A few months ago, megachurch Pastor Ed Young, Jr. challenged the married couples in his congregation to have sex with each other every day for a week. In his words: “So I thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we could get 20,000 people having sex for seven straight days?'”

A few days later, Tony Jones, the former national coordinator of Emergent Village and the author of The New Christians, gave his blessing to gay marriage and ordination saying, “I now believe that GLBTQ can live lives in accord with biblical Christianity (at least as much as any of us can!) and that their monogamy can and should be sanctioned and blessed by church and state.”

How much further can we lower the bar on discipleship? There are Christians around the world being persecuted for their faith; missionaries risking their lives to spread the Gospel; believers being tortured and killed for standing up for injustice and all we can do is challenge people to have sex? Are we so afraid of political incorrectness that we are willing to reduce the Word of God to this?

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was an infinitely costly rescue operation to bring justice to the oppressed, healing to the diseased, community to the lonely, and spiritual joy and connection to those alienated from God. To be a Christian is to become a part of that operation—with the same expectation of suffering and hardship.

Jesus came to begin a new humanity, a new community of people who are willing to die to themselves, to be crucified with Christ, and to follow him in every area of their lives. A people who are faithful to their promises, love their enemies, tell the truth, honor the poor, suffer for righteousness, and seek to live holy and blameless lives in a broken and dying world. A people who are liberated from the chains of their own self-centeredness and begin a new God-centered life.

Jesus didn’t die to make us happy, he died to set us free.

Galatians 5:1
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”