What Does it Mean to Bless Sinners?

Dec 19, 2023 by Dave Doveton

By Rollin Grams, Bible and Mission. (Editor’s note: Prof Grams outlines the faulty logic justifying the prayers to bless same sex couples)

With the Church of England now offering blessings to same sex couples as of last Sunday and now the Pope approving of the same, we need to ask what is meant by blessing something or someone. Some will understandably take this to mean an endorsement of the relationship, while others will take it to mean what both Churches want it to mean (for now): a welcoming of the persons but not the relationship. Neither the Church of England nor the Vatican has changed the definition of marriage as necessarily that between a man and a woman. The Catholic Church still calls homosexuality a sin.

So, by ‘blessing’ we are supposed to believe that this is not approval. Obviously, we are in the world of doublespeak. According to Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.), ‘doublespeak’ is a kind of euphemism that intentionally obscures meaning and aims to misinform. It ‘is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn’t. It is language that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable.’^[1] As in, ‘I go around blessing sinners to make them believe that I approve of their sin when I do not.’ One might imagine a homosexual couple standing in queue to receive their inheritance of the Kingdom of God with others and, when they get to the front, being told ‘Didn’t read your Bible? Those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.’[2] When they reply, ‘But our Church blessed our relationship,’ the only answer that could be given is, ‘That was just a way of making the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or tolerable.’ The couple might then ask, ‘Well, does being told we do not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven mean something good?’ And the answer will be, ‘Actually, no. We do not speak doublespeak here. You have opposed God’s purposes in creation and God’s commandments. You lived in sin. Go directly to hell. Do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect anything.’

For the time being, both Anglicans and Catholics tell confused homosexuals that they can get the Church’s blessing but this does not mean that they are married, and the Catholics add, ‘And you are living in sin.’[3] A homosexual couple might be forgiven for asking if the Church now blesses sin. The official answer is, ‘No’ because the purpose behind the blessing is said to be about putting on a happy face of welcome at the Church. The welcome is not just of the individuals but also to the individuals in this ‘irregular’ (new word) relationship. Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.

One of the many questions that arise with this doublespeak is whether the logic can be sustained for other sinful unions. Both Churches regard pederasty and incest to be sinful, for example. Yet if the participants are complicit, by the same logic, they ought to offer blessings for these ‘irregular’ relationships. How about adultery? Unmarried partners? Incest? The Church has always called these ‘irregular’ relationships sinful, but if one is now going to be blessed, why not the rest? Seriously, why not?

Would the logic sustain individuals practicing other sins? ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’ ‘Oh, good. You are entitled to a special blessing. Tell me the sin, and I will look up the blessing. No more repentance. No more penance.’

Has the Church a blessing for, say, an emperor massacring a population? This is not a question out of thin air. In about AD 390, Roman soldiers massacred civilians in Thessalonica during a riot. Emperor Theodosius the Great was somehow involved, and so Bishop Ambrose wrote to him to say that he had to repent. Until he did so, he would not be admitted to the Eucharist. Recognising a sin as a sin did not call for a more welcoming face of the Church with a blessing back then. It meant calling for repentance and forbidding Christian fellowship at the Lord’s Table. Think of all the missed opportunities the Church has had to bless sinners through the centuries. Indeed, Bishop Ambrose!

The BBC reports that a leading advocate of the conglomeration (can we finally agree that this is not a ‘community’?) LGBTQ in Catholic circles, Rev. (sic) James Martin, ‘celebrated the announcement’. Why would he? Does he believe blessing sinners in their sinfulness is a good idea, or does he believe that this little doublespeak is the door through which acceptance of homosexual marriage will eventually enter?

One is led to suppose that doublespeak is not meant for Martin’s heretical faction but for the rest of us Christians. The speech-act of Church blessings for sinners is meant to obscure the meaning of sin, of marriage, of ‘blessing’, of righteousness, of ‘Church’, and whatever else. Under the smog of ecclesiastical confusion, doctrinal change creeps along. The real agenda is full acceptance of this sinful relationship at some time in the future. The Martins in the game will play along; you do not turn around a historical Church overnight.

Two Biblical texts come to mind as true Christians witness this charade. First, God says,

Woe to those who call evil good

and good evil,

who put darkness for light

and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet

and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5.20, ESV).

Second, Jesus warned His disciples that, in the end times,

many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved (Matthew 24.11-13).

By ‘false prophets’, Jesus meant those claiming to interpret the will of God for people but misguiding them. Only time will tell if the current crop of false prophets signal the end times. We have seen such apostasy before. God abandoned His people to the invading Babylonians for their flagrant rebellion against His commandments. Jeremiah the prophet says,

The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’

Those who handle the law did not know me;

the shepherds transgressed against me;

the prophets prophesied by Baal

and went after things that do not profit (2,7).

The result of this apostasy was God’s bringing the punishment of the Babylonians on the Israelites and taking many into exile.

Apostasy is a perennial sin of many priests, teachers, shepherds, and prophets. It just takes different forms in different eras. Sometimes the Church withstands heresy, sometimes it succumbs to it. Already in the 1^st c. AD, John the Apostle cut through the speculation about whether apostasy meant that believers were facing the ‘end times’ by saying that many antichrists had already come, and therefore we ‘know that it is the last hour’ (1 John 2.18). Of course, some day there will be an end of the end times. We may be at the end of the end, especially with the widespread apostasy in our day and with the new dimension of apostasy in rejecting God’s creational purposes themselves in sex and marriage.

If Christ is coming again for a bride without spot or wrinkle, a pure and holy Church awaiting His return (Ephesians 5.26-27)—and we know that He is—then a lot of the filth that calls itself the Church just because it clings to the faithful must be washed away. We are unquestionably seeing this today. It is time the bride took a bath. Every mainline denomination has declared itself against our Lord in its theology and practices over the past fifty years. From rejecting Scripture to rejecting the Gospel to rejecting righteousness to rejecting Christ Jesus the Son of God, they have affirmed the doctrinal and ethical heresies of the antichrist. With such bold blessing of sin, the wolves in sheep’s clothing are boldly disclosing themselves for what they are. Our first thought might be to bewail the state of ‘the Church’, but we should rather understand that the hideous distortion that has presented itself as the Church in this disguise and doublespeak is only the satanic imitation of God’s people. We celebrate their declaring themselves as the anti-Church, for by doing so they show themselves not to be the Church.

Of course, if we continue to cling to this false Church, then we have only ourselves to blame for our own distorted witness to the world. If, however, we let them go out from us, then it will be plain to all that they are not of us (cf. 1 John 2.19). As long as the righteous bride of Christ keeps walking the streets with those dressed in the abominable teaching and practices of hustlers who mockingly bless one another in their sins, the world can fairly associate us with those selling the world’s pleasures as though they were the Church’s blessings. The Church’s role is not to show how much like the world it can be but to show the world how much unlike it is from the Church. The Church exists to witness, and if it does not witness to the truth, it has no purpose at all. No matter how small the pure light is, it shines ever brighter in increasing darkness. Indeed, as Paul urged the Corinthians,

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? (2 Corinthians 6.14).

What we note in this week’s news is the sad truth that unbelievers are, as in Jeremiah’s day and again in John’s day, masquerading as believers, even in historic Churches like the Roman and Anglican Churches. They have been overcome by the world. Yet ‘everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith’ (1 John 5.4). What does it mean to bless sinners? It means to be overcome by the world rather than to overcome it with the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

[1] Cf. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780190491482.001.0001/acref-9780190491482-e-2469 (accessed 18 December, 2023).

[2] First Corinthians 6.9-11.

[3] For the Catholic Church, see the BBC news article at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67751600 (accessed 18 December, 2023).

From here.