Now the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him (Luke 22:63).
The Equality Act (H.R.5), which attaches sexual orientation and gender identity to civil rights laws, if implemented would be devastating. Not necessarily for the church, for despite the threat to religious liberty that it poses, the church will press on. The Lord has always built His church in the face of man’s opposition. But it will codify, and therefore deepen, our cultural confusion, and encourage many who deal with sexual or identity confusion to walk down a dark and irreversible path. Questions concerning bathroom choice or sports are only the tip of the iceberg. In the name of freedom and equality, the Equality Act is oppression of the first order.
But what does this have to do with Good Friday?
As the church has recognized from of old, Jesus is “very God and very man.” As “very God,” He bears the perfect image of God. If we want to know who God is, we look at Christ. The presence of God among us posed a question: what do we think of God? The crucifixion of Jesus answers. Since Eden, man has sought to evade God. And the best way to evade God is to seek to do away with Him. To mock him and to seek to twist Him into our own image. To paraphrase the Gospel of John, the light came into the darkness, and the darkness tried to extinguish Him.
Jesus is also “very man.” He bears the perfect image of Man, and is therefore who man was created to be. If we want to know who man is, we look at Christ. The presence of this Man among us likewise posed a question: what do we think of man? The crucifixion of Jesus likewise answers: we mock, we disfigure, and we seek to extinguish Him. The crucifixion of Jesus is therefore not just a rejection of God, but a rejection of man. Of course, these always go hand in hand, for man is the image of God. To embrace one is to embrace the other, and to forsake one is to forsake the other. We reject not just God, but also man when we determine who we will be, rather than discovering who God created us to be.
The Equality Act attacks the heart of who man is, who God created us to be. Created distinctly male and female, the Equality Act reinforces a culture that bears false witness to who we are, insisting that ultimately there is no male and female, that we can decide who we want to be apart from who we were created to be. The transgender movement encourages those in personal distress to disfigure themselves permanently, whether by dress or by hormones or by scalpel. It mocks and disfigures man, and then tells us that we are as we should be.
None of this is to say that everyone who supports the Equality Act means to destroy man. Gender confusion is weighty, painful, and not easily addressed. Yet the Equality Act and other laws and programs that support gender confusion don’t address the problem. Rather, they deepen it by promoting “solutions” that may seem compassionate in the short term, but are destructive and often irreversible. It is the codification of a doctrine that always leads to ruin—“everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” As a mother of a dear friend of mine said as she mourned the loss of her daughter, “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary crisis.” So also here. We know not what we do.
Which brings us back to Good Friday, and particularly why it is good. Jesus was crucified precisely because all of us—without exception—have decided who we will be apart from who God has created us to be. Sin, and the confusion that always accompanies it, is not someone else’s problem. It’s mine. Yet, looking down upon us who had mocked and beaten him, Jesus prayed “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That’s the message of Good Friday. God is good. Furthermore, not only does God forgive us our sin, He will raise us in our full humanity, restored to who He created us to be. That’s the message of Easter.
W Ross Blackburn is the Rector at Christ the King Anglican Fellowship in Boone, NC. He holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of St. Andrews and has over 20 years of ministry experience. He is a member of the St. Anselm Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
