(43) gospel that reaches the vertical is the gospel that finally heals what is broken in every other room of the house.
He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Jeremiah Knight
The Reformation Resurgence
This is so well-written and explained that I am posting it verbatim even though that will stretch across multiple posts. Please take the time to read it carefully and entirely โฆ
The Exchange Beneath the Exchange
There is a connection running through Romans 1 that most readers
(42) change is required do that work in us, drawing us back from every exchange we have made and restoring us to the God whose presence in our knowledge is the only foundation on which a holy sexuality can ever be built. The vertical comes first. The horizontal follows. And the
(41) to be produced.
May we let the Word do its diagnostic work in us before we attempt any further reformation. May we honestly examine what we have placed in the position God should occupy. And may the Holy Spirit who alone can change what we want at the depths where the
(40) rules it tries to follow or what cultural pressures it tries to resist. The root determines the fruit. The exchange determines the expression. And the gospel that addresses the exchange is the only gospel that has ever produced lasting change in the area where it most needs
(39) theological question, and the soul that is healthy in its relationship with God will eventually produce a sexuality that reflects that health. The soul that is sick in its relationship with God will produce a sexuality that reflects that sickness, regardless of what external
(38) exchanged God for in my heart? What lesser thing has taken the place that He alone should occupy? Where have I traded the glory of the incorruptible God for an image of something corruptible? Because the answer to the sexual question always lies in the answer to the
(37) follows the heart and the heart follows what it loves and the love is shaped by where we set our minds day by day.
The diagnostic question every honest believer should ask themselves is the question Romans 1 raises before any sexual question is even considered. What have I
(36) mind on the things above not on the things that are on earth" Colossians 3:2. The setting of the mind is the daily work. The mind that has been set on Christ will produce a body that increasingly reflects the holiness of the Christ on whom the mind is set, because the body
(35) behaviour modification alone. The war is won by the slow reorientation of the heart's desires, the deepening love for God that displaces the lesser loves, the daily renewing of the mind by the Word that produces in us new ways of seeing and wanting and choosing. "Set your
(34) believer is that the war against sexual sin in our own lives is not primarily a war fought at the level of behaviour. It is a war fought at the level of preference. The man or woman struggling with sexual sin cannot win the war by sheer effort or accountability software or
(33) addressed the root. The sanctifying addressed the fruit. Both flowed from the same gospel applied by the same Holy Spirit to the same souls who had previously been governed by the same exchange that governs every unregenerate heart.
What this means practically for every
(32) Christ who alone can heal both the root and the fruit of human rebellion. "Such were some of you; but you were washed but you were sanctified but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit of our God" 1 Corinthians 6:11. The washing
(31) symptoms. We do not call homosexuals to change their sexual behaviour as the primary message. We call them, along with every other human being including ourselves, to repent of the rejection of God that has produced every sin including the sexual ones, and to receive the
(30) confusion is downstream. It is the visible consequence of an invisible exchange that took place in the heart's relationship with God before any sexual sin was ever committed. The work that needs to be done is the work of preaching the gospel that addresses the root, not the
(29) the structure built on it will eventually fall, and what we are watching is the falling that necessarily follows the removing.
This also means that the church cannot heal the sexual confusion of its surrounding culture by addressing the sexual confusion directly. The sexual
(28) The sexual chaos was not the cause of the cultural collapse. It was the symptom. The cause was the prior exchange that placed something or someone else above the God whose existence and authority had been the foundation of the previous moral order. Remove the foundation and
(27) gradually discover new information about human sexuality that previous generations had missed. The contemporary world rejected the God who had defined human sexuality, and the rejection produced the predictable result of a culture handed over to its own preferred disorders.
(26) require us to release what we love more than we love Him, and we are not willing to make that exchange.
This is the framework that explains the sexual revolution of the past several decades with a clarity that no other framework can match. The contemporary world did not
(25) movement is a movement of love. We love what we love and we are governed by what we love. The natural human heart loves darkness because the darkness conceals what we want to keep doing. We do not reject God because we cannot find Him. We reject Him because finding Him would