Christian Concern's Benjamin John delivered a powerful speech to the Church of England's General Synod this week. Here it is in full:
What our world needs, whether they know it or not, is the gospel, they need the saviour Jesus Christ. Don't we all The Jesus who washes, sanctifies and justifies us.
The hope, the gospel for all of us, whatever our struggles and sins and temptations is that in Christ we are forgiven and that our sins and desires no longer define us. As Paul says, such were some of you.
We do not need to hold onto sinful identities and behaviours. We have not been given a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but a spirit of adoption by whom we cry Abba Father!
These proposals are wrong. They say that Jesus doesn't wash and sanctify you. That you do not need to take up your cross and follow him. That there is no call to holiness. That the truth does not set you free.
But love rejoices in the truth, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing. Love calls people out of sin and to Christ, snatching them out of the fire with discipline so that their spirits might be saved.
Please, bishops I plead with you: withdraw the proposals and prayers, turn from this path that you are on, fear God not man, be the shepherds that God is calling you to be, protect the sheep entrusted into your care by driving out this teaching that perverts the grace of God into a licence for immorality, this teaching that tickles our ears to suit our desires, a teaching that leads to the broad road and not the narrow one.
It is not too late. Turn to the beautiful, wonderful, glorious gospel. Why make ourselves like the world when we have the one thing the world needs? The gospel of Jesus Christ where we receive our true identities as precious daughters and treasured sons of God.
