With a shepherding tone of voice, Begg told the congregation, “Loved ones, Pharisaism is alive and well in all of our hearts. We have to guard against it.”
“The motivation for purity and holiness of life and circumspection and so on is absolutely unquestionable,” he said. “The real challenge comes when we are confronted by issues that don’t just fit our clean little categories.” Begg preached that “grace” is what distinguished Jesus from the Pharisees—”the divine initiative, which first seeks, and then saves the lost sinner.”
Begg said that he had expressed to his daughter that he was caught off guard by the criticism his comments received. “I don’t really know what it’s about,” he told her. “You’ve been so clear about this for all of your ministry,” he recalled her saying back.
Begg assumed that anyone who heard his comments from last September wouldn’t have been alarmed because of his well-known stance on same-sex marriage.
“We can disagree over whether I give that grandmother good advice or not,” Begg said. But the pastor then asked, “Do you got a problem with the grandmother showing up, sitting on the front row in a context that she absolutely despises, and sitting on her lap, nicely wrapped with beautiful paper and a ball around it, is her gift? The gift of a Bible for the granddaughter she knows has no interest in the Bible.”
“But because that grandmother believes that the entrance of God’s Word brings light, she is prepared to trust the Holy Spirit to do the work,” he preached.
Begg shared that, in his experience, “homosexual people” are “either reviled or they are affirmed.” However, he said, “The Christian has to say we will not treat you in either of those ways. We cannot revile you, but we cannot affirm you.”
“The reason that we can’t revile you is the same reason why we can’t affirm you,” he said. “Because of the Bible, because of God’s love, because of His grace, because of his goodness.”
Begg ended his sermon by reading 1 Corinthians 13:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
, Pastor Alistair Begg of Parkside Church in Cleveland addressed his controversial comments about Christians attending LGBTQ+ weddings. ){kind=link}