Testing the Spirits
A Comment on the Editorial
Discerning truth from error and true teachers from false is a mandatory task laid upon Christians. We are instructed to “test the spirits” and are advised by our Lord that “by their fruits ye shall know them.”
As a guide in testing the spirits, we know that the Holy Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8). Sin is a target of God.
The infamous papal teaching released in December addresses how individuals who are living in sin may be blessed by a representative of Christ’s church. It was issued in the context of a longstanding and widespread pastoral failure to follow the biblical pattern of ministry to those living in open sin, and it perpetuates that failure..
The dominical pattern of ministry is to embrace the sinner in mercy for the sake of his repentance and salvation by addressing his sin. Jesus protected the adulterous woman from execution and assured her, “Neither do I condemn you,” but he also admonished her, “Go, and from now on sin no more.” Jesus said to the healed paralytic, “Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” Fiducia Supplicans issues no call to “sin no more,” but only to come and receive a blessing.
As for testing the spirits, we have the Lord’s commendation of the church in Ephesus for having “tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and are found to be false” (Rev. 2:2). Two of the seven letters to the churches also address specifically the Lord’s displeasure with the “sexual immorality” found within those churches, including teaching that allows it (2:14,20).
Scripture warns us that the world will face a trial of great deception. In the Book of Revelation, sexual immorality is cited numerous times as a mark of global infidelity, idolatry, and one of the causes of imminent judgment. In its final chapter, the sexually immoral are warned a final time. The fruit of Fiducia Supplicans is a clear impression that same-sex relations can be blessed with no repentance.
Opponents may reject this critique as “rigid biblicism.” But they have domesticated sexual sin, even if they admit that it is not ideal. (Paul said marriage was not ideal, over celibacy, but hardly a sin. This is something entirely different.) However, when it comes to ministering in love so that the sinner may repent from sexual sin, such critics, like the well-schooled Sadducees of old, know neither Scripture nor the power of God.
James M. Kushiner is the Director of Publications for The Fellowship of St. James and the former Executive Editor of Touchstone.
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