“Pastor” Steven Furtick just plain doesn’t understand such central truths about the Christian faith, like what Jesus Christ was doing on the cross. Apparently, and to the surprise to every single person familiar with the Bible throughout human history, “God broke the law for love” when Jesus died on the cross.
To be fair, though, what else should one expect from the man with such a well-established pattern of frequently saying nonsense, like “having faith in doubt“, and partaking in fruitless deeds of darkness like giving TD Jakes’ church $35K (which is, actually, pretty disappointing and a pittance compared to Tyler Perry’s publicly being “touched to give a million dollars”, but we can’t all be rock stars)?
I was friends with a guy in college who had a younger brother who had expressly abandoned the faith in which he had been raised. He had objections I wasn’t necessarily prepared at age 20 to defeat, one of which being that Jesus broke God’s law when He healed on the Sabbath. Furtick trumpets in this video that the Gospel is good news to the world, implying that he and his church preach it. One is left wondering when they do so, and if confronted with challenges and objections (which pretty much always happens if you’re actually preaching the Gospel to lost people, rather than just talking about it in the comfortable confines of your multi-million dollar building on Sunday morning), one wonders if Furtick would recommend we just shrug and agree with the skeptic. I mean, hey, we should just love people, right?
The likes of Deuteronomy 21:23, Galatians 3:13, Isaiah 53:10, Psalm 7:11, and Psalm 18:30 are enough to put this matter to rest.
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” –Matthew 5:17
Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one. Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law. –Romans 3:27-31
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. –Romans 8:3-4
And if those don’t do it for you, consider that sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4-5). If God broke the law, then…doesn’t that mean He sinned?
At this point we should all be shocked and amazed when men such as Furtick get something right.
[Contributed by Alan Maricle]
