Friday, December 6, 2024

Part I

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An Unpardonable Pardon: President Biden’s Misuse of Presidential Power and Responsibility as a Father

Well, we’ve had almost a week to think about the pardon. We can simply say the pardon because it’s the only pardon right now that matters. It is the pardon extended by President Joe Biden to his son Hunter Biden. And even as we talked about this a few days ago, subsequent developments and a thoughtful and reflective return to the basic questions cause us to at the end of the week want to come back and say there’s really something here we need to look at. There’s really something here we need to consider.

And for one thing, we know things we didn’t know about the context, we know things we didn’t know about the pardon even as it was issued as the president was headed for a foreign policy trip to Africa. And so what we now know is that even as the President had said repeatedly that he would not do this, he is now saying he did this because of what he alleges was the selective prosecution of his son. And this comes after month, after month after month of the President and his spokespersons in the White House saying on the record that he would not do this. So he has done what he said he would not do.

And here’s what we need to recognize that if you take the President at his own words, even when he says why he did it, nothing has changed from when he said he would not until he says now that he will pardon his son, which just underlines the fact that nothing has changed in the larger situation. What has changed, is if not what the President intended to do, at least what he has said he has intended to do. He said one thing, he has done the opposite thing.

But I want to turn now to an aspect of this that I don’t think is receiving adequate attention. And I guess we shouldn’t count on this attention in the larger secular world, but I think as Christians we just need to stop for a moment and just ask what in the world’s going on here because we are talking about two human beings. When we talk about the President of the United States, Joe Biden and his son Hunter, we are talking about a family and perhaps we just need to take a closer look because after all, as Christians we’re very concerned with the father’s love for his son. We’re very concerned that righteousness be upheld and done. We’re very concerned for the integrity of the family.

And this is where we have to understand that Joe Biden, because he’s been in the public eye for so long, it’s also true that his family’s been in the public eye for a very long time. As a matter of fact, Joe Biden’s appearance on the national scene came in the context of a tragedy, a horrifying tragedy that took place even before Joe Biden had taken office as a US senator but after his election. In just that little bit of time between his election and his taking of office, Joe Biden’s wife and daughter and two sons were in a horrifying automobile accident. His wife then was killed, his daughter was killed. Both of the boys, Hunter and Beau were badly injured. Thankfully, the two boys did survive, but this is something that was very, very public.

And so we say this with a good deal, a great deal of sympathy. President Biden, then Senator Biden, entered the public mind in the understanding that he had suffered an incredible family tragedy. That was just understood. That should be understood. The president later married the woman now known as Jill Biden, and Jill Biden helped Joe Biden to raise Hunter and Beau Biden and then they had a daughter together.

And so the Biden family has been living this out in the public eye, and yet that public eye has often presented Joe Biden as he’s claimed to be very much a family man. And there is no doubt that Joe Biden is very close to his wife Jill. There is no doubt that Joe Biden was very, very close to his son Beau, who after all had a rather illustrious legal career and a military career and who died tragically of cancer.

But his other son, Hunter, has been basically someone who’s lived a troubled life for most of his adult life, at least for his adult life as it is known to the American public. It has been scandal after scandal after scandal. So remember in the background of all of this are sex parties and drug use, you could just go down the line. Much of this lived out, of course, in the context of what are currently described as addictions. No doubt there’s a real basis to describing something as an addiction. And Hunter Biden appears to have fallen into numerous addictions.

He also has committed, undoubtedly, now even by his own guilty plea in court, in a federal court, he has committed serious crimes. But Joe Biden as President of the United States has utilized his presidential pardon power on behalf of his own son. And in doing so, when the president released the statement on Sunday evening, he basically said that his son had been singled out for prosecution, that his son had been unjustly prosecuted, and might face even further unjust prosecution.

But here’s where we noted at the time, this is an argument that should not be made by a president father about his son having been involved in criminal activity. And this is something that seemed to be so obviously wrong that at least when he was running for president, for reelection to office, Joe Biden made very clear it would be wrong to do exactly what he did just days ago.

And frankly, he did so in even more sweeping terms than many understood at the time. You look at the actual document that represents this presidential pardon, it is absolutely sweeping for a period of just about a decade. It is massive in its impact, but there are also signs and there have been signs all along that one of the problems here is the way that Joe Biden has related to his son. Should a father love a son? The answer is of course yes. Should a father love a son in such a way as to say pardon a son, using your presidential power for these criminal acts and prevent him from any criminal prosecution about other acts? I’m going to argue that biblically not to mention constitutionally, this is extremely suspect.

I wrote an article published at World Opinions just on Wednesday of this week entitled Joe Biden’s Unpardonable Pardon. And in the subhead I said this, “We must love our children both rightly and righteously.” And here’s where I think the Scripture points very clearly to the fact that we are to love our children without reservation, but we are not to love our children without moral judgment, which is to say a righteous father disciplines his son. A righteous father holds his son morally accountable. A righteous father does not try to prevent his son from a legitimate prosecution. A righteous father does not become an endless excuse maker for his own son.

This is so obviously right in moral terms that Joe Biden repeated it over and over again, that he would not do what he just this past week has done. Now remember that Hunter Biden’s been convicted of one crime. He pled guilty to others. He was awaiting a sentencing hearing when his father, entering the period of the last weeks of his term in office, pardoned him.

And as you look at this, you recognize that a closer look tells us that this pardon goes even beyond the crimes for which Hunter Biden has either been found guilty or pled guilty. It is a blanket pardon against any criminal prosecution for federal crimes during this period. That’s not only unprecedented, it frankly is almost breathtaking. But all of this of course, is in a political context, and it’s hard to separate all of this from a political context, but I want to try to do so by going to Scripture, going to Luke chapter 15 and thinking of the parable of the prodigal Son.

And what I want to point out is that even as Jesus told this parable, he tells it about a boy who was indeed a prodigal. He was a wasteful son, he was a rebellious son. He effectively said unto his Father, “I want to treat you as if you are dead. Divide the inheritance between me and my brother that will come to me.” And then he went off into a far country and in the Jewish background, there’s so much in play there, and he wasted his inheritance in riotous living, in promiscuous living, as a prodigal. And there’s no great detail about what he did. His elder brother later will have ideas about what he did. Let’s just say those ideas are not corrected, but they also are not specified in the text about the younger brother.

What we are told is that he sinned grievously, and furthermore, we are told that he came to his senses. That’s the picture that Jesus gives us. This is actually a picture of the sinner coming to understand the reality of our sin. That’s also a part of God’s gift to us and calling us to Christ. He came to himself and then he plots to go back to his father who is such a good man and to say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired men.”

But you’ll recall that when the son returns to the father, the father sees him afar off and runs to him and he kisses him. But remember what he says. The son goes on to say, “Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and in your sight,” but he’s interrupted by his father. The important thing to recognize here is that the son absolutely came to a divinely revealed understanding of the nature of his sin. That’s the one thing that never seems to have happened about Hunter Biden. There is absolutely no acknowledgement of any deep and grievous sin. There’s actually no open acknowledgement of any particular horrifying, ugly wrongdoing. Instead, it’s all now presented by the father as if it were nothing but a political trap.

An indulgent father mistakes indulgence for love. But Scripture makes very clear that love is not indulgence. A godly father loves his son and disciplines him. I simply want to conclude by saying it’s beyond our power to correct President Biden’s miscarriage of justice, but it is not beyond our power, we need to underline, to learn from it.

I would simply say as a father and a grandfather to other fathers, let me just ask this. Are you seeing this clearly? And I direct this question to myself and to all other fathers and grandfathers out there. By God’s grace, may the Lord grant us sight and show us as fathers how to love our children, not only rightly, but also righteously. Obviously that’s something we cannot do on our own, but we are not left on our own as Christian fathers. We are given the Holy Scriptures. We’re given the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in this task together and let us be found having loved our children rightly and righteously. We are told that the pardon by the President is, legally speaking, the end of the matter and legally speaking, constitutionally speaking, it may well be, but for the rest of us there are still lessons to learn and we need together to seek to learn them.

Part II

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What are Your Thoughts on Dietrich Bonhoeffer? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners to The Briefing

Okay, next, let’s turn to questions. And as always, I’m glad to receive thoughtful questions from so many listeners to The Briefing and we get to as many of them as possible in the time remaining, I received a series of questions about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German church figure and theologian. He lived from 1906 by the way to 1945. He was executed by the Nazis on April the 9th of 1945. There is no doubt that in that sense he was a victim of Nazi tyranny. He was involved with, to some extent, an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It’s not exactly clear exactly what part he had, but there is also enough clarity to know that he was engaged with some people who were certainly involved in that kind of effort. And he was a part of the resistance. That much is also clear. He was a part of what was known as the Confessing Church, which was a portion of the church, which by the way did not deny all the Nazism represented.

That kind of depends on figure by figure, but it did deny the central claim of Nazism that it could establish a church in its own image. The Confessing Church understood itself to be, in that sense, confessing Christ as a stark alternative to Nazi Christianity, the distorted Christianity of the Nazi regime.There’s also no doubt that Bonhoeffer is an illustration of courage and there are books about him. There are movies about him. There are some historical questions about all these books and all these movies. And as a matter of fact, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of those complex figures in which you can kind of claim this part or that part, but it’s hard to hold all the parts together. So let’s talk about some of the parts. There is the part of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the liberal Protestant, the product of a liberal theological faculty who was very much at home among theological liberals, whether it was in Germany or for that matter at Union Theological Seminary here in the United States.

But he’s also associated with the movement known as Neo-Orthodoxy, which included Karl Barth and a number of others, Emil Bruner. And that was seen as at least in part a middle ground or a correction between Christian orthodoxy and Protestant liberalism that basically denied the supernatural elements of the Christian faith. It is clear that Bonhoeffer wanted more than that liberal anti-supernaturalism, and one of the ways that was translated into Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology was in a pretty robust ecclesiology. And his book Life Together makes that very clear. So there are a lot of evangelicals who find some real encouragement towards the life of say, a local church in that book Life Together. He also wrote books including the Cost of Discipleship, and you just go down the list and you understand that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a very complex person. He’s a very confusing person I want to admit to me. I think that it’s very difficult to say, “This is Dietrich Bonhoeffer” other than to say the historical facts of his life because his thought is honestly rather puzzling and convoluted in places.

There is no doubt that at one point he was talking about a religion-less Christianity, which basically is a Christianity without any kind of doctrinal content. It’s also clear that he at least was friendly to and toyed around with many very liberal formulations, in some cases even more liberal than the Protestant liberalism of his era. It’s also clear that he was quite willing to use a theological vocabulary that was more common among conservatives in many cases. It’s clear that he understood more clearly than many other German Christians or those in German churches at the time that the cost of discipleship was going to require opposition to the Nazi regime. It’s not clear that he understood that early in the era of Nazism, but it is clear that he understood it by the end. After all, he was executed by the Nazis even in the very closing weeks of World War II.

It is also clear that even as he went to a very liberal theological institution here in the United States, Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, it is also clear that he was puzzled by some of the Protestant liberalism he confronted even at Union Theological Seminary. He saw American theological liberalism as extremely superficial. It is also beyond doubt that he demonstrated enormous personal courage by returning to Germany when he knew he was exposing himself to the deadly effects of the Nazi regime. He knew he was setting himself up for what could be and turned out actually to be very much a confrontation with the Nazi regime that would lead to his death.

So in that sense, you have to put Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the category of those who lived by conviction in that sense. And he actually did so at great risk to his life, indeed eventually the cost of his life. But it’s also clear to be honest, that if you’re going to take the writings, the total contribution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer at his time, and even as we read it with the distance now of almost say a century coming up or at least 80 years of history, you look at it and you recognize this is not Orthodox Christianity. It was his own personal amalgam.

And honestly, with his life cut off in 1945, we were denied the opportunity to find out how he was going to put all of this together in say a mature formulation at the end of his ministry or the end of his theological influence because that influence stopped at least in terms of his continuing contribution at the hands of a Nazi executioner. So in one sense, if you’re going to ask about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was he a hero? Yes or no? I think there’s a good argument that he was heroic, particularly in his confrontation with the Nazi regime.

Was Bonhoeffer orthodox or not? I think the greater burden of evidence indicates that he was not theologically orthodox, certainly not what we would describe as an evangelical. That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t willing to use, at times, very traditional language and evangelical language. It is to say that’s very hard to reconcile with many of the other theological arguments that Dietrich Bonhoeffer made. And I’ll just say he made them in an extended way, especially in his idea of religion-less Christianity in his hope to overcome the theological strictures and structures of the past.

It’s also clear when you look at his ethical work, that much of it was by the standards of our time now very conservative. But it’s also not exactly clear on what ultimate basis of moral authority Dietrich Bonhoeffer was making those judgments. We would really like to have answers to many of these questions. We were denied these answers for one thing because Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis.

And this is where I think it’s important that evangelical Christians be able to understand the history presents us with many complex issues and with many complex persons. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of those complex persons. I think there’s some evangelicals who want to, I think rather recklessly and wrongly, simply repackage Dietrich Bonhoeffer as an evangelical like us. I don’t believe he was. I don’t believe that can be squared with much of his theology and a good many of his writings.

Think it’s also true that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not a theological liberal just like many of the other theological liberals say, a Rudolf Bultmann. I think it’s possible he was even more liberal than the liberals when you come to his idea of a religion-less Christianity. But honestly, it’s really impossible to determine all of this and I’ll just state the matter clearly. I’m not doing a movie on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But for Christians, this is also a reminder of the fact that we can be thankful for some people who stood up and did the right thing at the right time, defied an evil regime like the Nazis, if not particularly in the beginning, but at the end and frankly even in the beginning, understood that he might have to do something like that which might cost him his life. There’s courage and there’s bravery, and to some extent it was grounded in his theological identity. But that theological identity has other troubling aspects that quite frankly, I don’t think we can fully understand and certainly cannot fully reconcile.

So there are those who are ready to say they know exactly where Bonhoeffer would stand on any number of issues, and on some of those issues, he wrote about them. On other of those issues, he wrote things that are actually not quite clear. And furthermore, the trajectory of his thought, that’s not really clear either, and we’re robbed now of knowing where his thought might have led. But it’s another reminder that the confrontation with Nazism presents this with a huge moral fact and quite frankly, with a huge historical fact that is a very compelling story, which is why now well over a half century after his death at the hands of the Nazis, we’re still talking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the likelihood is that Christians are going to be talking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer long into the future. That does tell us something.

Part III

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Why Should I Not Indulge Sin When I Am Forgiven For It Anyway? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a 20-Year-Old Listener to The Briefing

But next I’m going to go to a question from a young man who is a university student, a college student, and he says he’s age 20. That’s helpful to know. That’s right in the center of the target in terms of that college age group, and I’m speaking here particularly of young men in college. That’s a very crucial stage of life, between 18 and say 22. And for one thing, a young man at that point is coming face to face with the fact that he’s got to determine who he is. He’s got to make known who he is and he’s got to take responsibility for who he is. And that’s particularly true for young Christian men.

Here’s how the question is stated. “I am currently a university student who found myself frustrated and dejected in following God’s teachings.” He goes on to say, “From a young age, I’ve been taught to follow God’s will and have.” He says, “I now find myself frustrated asking myself the question, ‘Why should I continue to live a life of purity if someone who repeatedly sins and assumingly finds the Lord will end up in exactly the same place as me in the end?'” He says, “I’m struggling to find the benefits of my lifestyle on my own and then equally struggling to find someone who’s walked a similar path and can inform me.”

I just want to reach out to this young man and say, “I really appreciate the fact you asked this question.” And not only that, I want to say, “I think almost all the 20-year-old young men used to at church are asking the same question.” And it may be that many young women are asking the same question, but I’m simply going to speak to you as a young man. This is very much a young man question. It’s as natural as rain. And I understand in an evangelical Christian context why you’re asking this question this way. Why should you live a life of purity and a life of resisting sin as a Christian? If someone else can sin repeatedly, live a long life of sin, come to saving knowledge of Christ at the end, have his sins forgiven and go to heaven, you’re both in heaven. What good did you gain by not sinning? And the answer is the Bible would say, “Well, in one sense, that’s the good you gained, the good of not sinning.”

And that’s because the biblical conception of sin is not just how it starts out. It starts out fundamentally that sin is a violation of God’s law. It is a falling short of the law of God. It is acts of omission as the Christian theology tells us, and commission, it’s things we do is things we fail to do when it comes down to the law of God. And all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Which is to say that you as a young man who’s been living a life of protection from some sinful temptations, precisely because you are a Christian and living by Christian rules of conduct, there are sins you have not committed. You are a sinner, but you haven’t gone to commit some sins that the world would even celebrate these days. 

The fact is, have you been denying yourself those sins? Is that the only part of the story? Or by God’s grace have you been prevented from the pain and injury and judgment on those sins? And I think it’s really important, and I say this as an older man to a young man, and I would say this if I could to my younger self. The fact is that not sinning comes with consequences even as sinning comes with consequences. And the consequences of not sinning, of not indulging, say, in a sexually promiscuous lifestyle. The goods that come from that are the fact that one thing, you’re not living with the knowledge of the sins you have committed and you’re not living with the damage of the sins you have committed. And yes, if later in life a man who has been a profligate sinner comes to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and repents of his sin, his sins may be forgiven, but you know what? He will still bear in his body the consequences of that sin. He also bears it in terms of even the consequences of his memory and his conscience.

And so here’s where I just want to urge upon you. Yes, right now you sense this mostly in what you’re having to deny yourself. While others are indulging in certain sinful behaviors, you are denying yourself those things that the sinful world celebrates. But you know what? If you live long enough, even in this life, you are likely to look back and thank God for the fact that you avoided all the damage and the pain and frankly, the divine judgment that would fall upon those things. Not only in the final judgment and the age to come, but even in the outworking of God’s moral law in this life.

The other thing I want to say as an older Christian man to a younger Christian man, is that what you now understand to be denying yourself because you are a Christian at some point you’re going to recognize is replaced by a greater good than if you had not denied yourself these things that others around you are simply not denying themselves. And so that’s convoluted language, but I’ll simply say at some point I can assure you, you’ll be thankful that you did not do those things, that you did not commit those sins, that you did not give yourself to that. Because it’s not just that you are negatively not living under the world, it’s because you are positively living unto Christ.

And so let’s just think of this in transactional terms for a moment because you ask it in transactional terms, and my guess is there probably isn’t a Christian man of age who can’t look back and say, “I was asking myself the same question.” So I’m not judging you young man for asking this question. I’m telling you older Christians around you as men ask the very same question. But the reality is the question’s been answered.

And that is that if we follow Christ, it is not just that we deny ourselves some of the pleasures the world promises, which in their sinfulness are actually false pleasures, but we also gain all the benefits and all the blessings. I’ll just use that word, may sound like an old word, but I’ll simply tell you, there are gifts that God gives to those who are his own and who are faithful to him, that vastly, immeasurably outweigh all the deceits and lies of the world. So to this twenty-year-old young man, and I believe even the way you’re asking the question, you are a Christian young man. It’s a Christian conscience that asks this kind of question. I simply want to tell you that I have never in my entire ministry met an older man who said, “I wish I had been more promiscuous as a young man. I wish I had sinned more as a young man.” I have never once met an older Christian who has said any such thing.

Instead, what I meet are many older Christians who say, “I wish I’d come to know the Lord earlier. I wish I had been prevented from all these harms I brought in my life. The world offered me all these lies, all these deceitful promises, and none of them came true. Every one of them turned out to be false.” I have never an older Christian man who says, “I wish I’d sinned even more as a young man.” I just don’t believe that older Christian man exists who would make that judgment or that statement. In retrospect, I think all of us are even more thankful to the Lord for preventing sin in our lives in such a way that we were prevented from that pain and yes, prevented from that judgment.

I also want to say to this 20-year-old young man, a Christian young man in college, I also want to tell you, I think one of the issues here, especially when we’re young, is that we’re afraid we’re never going to know certain blessings that we believe should come to us. And many of those blessings are actually implied, if not promised to us, not only in God’s word, but even in creation order around us, which is to say it is not wrong for you to want certain things. The issue is you should want them in a holy and righteous way. And I’ll simply say, I can assure you that the Scripture says not only that this is true, but I think any older Christian man you’ll talk to will say, “It’s not only true, it is worth it.”

One last thing, the way you ask the question is that someone who lives a sinful life and then finds the Lord, “Will end up in exactly the same place as me in the end.” Well, you know that is true and false. In other words, do all the benefits of salvation come to every single believer who turns to Christ in faith? The answer is yes. The promise of the gospel is our secure place with Christ in eternity, reigning with him and in his glory. But the fact is the Scripture also tells us that heaven is going to be a place where there are different rewards and where, quite frankly, a life of faithfulness is going to be understood with gratitude for what it is, not to bring glory to us, but glory to God, which in conclusion, I simply want to say means you are not trading a greater thing for a lesser thing. As a Christian, you are trading a lesser thing for a greater thing. Just don’t forget that. Press on, dear brother.

Okay, this went a little longer than I expected, but my heart really went out, especially to those who send in questions this week and do that young man. So keep your questions coming.