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Shepherd of the Hills
Pastor Matthew DeNoyer
802 Maple Grove Road
Duluth, MN 55811
Phone: (218) 722-4364
Contact Via Email
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WELS view: God's word isn't subject to majority rule
By: The Rev. Matthew P. DeNoyer
Duluth News Tribune Opinion Article, Published September 02 2009
The news landed on front pages across the nation last month. The country’s largest Lutheran denomination — the 4.8 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, or ELCA — welcomed gays into its pulpits.
After the ELCA, the next two largest Lutheran church bodies in the U.S. are the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, with approximately 2.5 million baptized members, and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, or WELS, with about 410,000 baptized members.
Lutheran church bodies often are lumped together by virtue of a shared name and shared origins. But apart from those attributes, there is a striking end to the similarity.
It was disheartening there was even a discussion by the ELCA about human sexuality, something about which God is clear in the Bible, including in the first chapter of Romans. Is this a minority viewpoint? Likely.
But is the search for man’s approval based on faltering opinion? Or is it for God’s approval based on his truth?
ELCA Bishop Mark Hanson said of the decision: “This is a very difficult day for those who did not support [it].”
One was left to wonder where this church leader stands on this pressing issue. With majority opinion or with God’s Word? Was it a “difficult day” because so many in the ELCA have been forced to accept something they clearly know the Bible forbids? Or was it a “difficult day” because Satan has won yet another battle with false doctrine in a very visible church?
The fact that the outcome is reduced to being “difficult” on the basis of differing opinions stems from a much larger and more alarming condition: ELCA leaders lack the ability to defend and back their stance with God’s word because they have discarded the belief that it is truthful and authoritative.
Lest we in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod be accused of hypocrisy on the issue of homosexuality, let’s be fair about God’s will concerning sexuality. It is not limited to same-sex relationships. The book of Hebrews states: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” That puts live-in arrangements under the same judgment of God. In fact, we can bring it even closer to home: God condemns sexually impure thoughts, which makes even the author of this article a sexual deviant in the eyes of a holy God.
If we are honest, we all find ourselves falling under this judgment. (And if you don’t think you fit into the category, remember the Bible also says in the book of James that, “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”)
Whatever sexual sins we struggle with, Christians need to understand that God’s word condemns them all. So the issue here is not one of a “holier than thou” attitude by heterosexuals over homosexuals, but rather, “What does God’s word say?”
When anyone begins to pick and choose the parts of God’s word they want to heed and the parts they want to throw out, the entire thing is eventually lost. After all, how can some parts of it be inspired and infallible but others not?
Due to the course that its leadership has chosen (going back many years), the ELCA now has the luxury of deciding, by human opinion, what it will call sin and what it will leave to personal preference. Which means it will be able to condemn little more than whatever is outright unlawful in the eyes of civil government (things like murder, stealing and vandalism) because it has no moral grounds on which to condemn sins such as homosexuality, adultery and lust.
Being under a shepherd who can warn you of some dangers but not others is a dangerous place to be for a flock.
A Bible-believing church that can confidently herald God’s will on sexuality can also confidently herald God’s loving solution for a fallen, sexually deviant world. Christ’s forgiveness is for all. That includes sexual sins, sins of hate and neglect, sins of selfishness and lovelessness — and the sins of murder, cheating and lying, etc.
That’s the good news. Jesus died for those sins and forgives them through his blood. He didn’t die on the cross so that we could have a love affair with sin or indulge our sinful nature. He died to set us free from our sins so that we might enjoy life here temporarily and in heaven eternally.
Rev. Matthew P. DeNoyer is pastor of Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church on Maple Grove Road in Duluth. The church is part of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.
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