Love, Rainbow Flags, and the Nature of Jesus and the Holy Spirit

Jon

Hey, everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church. This is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon. I get to serve as one of the pastors at Peace Church, and I get to serve also as the weekly host of this show. We're excited to launch a new year, a new season of That's a Good Question, and we want to reach people and help them grow in their knowledge of the Bible and their walk with the Lord. We think a great way to do that is by answering people's questions about the faith. So you can always send questions to peacechurch.cc/question. We'd love to hear your questions about the faith and be able to talk about them here on the show. We also think the best medium for doing this is on a podcast. So you can listen to it on your way to work or while you're working or whatever the best place is for you so that you can hear us talk about what the Bible says and about how you can walk with Jesus in everyday life. You can also find video clips on YouTube of different parts of this, but the primary place you can find this is as a podcast. And today, I'm excited to be here with Pastor Ryan, our lead pastor at Peace Church.

Ryan

Yes, hello.

Jon

Excited to get to talk about the questions people have sent in. We've got some good stuff.

Ryan

Yeah.

Jon

All right, here we go. First one, big one here.

Question #1: What is love?

Ryan

Isn't that the question? What is love? So, I think there's a couple ways you can think about it, but I think primarily you gotta go right to probably the Bible's definition that God is love. So, when I think about what is love, I first think of God, who he is, but then also we're seeing that played out through primarily the flesh and blood of Jesus through his life, death, resurrection, through his teachings. So I think for me, when we talk about what love is, it's going to stem all the way back to God. It's going to stem back to who God is and what he's done and what he's done for us. And so there's, man, this is like the age-old question, right? I mean, how many poets have spilt so much ink? How many songs have been written about what is love and what love is and how do we know it and how do we see it, how do we recognize it. I think, you know, when I talk like this, the cynic in me, the person who wants to question everything is, I want to immediately snap back at my own question and say something to the effect of like, so we can only know what love is if we know the Christian God. Does that mean that atheists can't know love or show love to one another or people from another religion? And my response to that is to say, no, absolutely, we can know and show love because we are made in God's image. And because of that, we have a capacity to love that comes from being made in God's image. And so I'd say is that yes, other religions and atheists and anyone who's a human can know and show love. We just may not recognize it as being connected to Yahweh or Jesus Christ or what we see in scriptures. That's kind of ways I'd begin to try to like say that we know what love is. And even if you don't know God, you can still know love. You just may not recognize that that love is coming from our Creator.

Jon

It's coming from God, whether you know it's coming from God or not. That's how it got there. I was just thinking it came from Pepsi. Those little Pepsi commercials.

Ryan

As manifested through Mountain Dew?

Jon

Yes.

Ryan

Wait, was there a commercial with Pepsi and Love?

The What is Love? with Pastor Ryan. You really don't know that commercial?

Ryan

Man, uh... Wait, is it from the, is it from the SNL skit?

Jon

I don't know.

Ryan

Okay, I don't know what we're talking about. I've always been a cult guy.

Jon

Oh man, okay, I'll forgive you. I'll forgive you. I'll play the, I'll play a clip later. Yeah, yeah, us young folks in the room. That's who it's from. Yeah. Okay, so if it is, so if God is love, God is the ultimate definition of love, but just running down kind of the trail you were going of, if you're an unbeliever, if you adhere to another religion, and you don't know God, but you do know love, how do we, what are some words we could put that even describe what love is like?

Ryan

Yep, yep. So I think again, all that's going to look, we're going to get that from the pictures of Jesus. I think we'd say things like love is not selfish, love is sacrificial. Jesus said, a greater love has no one in this than he who would lay down his life for his friend. Right, so right there we see in an aspect that love is not selfish, love is sacrificial. And so as people recognize love in their life, I think it's always going to have some sort of sacrificial aspect to it. That love is something that you give out without expecting anything in return.What about you?

Jon

Yeah, yeah, totally. I think that makes sense. So selfless sacrifice. Selfless, sacrificial, yeah.Yeah, the selfless line was what I was going to think down of just putting others before yourself.

Ryan

Yep.

Jon

But love is usually characterized as...

Ryan

Yeah, I mean it's giving. For God so loved the world that he gave. So love is selfless, it's sacrificial, it's giving. Again, it's an outpouring without expecting something in return.

Jon

Yeah, which is why I like in the movies. You know, there's a reason that the movie heroes actually look a little bit like Jesus in the sense of the selfless sacrifice, right? Usually the best movie hero or story hero is the hero who lays down his life for everybody else or at least risks his life for everybody else. That's because there's a there's a universal aspect to what a hero is what love is because God is love and he's in us. Yeah, and that's universal across cultures, right? We're always going to recognize that in the hero.

Ryan

And that's why, you know, guys like Tolkien and Lewis will talk about how Christ is the true myth. Right? I mean, all the things that we long for in the stories are fulfilled fully and really and truly in Jesus. Jesus is the true myth. He's the one who all the stories of what a great hero, of what great love is, is all truly found in the real person of Jesus Christ. And so when we talk about love, I think one of the questions I want to get to is, okay, so we know what love is from Scripture and through God and through the demonstration of Jesus coming to earth and in the gospel. So what are ways that the world misinterprets love or what are the ways that the world defines love that's actually wrong? How would you begin to think about that?

Question #2: What are the ways the world misinterprets love?

Jon

Yeah, well the main one we're hearing right now is love is love, right? The circular definition of love, that love is love. And I think what people are trying to say by that circular definition is that love is whatever you want it to be. I think that's the point of the circular definition. It's you make up your own, create your own adventure, you make up your own meaning to what love is.

Ryan

So I'd say that's definitely part of it. We'd say love has a definition. In a lot of ways, the world would say it doesn't. Love is whatever you want it to be. We'd also say, and again, when I say we, I mean a representative of the biblical worldview. Love is a sacrificial, selfless thing that you give up, versus the world is love is you affirming me. Love takes. Love is receiving something, versus giving. We put the emphasis on love as the action of one towards another. I think the world would say love is the action of someone else towards me, that they make themselves the center of the story. And so I think, you know, those two dichotomies, love has a definition, with the world to say it necessarily doesn't, or at least they would say every generation and culture has its freedom to develop their own, which essentially is just saying that there's no definition. So we'd say there's definition, the world says there's not definition. We would say, again, we from the biblical worldview, we would say that love is selfless and sacrificial versus the world, which is saying no, love is receiving and affirming something that you get. And we can definitely be the object of love, but we don't start there. We start with the Lord, we start with the gospel.

Jon

Yeah, so it really goes back to one of those core things of, core worldview things of is truth objective or is it subjective? And as Christians, we're saying truth is objective. There is an objective reality. It comes from God, it's in the Bible. And so things like love, things like beauty, there is an objective standard for these things.

Ryan

And yeah, there's an objective standard for love. You can't make it up. It's just what you said. I mean, this comes down to a battle of worldviews. Which worldview makes the most logical sense? Which worldview makes the most sense universally? Which worldview will stand the test of time? I think every great battle of thought is ultimately a battle of worldviews. It's where does it actually come from? Where does it stem from? Where does it find its grounding and its rooting? And for us, the eternal question of what is love. We're going to root that in the most eternal thing there is and that's that's God himself.

Jon

So to go down a little bit of a practical road of another question that came in the question was this:

Question #3: What do we do with businesses that have rainbow flags in front of them?

Yeah. Are we to go in there and is that showing them love or we to not go there is that yeah. The Christian loving thing to do. How do you do love the business? It's got a rainbow flag in front of it?

Ryan

So that's a, I'd say that's a, there's a number of ways you can begin to think about that question. And for me, when I think about this, because we've, I'm sure you have too, I've had people at numerous times, and that's putting it lightly, contact me about that very question. And I think at some point you have to leave space for Christian conscience. You know, as you seek the Lord with a mind renewed by the gospel, what are you led to do?

So I think you can look at it two ways. One is, I think something you're gonna find a lot, at least around in our culture, like our specific context, is people say, I don't want to support businesses that don't hold true to the values that I wanna see permeated in our culture. So when I go and support businesses with rainbow flags or supporting values that I don't adhere to, people feel like, okay, well, I'm supporting the spread of those ideas into my culture, and I don't want to do that.

That's one way that I think you could honestly approach that, but I think other people look at it, other Christians, I would say, other Christians look at it and they say, well, I want to reach these people. I want to share the love of Jesus with these people. And so we should be going into these businesses and making connections and showing the love and letting them know that we love them as people and that we we want you know we want good things to come from them and you know I have pushbacks and critiques on both sides of that on the one hand you can't just stand against so going back to that first group of people you can't just stand against something okay how are you actually promoting then the values you want to see in this world you know if you're willing to take a stand and not go to these businesses, then what in your life are you actually doing that's going to be promoting the values that you want to see in this world? I think a lot of times that can't point to a lot, can't point to much.

On the flip, for those who say, no, we need to go into those businesses, we need to share the love and support them as people and look them in the eye and let them know that we love them. A lot of times they'll talk about building bridges, we want to build bridges with these people. And I'd say that I can understand that, that's great, but what are you going to do with that bridge and when are you going to actually walk across it and share the gospel? Like, say, you are a sinner, but the good news is that Jesus died for our sins. You want to build these connections and let these people know they're loved. I appreciate that. I can support that. But you need to at some point walk across the bridge that you say that you're building, which leads to a confrontation in the sense of you're presenting the gospel, which is going to be confronting to their sin.

So I think a lot of times people aren't willing to actually do that. They will couch their intentions in this nicety of showing love and building bridges. And it's like, okay, but what are you actually going to do with that? Are you actually going to walk across that bridge and share the gospel at one point. So, again, the cynic in me wants to critique both sides. And so, those are just some ways I'm going to think about it. What about you, Pastor Jon?

Jon

Yeah, there's one answer that you didn't list in there, and it's because you listed the valid options that Christians can hold in tension, right? Two options that they can both do. There's a third option, which would be to say, well, I'm going to support the rainbow flag and all that it means because I'm a loving person. And that goes back to some of what we were saying just a minute ago, which is that we believe in the truth, objective truth, God and the Bible, God telling us objective truth and what reality is like through the Bible. And therefore, that means that that option is off the table, that scripture is very clear with us, that that lifestyle, LGBTQ lifestyle is contrary to God's word.

And so that's one of the options, one of the non-options, is to say that I support all that does and means because I'm a loving person. Actually, to be a loving person would be to share what's true, what's objectively true and real, and what God says leads to eternal life. You want other people to experience eternal life, then you've got to share the truth of the gospel with them. They can turn from their sin, receive Jesus as Savior, and experience life. That'd be the most loving thing you could do for them.

Ryan

Yeah, this is, I think this is the one of the great tensions people feel because we want to be seen as loving and the world has said, okay, well, to be loving means to affirm everything that the rainbow flag stands for. And there's people who buy into that and people who will go and support because they're trying to fit in. And, you know, I just preached a message about this and where I kind of brought up in the whole notion of holiness is like the more you fit into culture the more that's the antithesis of holiness. Like holiness is being set apart. It's being set apart from this world. It's belonging to God not belonging to this world. And so when we have a pursuit that is leading us to be more affirmed and embraced by our culture, I think we're becoming less holy. And so we get that it's totally unpopular, we get that it's countercultural, we get it's not the way that the world is turning, at least in our society, but for those who want to hold true to the biblical truths of the Christian faith, we can't affirm that as being ordained by God as a flourishing, fruitful life.

God has something better for us. And that's the message of Christians, that we want to share that with the world, that we have a God who has something better for us. Even though we are all, all of us trapped in our sin, Christ has made a way to save us from that through his own life and death and resurrection. Yeah, I'd say that's not a valid option. I think you need to either just say, I'm not going to support this because it doesn't promote the values I want to see in my culture at which point I'd say okay well then how are you actually promoting the values? You want you to see in your culture and then on the flip you could say well No, I think we need to go in there and show the love of Christ and build bridges and build relationships to which I'd say Great, that's what you're called to do go do that But what's your plan of action for actually sharing the gospel for actually walking across that bridge once it's built.

Jon

Yeah, so you brought up your sermon yesterday Which is awesome by the way. But thinking about those two options that you just laid out, I can imagine a Christian being in a conversation where they are asked or are confronted with this choice about what they do with a business with a rainbow flag. And either way they take, they could find themselves in this conversation where somebody's saying to them, okay, you decided not to go to those businesses. How is that, how does that not make you a hateful person? Or you could be sitting in a situation where you say, well, I do go to these businesses, but then I tell the people who are there to repent and turn to Jesus, and they say, well, that's hateful that you tell them they should repent and turn to your God. So, in either way, they could find themselves in this position where they're being accused of being hateful. So, if you're a Christian sitting in that spot where you're doing one of these options that aligns with the vocal worldview and a Christian conscience, and yet the world is saying to you, you're a hateful person because you've made that choice. Yeah. What should Christians say when they are accused of being hateful?

Ryan

What should a Christian say? Well, I'd say, number one, the first thing I'd say is that just shows the clash of worldviews. Because the truth is, is that unless you're going to affirm and celebrate what they affirm and celebrate, they're going to see you as hateful. It's a zero-sum game in our culture. And this is the whole point I was making yesterday, this is the whole intro, and I wove this throughout the entire sermon, that Christians have always been accused of being something that we're not. That's been the case since day one for Christians. And it's because the world judges us only by their own standard, and they don't look to see the true intention of the Christian heart and message. You can very much expect you will be called the things you don't want to be called. You will be called the things that are not true because you're not doing what the world wants. And so I would say to the Christian, you can expect to not be ultimately welcomed when the rubber meets the road of sharing the message.

Now, that's a worst case scenario. I think what we pray for is that God will work and the Spirit will move and people will turn to Jesus and we'll welcome them as brothers and sisters and we'll see him in heaven and we'll join forces and do some great mission and ministry here. But this is part of the package of being a gospel sharer in our world. People are going to reject it and part of that rejection is calling you things that are not true. Yeah. Well, and it's it's kind of getting uh I hesitate to say this but it's getting harder or at least it feels like it's us you know the generations of Christians past might agree or disagree with the statement but it's getting harder and harder to have the conversation because in our world there's so much there's so much there's a such a lack of common ground in our worldviews that it's hard to talk about. Or at least like the yeah, like the moral framework is competing is getting more and more divorced.

Jon

Yeah. Well, and even it, yeah, and the blending in obviously was Christians. We don't want to blend in. So there's that side of it. So that's good that on the one hand, we're caused to stand out more. On the other hand, I'm saying, I guess one thing that's just even harder is just our lack of shared values or language. Even, you know, when we say love, we mean two different things now. That's just, I think that's harder now than it was five or ten years ago.

Ryan

Well, and that's it's like there's there's the aspect of no definition and redefinition. I saw this I have this very liberal Progressive Facebook friend who went on this rant about pride and there you know the whole thing was like if you don't understand what we mean By pride then you you know you're a bigot or you're archaic or you're ignorant. You know, pride doesn't mean bride. Pride means celebration of yourself. And it's like, well, at some point, we have to like use the same dictionary. Otherwise, we're never gonna move forward and with any sort of commonality or to any sort of agreement on anything. And it was like, if you don't automatically know what we mean when we use words that we've always used, but now use in a different way, then you're the one who's on the outside, you're the one who is the trouble to society or the ignorant one or the bigot and it's just that whole notion of losing our shared values, we're losing our shared language with that.

I mean again we should know what love is love, what that actually means. Okay, I think we do. It's what we're saying is like love between two people of opposite sex. It's like, okay, but it means more than that, right? That's what you're saying. And so when they kind of concede that, then it's like, okay, but what does it actually mean? Well, so if we have two different sets of words, it's like we have two different languages, right? It is like a language barrier. It's like you're talking, one person's talking English, one person's talking Spanish. It's sort of feels like that way sometimes. Which is just an aspect of a culture barrier, right? I mean, part of the culture barrier is language. And that's just where it kind of shows that we are becoming two distinct cultures. Because we're developing different languages. Yeah, totally, totally.

So as I think about my own question, the question that I asked, if you're standing in front of somebody and they accuse you of hate speech for sharing a biblical perspective, I'm sort of imagining how I would try to, so if you're trying to cross that culture barrier, that language barrier in a few short sentences, I think I would probably say something like, okay, well, I understand what you're saying, I understand why you're telling me that, that you think that I'm hateful for saying this or for believing this, but actually see it from my side, see it from my perspective. From my perspective, I'm actually the most, this is as loving as I can be because what I believe is that if you don't turn to Jesus, then you will go to hell and spend eternity in punishment instead of eternity in life with Jesus. And so the most loving thing I can do is to point out your sin and ask you to repent of it and to turn to Jesus.

Now, I know you don't see it that way, but that's how I see it because that's what the Bible says. And so that exactly it's at some point, right? You not some point you want to start here, but when things get heated, you kind of want to go back to that base level human to human and just be like, listen, you, you understand like you, I understand how, like you're saying, I understand how, why you think this is hateful, but do you understand from my perspective, like, hear me, I do not hate you. Yeah. I do not mean to be hateful to you. That's not my intent. That's not my heart. I'm, I, I, I'm sorry that you receiving it like that way. But the true intention of my heart is to share with you something that's good and pure and right and better. And at some point, if the conversation still crumbles, you did your due diligence.

Jon

Right. Yeah. The victory, the outcome is not in your hands. It's in the Lord's hands. But I think that's a good way to try to explain yourself. And then ultimately, you go home and you pray.

Ryan

And also, the other thing is, I think we often get trapped into like, maybe like a YouTube wormhole, or rabbit trail, and we nd up seeing all these videos of these two groups on the street starting to hash it out and go screaming at each other. For me, it's like, the more you can do this one-on-one, I think in the American culture, that's a better way to do it. Sure. I'm not saying there's not a place for street preaching. I'm saying you have to be wise to your times and understand the dynamics of your culture. And I just think there's a group thinking group mentality that is so overbearing. It's almost unproductive to try and have two groups like that.

The best, the more that you can move to those is one-on-one conversation or correspondences. I think they're more beneficial and fruitful. I had some conversations this past week with, or not this past week, I had some conversations this past summer with some people on the opposite side of this culture. And we actually had some really great conversations, just me and them, one-on-one, talking about these things, because we're not trying to get likes, we're not trying to show off in front of our buddies, we're having two conversations with between two real people, just with very different perspectives on things. And I felt like it's, they know where I stand, I know where they stand, and it wasn't shrouded in a heated conversation with a bunch of witnesses.

And so I think the more you can move those two over a cup of coffee, or through some sort of electronic exchange, I think that's a better approach by and large in our culture. Again, I don't want to diminish the effectiveness or the place of street preaching. I've actually done it myself. I'm not opposed to it. I just think when in my time, I've been way more kingdom productive when I go one-on-one and then on a street corner or with a group of people. So that was a little bit of a rabbit trail, but. No, that was great.

Jon

Alright, hey, one last question for us here before we go. Somebody sent in this question. It's a great question. They asked this. They asked if Jesus always was or if he came to be when he was sent to Earth. And they're asking the same question about the Holy Spirit. Was the Holy Spirit always there or did the Holy Spirit come when Jesus gave him as a gift after he left the Earth?

Question #4: Did Jesus always exist or was He created when He came to earth?

Ryan

You know, just before we get into the finer points of that, I really appreciate when people just ask straight up theological questions. Yeah, it's awesome. Not the practical questions dealing with all the relevant cultural issues, but just these good old fashioned theological questions. So I can't say for certain, but I wonder if this stems from something I said in the message when I talked about how Christians are called atheists. Christians at one point were called atheists, but I said, it's really odd because we have like the most robust theology of all the religions because we believe that God came to earth as the man born in that manger on Christmas. So I wonder if that sparked it, maybe, maybe not, or it could just be, that's a great age-old question.

Jon

Yeah, right. People have been asking that question for a couple thousand years now.

Ryan

They certainly have. They certainly have. So, the answer to that question is that Jesus always existed. He received the name Jesus at his birth, but God the Son, the second member of the Trinity, has existed from all eternity. That's the Orthodox Christian stance. That's what the Bible teaches. That's what we believe and preach here at Peace Church. Pastor Jon, you want to dial in on that a little bit?

Jon

Yeah, a few passages that come to mind. Think of John 17, when Jesus is praying his high priestly prayer. He's talking to the Father, and he says, he talks about going back to the glory that he had before he had come to the earth, the glory that he had at the Father's side. So, talking about his existence before becoming a man. Think of John chapter 1, the Gospel of John chapter 1, and talking about being the Word, being one with God, talk about his existing since eternity past.

John 1:2-3

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

I think of Colossians chapter one, talks about Jesus' preeminence, think of passages like in Romans 8 that talk about Jesus being the firstborn among many brothers. Those passages could be easily kind of, I could see, you know, it'd be, those are kind of tricky, that language, firstborn, but what Jesus is talking about is actually his higher standing or his being the highest among the brothers. Also just that he's the first of the resurrected ones. So it's not saying that he didn't exist before he was born as a man. Jesus always was.

Ryan

Yeah, we, I know that you had this professor too. We weren't in college, Professor Dr. Doug Felch. He talked about this because this is an age-old controversy that the early church dealt with. It's called the Arian Controversy where people would argue, was there a time when Jesus did not exist? Or was there not a time when Jesus did not exist? And like literally people would gather in groups on the sides of the on different sides of the street and they'll and you know two thousand years ago and scream at each other and professor felch would like reenact this in front of it was amazing you know people would raise their fist in the air and they'd say there was a time when he was not and then the people on the other side of the street would say there was not a time when he was not and then you go back and forth and was when he was not was not when he was not was not when he was not that's right it's a tongue twister, but he was doing it perfectly every time.

Jon

He did, yeah.

Ryan

And never forget it. Never forget it. So, no, Jesus pre-existed. His time went before, I mean, Jesus was always existed with the Father. The Father, Son, and Spirit. Paternally existed. One in essence, three in persons. The second member of the Trinity came to earth, born, took on humanity, was given the name Jesus, Jesus Christ, forever wedded with his humanities. He's perfectly, he's 100% human, 100% divine, but Jesus came from heaven to earth and he's returned to heaven to earth and we will be with him one day when we leave this mortal plane. And so that's a great question. Real quick, the Holy Spirit too.

Jon

Should we talk about the Holy Spirit as well?

Ryan

Yep, so I mean, I think that's less confusing, or at least produces less questions. I hear that one way less. And I think a lot of times you just go back to Genesis 1, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep. I mean, the Spirit was there in the very beginning before creation. And so, Father, Son, Spirit, first, second, third persons of the Trinity, eternally existing.

Jon

God has always been one in essence, three in persons. Always was the case, always will be the case. Didn't just start on earth in human history. Always been the case. Great question. Awesome stuff. Thanks for asking. Thanks everybody. Great questions. Thanks for sending them in. And thanks for spending some time with us. And thanks for spending some time with us. We'll catch you later.