Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 5

My Top 10 Books of 2019

The best books I read this year. (Keep in mind that not all of these were published in 2019—they were just the best books I read in 2019.)

In ascending order:

10. Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill with Dan Piepenbring (Little, Brown & Co.)

Not for the faint of heart, nor the impatient of mind. This meticulous investigation into the circumstances around the 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others by members of the Manson cult began as a short magazine article that ballooned into a decades-long inquiry into local and federal obfuscation of key facts. O’Neill’s treatment is obsessive and complex, but his conspiracy theories are not as outlandish as one might expect. The deeper he digs, the more evidence he unearths to reveal the moral chaos of this tumultuous period in American history.

9. Remember Death: The Surprising Path to Living Hope by Matthew McCullough (Crossway)

The human enterprise in the 21st century will continue to be oriented around the pursuit of physical immortality—or at least the plausible illusion of it. Which is what makes books like this incisive biblical meditation on our unrelenting creatureliness so valuable. Like Solomon before him, McCullough brings the unavoidable end of us all into the spotlight of honesty and, through it, points to the every-living One who provides the only escape.

8. The Care of Souls: Cultivating a Pastor’s Heart by Harold L. Senkbeil (Lexham)

In an age of ever-increasing ministerial technology and “best practices” destined for the bargain bins of yesterday’s cutting edge-church resources, here is a refreshing entry into the lost art of “soul curing.” Senkbeil writes with wisdom and care, making constant connections between the biblical art of shepherding with the ancient pasture-work that runs in his family. A good corrective for Western evangelicalism.

7. Who Is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis by Thomas S. Kidd (Yale)

Another great contribution from one of evangelicalism’s best modern historians, Kidd in this book provides a good bridge for wary Christians (in the United States, in particular) between where we’re going and how in the world we got here. If, like me, you’ve wondered about the historic roots of and contemporary developments in the present-day evangelical malaise, this book is a brilliant guide.

6. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Penguin)

Perhaps the greatest “haunted house” story of all time, this classic work of gothic horror has inspired countless knock-offs and derivations. Contrasted with the garish quality of much modern horror, including works directly inspired by Jackson’s book, the scares in this story are subtle, nuanced even. The book builds more upon a growing sense of dread and ominous portent, as much a haunting character study as a ghost tale. Readers accustomed to modern tropes may find the book anticlimactic, but careful appraisal reveals a story that will continue to grow and haunt in the imagination long after the last page is turned.

5. J. I. Packer: An Evangelical Life by Leland Ryken (Crossway)

I thoroughly enjoyed this creative biography of the last in a generation of Reformed evangelical giants. Ryken organizes the book more according to themes and vocations than strict chronology, and the effect is really “getting to know” the brilliant Packer in multiple dimensions. I was especially inspired and moved by the coverage of Packer’s authorial output throughout his career, which while slowed, is thankfully still ongoing.

4. Virgil Wander by Leif Enger (Grove)

Enger’s most recent novel (2018) is a masterful character study in which, once again, the setting becomes as vivid a figure in the story as anybody walking and talking. The plot is sparse (really until nearly the end) but the pleasures and pressures of place carry the narrative along with the fully conceived characterization. A book about the clash between nostalgia for the past and the burdensome mysteries of the future, as well as a host of other things in between, read this for Enger’s delectable prose and evocative sense of scene.

3. Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis by Craig A. Carter (Baker Academic)

Take your biblical theology next level with this dense but daring foray into Christian Platonism, patristic retrieval, and Spiritual hermeneutics. Carter’s book is already subject of vigorous debates within academic circles, and whether you agree with all his theses or conclusions, if you’re interested in an evangelical understanding of the Bible that comports both with Christ-centeredness and also historic rootedness, you should find this work helpfully challenging, if not spiritually invigorating.

2. Sketches of the Life and Character of Lemuel Haynes by Timothy Mather Cooley (Negro Universities Press)

I first read this important book upon discovering a copy of the 1837 edition at an antiquarian books shop during my pastorate in Vermont. This year I more closely re-read a 1969 Negro Universities Press facsimile edition as part of my doctoral work. Haynes is likely the most significant figure in American religious history that most people have never heard of, and this versatile biography, written by a younger contemporary of Haynes’s and first published just a few years after his death, is one of only two(!) substantive biographies published on Haynes in the last 200 years. And it is a wonder of a work, covering Haynes’s childhood and theological upbringing, as well as a host of anecdotes and quotable quotes from his faithful ministry in colonial Vermont and New York. Reading this book more closely I came away with a renewed affection for this great American pastor—the first ordained black man in American history and the first black pastor of an all-white congregation—and feeling like I’d found a friend.

While the one extensive collection of Haynes’s writings is frustratingly difficult to find, there are numerous reprints of this biography that can found online and purchased at an affordable price. I highly recommend it.

1. On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts by James K. A. Smith (Brazos)

This latest work from Smith is an incisive ethnography of the heart of Western Christianity and at the same time a stirring cartography of the individual human soul. I found the book both intellectually stimulating and also emotionally moving. The chapter on fathers is alone worth the price of the book, but the whole thing is a journey worth joining. I read it in one sitting and loved every mile. The best book I read this year (and it happened to be published this year).

My top reads from previous years:

2018

2017

2016

How C. S. Lewis Changed My Life with One Page

Today begins the hallowed C.S. Lewis Week for me, as we mark the 56th anniversary of his passing (11/22/63, the same day as JFK’s assassination and the death of philosopher Aldous Huxley—see Peter Kreeft’s imaginative book on the three deaths) and then in seven days his 121st birthday (11/29/1898). There will be much digital ink spilled today and for the next several days—and I share a bit of my own writing on Lewis at the end of this post—but I thought I could get a bit more personal than the usual celebratory bios or tributes.

Lewis once wrote about how the writing of George MacDonald “baptized his imagination” for later receipt of the gospel of Jesus. The writing of Lewis himself did this for me. I consumed the Narnia stories in elementary school, the Space Trilogy in junior high, and most of Lewis’s non-fiction in high school. My experience is not rare, I know. For many Christians, the writing of C. S. Lewis serves as a gateway to both intellectual and imaginative Christianity. This is why he is the greatest Christian writer of the 20th century and one of the greatest of all time.

A burgeoning storyteller myself, I had an overactive imagination that spilled over into my sense of self and my understanding of the world around me. Childhood was magical because I wished it so. Everything in my environment seemed ripe with splendor and meaning. I was an odd kid. But I didn’t just enjoy Lewis’s Narnia—I felt it. I knew instinctively he had tapped into something truer and better about fairy tales and fantasy and also about the ordinary world that seemed on sabbatical from wonder, much less from the prevalent miracles of the Bible. But I didn’t know what.

When I graduated from high school in 1994, my Grammy gave me a paperback copy of C. S. Lewis’s ‘God in the Dock’ and Other Essays. I devoured it. And when I came to my absolute favorite piece in the book, a little treatise on the importance of mythology called “Myth Became Fact,” the effect was similar to putting on corrective lenses for the first time. Clarity of vision descended. I am speaking of page 67 in my edition, specifically, where Lewis writes this: “We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology.” He has been explaining why the ancient myths continue to be so resonant; namely, because “myth transcends thought” (66). These stories are received on a deeper frequency than other transmissions.

I like theology and its systems. I like to think rationally and logically. (So did Lewis!) But there is an inscrutable logic in a statement like this: “We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic . . . shall we refuse to be mythopathic?” (67)

Lewis’s point is this: Myths resonate because there is a residue of truth in them—not historic facts of course, but truth about reality. (In his novel Perelandra he writes that myth is “gleams of celestial beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility.”) And in the biblical story of Jesus and his gospel we find the convergence of the radiance of the mythopoeic with the glorious radiance of fact! Finally the one true “myth,” the myth that is not fiction. Lewis writes:

For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher. (67)

Can even the Christian scholar and philosopher deny that the facts of the gospel are received on a frequency deeper than just the intellect? We discern the facts of the gospel with our minds, of course, but we receive them with our hearts because the Spirit has freed our hearts to receive them as true—to receive Christ as The Truth, the one true myth that is incontrovertibly fact.

What Lewis helped me see in that page helped me to see, period. Page 67 of “Myth Became Fact” helped me to make the difference between seeing along the beam of light and seeing into the beam of light (to borrow from a later essay in the volume, “Meditation in a Toolshed”). Lewis helps me see how wondrous our real God and Savior is, how expansive, how utterly and eternally glorious. These words in “Myth Become Fact” gave me permission to wonder at God and to deepen in enjoyment of the true story of his Son’s reversal of death, rescuing of the bride, razing of evil, ruining of the dragon, and reigning forevermore. He has helped me see that nothing is wasted under God’s sovereign authorship of the universe, not even our fictions.

The Devilishness of ‘Let Go and Let God’ Theology

My upcoming book The Gospel According to Satan (Thomas Nelson) is now officially available for pre-order. If you order before January 14, you can get a host of pre-order goodies like advance access to certain chapters, a discussion guide, and exclusive video teaching from me. Here’s an excerpt from the book to give you a sense of what I'm aiming to do with it:

Maybe you’ve said it. Maybe someone has said it to you. It’s one of those religious cliches, a vapid form of Christianese doled out whenever someone is struggling. “Let go and let God.”

It means well. In its best sense, it means “don’t worry and trust God.” But even that exhortation needs some packing. And “let go and let God” is often implied as some kind of key to spiritual breakthrough. It has its roots in the “higher life” principles of the (old version) of Keswick theology.

“Let go and let God” as a problem-solver is a way of suggesting that faith is a force field against trouble. When we say “let go and let God” to those who struggle, we must be careful we aren’t suggesting to them that if they were stronger Christians they wouldn’t deal with such things. “Let go and let God” can inadvertently promote the idea that there are Christians, and then there are Christians.

There is no Christianity 2.0. Every believer in Jesus—whether new or old, immature of experienced, weak or strong—has received every spiritual blessing in Christ (Eph. 1:3). Every believer is totally and inextricably united to Christ for all eternity. There is no partway in. Every Christian is justified totally, freely, forever. In this regard, no one is higher or more advanced than any other. Christianity is not Scientology. It’s not a pyramid scheme.

Like those within the Lordship controversy who (wrongly) argued that one could receive Christ as Savior but not as Lord, “victorious Christian life” kinds of Christians don’t just distinguish justification from sanctification but, in a sense, make them entirely dichotomous, as if you can have the former without the latter.

The Devil Loves the Hollow Theology of “Let Go and Let God”

If Satan cannot keep you from salvation, he will do his best to undermine and obscure the gospel that saved you by making you either overconfident in yourself or underconfident in God. Both dispositions make the gospel look small and consequently may prevent more people from believing.

“Let go and let God” as advice to struggling people imagines there is some next-level Christian experience just waiting for us to crack the faith code. Like Luke Skywalker staring at the swamp trying to use his feelings to raise the X-Wing, we aren’t quite sure how to accomplish something so big by doing so little. Do we think about it hard? Or not at all? Do we concentrate? Or do we empty our mind?

Our enemy would love to get us off the comfort we could have in knowing that no matter what our difficulties, we are already close to God through union with his Son by faith, and he would love to get us on the insecurity that comes from constantly worrying if our faith is strong enough. The best way to rattle your assurance is to keep measuring it. And the best way to undermine your confidence in your justification is to begin holding your sanctification up to the imaginary light of the Super Christian.

It doesn’t take long for those who’ve been trying to “let go and let God” to let go of the process entirely, finding it futile and anxiety-inducing. “Let go and let God” is a lie that will ironically make you feel further from God, not closer.

But there’s another reason the devil is fond of this fortune-cookie faith, and it has to do with the view of God it promotes.

You Don’t “Let” God Do Anything

An early proponent of Keswick theology once wrote, “Christians need not sin, and if they allow the Holy Spirit to ‘operate invariably’ they will not sin.” There are numerous problems in this one sentence, not least of which is that it represents, again, a fundamental misunderstanding about how sanctification works in a Christian’s life. Another issue is the idea that Christians can reach a point of sinlessness (or near-sinlessness). But a big problem hiding behind the others is one that is repeated in countless Christian sermons, books, social media thoughts, and even songs. It is the notion of “letting God.”

We must “allow the Holy Spirit” to operate, W. H. Thomas says.

I don’t know if you noticed, but this sounds a lot like the Holy Spirit is our servant, a cosmic butler of sorts, rather than—oh, I don’t know—the third Person of the Trinity and thus our God.

I get the heebie-jeebies when I come across language like this, which is a lot more often than I would like. Christians who ought to know better routinely begin statements with phrases like “God can’t” or “God needs.” We are told that we need to “let God” do all manner of things before he can guide us, bless us, reward us, etc.

To all of this we ought to say that any God who needs us to activate him is not much of a god at all.

God says, “Look, I am the LORD, the God over every creature. Is anything too difficult for me?” (Jer. 32:27). He doesn’t need our help. And he doesn’t need our permission.

One reason the serpent wished Adam and Eve to elevate their conceptions of themselves to god-like status is because he wishes by implication to demote the one true God to man-like status. Satan loves “let God” language because he loves the idea of a deficient God. He will support any doctrine of God that is weak and unbiblical.

The true God is sovereign over all. If he does not do something, it is because ultimately he has willed not to do it. The blessings we receive in response to our honoring God are themselves foreordained. Even the faith we exercise to receive his salvation, which was until then withheld, is itself a gift from him (Eph. 2:8). And contrary to higher life teaching, the power we need to pursue holiness, choose obedience, and participate in our sanctification is granted entirely by God’s grace.

“I labor for this,” Paul writes in Colossians 1:29, “striving with his strength that works powerfully in me” (emphasis added). And when he tells us in Philippians 2:12 to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” he adds: “For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose” (2:13, emphasis added).

Still, the language of “letting God” persists. A simple Google search of incomplete phrases like “you have to let God…” and “God can’t bless you unless…” returns an abundance of distressing results, including from high-profile evangelical leaders and otherwise reliable Christian resources.

It sounds true. But why? It sounds true, because we have smuggled a cause-and-effect kind of spirituality into our Christian thinking, which is more akin to the idea of karma and grossly misunderstands that God declares the end from the beginning and does whatever he pleases (Is. 46:10).

The gospel according to Satan seeks to dethrone the true Sovereign and enthrone the subjects. And the full counsel of the true gospel is the right antidote to “let go and let God” thinking, because only the gospel reminds us that God is sovereign over us and our circumstances—including our good works (Eph. 2:10) — while at the same time empowering us for these good works.

Learn more about The Gospel According to Satan.

The Time-Traveling Temptation of Christ

The temptation of Jesus works backward and forward. It works backward because we see in the ways that Satan tempts Jesus the exact same ways he tempted Adam and Eve. If you remember, the serpent led Eve to believe that the forbidden fruit looked good for food. This parallels Satan tempting the hungry Jesus to turn the stones to bread. Then Eve saw that the fruit was “a delight to look at.” This is similar to Satan showing Jesus the dazzling cityscape of all the promised kingdoms. Finally, the serpent promised Eve that by taking the fruit, she could become like God, would become a kind of god herself. We see Satan tempting Jesus to exploit his own deity in Luke 4:9-11.

At each step of the way, the Accuser echoes the temptation of Adam and Eve in his temptation of Jesus. But where Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation, rebelling against God’s will and bringing death into the world, Jesus withstands the temptation, holding to the Father’s will. He thereby brings life into the world for all who will trust in him.

This is where you and I stand each day. Like Adam, we are passive. With Adam, we suffer from indwelling sin. Temptation rises up to meet us each day, in these same three ways. We are tempted to fulfill our appetites with money, with sex, with all kinds of fleeting pleasures, as if they will really satisfy the “rumbling tummies” of our flesh. We are tempted by the things we see, by what dazzles us—we want to look good, powerful, successful, put-together. And we are always tempted to put ourselves at the center of our lives, to exalt ourselves and live like little self-worshiping gods. This is all our fault, but it began thanks to Adam.

But Christ’s temptation works forward. We see in Adam’s fall our own sinfulness, but we see in Jesus’s obedience our righteousness. We are forgiven by his grace. We are filled by his grace. And we can withstand temptation by his grace (1 Cor. 10:13). Through faith, we even receive Christ’s perfect submission to the Father’s will as if it were our own! And at each point of temptation, when we set our minds to the perfect work of Christ, we find the strength to say “No” to the tempter and “Yes” to God’s glory. Unlike Eve, we don’t have to run out of “As it is written’s.”

When we go our own way, we prove we’ve still got Adam in us. But when our accuser comes calling, we can plead Christ’s obedience. Sin is all our fault, but it ends, thanks to Jesus.

Habakkuk’s Place in the Grand Story

This man named Habakkuk held the extraordinary role of prophet of God, but he was ordinary in the way he, like many of the rest of us, look out at the injustice in the world and wonder when God will set things right. Why do “good people” suffer and “bad people” prosper? These enduring questions set off Habakkuk’s sense of righteousness, but deeper than that, his first outcry is about the disobedience of God’s own people.

Habakkuk wanted to know when God was going to make his people act right. How long was God going to let his own people live in stubborn unrepentance? This is just the first volley in Habakkuk’s conversation with God, and the response he receives is not one he expects—or appreciates. God confirms his plan to deal with Judah’s disobedience, but he says he will do so by unleashing the wicked Chaldeans on them. That is how he plans to execute judgment. In other words, God says, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Suddenly Habakkuk shifts gears. Concerned first about Judah’s disobedience, now he wants to argue that they’re not that bad, certainly not bad enough to warrant harm at the hands of pagans. But God is teaching Habakkuk something about his sovereignty, something that reaches back further into history than Habakkuk’s day and proceeds farther into the new day to come. The gist is this: Whatever happens, good or bad, God does all things for his own glory. Pushed to this vivid realization, Habakkuk can only respond with radical trust in God’s goodness and faithfulness, even in the midst of suffering.

The closing lines of his book reflect his vow to “take joy in the God of my salvation” (3:18) and find strength in him alone no matter what. But for all of God’s inscrutable ways, he still gives Habakkuk—and us!—the glimpse at the end-goal of it all. God is sovereign over all the ups and downs and joys and pains of this life. But through it all, his master plan for this broken world is that it gleam only with his manifest glory. Habakkuk 2:14 shows us God’s vision for fallen creation. Every nook and cranny will some day be filled to the brim, overflowing with glory, reflecting in diamond-bright brilliance the new dawn sun (Rev. 21:23; 22:5).

Malachi’s Place in the Grand Story

As the Old Testament narrative winds down, there is a clash of darkness and light reflected in the climactic cymbal crash of the book of Malachi. God’s people are once again mired in disobedience and disregard for his name. They have profaned his covenant. The priests bring polluted offerings. Judah’s worship is halfhearted, lazy, dry, weary. They are greedy and dishonest (3:6-9). Even in their emotional outpourings, God sees through to the sins they keep trying to sweep under the rug (2:13-14). Their demands for justice don’t evince a passion for holiness so much as a doubt of God’s oversight (2:17).

For all of this and more, God through his prophet Malachi issues one of the most terrifying warnings in the Scriptures. In Malachi 3:2-3, God promises his fiery vengeance. But to the diligent eye, in the midst of looming condemnation sparkle gospel promises. Malachi’s prophecy itself begins with God’s affirmation “I have loved you” (1:2). Notice the past tense—“I have loved.” Why? Because God wants his people to obey him out of awe of historic faithfulness. Because he wants them to honor and glorify him out of remembrance of his covenantal love and blessings. This is the root of all worshipful obedience in the present: belief in God’s historic love.

For us today that historic love is the gospel of Jesus Christ. For God’s people in Malachi’s day, it was the covenant made with Abraham, the Exodus event, and many other ensuing evidences of God’s faithful provision for his children. Interspersed with warnings in the book of Malachi are promises of deliverance and blessing, but as the book comes to a close, so does the prophetic vision for God’s people.

The end of this book will mark the beginning of 400 years of God’s silence. No prophets in all that time, no inspired Scripture. It’s as if God is closing a door on his people. But perhaps not all the way. It is cracked a bit, a little light peeking through. The day of the Lord is coming, a day that will mean judgment for the wicked but healing, joy, and victory for those who fear the name of God. Elijah will return to announce that day, and the Lord himself will come, bringing reconciliation with him. Four hundred years later, a wilderness prophet will arrive to declare the dawning of the Lord’s favor and the good news of restoration between man and God, man and man, and creation and God. The door swings wide open then.

Remembering Is the First Change

I recall Paul Tripp speaking on Psalm 27 once, and as he was emphasizing how important it was for David to “remember” in times of trouble, my mind went—as it often does in such scenarios—to another psalm, one that has been profoundly important to me in my Christian life.

I once went through a period of serious depression, laid low by the consequences of my sin and by the specific pains of my life circumstances. I was broken, weary, and frequently willing to simply “check out.” In my lowest moments of despair, I often thought of even taking my own life. I think the spirit of Psalm 42 speaks directly to such despair. At least, it certainly seemed that way to me at the time, and it does to me still today.

It strikes me as I read through Psalm 42 how crucial memory is to the process of faith in the midst of difficulty or depression:

These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival. (v.4)

One thing that is brought to mind is previous times of joy. In this case, the psalmist is remembering times of worship with his fellow saints. This may not “do the trick” of warding off present affliction, of course, but it at least reminds us that joy can be had. If could be had in the past, we should take care to anticipate that it can be had in the future. Joy is not impossible, in other words, and that glimmer of hope can be a consolation in times of pain. This is why he says in verse 5, “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation.”

But there is a deeper reflection, a more historic remembrance the psalmist goes to, as well:

. . . My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar. (v.6)

The psalmist is here recalling mighty deeds of God, the milestones of God’s intervening redemption in Israel’s history. These geographic locations are signposts for his memory, places and times where God came through for his people big time.

When God allows affliction, it is important to remember his historic faithfulness. There is a reason the Israelites filled the ark of the covenant with mementos of God’s faithfulness, and it’s not because they were magic talismans. It was because they wanted to carry before them tangible reminders of God’s love and care and redemptive interruption of their troubles, lest they forget when they had to face trouble again.

When you are stuck, deep, despondent, or in despair, think back to what God has delivered you from in difficult times past. Remember how he has never really failed you. In fact, remember your way all the way back to Mount Calvary and the empty tomb. Remembering God’s historic faithfulness is the first step in enjoying his present faithfulness to you, even if you don’t feel it.

Remembering God’s historic faithfulness is the first step in enjoying his present faithfulness to you, even if you don’t feel it.

“We are simple people,” David Powlison says, “You can’t remember ten things at once. Invariably, if you could remember just one true thing in the moment of trial, you’d be different. Bible ‘verses’ aren’t magic. But God’s words are revelations of God from God for our redemption. When you actually remember God, you do not sin. The only way we ever sin is by suppressing God, by forgetting, by tuning out his voice, switching channels, and listening to other voices. When you actually remember, you actually change. In fact, remembering is the first change.”

What’s in Your Soul That the Gospel Needs to Run a Sword Through?

([A]nd a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”
— Luke 2:35

Often our joy comes in ways we do not expect. In the days of Jesus, the people of Israel were very much waiting on the arrival of the Messiah. They looked forward with eager expectation and zealous hope for the day the promised one would jump on the scene, overthrow the Roman oppressors, and re-establish God’s tangible kingdom on earth. The dominant vision for this deliverance involved the use of stallions and swords. But then the King finally does come. And he is riding on a donkey. There are no swords in the air, but rather palm branches. Yet the kingdom of God was not coming to bear any less in this peaceable rebellion.

When the blind Simeon finally saw the salvation of Israel, he was not beholding some muscular warrior armed for battle. He was holding up a baby. And yet the salvation this baby carried was no less powerful, no less vindicating, no less revolutionary. In fact, by coming as a baby, by coming in humility and low estate, by coming to serve and to teach and eventually to die, Jesus brought an even more dramatic rebellion than if he’d come with the zealot’s warfare.

Simeon declares the child Jesus “a glory to your people Israel,” but also “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32). He brings a salvation that God has prepared “in the presence of all peoples” (v.31). This was no Plan B. This was not some unexpected twist in God’s covenant story. What Paul calls the “grafting in” of the Gentiles was forecast as part of God’s redemptive purposes throughout the Old Testament prophecies. And now that Christ has come, he is putting the plan into effect.

Christ’s work, then, frustrates the Gentiles’ search for glory apart from the God of Israel and unravels the Jews’ search for glory apart from the inclusion of the Gentiles. Christ has not come to overthrow physical kingdoms—at least, not yet—but to overthrow spiritual ones, the toughest ones to overthrow. Simeon promises “a sword through the soul” (v.35).

What’s in your soul that the gospel ought to run a sword through? Are you searching for pleasure and meaning in ways contrary to God’s plan? Are you trying to write the story of your own glory with your life? Are there areas of stubborn sin you have yet to attack with the power of Christ’s grace?

We try and try and try. We think the best answer to our bad behavior is trying to look good. We’re allergic to looking un-tough. But hope and joy comes in unexpected ways. It’s leaning on the finished work of Christ that finally undoes our desires for fulfillment apart from him. As Simeon could tell you, not even religion can do that.

‘Yesterday’ and the Forgotten Gospel

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.
— Psalm 126:1

(Spoiler warning: This post contains a spoiler of a plot point in the recent film Yesterday.)

Danny Boyle’s Yesterday may be my favorite movie of the year. In it Himesh Patel plays Jack, who discovers after a momentary global blackout that nobody has any idea who The Beatles are. Suddenly the struggling musician is able to draw on a deep reservoir of pop musical genius—if he can remember the lyrics—and catapult to stardom via the hard work of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, because nobody knows he’s plagiarizing the tunes.

It’s a fascinating conceit—and the viewer discovers along the way that there are other things that suddenly don’t exist post-blackout too, things like Coca-Cola and cigarettes—and it prompts questions about where the appeal in The Beatles’ oeuvre came from, whether those songs could be pop hits in 2019, and so on. During Jack’s rise to superstardom on borrowed genius, there is a recurring thread of ominous portent about his being found out. One scene promised in the trailer where talk-show host James Corden threatens to bring out Lennon and McCartney is revealed in the film to simply be one of Jack’s nightmares, as he’s increasingly convicted about the hoax he’s perpetrating on an unwitting public.

But the public isn’t entirely unwitting. As part of that ominous thread, we see two reappearing figures across some concert scenes—one a hulking Russian man and the other a matronly British woman—who appear to know Jack’s secret. The movie builds up the anticipation and the threat of Jack’s exposure. (I confess I feared the lesson we were about to learn is that to steal someone’s genius is also to steal their life—and death—as I expected these figures to attempt assassinating Jack, a la Mark David Chapman’s murder of John Lennon). Instead, the scene where Jack finally meets his stalkers is climactic in an entirely different way.

Jack fears this couple is going to expose him. And in fact, they do recognize the songs. They do know that he is singing songs by The Beatles. And rather than being angry—or even hostile—about his elaborate sham, to Jack’s pleasant surprise, they are happy he is performing the songs. They have felt alone and sad that nobody remembers the greatness of the Fab 4, that they “alone” now know these songs but are unable themselves to perform them. “It’s just so nice to hear the songs again,” the woman says to a sheepish Jack, surprised they aren’t livid with him for passing the songs off as his own. “It’s so lovely.”

They are practically in tears. They no longer feel alone. They feel understood. They feel a shared vision of something beautiful that everyone else has evidently forgotten. They feel heard and seen. They feel like what had begun to feel like a dream is now in fact proven to be real.

I was practically brought to tears myself. Why? Well, not because I love The Beatles (though I do). But because I couldn’t help but make a parallel connection to the preaching of the gospel in difficult places. (Yes, I know connecting movies in some arbitrary way to “the gospel” is just the kind of fresh content you come to TGC for, but bear with me a bit in a connection that’s not as arbitrary as you might think.) When I went to rural New England in 2009, there were already some great, seasoned gospel preachers there. I wasn’t innovating anything in joining them to preach it myself. But in many places around us there were indeed towns and villages where gospel witness had long lain dormant.

Many towns in rural New England have only one or two churches, churches where the gospel is not preached, and many of them have no church at all. The “old, old story” is like a song everyone’s forgotten. From some pulpits you get tidy little moralistic fables, homey little homilies doled out like condensed chicken soup ladled lightly into tea cups. In others you get outright heresy. In some you get sets of steps, tips, action points, imperatives, ginned-up rhetorical PowerPoints sure to drain us to 4 percent battery life by the time next Sunday rolls around, in time to get another set.

Then word gets out. Some preacher or another is opening up the Bible again. He’s preaching the glories of redemption! He’s holding up the beauty of Christ! Is he cheating? Yes. It’s not his own material! He’s unabashedly and unashamedly declaring “thus saith the Lord.” And saints start trickling in.

Every week my gospel comrades and I would meet a few people who’d followed the rumors to our sanctuaries. Occasionally they’re in tears. Usually they’re just smiling, happy and relieved. “It’s just so nice to hear the song again,” they say. “It’s so lovely.” They had almost given up ever hearing it again. They knew the song themselves, and now they’re glad to know somebody on a stage, behind a pulpit—at the prow of a thing—knows the song and is cheerfully singing it and teaching it to others.

Large swaths of the United States will be in this position soon enough. Which is why I’m glad for the vast army of theological plagiarists being trained up among the younger generation. Unlike my own, they know the best work in service to the church and to the world is not their own good ideas cooked up each week, not their enlightened visions for the future, but rather the finished work of Christ rehearsed over and over and over again. They know that, as G. K. Chesterton said about the Creed, “it is making them, not they it.” As our culture and even the church itself rapidly slips into a kind of gospel amnesia, it’s time to re-evangelize the whole lot of them not with what we’ve created, but with what we’ve received (1 Cor. 15:3).

In other words, there’s no need to make anything up. Just preach Christ crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). If you want to call that cheating, go ahead. I aim to bring nothing new except the new wine of the ancient gospel. And I hope your aim will be just as un-creative.

But this is the wonder of the ongoing gospel recovery movement—we have reached an era where the foundational truth of Christianity is itself new, radical, unheard-of. Let’s play the song, brethren. Every week. Every day. Again and again. Those who’ve never heard will be amazed, and those who have forgotten will be refreshed.

Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.
— Proverbs 25:25

The New Math of the Gospel

Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?”
— Luke 7:49

The Puritan preacher Thomas Watson once said, “Until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.” What he meant was, until we see ourselves for who we truly are apart from Christ—considering the depth of our need, the extent of our brokenness, the totality of our depravity and the condemnation we deserve—we will not see Christ for all that he truly is.

In Luke 7:36-50 we see the curious story of the “woman of the city” interrupting Jesus’s meal in a Pharisee’s home to wash his feet with her tears and precious ointment. The Pharisee of course objects. But the woman he there declares a sinner understands the great divorce between herself and Jesus. For this reason she has determined to serve him and bless him. The Pharisees, on the other hand, thought themselves Jesus’s peers at best, so of course they probably thought they were doing him a favor letting him come eat with them.

The dinner host, Simon, grumbles inwardly, not just because he doubts Christ’s holiness in allowing this scandalous scene, but because he considers himself to have higher standards than Jesus has. He knows what this woman is up to. He knows this woman’s sin. If Jesus knew like he knew, he reasons, he wouldn’t allow her to touch him.

But the gospel turns our religious math inside out. There are not “good people” and “bad people” in the mathematics of the gospel. There are bad people and Jesus. So the story Jesus tells about the man with two debtors serves a dual purpose: it reminds us that we all stand indebted to Christ. Religious or irreligious, people far off and people nearby, “prodigal sons” and “older brothers”—we are all debtors to grace. But the parable also shows us that the more mindful of our indebtedness we are, the more of God’s grace we will know. We are in big trouble if we think we only need a little bit of God!

When we are on spiritual autopilot, trusting in our own wisdom and relying on our own strength, it is fundamentally because we don’t think we need God all that much. This is functional self-righteousness. But the more in tune with our inner inability and spiritual poverty we will get, the more of Christ we will experience and the more honor we will give him.