Anyone for a bowl of Marrow (Controversy) Soup? ET meets the EMW.

Have you ever watched as two good friends, a husband and a wife, or a pastor and his elders fall out? Perhaps you love and appreciate both and don’t want to take sides, even when you can see that one party is clearly right. It is a painful position to be in and you fear that, when all is said and done, nobody will come out stronger and everyone will have wounds to lick.

That is how I felt reading an article in the Evangelical Times (ET) this month, entitled “Concerns raised over LGBT and racism seminars at Aber Conference”, which brings together a number of my friends and pitches them against each other. I can’t say that I agree at every point with any of these friends but at a fundamental level I believe we are all on the same page when it comes to our Christian core: Salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. 

Firstly, I have always considered ET a friend. I have often appreciated articles in the paper and they have published one or two things which I have written. 

Then there is the Evangelical Movement of Wales (EMW) an organisation which is doing so much for gospel ministry in Wales. Family members have benefitted from their camps and conferences and I have enjoyed their fraternals and conferences for ministers. A few years ago, I had great fellowship with their folks in North Wales who gave me free office space during a stint of student evangelism in the area. One highlight was joining together to pray through a small building renovation project and seeing the Lord wonderfully and graciously provide.

Third through fifth are three Christian brothers: Paul Smith, John Funnell and Roger Abbott. The article’s author, Paul and I were in the same congregation for a while as students. John and I enjoyed prayer and fellowship together through a South Wales minister’s fraternal. And Roger - I’m not sure that we have ever met but his writing on pastoral responses to trauma helped me process some critical situations I encountered in a foreign mission setting. (A fourth brother who I am not acquainted with, Sam Liu, is also mentioned in the article).

Should I stand and watch? Or should I speak? On this occasion I have decided to write because I believe the point of dispute at the centre of this stormy tea-cup relates to the heart of what Christians believe about grace.

This is the statement which caught my attention:

“...Furnell (sic) seemed to divorce faith from repentance, stating that ‘being gay has nothing to do with it, our salvation is based on faith in Christ Jesus’. Evangelism was ‘not beating people with the sin-stick because of their current lifestyle choices. Friends, the LGBT+ debate is an issue of discipleship, not evangelism’.”

On the one hand we have a brother who is concerned that sexual identity should not stop a person coming by faith to Christ for salvation. He is concerned about repentance, because he clearly states that LGBT+ “lifestyle choices” are an issue of Christian discipleship - they are long term ongoing issues but not necessarily to the forefront at the point of conversion. On the other hand we have a brother who believes that, in true Christianity, faith and repentance always go together. He is concerned about the gospel being presented in a way that might seem to divorce the two.

If you have read Scottish church history - or if you have read Sinclair Ferguson’s contemporary book ‘The Whole Christ’ (Crossway, 2016) - this might be sounding a little familiar. ‘The Marrow Controversy’, as it has become known, was a rigorous and heated historical debate regarding the relationship of faith and repentance in Reformed theology (the name came from a book called ‘The Marrow of Modern Divinity’ around which the battle lines were drawn). The details are complex and confusing. Poor choice of words did not help. Both sides seemed to have had a concern for true conversions in which faith and repentance played their right part. They differed on the order in which faith and repentance should be logically arranged.

Let’s say that you put repentance in first place. A person cannot believe in Christ until they have turned from their sin. If we follow this line it will produce a certain flavour in our evangelism. We will indeed use the “sin-stick” to beat people to Christ. We will prescribe that a certain amount of ‘law work’ must be done before they are ready to receive Christ. In fact, we might even hold back preaching Christ until we feel that they are sufficiently repentant to believe in Him. But we have a problem. If a person is dead in sin and under sins power until they come to Christ, how can they ever meet the requirement of ‘repenting’?

Let’s say, on the other hand, that faith comes first. In this case we look any and every sinner in the eye and compel them to wait for nothing but come to Christ immediately. We can argue that this is their duty - He commands it. We can argue that this is their privilege - He invites them. We can argue that it is a free gift - nothing to pay, no hidden ‘costs’ in the small print. We can argue that it is their need - they are spiritually sick. We can argue that it is what they want - all their deepest dissatisfactions are traced to the fact that they do not know God. We can argue from a warning - that sin leads to judgment and hell. We can argue from God’s love - if He offers so much out of pure love how can you refuse? We will also argue on moral grounds by appealing to conscience - you know this is wrong, you must turn from it (repent) to Christ. In fact, we will use any honest means possible to bring them to Christ. We will not make repentance an essential preparation or work or penance - because we know that if a person just looks to Christ by faith, He will forgive them, rescue them, set them free from sins power, and lead them into deeper and deeper repentance. (See for example, the sermon by C.H. Spurgeon on Luke 14:23 in ‘Compel Them To Come In’ by Donald Macleod, Christian Focus, 2020). Realising this can bring a new compassion, a softness, a gentle and gracious influence into a gospel ministry, which has been a bit too hard, crisp, and metallic.

For Reformed evangelical theology, faith in Christ must have priority even over repentance, although they are really two sides of the same coin (Prof. Robert Letham has a helpful section on this in his recent Systematic Theology). When Christ’s invitation “Come unto me all who labour and are heavy laden” is preached indiscriminately to all in this way, in all His fullness and all His free-ness, the Holy Spirit will work to guarantee that faith and repentance are present and to safeguard the relationship between the two. He does this in His own sovereign way, choosing how and when to convict of sin. In lived experience, He leads some people’s consciences through deep waters before they are visibly converted. Others come to Christ relatively easily but go through much greater ‘conviction’ later. Whatever our experience, theologically faith comes first.

I have good reason to believe that this is what was being taught at the EMW conference LGBT+ seminar. We do not - we must not - preach “Come unto me all who labour and are heavy laden except for gay people - they have to get rid of their baggage first” any more than we would preach “Come unto me all who labour and are heavy laden except for proud, religious, self-righteous people - they have to get rid of their baggage first”. To single out anyone and fence the gospel from them on the basis of our perception that their peculiar sins are some how worse is nothing more than sinfully prejudiced discrimination.

One of the lessons the Marrow Controversy teaches, is that it is very easy to talk across each other. Some will defend repentance and accuse their opponents of ‘anti-nomianism’. Others will defend faith and accuse their opponents of ‘legalism’. It is not my intention to defend John Funnell’s choice of words at every point (though I think that much of what he said has been wrenched from its context and misunderstood). Nor is it my intention to imply that Paul Smith and the good folk at ET actually believe that people cannot come to Christ until they have sufficiently repented.

I just want to ask, will it serve the cause of Christ for evangelical brothers to go through this debate again? And if we must, would it not be better to meet and talk through our misunderstandings respectfully and sympathetically - perhaps over a bowl of marrow soup?