The calamity of the institutionalization of sin

“My Eyes Shed Streams of Tears”—br /Thoughts on the New Calamity

Powerful words from John Piper this morning. Here is part of what he wrote:

My sense is that we do not realize what a calamity is happening around us. The new thing—new for America, and new for history—is not homosexuality. That brokenness has been here since we were all broken in the fall of man. (And there is a great distinction between the orientation and the act—just like there is a great difference between my orientation to pride and the act of boasting.)

What’s new is not even the celebration of homosexual sin. Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia. What’s new is normalization and institutionalization. This is the new calamity.

What is even more important than those sobering and vital words is what he wrote next:

My main reason for writing is not to mount a political counter-assault. I don’t think that is the calling of the church as such. My reason for writing is to help the church feel the sorrow of these days. And the magnitude of the assault on God and his image in man.

Those are wise words. Our reaction as the church is not to rally to “recover America” by political force. It is to be broken hearted over the consequences of sin and the calamity sin has had and continues to have on men. It is to feel the urgency of the mission of God’s people to declare both the wrath that is to come and the forgiveness uniquely found in Christ. Where it comes to those who claim to be part of God’s people and yet embrace sin and indeed celebrate sin, the stance must be different (1 Cor 5: 9-13). There must be no compromise, no hint of looking the other way on that, but our reaction to the sin of the world must be of sorrow and tears that leads to boldness and humility in declaring the Gospel of Christ.