Tullian Tchividjian's Blog, page 12

Happy Birthday Daddy Bill

It was May 2, 1996 and I was sitting in the U.S. Capitol rotunda with my family. We were eagerly anticipating the ceremony that was getting ready to begin. I had been to Washington DC once before, back in 1985, when I was just 13 years old. This trip was different though. We were there because my grandparents were being honored on this day with the Congressional Gold Medal—the highest honor the Congress of the United States can bestow on a citizen. In fact, Senator Bob Dole, during a speech at the ceremony, said, “When the idea of awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to Billy and Ruth Graham was first raised, it received something rare in this building—unanimous approval.” Everybody laughed. At the time, it was only the 114th medal awarded, with George Washington being the first recipient.

There were hundreds who came that day to honor my grandparents, ranging from then Vice President Al Gore to Kathy Lee Gifford. Newt Gingrich, Senator Dole, and Vice President Gore publicly honored my grandparents by sharing how much my grandparents meant to each of them personally.

After the medal was presented, my granddad got up to speak. Before he could say a word, the crowd stood and applauded for a solid three minutes. Tears began streaming down my face. I was so proud of him and so thankful that God had given me such a tremendous heritage—one I had neither asked for nor deserved. Here was a man who was being publicly honored for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to more people than anyone in history; a man who was being recognized for his love for God and love for others—and I had the privilege of calling him “Daddy Bill.” As we all stood and clapped, I prayed: “Lord, no matter what it is that you call me to do, I want to do it with the gospel-centered focus, passion, and humility that have characterized the life and ministry of my grandfather.”

It was no surprise that he presented the Gospel that day. He spoke boldly of sin, the cross, and the amazing grace of God. He spoke of God’s infinite willingness to forgive, the brevity of life and the fleeting pleasures of this world. He looked into the eyes of the many high ranking political leaders who were there that day and challenged them to contemplate death and the life after. He was so bold, so unashamed of the Gospel—yet so winsome. To this day, I’m not sure I have ever heard the truth spoken in love more effectively. I had heard him preach a thousand times, but this time was particularly moving. I’ll never forget that day.

Today “Daddy Bill” turns 95. I’m in North Carolina to celebrate his birthday. Among the invited guests who will be there are Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, Rick Warren, and Lecrae. He told me that he doesn’t plan on speaking (he’s so weak), but I wouldn’t be surprised if he took this rare (and perhaps last) opportunity to preach the Gospel to the gathered guests. He just can’t help himself. It’s who he is. He can’t get it out of his system.

Born November 7, 1918 on a dairy farm outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, “Daddy Bill” (who lived the majority of his life on the world stage) rarely leaves home now. His mind is still sharp but his body is weak and frail. He says that getting old has been hard. His wife of over 60 years (my grandmother “TaiTai”) died 6 1/2 years ago. Most of his friends have died. He still sees a world in dire need but is now, for the most part, relegated to the sidelines-cheering his brothers and sisters on, but wishing he could still be in the game. He told me recently that he thinks he’ll live another year or two. I hope it’s longer.

Here’s a short video that CBS taped with me that will be aired across the country today on all CBS outlets (I also taped a tribute to Daddy Bill with Sean Hannity, Lauren Green and James Dobson that will air tonight at 10:00 on Fox News):

Even in his frail state, he was kind enough to write the following blurb for my new book One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World.

I have been greatly encouraged by the emergence of a new generation of committed and articulate Christian leaders—and my grandson Tullian Tchividjian is certainly in the forefront of this development. His deep understanding of the gospel and his unique ability to communicate its timeless truths with compassion and insight have already had a profound impact on countless men and women. May God use this book to expand your understanding of what Jesus Christ has already done for you.

Not long ago, I wrote a few things down that I’ve always admired about my granddad. Since it’s his birthday, I thought I’d share them with you.

1. His Humility: Daddy Bill has always been keenly aware that God is God and he is not. He’s always been conscious of his smallness and God’s bigness, his imperfection and God’s perfection. I was telling someone the other day that it wasn’t until I got older that I began to realize my grandfather was a pretty important person. This is mainly due to the fact that he never, ever, projected himself to be any more or less important than anyone else. I have never seen him think more highly of himself than he ought.

2. His love for the Gospel: Daddy Bill has always had a deep sense of his own sin which has led him to a deep love for his Savior. He’s always exemplified the sweet reality that you can never know Christ as a Great Savior until you first know yourself to be a great sinner. God’s amazing grace still amazes him—and that amazes me!

3. His Faithfulness: Although he had the opportunity to do many things (have his own TV show, become President of various colleges and seminaries, star in movies, and yes, even run for President of the United states) he never wavered concerning God’s call on his life to be an Evangelist. He knows he’s not a scholar or a theologian and he’s never tried to be. He’s always remained true to God’s calling on his life. And he has fulfilled that calling without ever being guilty of any sexual, financial, or other moral scandal.

4. I have never seen him show favoritism: I have been with Daddy Bill in numerous places at numerous times with numerous people and I have never, ever seen him show favoritism. He treats all people the same, whether they’re rich or poor, weak or powerful, socially significant or socially insignificant. Because of his belief that all people are made in God’s image, he has rightfully concluded that there are no little people.

5. His humanness: Daddy Bill is normal! He gets mad, he gets sad, he can be grumpy, and he has a remarkable sense of humor. His favorite restaurant is Morrison’s Cafeteria. His favorite movie is Crocodile Dundee. His favorite drink is orange juice and he loves catfish. He’s just another man with all of the limitations and idiosyncrasies that the rest of us have—and I love him for it!

Daddy Bill, you have been one of my closest friends and most reliable counselors all my life. I want to be just like you when I grow up.

Happy Birthday! I love you.

Marriage And One-Way Love

A marriage is a like a petri dish for the weight of conditionality and the beauty of one-way love. Husbands and wives are often so hard on one another, merciless with their demands and expectations, their criticisms and silences. I’ve seen husbands and wives keep score on one another for the most ridiculous things, from the way they chew their food, to the way their voice sounds when they’re speaking on the phone, to the type of presents they give each other. And yet what brought the couple together in the first place was almost always an experience of grace, some connection that transcended their worthiness. As Southern novelist Walker Percy writes in Love in the Ruins, “We love those who know the worst of us and don’t turn their faces away.”

You and I both know that beneath our happiest moments and closest relationships inevitably lies some instance of being loved in weakness or deserved judgment. Someone let you off hook when you least deserved it. A friend suspended judgment at a key moment. Your father was lenient when you wrecked his car. Your teacher gave you an extension, even though she knew you had been procrastinating. You said something insensitive to your spouse, and instead of retaliating, she kept quiet and didn’t hold it against you the next day. One-way love is the essence of any lasting transformation that takes place in human experience—a person who is loved in their guilt and weakness blossoms.

A marriage flavored by one-way love eschews score-keeping at all costs. It is not a fifty-fifty proposition, where I scratch your back and then you scratch mine. A grace-centered marriage is one in which both partners give 100 percent of themselves. They give up their right to talk about rights. This means that a grace-centered marriage, in theory, is one where both parties are constantly apologizing to each other, asking for and granting forgiveness. No one is ever innocent in a grace-centered marriage. If original sin is as evenly distributed as the Bible claims it is, then both parties have some culpability. Every marriage is the union of two selfish people, fighting for their way, desperate to win. That’s why an apology so often feels like we are betraying ourselves. We would rather see a marriage fall apart than cede any ground in the “war of the roses.”

The world tells us to stand up for ourselves, to stick to our guns. But the Gospel frees us to lay down our arms. There is nothing at stake, and therefore nothing to fear, ultimately. Our righteousness, which we are often hell-bent on protecting in a marriage, has already been secured, and it is not our own. No more having to win, no more having to be right, no more fighting to secure love and extract affection. Because everything I need and long for I already possess in Christ, I am now free to do everything for you without needing anything from you. The fire to love unconditionally comes only from being soaked in the fuel of being unconditionally loved.

For the marriage grounded in one-way love, there is always hope, always a way forward.

Excerpted from One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World

Merry Halloween

Since today is the day that Christian people all over the world celebrate, think about, and comment on the Protestant Reformation which was launched by God through Martin Luther on this very day back in 1517, I thought I would change things up a bit. There may be no better way to celebrate the doctrine which launched the Reformation, justification by grace alone through faith alone, than to post a short piece by my friend (and editor-in-chief of LIBERATE) Nick Lannon, on how Halloween (in its current expression) has become a better picture of the heartbeat of the Reformation than Christmas (in its current expression).

Enjoy…

Consider the theological implications of Halloween. Halloween is the ultimate equal opportunity holiday. EVERYONE gets candy. On the surface, it’s the picture of the Gospel! There is no checking of qualifications at the door. You come, you receive. Christmas, on the other hand… well, you know the song: “He’s making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty or nice. Santa Claus is coming to town.” Yikes! You’d better hope that you’re on the good list, or you’re not getting any presents! David Sedaris, an amazing humorist, writes in one of his essays that in Holland, if a child is bad, Saint Nicholas and his helpers beat the offending child with a switch. If a child is REALLY bad, they throw him into a sack and take him back to Spain (which, of course, is where St. Nicholas is from). Our punishment isn’t as harsh as the Dutch one, but it’s still based on judgment. If you’re good, presents. If you’re bad, lump of coal.

Halloween has become more Christian than Christmas.

Read the rest here.

Hounding Grace

“Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.”

Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law and the Outrage of Grace

What Is Reader’s Digest Christianity?

For a while, my parents were getting Reader’s Digest every month while I was growing up. Because they were stored next to the toilet, they were widely read. In each and every issue there was an interview with some celebrity, usually an actor or an athlete. Reader’s Digest’s favorite kind of celebrity was the “self-made” variety: someone who had come from nothing, preferably a broken home in which the single mother had to work multiple jobs to afford the windows that protected the family from the ceaseless gunfire outside. The interviewers inevitably ended their pieces by asking the celebrity something like, “If you could offer one piece of advice to our readers, what would it be?” (In fact, this makes up the bulk of Reader’s Digest…the part that isn’t ads. It’s full of pithy little pieces of advice for an improved life: “For a fun afternoon with the kids, try making caramel apples! To sleep better, try eating more blueberries! For a more fulfilling marriage, try going camping together!”) The celebrity would always say something like, “The one thing I would like to tell your readers is that you can’t let anyone tell you that you can’t accomplish your dreams. I’m walking evidence of that. If you want something badly enough, and work at it hard enough, you can accomplish anything at all.”

So much Christianity has become Reader’s Digest Christianity: “Jesus can help you achieve your dreams. He’ll go ninety-nine yards if you just go one. Do a little and he’ll do a lot. God helps those who help themselves.”

Read the rest here.

Church, We Have A Problem

In response to my Washington Post op-ed last Thursday, one commenter wrote: “Moralism in the church was a huge problem 7-10 years ago, but I honestly feel that the pendulum has swung in the other extreme full force, to a fault on the other side.” This is a pretty common objection that those of us who are committed to decrying moralism and legalism hear. The thinking goes precisely the way the commenter suggests: “Legalism and moralism is NOT the problem today; licentiousness is.”

On the surface, this seems to make a lot of sense. Just look around. One could argue that our country has never been more licentious and morally lax than it is at our present cultural moment. Is preaching the gospel of grace what we really need? Or, to put it another way, is preaching the gospel of grace really the means by which God rescues the lawless, the unethical, and the disobedient? There are at least three huge assumptions in this common line of thinking that need to be addressed.

Legalism and Lawlessness as Two Opposite Extremes?

The whole “pendulum swing” argument is one I know well. Not only because I hear it all the time but also because I used to make the same argument. What I’ve discovered, however, is that there is one big problem with this (simplistic) argument: it fails to realize that since Genesis 3, legalism (self-salvation) has always been our biggest problem. And this problem does not shift to something else when the cultural mood shifts–it just takes one of two different forms.

Spend any time in the American church, and you’ll hear legalism and lawlessness presented as two ditches on either side of the Gospel that we must avoid. Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law or rules, and lawlessness when you focus too much on grace. Therefore, in order to maintain spiritual equilibrium, you have to “balance” law and grace. If you start getting too much law, you need to balance it with grace. If you start getting too much grace, you need to balance it with law. This “balanced” way of framing the issue has kept people from really understanding the Gospel of grace in all of its radical depth and beauty.

It is more theologically accurate to say that the one primary enemy of the Gospel—legalism—comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (you could call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (you could call this “back-door legalism”). In other words, there are two “laws” that we typically choose from: the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules,” or the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” Either way, you’re still trying to save yourself—which means both are legalistic, because both are self-salvation projects. “Make a rule” or “break a rule” really belong to the same passion for autonomy (self-rule). We want to remain in control of our lives and our destinies, so the only choice is whether we will conquer the mountain by asceticism or by license. So it would be a mistake to identify the “two cliffs” as being legalism and lawlessness. What some call license is just another form of legalism. And there’s always and only been one solution to our self-salvation projects: God’s salvation project in Christ.

Can the Law make us Lawful?

What is the ultimate solution to lawlessness? The assumption is that championing ethics will make us more ethical; that preaching obedience will make us more obedient; that focusing on the law will make us more lawful. But is that the way it works?

I completely understand how natural it is to conclude that, given our restraint-free cultural context, preachers in our day should be very wary of talking about grace at all. That’s the last thing lawless people need to hear, is it not? Surely they’ll take advantage of it and get worse, not better. After all, it would seem logical to me that the only way to “save” licentious people is to show intensify our exhortations to behave. Therefore, what we desperately need is a renewed focus on ethics, duty, behavior, and so on. I mean, surely God doesn’t think that the saving solution for the immoral and rebellious is his free grace? That doesn’t make sense. It seems backwards, counter-intuitive.

Matt Richard describes well how naturally we take it upon ourselves to reign the gospel in when we fear too much of it will result in lawlessness:

I have found that as Christians we many times attribute “lawlessness” to the preaching of the Gospel. Somewhere in our thinking we rationalize that if the Gospel is presented as “too free, too unconditional or that Jesus fulfills the law for us” that the result will be lax morality, loose living and lawlessness. It’s as if we believe that the freeing message of the Gospel actually produces, encourages and grants people a license to sin. Because of this rationalization we find ourselves strapping, holding and attaching restrictions to the Gospel so that we might prevent or limit lawlessness. In other words, the Gospel is placed into bondage due to our rationalization and reaction to lawlessness.

The truth is, that lawlessness and moral laxity happen, not when we hear too much grace, but when we hear too little of it. In One Way Love, I share the following letter I received from a man I’ve never met. He wrote:

Over the last couple of years, we have really been struggling with the preaching in our church as it has been very law laden and moralistic. After listening, I feel condemned with no power to overcome my lack of ability to obey. Over the last several months, I have found myself very spiritually depressed, to the point where I had no desire to even attend church. Pastors are so concerned about somehow preaching “too much grace” (as if that is possible), because they wrongly believe that type of preaching leads to antinomianism or licentiousness. But, I can testify that the opposite is actually true. I believe preaching only the law and giving little to no gospel actually leads to lawless living. When mainly law is preached, it leads to the realization that I can’t follow it, so I might as well quit trying. At least, that’s what has happened to me.

The ironic thing about legalism is that it not only doesn’t make people work harder, it makes them give up. Moralism doesn’t produce morality; rather, it produces immorality. It is no coincidence, for example, that the straight-laced Leave It to Beaver generation preceded the free-love movement of the 1960s. We live in a country where the state most known for its wholesomeness and frugality, Utah, also leads the country in rates of pornography consumption and antidepressant prescriptions. We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you simply lay down the law. This isn’t to say the Spirit doesn’t use both God’s law and God’s gospel in our lives and for our good. But the law and the gospel do very different things.

As I mention here, Paul makes it clear in Romans 7 that the law endorses the need for change but is powerless to enact change—that’s not part of its job description. It points to righteousness but can’t produce it. It shows us what godliness is, but it cannot make us godly. The law can inform us of our sin but it cannot transform the sinner. We can tell people all day long about what they need to be doing and the ways they’re falling short (and that’s important to keep them seeing their need for Jesus). But simply telling people what they need to do doesn’t have the power to make them want to do it. I can appeal to a thousand different biblical reasons why someone should start doing what God wants and stop doing what he doesn’t want—heaven, hell, consequences, and so on. But simply telling people they need to change can’t change them; giving people reasons to do the right and avoid the wrong, doesn’t do it. Grace and grace alone has the power to inspire what the law demands.

I’ve pointed out before, in Romans 6:1-4 the Apostle Paul answers antinomianism (lawlessness) not with law but with more gospel! I imagine it would have been tempting for Paul (as it often is with us when dealing with licentious people) to put the brakes on grace and give the law in this passage, but instead he gives more grace—grace upon grace. Paul knows that licentious people aren’t those who believe the gospel of God’s free grace too much, but too little. “The ultimate antidote to antinomianism”, writes Mike Horton, “is not more imperatives, but the realization that the gospel swallows the tyranny as well as the guilt of sin.”

The fact is, that the only way licentious people begin to “delight in the law of the Lord” is when they get a taste of God’s radical, no-strings attached, one-way love.

The Focus has Clearly Shifted

The third and final point I want to make regarding the objection that preaching the gospel of grace is the most pressing need of the day is that it reveals the biggest problem with a lot of messaging inside the church: we’ve concluded that the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian. Therefore, our messaging has shifted from Christ and him crucified to humanity and it improved.

Ever since the fall of man in Genesis 3, we’ve been obsessed with ourselves. Add to that fire the fuel of the Enlightenment’s mantra, “Progress is inevitable”, and the “manifest destiny” DNA that has marked our country since its inception, and it’s no surprise that our man-centered culture of narcissism has seeped into the church. Whether it takes the crass form of “health, wealth, and prosperity” or the more theologically sophisticated form of an obsession with “sanctification” and “holiness”, the bottom line is, we have concluded that this whole thing is about our transformation, not Christ’s substitution. Or, to put it more accurately, Christ’s substitution is a means to an end–the end being, our transformation. I can hear the objections now: “It’s not either/or, Tullian, it’s both/and.” I’m not saying it’s “either/or” but I’m also saying that it’s not “both/and.” It’s primary/secondary, cause/effect. Those distinctions matter. A lot!

Yes, the gospel does transforms us. But transformation does not happen when we make transformation the warp and woof of our message. But that’s exactly what’s happened. Whether it’s “how to have a good marriage”, or “how to be more missional”, or “how to practice godliness more effectively”, people hear more about what they need to do than what Jesus has already done. We’ve taken our eyes off of Christ, “the author and finisher of our faith”, to focus on ourselves. Plain and simple. When the gospel of free grace is preached without “buts and brakes” and people inside the church start crying out that the deeper need of the hour is a renewed focus on ethics, it’s nothing more than a “pietistic” mask for our seeming inescapable addiction to personal progress.

In his book Paul: An Outline of His Theology, famed Dutch Theologian Herman Ridderbos (1909-2007) summarizes the shift which took place following Calvin and Luther. It was a sizable but subtle shift which turned the focus of the Christian faith from Christ’s external accomplishment to our internal transformation:

While in Calvin and Luther all the emphasis fell on the redemptive event that took place with Christ’s death and resurrection, later under the influence of pietism, mysticism and moralism, the emphasis shifted to the individual appropriation of the salvation given in Christ and to it’s mystical and moral effect in the life of the believer. Accordingly, in the history of the interpretation of the epistles of Paul the center of gravity shifted more and more from the forensic to the pneumatic and ethical aspects of his preaching, and there arose an entirely different conception of the structures that lay at the foundation of Paul’s preaching.

Donald Bloesch made a similar observation when he wrote, “Among the Evangelicals, it is not the justification of the ungodly (which formed the basic motif in the Reformation) but the sanctification of the righteous that is given the most attention.”

With this shift came a renewed focus on the internal life of the individual. The subjective question, “How am I doing?” became a more dominant feature than the objective question, “What did Jesus do?” As a result, generations of Christians were taught that Christianity was primarily a life-style; that the essence of our faith centered on “how to live”; that real Christianity was demonstrated in the moral change that took place inside those who had a “personal relationship with Jesus.” Our ongoing performance for Jesus, therefore, not Jesus’ finished performance for us, became the focus of sermons, books, and conferences. What I need to do and who I need to become, became the end game.

Conclusion

The late Robert Capon once memorably wrote:

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace—bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel—after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started.

It has been roughly five hundred years since the Reformation. And looking at the church today (reading comments, blogs, tweets, books, and listening to objections and sermons) it is obvious that we are overdue for another one. Indeed, what a terrible irony it is that the very pack of people that God has unconditionally saved and continues to sustain by His free grace are the same ones who push back most violently against it: “Yes grace, but…”, “stop peddling cheap grace”, “God’s agape is not sloppy.” Far too many professing Christians sound like ungrateful children who can’t stop biting the hand that feeds them.

It is high time for the church to honor its Founder by embracing sola gratia anew, to reignite the beacon of hope for the hopeless and point all of us bedraggled performancists back to the freedom and rest of the Cross. To leave our ifs, ands, or buts behind and get back to proclaiming the only message that matters—and the only message we have—the Word about God’s one-way love for sinners. It is time for us to abandon, once and for all, our play-it-safe religion and get drunk on grace. Two-hundred-proof, unflinching grace. It’s shocking and scary, unnatural and undomesticated, but it is also the only thing that can set us free and light the church—and the world—on fire.

The Missing Message In Today’s Churches

The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by me this morning entitled “The Missing Message in Today’s Churches”:

America’s churches came back into the media limelight a few weeks ago after a well-publicized Pew study showed a meteoric rise of Americans claiming no religious affiliation, shooting up from seven percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2010. The percentage more than doubled for those under the age of 30, reaching almost 35 percent. The group is now being referred to as “the religious nones.”

There has been no lack of theorizing to account for the numbers. Some chalk it up to a more visibly secularized society, others to doctrinal confusion, and others to the social media-fueled culture of distraction among today’s youth. Some dismiss the charge as alarmist, claiming that young people have always had a distaste for organized religion. The list goes on.

Many inside the church have responded to the decline in attendance by attempting to “remarket” Christianity by updating worship services and unwittingly playing into consumerist biases, presenting themselves as one more product in the spiritual marketplace. By and large, these tactics have backfired. There may be noble intentions at work, but the collective impression is that these Christians are trying too hard to be “cool.” No wonder “authenticity” has become such a buzzword. Young people are not finding it at church.

Read the rest here.

Earrings And One Way Love

Below is an excerpt from my book One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World.

Critical environments are contexts which (while never explicitly stated) shout: “my approval of you, love for you, and joy in you depends on your ability to measure up to my standards, to become what I need you to become in order for me to be happy.” It’s a context in which achievement precedes acceptance. We’ve all felt this. We’ve felt it at school, in churches, in the workplace, with our friends, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, and most painfully, at home with our spouses, our children, our siblings, and our parents. One-way love is often what distinguishes a warm household from a cold one. Children often move across the country to get away from a toxic home life where two-way conditionality has come to rule the roost via the judgments of parents and other siblings. A house full of conditions feels like a prison. Rules are one thing—take out the trash; don’t hit your brother. They govern the day-to-day and protect us from one another. Conditions are different and more emotional in nature. “If you really loved us, then you wouldn’t spend so much time with those people.” “We will approve of whatever career choice you make, provided it’s between medicine, law, and business.” “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” Even small differences between family members can be the source of tremendous friction. Yet grace has the power to bind generations together. I was blessed to have experienced the power of one-way love not just from my parents but my grandparents as well.

Whenever people learn that I was kicked out of the house at sixteen, they invariably ask how my grandparents responded. What they usually mean is “How did Billy and Ruth Graham respond to actual sin in their midst?” People looked up to them, not just as spiritual leaders, but as role models for how to raise godly children and grandchildren. “Weren’t you shaming the family name?” The truth is, my grandparents never said a single word to me about getting my act together. They never pulled me aside at a family gathering and told me what I needed to do or stop doing, how I was squandering all that my parents had given me, and how my hard-hardheartedness was hurting others–especially those who loved me most. Only God knows what they were thinking or feeling, but I never picked up on a shred of conditionality from them: “If you want our approval and affection, you have to get your act together.” They treated me exactly the opposite of how I deserved to be treated.

For example, I wore earrings back in those days. One in the left, and one in the right. It used to drive my parents nuts. Every time my grandmother—Ruth Graham—came down to visit, she would bring me a fresh set of earrings to wear! They were always funny. At Christmastime, she would bring me ornament earrings and make me put them in and take a picture. At Thanksgiving, she brought fork and knife earrings, and she took a picture. She made light of it. She would often tell me with a twinkle in her eye that I was her favorite granddaughter. She wasn’t making fun of me. She was saying, “This isn’t that big of a deal. He’s going to grow out of it.” It may sound pretty trivial, but it meant the world to me. Everyone else was on my case, and instead of giving me one more thing to rebel against, my grandmother drew me in closer.

Of course, I eventually did grow out of the “earring wearing” stage–a stage my oldest son just entered (I guess what goes around really does come around). But thanks to Tai Tai’s (what we called my grandmother) unconditional posture towards me 25 years ago, I won’t be making an issue of it. In fact, they actually look really good on him.

 

The Distinction Between the “What” And “How” Of Obedience

My friend Matt Smethurst interviewed me about the themes in my new book One-Way Love. I always appreciate Matt’s thoughtful questions. One of the questions he asked me had to do with whether the Bible includes exhortations that appeal to a wide variety of motivations. In short, my answer was “no.” But you’ll have to read the full answer below to see what I mean. I think the distinction between “reasons” to obey and “motivations” that produce obedience is absolutely crucial. Read on:

Matt: The Bible includes exhortations that appeal to a wide range of motivations. As a pastor, how do you determine when it’s time to counsel someone not only to “run to the cross,” but also to “run away from sin” or to “run for the crown”?

Me: I want to push back a little on this one, or at least challenge the choice of words. I think the Bible includes exhortations that appeal to a wide range of “reasons,” but I’d like to suggest “reasons” are very different from “motivations.” For instance, we might say that a reason to follow the law is to simply please God. After all, Hebrews talks about our good deeds being pleasing to God (perhaps we could call this “running for the crown”). But there’s a distinct difference between a reason to be obedient and a motivation that actually produces obedience. It’s all well and good to say there are many reasons to obey, but what actually motivates you to be obedient? The idea that we act based on reasons—we act to please God because it’s “the right thing to do”—presupposes that we act rationally. But that’s the very idea that the Reformers rejected! Just because we have a reason to be good doesn’t mean we’ll do it—we have to want to. As John Piper says, we always choose according to what we desire most. We need more than reasons, then—we need motivation.

A lot of preaching these days is too theoretical and disconnected from reality when it comes to the human condition and how real change happens. We use language like “indicatives” and “imperatives.” We love phrases like “faith alone saves but the faith that saves is never alone” and “grace is opposed to earning, not effort.” And all of those categories and phrases are good. I affirm them all theologically. But none of them answers this question: how does change actually happen?

When it comes to real heart change, we have two options: law or grace. That’s it. Two. At the end of the day we either believe law changes or love does. I can tell people all day long about what they need to be doing and the ways they’re falling short (and that’s important to keep them seeing their need for Jesus). But simply telling people what they need to do doesn’t have the power to make them want to do it. I can appeal to a thousand different biblical reasons why someone should start doing what God wants and stop doing what he doesn’t want—heaven, hell, consequences, blessing, and so on. And I do. But simply telling people they need to change can’t change them; giving people reasons to do the right and avoid the wrong, doesn’t do it. Both are necessary, but neither can actually change the person.

Paul makes it clear in Romans 7 that the law endorses the need for change but is powerless to enact change—that’s not part of its job description. It points to righteousness but can’t produce it. It shows us what godliness is, but it cannot make us godly. The law can inform us of our sin but it cannot transform the sinner. The law can instruct, but only grace can inspire. Or to put it another way, love inspires what the law demands.

Think about it: beneath your happiest moments and closest relationships inevitably lies some instance of being loved in weakness or deserved judgment. Someone let you off hook when you least deserved it. A friend suspended judgment at a key moment. Your father was lenient when you wrecked his car. Your teacher gave you an extension, even though she knew you’d been procrastinating. You said something insensitive to your spouse, but instead of retaliating, she kept quiet and didn’t hold it against you the next day. One-way love is the essence of any lasting transformation that takes place in human experience—a person loved in weakness blossoms.

So we might say reasons answer the “why” question and motivations the “how.” As I mentioned earlier, we love God because he first loved us. God’s command to love him is all the reason we need to love him, but it’s not what causes actual love for him. What causes actual love for God is God’s love for us. His love for us is what motivates love from us. Reasons, therefore, can differ, but the true motivation always remains the same. As a pastor, I always counsel people to “run to the cross” because the love found there—the one-way love of God in Christ—is the only truly motivating factor toward Christian obedience.

You can read the whole interview here.

A Tale Of Two Favored Sons

Want to know how to read the Old Testament? Here’s a quick primer: Martin Luther said that everything bad in the Old Testament (and there’s a lot) is there to point out our sin, while everything good in the Old Testament is there to point us to our Savior. Remember this pithy little couplet, and you’ll be well on your way to understanding what can often seem to be an intimidating and inscrutable collection of books.

Consider Joseph, for example. His life, like all of ours, is a mixed bag: some bad, some good. There’s no question that we can learn a lot of good from reading about Joseph’s life. His refusal to sleep with Potiphar’s wife stands out. The Bible never tells us that, after all Joseph had been through, his faith in God wavered. In fact, it tells us just the opposite. When he finally encounters his brothers years after they sold him into slavery and lied to their father about him dying—and he now has the power and the authority to enact some serious vengeance—he extends tremendous grace saying, “What you intended for evil, God intended for good.” Amazing.

But Joseph wasn’t always gracious and humble. In fact, when we first meet Joseph, he’s a spoiled brat.

Read the rest here.