The mind of God.

In his letter to the early disciples of Jesus, in Rome, the apostle Paul asks the rhetorical question: "... who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?" (11:34; see, also, I Cor.2:16).

It would appear from newspaper reports, that the answer to that question is the pop singer, Elton John.

In yesterday's Daily Telegraph, we read his words, spoken on the Sky News' Murnaghan programme: "If Jesus Christ was alive today, I cannot see him, as the Christian person that he was [sic] and the great person that he was, saying this could not happen,"   "He was all about love and compassion and forgiveness and trying to bring people together and that is what the church should be about."

Perhaps the singer should be made aware that, whatever else he is, he is neither a theologian nor one with an understanding of either the Christian faith, or the Greek language of the New Testament!  Permit me to correct some of his erroneous assumptions:

1. Jesus was not a "Christian person".  He was born into the Jewish faith; He lived His earthly life as a Jew; He died as a Jew - indeed, the inscription that Pontius Pilate had placed on the cross read, in three languages: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." (John 19:19).
2. Jesus was not merely a "great person".  He was, and is, Almighty God.
3. It is true that Jesus was "about love and compassion and forgiveness".  However, He was also about sin, and justice, and keeping God's Law.
4. That same Law, that Jesus upheld, makes it quite clear that the homosexual lifestyle adopted by Elton John is an abomination.
5. The 'love' that Jesus was "all about" is, in the Greek language of the New Testament, 'agape'.  The 'love' to which Elton John is obviously referring is the Greek word 'eros'.  The two are as different as chalk and cheese!  'Eros' is sexual love that is, as often as not, little more than physical lust.  'Agape' is the unconditional love of Almighty God - described by my own former minister, spiritual mentor, and personal friend, the late Rev George B.Duncan, as "a minimum of emotion, and a maximum of evaluation".
6. What "the church should be about" is summed up in what is known as 'the Great Commission'.  It comes from the very lips of the resurrected Jesus: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." (Matt. 28:19-20).

Of course, Elton John is entitled to his choice of lifestyle.  He is even entitled to promote that lifestyle although, thankfully for the future of the human race, it is a miniscule percentage who allow themselves to be drawn into its perversion.  What he is not entitled to do is to claim, or even infer, that the Lord Jesus would approve of it.  The whole of the written Word of God says differently.

Elton John should also be made aware that the Jesus Whom he so readily 'uses' promised that He would return to judge the world.  On that Day, Elton John may not be smiling!