Christ Our Saviour, Not Our Excuser

On Sin, the Cross, the Love of God, and Russell Brand

We often find it hard to understand that although God may forgive sin, He does not accommodate it, however friendly it seems.

One of the features of evangelicals is our desire to emphasise the Good News of the Gospel. It’s where we got our name. We’re “Gospel” people, who like to frontload the announcement of salvation wherever possible. Many of us have known in our own lives the transformational power of conversion—particularly the feeling of being forgiven for a life of sin turned back to God. This emphasis often affects everything about how our church services operate, how we disciple others, what we do or don’t say, and what we do or don’t think.

Gospel-Centred Weeds

In a licentious culture like the modern west, however, there are numerous ways this perpetual emphasis can go awry. Over the last couple of years I’ve been reflecting on this problem in various avenues in terms of how we understand the Gospel and live out its implications in the world. For example:

• Because we sought to evangelise liberal culture with this Gospel, we ordered our lifestyles around the way modern liberals live, over time failing to see the ways that liberal culture was subtly evangelising the Church far more potently than the Church was evangelising the culture: The Cost of Our Cultural Engagement: We Need Communities Who Stand Tall Against the World.

• We saw an example of this in Alastair Begg’s recommendations that evangelicals should effectively show public support for LGBT+ weddings (without technically agreeing with them) for the sake of displaying to non-Christians the “radical” love of God: The Idolatry of Evangelical Witness: Gay Wedding Gifts and a Misguided Gospel

• To a more extreme extent, there have been the likes of Jayne Ozanne, not only using grace to “witness” to same-sex relationships in general, but fully endorsing them under the banner of “evangelical” faith: The Deception of “Outrageous” Grace: A Progressive Trap for Zealous Evangelicals

• Such attitudes are downstream from the contemporary evangelical desire to not appear judgemental of the broader lifestyle choices of others. Because we accentuate free grace, we sometimes find it uncomfortable telling people to do (or not do) anything specific with any kind of conviction. Life choices become “optional”: Is Antilegalism the New Legalism?: Forgetting the Power of Grace to Empower Works

However much we love the Gospel, however much we “centre” the Gospel within our life, our faith, our prayers, and our churches, evangelicals should admit that where things have gone wrong of late, this is perhaps because many of us began to love emphasising God’s love because we found it far more convenient during our cultural moment than emphasising other things about God. We must face the fact that there is a need for some weeding in the evangelical garden.

Surprised By Conversion

In light of this general backdrop to evangelical compromise in our time, enter the living tour de force that is Russell Brand, who converted to Christianity last year in a very public manner, and almost immediately began evangelising (and even baptising!) others. There has been an infectious child-likeness about his faith that has been encouraging to see, even with all the accompanying complications that often come with those who don’t yet know all the “rules” for how Christians “ought” to conduct themselves (some of which are Biblical, but many more of which are often manmade conventions held to as though they are Biblical).

Overall, I’ve been delighted seeing how unashamedly he expresses his faith, especially knowing it would likely not do him any favours with a significant portion of his audience. (If Twitter followings are any kind of metric, I noticed he was around 12.4m at the time of his conversion, and is now at 11.3m, so that’s possibly over a million followers who are already fed up of the Jesus talk on his channel - but perhaps more encouragingly, over ten times that number still listening in).

There are many evangelicals who have been suspicious about his conversion for various reasons. Even those who see his conversion as genuine may have preferred him to have not used his platform to broadcast his newfound embryonic faith. Ironically, of course, this is a remarkably unevangelical way of thinking. Would we really want Russell Brand not to be talking so regularly about Jesus and the Bible and the Gospel every other day to his eleven million followers on Twitter/X?

It’s true that overseers in the church (i.e. elders/pastors) are not meant to be new converts because of the danger of a superficial and conceited faith (cf. 1Tim. 3:16), but we would not normally begrudge new converts their trademark evangelistic zeal, even as “influencers” with a platform as public as Brand’s. Rather than telling new converts to keep quiet for several years in case they get a few things wrong, most churches are normally happily galvanised by the evangelistic enthusiasm of fresh converts, and will commit to praying for them more fervently for their protection against the enemy (cf. 1Pet. 5:8-9).

Russell Brand’s conversion was especially animated by his intense awareness of being someone who is “known to have sinned” and thus, has a greater awareness of the need of forgiveness. Wherever he sits denominationally (I expect he still doesn’t quite know himself) there is at least a flavour of HTB/Alpha-style evangelicalism in him, alongside the various other quirks. He was baptised by Alpha advocate Bear Grylls, and has been in part influenced by J John (who, I hear, is the one who gave him a copy of Joe Boot’s Mission of God, which Brand was soon recommending to people like Tucker Carlson!). It’s a good reminder of the blessing of evangelicalism to the wider Church, even with all its aforementioned faults. God loves to use such straightforward expressions of the love, forgiveness, and grace to win souls.

The misdemeanours of Brand’s former “reprobate” lifestyle are often exploited by his critics, who see his conversion as a convenient excuse to bat away the various #MeToo charges of sexual harassment held against him by various women (charges he denies). In this respect, I think his critics are quite wrong. By all accounts, his conversion does not appear to be a mere subterfuge to escape earthly judgement, but rather a realisation of his greater need to escape divine judgement, the same realisation we all must face, one way or another.

I believe Russell Brand truly does love Christ. His intense awareness of how much he was forgiven is reminiscent of Jesus' rejoinder to the Pharisees, who were outraged at the grace he showed to the prostitute:

“I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

—Luke 7:47

We must ever keep this foundation of the Gospel in mind, however critical we wish to be of its aberrations. Indeed, the other side to this coin is that Russell Brand’s understanding of the Gospel’s implications for life was always in danger of being stymied by this experience of radical forgiveness.

LGBT+ and God’s Judgement

Perhaps it is inevitable given Brand’s colourful past and his ingratiation within the Hollywood dystopia (as critical as he now is of that world) that there would still be remnants of worldly thinking which he has not yet thought out, not least regarding all things LGBT+.

This came out more definitively in recent comments he made about the need to accommodate LGBT+ people among the emphases of the Trumpian Right in the US, where he even appeared to emphasise a kind of inclusive universalism, even claiming elsewhere in the speech that Jesus would advocate for “Trans rights”:

“America is gonna have to start having more open conversations regarding the LGBTQ+ community. Whether you like it or not, Jesus cares about this topic. He loves ALL of us and died for ALL of us.”

There are many things one could say about this. First there is the apparent misconception about the supposed LGBTQ+ “community”. Is it really a community? Is it something gay people are all automatically part of, a family that stands by them and offers healing regardless? Or is it a propagandistic concept which indoctrinates its “members” with a sense of belonging in opposition to heteronormativity?

“what appears to be offered so freely by the LGBT ‘we’ is a lie. Unlike the offer of the Gospel and the invitation to be part of God’s eternal family, the LGBT+ community does not offer lasting peace, hope, joy, and unity. It does not even fulfil its own ‘mission statements’ on inclusivity. Anyone who is awake will have seen how this LGBT ‘community’ tends to wield its newfound socio-political powers to exclude and demonise ‘the other’ who oppose them.”

—“The Deceptive ‘We’ of LGBT”

Few realise that, for all the grandiose statements of inclusive welcome to the wounded, the concept of LGBT+ community makes such people utterly dependent upon the LGBT+ ideology in perpetuity. It becomes their most fundamental identity, despite being the very thing which actively perpetuates their hurt and shame. It is akin to encouraging someone to join a cult because at least they will feel included and welcomed.

But the issues with Brand’s statements go deeper than just a misconception over “the LGBT+ community” towards a misconception of the implications of Jesus’ love. It is understandably difficult for someone like Russell Brand—so effervescently delighted with the way Jesus has forgiven him his many sexual sins—to see that there is a particular way Jesus sees sin which may look and sound superficially similar to the inclusive hospitality of western liberalism, yet in reality is a million miles away from it.

Jesus does not accommodate our sin. He does not “welcome” it into the household of faith, putting a roof over its head. It is trash. It belongs outside the house. It must be dealt with and disposed. However much we try to dress it up with terms like “identity” or “lifestyle” or “orientation”, sin has consequences. Those consequences led Christ to the Cross, where He died for His beloved bride whom He absolutely does forgive not because He “excuses” her sin but because He was willingly punished for it.

Many like to think that some sin is no longer sin because it's the 21st century now and the culture has "moved on". For many—even for many conservatives—it's getting more and more embarrassing to be against homosexuality. It just seems silly and bigoted, denying otherwise very nice and upstanding people a freedom that doesn’t seem to affect the rest of society all too much (it does, of course, but that’s another matter). And so, in the name of Jesus, our sacrificial lamb, such people sacrifice the truth. They sell it down the river, thinking they are following in Christ’s footsteps.

Brand appears to believe that Jesus would be for “trans rights”, even. This is unusual for a Centre-Right thinker. Most tend to say: “Well, perhaps I’ll oppose transgenderism because it’s deluded; but surely it’s ok for a man to be in a relationship with another man, isn’t it?” No, actually. Not if you wish to be in a relationship with God. Same-sex relations are not a “harmless” cousin of transgenderism. They are just as much the product of the nature of sin. Having rejected God, our minds become “debased” and we start believing right is wrong and good is bad. This is why a culture that believes “trans rights” are a thing at all is already demonstrating it is under God’s judgement:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth…For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves…For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”

—Rom. 1:18-28

If we go down the route of accommodating what God does not and cannot accommodate, however benevolent and compassionate our motivations, we undermine the entire point of the Cross. On Good Friday, Christ was not our “excuser”. He was our sacrificial scapegoat, our advocate, and our Saviour. But God is our judge before He is our Saviour.

When the Judged Become the Judges

What many people in the 21st century want is to have God's love without His judgement; thus, without their repentance. Ironically, this means they end up becoming God's judge. They tell God that He really never should have had a problem with their preferred sin in the first place, and so He really needn't have bothered dying for it on the Cross because it's not all that bad after all. “Love is love, after all. We’re not hurting anyone, are we?”

Such views are the result of decades of cultural propaganda which plays on the evangelical heartstrings in particular because we yearn to show people that God loves them just as they are. In one sense, this is true, because Christ died for us “while we were still sinners” (Gal. 5:8), but in another sense it is false. God does not love our sinful nature, He loves us, and He calls us out of sin into holiness.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

—Heb. 12:1-2

The problem with the contemporary “LGBT+ community” is that they have been told that their membership of that community is who they are, so if God accepts them as they are, they cannot imagine Him not accepting their LGBT+ identity because it feels to them like the most fundamental part of who they are. It’s as though, if God rejects that, there is nothing left of them to accept. This is the tragic lie under which so many gay people live their lives.

I remember talking about this issue in one of my first TV interviews after my dismissal two years ago on this same topic, where I said that whilst God can forgive sin, He does not “tolerate” it. The distinction is crucial.

There is nothing especially unusual about this. It’s standard evangelical belief. Yet because of the aforementioned subtle erosions in how evangelicals wield the Gospel message, it has become surprising to those who would prefer God to take a “lenient” stance against their sin. But that distinction between toleration and forgiveness is easily missed.

Many people in western liberal society have long demanded “tolerance” from Christians whilst refusing to tolerate Christian beliefs which they now deem “intolerant”. This also includes professing Christian institutions, who will say with one breath that they are inclusive of contrary views until someone declares a truly contradictory view with any kind of conviction, and thus causes offence to those who were told they would never need to feel offended again. This was another lie, but a subtler one that became bound up with the aforementioned misinterpretations of the Gospel itself.

The assumption is that, because God is loving and forgiving, and because He calls us to be loving and forgiving, then God Himself tolerates our “alternative” lifestyles and our “alternative” interpretations of sin. It really is as if the coming of Jesus introduced a “nicer” side of God that was henceforth irreconcilable with the “judgemental” God of the Old Testament. This is one of the oldest heresies going. But it’s easily done if you have been drilled to focus perpetually on the love of God to the detriment of the holiness of God (which necessitates his justice, judgement, and wrath too).

God’s Love Is More Astounding Than Tolerance

Although we have probably all had experiences of forgiving someone who sinned against us, in a sense none of us can fully understand God’s total forgiveness of us because we are not God. We don’t (yet) know what it’s like to be utterly holy, and to simultaneously forgive and pay the price of that forgiveness ourselves to that degree. If God had merely tolerated our sin, if he had merely turned a blind eye to it and “let us off”, there would have been no need for Good Friday, no need for Christ’s shed blood.

It’s worth saying that the love of God truly is mind-blowing. I get the impression that people like Russell Brand really do “get” that. It's a good thing that he talks about it all the time. He knows what it means to be forgiven. He does not want to be going around condemning people like the wicked servant Jesus spoke of, who all too soon forgot how much he had been forgiven and refuses to forgive others (Matt. 18:21-35). But if we start “accommodating” sin in the name of our own mirage of the all-inclusive love of God, we end up diluting the true power and wonder of God's love.

This is why the Cross is so profound, and why, in a sense, we will never really be able to “get over it”, and why Paul continued to say he would boast in nothing else “except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 6:14). The reality is that God could and should have killed us for our sin. That's what we deserved. Instead, He suffered and died for us, calling us to repentance that we might receive His astounding forgiveness.

It would be an insult to that astounding act of love to go and tell God that we have decided to redefine what He had to die for on his behalf because we suddenly realised we knew better than Him about what is or is not an offence to Him. Safe to say, this is astonishingly foolish. We do not know better than God, nor are we more compassionate than God. We are sinners. That is why God came for us.

I know this only too well, even if it took me a while to do anything about it.

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Lord, thankyou for what you have done not only in my own life but in the lives of countless others, including even the unlikeliest of converts like Russell Brand. May there be many more like him. May they also bring us all manner of inconvenient teething problems along the way, if only your name would be more glorified and your kingdom further advanced as a result. May you enlighten your Church and convict her with a fresh understanding of your holiness. May we learn what it means to take up our cross in this world of darkness and live in light of your light, you who alone could suffer and die for us that we might live. Amen.