JD Greear Blas­phe­mous­ly Claims Jesus Said “The Cru­ci­fix­ion was a Project Between Those on the Left and the Right”

Last week, the Gospel Coali­tion aired an inter­view with for­mer South­ern Bap­tist Pres­i­dent JD Greear in which Greear attempt­ed to down­play the dif­fer­ences between the polit­i­cal left and right as sec­ondary issues. When asked if there is one thing Greear would change about the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, Greear stat­ed the fol­low­ing:

“My polit­i­cal answer is, I just find a ten­den­cy in every gen­er­a­tion to turn things besides the gospel into the cen­tral thing. And that hap­pens to good people…[for] South­ern Bap­tists, our defin­ing nar­ra­tive is resist­ing lib­er­al­ism. And praise God for that…Then there’s oth­er leav­en Jesus talks about. Jesus’ cru­ci­fix­ion was a joint project between, you know, those on the left and those on the right. And to say, can we be like the Gospel Coalition’s audi­ence, like evan­gel­i­cals at large? Can we be a peo­ple defined by the gospel and not by sec­ondary polit­i­cal align­ments? And I’m not try­ing to back off there with pro-life or the impor­tance of gen­der and mar­riage. I mean, yes to all that, and to all that, you pro­claim that loud­ly. But can we be defined as a mis­sion­ary peo­ple who are big on the gospel and not build our iden­ti­ty on these oth­er things?”

With no bib­li­cal chap­ter or verse, Greear claims that Jesus said that the cru­ci­fix­ion was a project for those between the left and on the right. The rea­son why he failed to men­tion a bib­li­cal pas­sage on that is because Jesus nev­er said that.

In addi­tion to mis­quot­ing the Lord, Greear also seems to be con­tra­dict­ing him­self. On the one hand, he states that lib­er­al­ism is some­thing he is grate­ful Chris­tians pushed back on his­tor­i­cal­ly. But on the oth­er hand, he states that being on the polit­i­cal left is a “sec­ondary polit­i­cal align­ment” and should not be placed above the gospel. In the con­text of the quote, Greear is mak­ing a dis­tinc­tion between the­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal lib­er­al­ism. The­o­log­i­cal lib­er­al­ism refers to peo­ple who deny the inerran­cy of the Bible and the deity of Christ, where­as polit­i­cal lib­er­al­ism is being aligned with the pol­i­cy pre­scrip­tions of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. It seems that Greear is okay with vig­or­ous­ly oppos­ing the­o­log­i­cal lib­er­al­ism, but oppo­si­tion to polit­i­cal lib­er­al­ism should be done sec­on­dar­i­ly, while the gospel is ele­vat­ed to the fore­front, so that both polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives and lib­er­als can wor­ship togeth­er in the same church.

Greear is cor­rect that polit­i­cal issues are not the gospel, nor should they take pri­or­i­ty above the gospel mes­sage. If some­one does not repent and believe in the God-man Jesus Christ who died for their sins, their soul is damned regard­less of polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion. The error here is that Greear is mis­ap­ply­ing the cor­rect response to the gospel: repen­tance. One who hears the gospel must turn from their sin by faith alone in Christ. Allow­ing some­one who believes in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s plat­form is to give them a gospel that does not require repen­tance. This is because issues such as abor­tion, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, and racial par­tial­i­ty are sin issues to be repent­ed of. Mak­ing polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion a sec­ondary issue denies lib­er­als the repen­tance they so des­per­ate­ly need, as well as the lib­er­at­ing effect of the gospel.