free, life does not have to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, and validate ourselves.

If the world out-loves the church, then we have implicitly nudged our children away from the loving arms of Christ.

Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return.

the most visible form of Jesus’s not-of-this-world kingdom is the radical, head-turning love of one’s enemies, even (or especially) when we are suffering at their hands. Peter mentions this cruciform enemy-love no fewer than ten times in five chapters, making it the artery of the letter.

As long as we pray, love, suffer, and herald the good news that Jesus is King, we will continue to see the kingdom of God thunder against the kingdom of Satan. We need to make sure we’re fighting in the right war with the right means.

Jesus came into our world as a man to embody grace. He left us, the church, to be the body of Christ, not a flock of parakeets that repeat Christian jargon but the ongoing in-the-flesh presence of His grace. We are the evidence that God’s grace is more than just words.

when Jesus tells His followers not to resist evil people, He uses a word that suggests a violent resistance. In fact, New Testament scholar N. T. Wright translated the verse “Don’t use violence to resist evil” to remove all ambiguity.6 Put simply, when Jesus says, “Do not resist the one who is evil,” He specifically prohibits using violence to resist evil.

If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. If you want to know what we are like and what we should become, look at Jesus.

The Bible’s primary invitation to every Christian is not to act more like a man or to act more like a woman, but to act more like Jesus.

Acceptance is the first step of discipleship. And Christian discipleship is about pursuing the image God created us to be.

To listen is to love. You can’t love without listening.

God helps those who realize that they can’t help themselves.

Jesus planted the first church on earth with a group of hoodlums who wouldn’t be let inside the doors of most churches today.

The nonviolent rhythms of the cross meet the melodies of this world with dissonance. I

But grace has no leash. It’s untamed, unbound, and runs wild and free.

From beginning to end, our Christian lives— highs and lows, fasting and fornication— are a tapestry of grace. Charis: God's Scandalous Grace for Us (p. 31).

Before we apply Joshua to our lives, we need to make sure which side of the Jordan we are living on. Militarism invites God's wrath.

Seeing America’s military strength as the hope of the world is an affront to God’s rule over the world. It’s idolatry.

Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable….

But our hope does not lie in enforcing our ethic upon secular governments. We can’t legislate the kingdom of God into existence.

It’s tough to follow Jesus while clutching on to our rights, our honor, our reputation. This kingdom stuff isn’t for the fainthearted.

we need to really get to know someone on a practical level and enter their story before we give an opinion on whether they should make a life-altering decision.

Grace is a dangerous topic because the Bible is a dangerous book. It wrecks people, it offends people, and it’s tough to read from the suburbs.

Old Testament is all about grace, and it forms the rich soil from which Jesus’s gospel of charis blossoms. To understand Jesus, we must soak ourselves in Israel’s story of grace. That’s why we’ll end our adventure in this book by looking at the birth, life, and death of Jesus. Jesus is not just the beginning of the New Testament but also the fitting climax of the Old.

Jesus’s central message was not primarily about how to get to heaven when you die, or about becoming a better person. The central message of Jesus was about the coming of God’s kingdom.

TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN   The best definition for grace I know comes from Paul Zahl: Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable…. The cliché definition of grace is “unconditional love.” It is a true cliché, for it is a good description of the thing.… Let’s go a little further, though. Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so-called “gifts” (whatever they may be). It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualifications the receiver may personally hold…. Grace is one-way love.1 Grace doesn’t make demands. It just gives. And from our vantage point, it always gives to the wrong person. We see this over and over again in the Gospels: Jesus is always giving to the wrong people—prostitutes, tax collectors, half-breeds. The most extravagant sinners of Jesus’s day receive His most compassionate welcome. Grace is a divine vulgarity that stands caution on its head.

The only times “work and keep” are used together in the Bible are in Eden (Gen. 2:15) and the tabernacle (for example, Num. 3:7–8).7 When you think of the tabernacle, you should think of Eden.

We are all, as Robert Robinson wrote in his well-known hymn “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” “prone to wander … prone to leave the God I love.” We are prone to wander, but God is prone to pursue. And He’s faster.

Grace is more than just leniency and unconditional acceptance. Divine grace is God’s relentless and loving pursuit of His enemies, who are unthankful, unworthy, and unlovable. Grace is not just God’s ability to save sinners, but God’s stubborn delight in His enemies—yes, even the creepy ones. Grace means that despite our filth, despite the sewage running through our veins , despite our odd addiction to food, drink, sex, porn, pride, self, money, comfort, and success, God desires to transform us into real ingredients of divine happiness. Sprinkle, Preston (2014-07-01). Charis: God's Scandalous Grace for Us (p. 24). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.

You wear a crown of glory and honor. The transcendent King of creation placed it upon your head. When you look into the mirror and see scars and zits and fat and abuse and loneliness and pain, Yahweh sees glory and honor.

We are a generation of lovers who long to be loved. We spend exorbitant amounts of money to compel others to delight in us. We construct our ideal life on Facebook because we are unsatisfied with our real life, which is tainted with boredom, loneliness, insecurity, and a lack of friends and followers . We do not enjoy the person God created us to be or the life God has gifted us with. We think we are overweight, underweight, too pale, too dark, too plain, or just plain boring. Yet we crave to be delighted in by a significant other. So we pursue misguided avenues to make ourselves delightful, to satisfy our craving to be loved. Charis: God's Scandalous Grace for Us (pp. 118-119).

Christians are not solitary individuals called to follow Jesus on our own and demand that others do the same. We’re a community of radical misfits, called into a motley family filled with grace and truth where no one should walk alone.

The most extravagant sinners of Jesus’s day receive His most compassionate welcome. Grace is a divine vulgarity that stands caution on its head. It refuses to play it safe and lay it up. Grace is recklessly generous, uncomfortably promiscuous.

And when Jesus declared, 'It is finished,' He meant it. God’s punishment for our sin was paid for, permanently settled, finished— 100 percent. If you have responded in faith to God’s free pardon through Jesus, then God will never punish you for your sin. It’s finished. No more. If you screw up today or tomorrow (which you will), it’s already been paid for through Jesus. 'There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,' Paul said (Rom. 8: 1). None. God will not and cannot condemn you after He has already condemned Jesus for you. It’s impossible. God will never be angry with you since His anger was poured out on Jesus. All of it. One hundred percent. Charis: God's Scandalous Grace for Us (p. 169).

Loving your enemy. Doing good things for evil people. Never taking vengeance. Responding to violence with nonviolent love—even if it brings suffering. These are not options, but the primary character traits of those who claim to follow a crucified God.

And if a trans* person comes to your church, they should be welcomed with open arms and accepted. Not just accepted, but embraced, delighted in, listened to, learned from, honored, loved, cared for, and shown the heavenly kindness saturated with compassion.

Jesus is building an upside-down kingdom where outcasts have their feet washed, the marginalized are welcomed, and dehumanized people feel humanized once again. Where truth is upheld, celebrated, and proclaimed. Where those who fall short of that truth are loved.

But correct science and correct theology are pointless if we’re not willing to love and honor, listen to and learn from, care for and be cared for by the trans* people God has gifted us with. Jesus cherishes them and values them. Would they say the same about you?

But whenever the church fails to mediate God’s counterintuitive delight in broken people, the pain of sin will only be magnified until it suffocates our souls. Good deeds and spiritual lingo can’t heal a human heart suffocated by evil. Only grace can. Rich, embodied, earthy charis.

If God is God, then He must be transcendent. But what I have a hard time believing is that this same God cares about me. That He delights in me. That He thinks I am more valuable than the hundreds of snowcapped peaks in Colorado. That He can’t wait until I wake up so He can see my eyes and hear my voice. That He desires to be in relationship with me—not out of obligation, but out of sheer delight. I know that He is sovereign. But He wants to be my friend? He wants to have a relationship with me? And He wants this so badly that no matter what I do, He will keep on pursuing me, chasing me, and never give up?

We love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, extend kindness to the ungrateful, and flood evil people with mercy not because such behavior will always work at confronting injustice, but because such behavior showcases God’s stubborn delight in un-delightful people. Faithfulness rather than perceived effectiveness motivates our response to evil.

In no way should we minimize the psychological difficulties that a person with one of these conditions might experience. These are ripe pastoral opportunities to embody the love and life of Jesus toward people who, for whatever reason, might feel “othered” by society (intentionally or unintentionally) or by their own self-perception of what it means to be a “real” man or woman.

Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so-called “gifts” (whatever they may be). It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualifications the receiver may personally hold…. Grace is one-way love.

Having the mind of Christ means embracing others—especially our enemies—in humble, reconciling, forgiving love. It means never giving up on them even when they are putting us to death.11 Paul doesn’t leave any wiggle room. He doesn’t say, “Have this mind among yourselves until it gets too hard” or “until your enemy becomes particularly violent.” Jesus’s enemies were plenty violent (ever studied crucifixion?), and yet He was “obedient

Like Job’s three friends, we naturally conclude that good people get good stuff and bad people get bad stuff. The idea that bad people get good stuff is thickly counterintuitive; it seems terribly unfair and offends our sense of justice. Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace.… Grace is radically unbalanced. It has no “but”; it is unconditional, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and undomesticated.

My culture gives me no categories to view suffering—especially suffering at the hands of an oppressor—as victory. My culture sees suffering only as defeat, as evil. It never sees suffering as a means of victory. This is why I need to read John’s vision about what’s really going on from God’s perspective to correct my American, self-serving, “I will defend my rights at all costs” mind-set. I need to follow the slaughtered Lamb wherever He goes, so that I can reign with Him in victory. THE

FURIOUS FAVOR I wonder if David would be allowed in our churches today. In most cases, when a church member has an affair, he is shunned at best or mistreated at worst—even if he repents. But David doesn’t just have an affair. He lusts, covets, fornicates, lies, and gets another man hammered. Then he tries to keep his dirty little secrets by murdering the husband of the woman he “loves.” I doubt I’ve met anyone as sinful as David. Have you? He breaks half of the Ten Commandments in a single episode. And he doesn’t repent until he’s caught. But when Nathan shoves his prophetic finger into David’s chest and rebukes him, David falls to his knees and admits his guilt. And right then, at that moment, God rips open the heavens to reach down and touch David’s soul with stubborn delight. God eagerly forgives David for his sin, and all of it is buried at the bottom of the sea, never to be remembered again. There is no hiccup in God’s furious favor toward David. So why do repentant sinners still bear the stigma of “adulterer,” “divorced,” or “addict” in our churches today? It’s one thing if they don’t repent. But quite often we shun repentant sinners, like Jeffrey Dahmer, whose crimes we just can’t forget. “He’s the former addict.” “That’s the divorced mom.” “Here comes the guy who slept with the church secretary.” For some reason we love to define people by the sin in their lives—even past sin in their lives—rather than by the grace that forgave it. It’s no wonder that David pens the last sentence in Psalm 23: “Surely goodness and mercy shall [hunt me down] all the days of my life” (Ps. 23:6).

If America, for instance, used the Bible to shape its warfare policy, that policy would look like this. Enlistment would be by volunteer only (which it is), and the military would not be funded by taxation. America would not stockpile superior weapons—no tanks, drones, F-22s, and of course no nuclear weapons—and it would make sure its victories were determined by God’s miraculous intervention, not by military might. Rather than outnumbering the enemy, America would deliberately fight outmanned and under-gunned. Perhaps soldiers would use muskets, or maybe just swords. There would be no training, no boot camp, no preparation other than fasting, praying, and singing worship songs. If America really is the “new Israel,” God’s holy nation as some believe, then it needs to take its cue from God and His inspired manual for military tactics. But as it stands, many Christians will be content to cut and paste selected verses that align with America’s worldview to give the military some religious backing. Some call this bad hermeneutics; others call it syncretism. The Israelite prophets called it idolatry.

Studying the book of Revelation has been one of the most paradigm-shifting experiences I’ve had in the last ten years. I’ve known that the Bible talks about suffering. But I’ve never seen how godly suffering has such significance in God’s plan of redemption and judgment. This has revolutionized my thinking, because I don’t like to suffer. But if Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension mean anything, then I must let my eyes of faith rather than my pain sensors dictate how I process suffering. I must, like the Moravians, follow Jesus wherever He goes.

Divine grace is God’s relentless and loving pursuit of His enemies, who are unthankful, unworthy, and unlovable. Grace is not just God’s ability to save sinners, but God’s stubborn delight in His enemies—yes, even the creepy ones. Grace means that despite our filth, despite the sewage running through our veins, despite our odd addiction to food, drink, sex, porn, pride, self, money, comfort, and success, God desires to transform us into real ingredients of divine happiness.3 Grace is God’s aggressive pursuit of, and stubborn delight in, freakishly foul people. And

Genesis 1 shows off God’s raw power. Genesis 2 showcases God’s earthy affection. Here’s how. First, notice the different names for God in Genesis 1–2. Throughout Genesis 1, the English word “God” translates the Hebrew term Elohim. Thirty-five times, in fact, Moses writes the term Elohim to describe God, and he doesn’t use any other term, such as the Almighty, the Holy One, or the Lord of Hosts. But something changes in Genesis 2. Beginning in 2:4, Moses consistently writes “the LORD God,” or Yahweh Elohim in Hebrew. Moses never just says Elohim in Genesis 2. He always says Yahweh Elohim. Elohim is a generic term for God. Other ancient religions would have used the same term (or just El) to refer to their god. Elohim simply refers to a deity and emphasizes his (or her) power. And so it’s fitting for Moses to use Elohim to refer to God in Genesis 1 when he wants to emphasize God’s transcendence and power. But Yahweh is God’s personal name. My name is Preston, your name may be Joey, Sadie, or Mattie, and God’s name is Yahweh. Now, in the ancient world, revealing your name to somebody was a sign of intimacy. While the title Elohim simply means that God is powerful, revealing His personal name Yahweh means that this powerful God also desires a relationship.

But our Edenic tent–God doesn’t just want to save us. He actually wants to be with us. He doesn’t just love us. God actually likes us. So God removes His royal robes and steps down from His throne to experience—for the first time—what it is like to be human. God is omniscient, which means that He is all-knowing. There’s nothing in the universe, no piece of information, no fact, no statistic that He doesn’t know. The hairs on your head, the zits on your face—He knows about every one. But until the incarnation, God hadn’t experienced human nature. Since zits aren’t a sin, perhaps Jesus had them too. God knows every hair on your head, but through the incarnation, God knows what it feels like to have hair ripped out. God knows about tiredness, but through the incarnation, He experiences exhaustion. God knows how many molecules it takes to shoot a hunger pain from your stomach to your brain. But through the incarnation, God knows what it feels like to starve to the point of death. Through the incarnation, God has enjoyed the same warm wave of sunlight that splashes across your face on the first day of spring. When you bathe in it, God smiles because He’s bathed in it too. He’s been refreshed by a night’s sleep after a long day of work. Warmed by a toasty bed on a cold winter night. Enjoyed a rich glass of wine while celebrating among friends. God authored creation. But through the incarnation, God experienced creation. And He encountered joy under the bridge. He also experienced pain. Relational, psychological, emotional, and physical agony. God has suffered the misery and brokenness of the same sin-saturated world that oppresses us every day. The pain of being rejected, beaten, abused, unloved, uncared for, mocked, shamed, spat upon, and disrespected as an image bearer of the Creator. Jesus knows all of this. He’s experienced all of this. And He willingly endured it to bring you back to Eden.

Better to sit down to listen and love a person before waxing eloquent on the nature of their experience.

Jesus’ sexed embodiment challenges the notion that biology is irrelevant to identity.

If something is truly “biblical,” it needs to actually come from the Bible.

Men aren’t commanded to be masculine, and women aren’t commanded to be feminine. They’re both just commanded to be godly.

Humans differ in how they are male and female, but this doesn’t mean sex categories exist in addition to male and female.

Genesis 1 is talking about biological sex—male and female—not what we have labeled gender identity or gender role. And it’s perfectly fine for males and females to resist cultural stereotypes as males and females.

Does Jesus accept, affirm, and celebrate godly men who can’t throw a football and who cry while watching Downton Abbey? Absolutely. Jesus values godliness, not gender stereotypes. But does Jesus use the eunuch to show that a person’s internal sense of self is more definitive than their biological sex when there is incongruence between the two? I think this is a bit of a stretch.

The eunuch passage calls us to a broader biblical vision of what it means to be a man or a woman, reminding us that we don’t need to mimic the cultural scripts of masculinity and femininity.

Paul is most certainly deconstructing social hierarchies associated with sex difference. But it’s unlikely that he’s doing away with sex difference itself.

Paul is boldly declaring that women (who were usually treated very poorly in the first century) are given status equal to men in God’s kingdom—a beautiful statement that only makes sense if sex differences are real.25

No matter what year it is, we still haven’t arrived. It’s important to keep our fallibility in mind whenever we’re tempted to overturn a biblical truth because it seems to clash with some settled perspective in science. Science is rarely settled.

Now, we do have to be extra cautious about making the biblical writers speak more directly to our current conversation than they intended. We have to understand what the Bible says on its own terms, in its own context, as it addresses its own situations.

Christian acceptance is always acceptance into a flawed community seeking holiness and repentance.

All of this is dehumanizing. We can’t just care about “intersex” when it comes up in an argument. Intersex people are people—image bearers of the divine and gifts to the church.

We need to make sure we’re talking with people, not just about people.

Though some intersex people embody traits from both categories, there are still only two categories of sex.

And this is true, if by “gender” they mean biological sex. But that’s not the way the word gender is typically used today. When two people use one word in different ways, chaos ensues.

Leaving aside the ethical question of transitioning, we need to really get to know someone on a practical level and enter their story before we give an opinion on whether they should make a life-altering decision.

it can be easy to adopt a depersonalized posture, one that forgets about the lives of real people. A posture of argumentation instead of listening. A posture of being right instead of being love.

Whatever interpretive hurdles exist, they all—on some level and to varying degrees—affirm that male and female sex distinctions are a creational good that should be honored.

The thing that brought me to an acceptance of Biblical masculinity was not a poignantly laid-out exegetical argument against transsexuality nor a fire and brimstone diatribe against homosexuality but a man who gave me the space to speak about my desires openly and let me know he and God loved me nevertheless.

Masculinity and femininity—gender roles—are kind of like height. Males are taller than females. The average height of American males is five feet nine inches tall, while the average height of females is five feet four inches tall. But this doesn’t mean every male is taller than every female. Some women are six feet tall, and yet no one would say they are not female because they fall outside the general pattern. There’s a clear difference in average, and yet much variation within each sex. The same is true of masculinity and femininity. Most males are more physically aggressive than most females. This forms the stereotype that aggression is a masculine trait. On the other hand, some females are more aggressive than some males. This doesn’t mean aggressive females aren’t females. These behaviors are generalities. We don’t determine whether a person is male or female based on whether they match the stereotype of their sex.

Light will beam across our dark world as we love the spouses who don’t love us back, keep our word when it hurts, judge ourselves rather than others, and—most shockingly—love our enemies who are harming us. When we are cursed, we bless. When we are hated, we love. When we are robbed, we give. And when we are struck, we don’t strike back with violence. A person who chooses to love his or her enemies can have no enemies. That person is left only with neighbors.

Shallow answers to complex questions are offensive to our God-given minds and they fail to shape our hearts into being more like Jesus’.

It’s fundamental for discipleship—becoming more like Christ. We need to first understand who we are (ontology) before we know what it means to become who God wants us to be (discipleship). Ontology is integral to discipleship, because discipleship means living as we were designed to live—living as divine images.

The nature of belief is tricky. Rarely do we believe things simply because we took a levelheaded look at all the facts and dispassionately formed our beliefs from those facts. Instead, our beliefs are formed in a complex web of emotions, life experiences, stories, fears, and tribal allegiances.

helps those who realize that they can’t help themselves.

Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan is peppered with strange events: the earth swallows a clan, almond blossoms sprout from a rod, and a donkey opens its mouth to argue with a wayward prophet. Who says the Bible is dull?

Consider Jesus’s genealogy in Matthew 1:1–17. In the ancient world, genealogies determined a person’s status—whether you came from an honorable family or a shameful one. A person’s family line says something about that person. Their character, their social status, the types of people they would hang out with. And Jesus’s genealogy says one thing loud and clear: Jesus is right at home with sinners, thugs, and outcasts. Most genealogies list only the male descendants. Remember, the ancient world was patriarchal. Men were more valued than women, so there was no need to list women—thanks for bearing our children, but we’ll take it from here. But Jesus’s genealogy lists five women, most of whom have some shady event attached to their name, all of whom we’ve already met. The first woman is Tamar, the Canaanite woman who dressed up as a prostitute in order to have sex with her father-in-law, Judah. Her plan succeeded, and she became pregnant with Perez, the one whom God would weave into Jesus’s family line. Next is Rahab, Jericho’s down-and-out prostitute, who was the first Canaanite to receive God’s grace. Among all the Canaanite leaders, among all the skilled warriors, Rahab was the only one who savored the majesty of Israel’s God. Then there’s Ruth, the foreign widow burdening a famished society. A social outcast, a perceived stigma of God’s judgment, Ruth was grafted into the messianic line. Then there’s “the wife of Uriah,” Bathsheba, who was entangled in the sinful affair with King David—the man who murdered her husband. Finally, there’s Mary, the teenage girl who got pregnant out of wedlock. Though she would become an icon in church tradition, her name was synonymous with shame and scandal in the beginning of the first century. You thought your family was messed up. All of these women were social outcasts. They belonged under a bridge. Whether it was their gender, ethnicity, or some sort of sexual debacle, they were rejected by society yet were part of Jesus’s genealogy—a tapestry of grace. Not only was God born in a feeding trough to enter our pain, but He chose to be born into a family tree filled with lust, perversion, murder, and deceit. This tells us a lot about the types of people Jesus wants to hang out with. It tells us that Jesus loves Tamars, Judahs, Gomers, and you.

Sometimes our belief in Jesus’s deity clouds our understanding of His humanity. But Jesus is a mathematical conundrum—100 percent God and 100 percent man. Fully God and fully human: a grade A, heart-pumping, excited, sad, energetic, tired, athletic or pudgy, coordinated or clumsy (being cumbersome is not a sin) human. Jesus was not “God in a bod” or some spirit who appeared to be human. He was and is human. Jesus was a real human who felt the dull ache of weakness and never sinned. And He experienced the same limitations we possess as humans.

Grace pursues; grace transforms; grace molds porn stars into objects of delight. Grace means that God seeks out repugnant sinners—the Judahs of the world—and uses them to redeem wicked people. And we are Judah.

God rescues sinners, losers, victims—those who know they can’t help themselves.

But what precisely no one can conclude is that God was threatening that “in the day you eat of it you shall die — by which I mean, you will actually live forever, if very unpleasantly.” Given the pains God later takes to keep Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:22), we can be sure that by “die” God does not mean “not die.

Augustine suggests that in the mutual submission and self-surrender of marriage, and in the openness of the marriage relationship to children, with the demands of self-sacrificial love that the arrival of children bring, there is a discipling process. Our desires are reordered as we live out the marriage relationship (just as they are when we live out a celibate life) so that we are rendered fit for the kingdom—and marriage and celibacy alike are ways of life, thick clusters of practices, that tend to this reordering of our desires when lived seriously. In this sense marriage is properly named an “ascetic” practice.

this “right to marry” argument has enormous contemporary cultural traction in the West, which requires explanation if it is indeed obviously worthless. I suspect that the felt force lies in another contemporary Western cultural assumption, that it is necessary to be sexually active to be a fulfilled, or even a properly adult, human being. We could no doubt trace the root of this assumption to Freud, but I trust it is evident once named, displayed repeatedly in our popular music, in the Hollywood assumption that the existence of a “40-Year-Old Virgin” is self-evidently hilarious, in our newspaper advice columns that prioritise sexual satisfaction as a personal need, and in countless other ways.18 The (Protestant) churches have visibly surrendered to this cultural assumption, making marriage an inevitable part of Christian maturity for much of the twentieth century. We looked askance at ministerial candidates who were not married and constructed church programmes on the basis that the only single people around were young adults preparing for marriage or widows.

We are called to go beyond our imaginations, to be led by God’s Spirit into church practices that are as welcoming of outcasts as Jesus was during his earthly ministry and as implacable in the face of sin as Jesus was then. Conservative

genuine relationships are always the best place to start as we seek to integrate our ethical views in the daily life of ministry.

Pastoral questions are properly answered at the level of individual lives, not at the level of generic themes. When

I do not accept that there has been a change in our understanding of marriage, just many and repeated changes in its cultural expressions. We need to distinguish, I suggest, between the theological reality of marriage and its ever-changing cultural trappings. We need to do this because the biblical texts make no sense if we do not. To