Unquestionable Authority

Coram Deo: Living Before the Face of God

Unquestionable Authority by Burk Parsons

I am terribly vexed. I have just finished reading an article from the notoriously left-wing magazine Newsweek. In the cover story, “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage,” author Lisa Miller argues the case for gay “marriage” using the Bible as her authority. Miller opens with this line: “Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does.” She later asserts, “The Bible gives us no good reason to oppose gay marriage.”

It takes no brains but a lot of guts to try to make a case for gay “marriage” (of course, the phrase itself is a contradiction in terms). But it’s just downright crazy to try to make a case for the legitimacy of gay “marriage” using the Bible.

I was recently at an event with Mike Huckabee as the keynote speaker, and I was delighted when the former governor quoted from the book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 17:6). This recurring assessment from Judges is certainly applicable to our own day. While the Lord has shown that He will raise up and sustain a faithful remnant of His people in every generation, in His providence He has also shown the chaotic and noetic effects of the fall in every generation. And if you haven’t yet realized it, I’ll let you in on something — we are among the faithful remnant in this generation.

With the Bible as our only infallible authority for every aspect of faith and life, we must stand on the truth and for the truth with uncompromising commitment to the truth and unwavering compassion for those who hate the truth, deny the truth, and use the only infallible authority for truth to defend their lies. By God’s grace, we have been called out of darkness in order to stand in His marvelous light so that we might boldly go into the darkness of this world as a light to the world, proclaiming the way, the truth, and the life before the face of God, coram Deo, and before the faces of our enemies. But in doing so, we must not in practice deny our allegiance to the authority of the Word of God by saying we believe it while continuing to live according to what is right in our own eyes.

Burk Parsons is editor of Tabletalk magazine and minister of congregational life at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and is editor of the book John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, & Doxology.

Coram Deo by Burk Parsons introduces the theme of each month's issue of Tabletalk and explains why everything we study should contribute to the living of a holy life before the face of God.

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