Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas went on Fox Business with Lou Dobbs yesterday to make the following claim:
“There’s not a snowball’s chance in Hell’s chance [sic] of Joe Biden gaining any significant evangelical vote at all. And the reason is this: The only evangelicals who are going to vote for Joe Biden are those who have sold their soul to the Devil and accepted the Democrats’ barbaric position on abortion…”
I spent years sitting in the pews of many Southern Baptist Churches. And more than a few times, I spoke from the pulpit as well. I cannot tell you how many times that I have heard a pastor preaching from James 2, discussing the universality of sin and its consequences. If you are not familiar, James 2:8-13 reads as follows:
If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgement is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgement.
I have heard some use this passage to assert that all sins are equal. There are no big sins and no little sins. Personally, I don’t think that was James’ point, rather, I think his point is that all sins, whether big or small, have the same consequence. Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. So whatever sin we commit, we are guilty of the same consequence. If you murder, or commit adultery, or show partiality, or whatever you do to violate the law of God, the resulting consequence is the same thing…death.
To be clear, I am not defending abortion on demand, late term abortions, or abortions in general. I believe that as a nation we are far from “safe, legal, and rare” abortions.
However, for Mr. Jeffress to assert that the only way that an evangelical could support Joe Biden or the Democratic party is for them to have “sold their soul to the devil” is extremely divisive to the faith, and frankly, un-biblical. If scripture teaches us that either all sins are equal OR that all sins have equal consequences, then whether the believer chooses to support the Democratic party, and by that choice, abortion on demand. Or they support the Republican party, and by that choice policies that both neglect and harm the poor, the imprisoned, and the immigrant, either way, the Believer has made a choice to either directly or indirectly endorse sinful behavior and is guilty of violating the law, facing the same judgement.
It is interesting that in the very next verses (14-16), James continues:
What good is it, my brothers, is someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
We cannot show the love of Jesus simply by opposing everything that God says is immoral. We show love by being loving and sacrificial, of our possessions, and sometimes our rights.
In this season in America, and the world, we need pastors who, like Paul, will “not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Act 20:27). I hope and pray that God will reveal to Mr. Jeffress that the piecemeal gospel that he is sharing on television is much like that of the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
The gospel isn’t either/or. It is all or nothing.
Running A Little Late 