Gospel-Centered Sexuality – Session 1

These are the notes I took from the frist session of Scotty Smith’s “Gospel-Centered Sexuality” class. I found these things very helpful in understanding how the gospel transforms and re-orients my view of sexuality, and figure these might provide some interesting “springboards” for further thought. I’ll try to put up the Saturday sessions later on.

Friday PM: Session 1

Intro – Story-line of Scripture

• We’re not going back to Eden—we’re going to Paradise! The future (eschatology) is far better and grander than the beginning!
• We were made for a relationship and intercourse with, that can only be truly fulfilled in Jesus! (Quote in handout)
• Q: What is this, exactly? Sounds a little fruity to me? (referenced: “neither given or given into marriage” in Heaven/Paradise)
• Right Use—-Mis-Use—-Dis-Use—–Abuse of Sex
• Q: What does “dis-use” of sex drive at?
• A: So busy with life…or comfort…that sex, within marriage, is minimal, if not non-existent.

Song of Solomon 4-5

• The fact that we can’t read this “shame-free” is evidence that we live in a fallen world – we have been robbed of something precious to us!

Ephesians 5: 31-33

• Nothing else but the Gospel could ever give us the hope of being able to say, “I hold nothing back from you” [my finances, imagination, fears, tears, dream, hopes, hurst...genitalia]
• v. 32 – There is a fulfillment of Gen. 2 that is reserved alone for Jesus Christ
• Q: What is this “fulfillment”? Is it the idea of “shame-freeness” that you’re driving at?
• A: If you consider intercourse as genital-to-genital interaction, you’ve missed the point.
• Sex serves cleaving! (Wow, that makes sense). Sex has a context, and when we take it out of context, monsters are created.

Sex and Subversive Nature of the Gospel (from Tim Keller; also S. Smith, The Reign of Grace)

I Corinthians 6:12-7:40

• Paul isn’t just saying, “Stop sleeping around.” He is saying, “You were made for deep, connection with Jesus!”
• In a sense, you have to demote your human relationships in relation to your relationship with Jesus.
• Being the “bride” of Christ doesn’t just mean that we are faithful and not sleeping around, but that we are in love and fully engaged with our lover!

Nature of the Gospel

• Where does the true gospel become the real (functional) gospel in your life? (Great question!)
• “When Jesus died on the cross, He got down on one knee and proposed to us.” – anonymous
• Legal and Existential side of the Gospel
• “If all you have is the legal/penal side of the Gospel, you have the lyrics, but where is the music?”

Miscellaneous Thoughts:

• Sex is for community (needs more development)
• Eschatologically speaking, to speak of “intercourse” with Jesus is to refer to unlimited, unbounded, intimacy and communion with Him and His creation – the ultimate community; the grand city within a city!
• The Gospel (and Sex in the Context of the Gospel) is about giving not getting!
• We’ve got to learn to demote certain things in our lives and culture to line up with the Gospel – like money, sex, and power!
• Not suggesting to stop longing to be married, but to realize that our longings are only met and fulfilled in Jesus!

Reading Reflection – The Urban Face of Mission

I’m reading this book for an upcoming weekend calss on Urban Church Planting. I’d like to from time to time offer some good quotes and some of my reflections on what I am reading. I welcome comments on this stuff, just know that most of is written in the form of journal-thoughts, not really completely formed, but in process. Here’s something that got my mind going from Raymond J. Bakke, “Urbanization and Evangelism: a Global View”, The Urban Face of Mission, ed. by Harvie Conn

“Today over 50 percent of this earth – over three billion people – lives in world-class cities. We aren’t prepared for that. Most of our mission industry, most of the ministries that many of us represent, are still thinking in terms of tribal world, a world where we cross oceans and deserts and jungles to get to the lost groups of people. There are, indeed, still about a billion people who are geographically distant from existing churches, so we will need traditional ministries on into the future. But far more than two billion of the world’s nonchurched people are no longer geographically distant from the church’ they are culturally distant. They live in the largest cities of the world.” p. 29

The way we should think about “missions” in this non-traditional sense, is less in terms of geography, and more in terms of culturally.

Categories of Thought:
Geographically Distant, Culturally Distant -> Traditional Missions
Geographically Distant, Culturally Close -> Traditional Missions
Geographically Close, Culturally Close -> Traditional Evangelism
Geographically Close, Culturally Distant -> Missional Intentionality

- Who are those people who are culturally outside the church and in need of the redeeming power of the gospel? I think, if we were to ask this question, our conversations about contextualization would be properly subsumed under the aim of missions, and that is to bring all of God’s creation into a right relationship with Him (God <–> Man <–> Creation).

Man-centered vs. Christ-centered Sermons

This is directed mostly to the guys who are in my Christ-Centered Preaching right now, since it relates to an article we have to read and process. But anyone is welcome to contribute to any discussion, so feel free no matter who you are.

Ok – here’s the deal. I just finished reading the article by Adams called “Preaching Christ.” I am not evaluating, assessing or criticizing his article, but I had a couple of questions come up that I wanted to get some interaction on.

I’ll quote a couple of thoughts that struck out to me, and then at the bottom, I’ll ask the questions I’m wrestling with. Maybe the answer was apparent to you when reading; if so, I’d love to know how you guys took it. Perhaps it wasn’t clear, but you have some thoughts in response to my question; great too. I’m hoping through this we can interact on the differences between Moralistic Preaching and Christ/Gospel-Centered Preaching. Here are the quotes:

…edificational preaching must always be evangelical; that is what makes it moral rather than moralistic, and what causes it to be unacceptable in a synagogue, in a mosque, or to a Unitarian congregation. By evangelical, I mean that the import of Christ’s death and resurrection – His substitutionary, penal death and bodily resurrection – on the subject under consideration is made clear in the sermon. You must not exhort your congregation to do whatever the Bible requires of them as though they could fulfill those requirements on their own, but only as a consequence of the saving power of the cross and the indwelling, sanctifying power and presence of Christ in the person of the Holy Spirit. (p. 147)

and…

A good self-image comes not merely from acknowledging what we are in Christ, as the psychologizers suppose, but also from closing the gap between what we are in Christ and what we should become in our daily living. That is to say, it comes not only from justification, but also as a by-product of progress in sanctification. (p. 151)

These are the quotes that made me pause and want to ask a couple of questions. Here they are:

1. How is preaching to enable a “closing the gap between what we are in Christ and what we should become in our daily living,” not a modified moralism (or Sola Bootstrapsa as Chapel would say)?
2. What does it mean to preach Christ’s “sanctifying work,” in a non-moralistic way? What is the active response of the listener to this? The pastor?
3. What is it we are really calling people to when we preach in this Christ/Gospel-centered way?

I guess what I’m struggling with is what does this look like practically. I’d love to get some interaction on this with you guys, so fire your comments away.