Tullian Tchividjian's Blog, page 20

He Came…You’re Free

I hope and pray that today is a day of restful reorientation for those of you who are weary and heavy laden, for those who feel the weight of trying to “make it” on your own.

For those who feel the acute pressure of thinking you have to change your spouse if you’re going to be happy, that you have to be on top of everything if you’re going to make it, that you have to do everything right with your kids if they’re going to turn out OK, that you have to control what others think about you if you’re going to feel important, that you have to be the best if your life is going to count, that you have to be successful if you’re ever going to satisfy the deep desire for parental approval, and so on and so forth…Christmas is for you.

The Incarnation frees us from what Paul Zahl calls “the law of capability”–the law, he says, “that judges us wanting if we are not capable, if we cannot handle it all, if we are not competent to balance our diverse commitments without a slip.” Because of Christmas, we are now endowed with the strength to admit that we can’t make it on our own–that we’re weak and needy and restless. Since our identity is now anchored in Jesus’ strength, our weaknesses don’t threaten our sense of worth and significance–our security. We’re now free to admit our faults and failures without feeling like our flesh is being ripped off our bones.

The Incarnation of Christ serves as a glorious reminder that God’s willingness to clean things up is infinitely bigger than our willingness to mess things up. The arrival of God in the flesh sets us free from the pressure we feel to save ourselves from loneliness and lostness, despair and dejection.

In short, Christmas is God’s answer to the slavery of self-salvation.

Whether it’s by trying harder or giving up, being good or bad, pursuing wisdom or foolishness, sacrificially giving or selfishly taking, we suffer under the weight of looking to ourselves for life’s answer.

Christmas celebrates the glorious truth that no matter how hard we try, we can’t do it. Apart from the Incarnation we are left to our own devices. But Jesus came to liberate us from the pressure of having to fix ourselves, find ourselves, and free ourselves. He came to rescue us from the slavish need to be right, rewarded, regarded, and respected. He came to relieve us of the burden we inherently feel to trust in ourselves in order “to get it done.” Because Jesus came to secure for us what we could never secure for ourselves, life ceases to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, validate ourselves.

Because of Christmas, we have nothing to prove or protect. We can stop pretending. We can take off our masks and be real. We hold the wining hand. We have nothing to lose.

The Incarnation is God’s shout: “You’re free!”

As Everything, he became nothing so that you–as nothing–could have everything.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Only The Promise Produces

Mike Horton rightly warns against depending on “guidance technology” to put wind in our sails:

Like a sailboat equipped with the most sophisticated guidance technology, our Christian lives are often decked out with the latest principles for living, with spiritual guidance counselors telling us what will make life really work for us and our families. Oftentimes, brand new Christians sail out of the harbor under full sail, eager to follow the guidance system, making use of all the gadgets, enthusiastically listening to every fellow boater who has some advice to offer. Yet as many long-time believers know, eventually the winds die down and we find ourselves dead in the water. Then when storm clouds gather on the horizon, we discover that all of the guidance technology and good advice in the world cannot fill our sails so that we can return safely to the harbor. The equipment can plot our course, tell us that a storm is coming, and indicate our present location, but it cannot move us one inch toward the safety of the harbor. In other words, if we are looking for motivation in the Christian life, it cannot come from motivational principles; only the gospel fills our sails…While God’s wise directions are necessary, apart from the ever present word of promise that, despite our failures at sea, God is at the helm piloting us to safety, we will eventually give up on sailing altogether. Purposes, laws, principles, suggestions, and good advice can set our course, but only the gospel promise can fill our sails and restore to us the joy of our salvation.

The Gospel Driven Life, pg. 143-144

Don’t You Worry Child

I was putting my daughter Genna (11) to bed the other night and I asked her, “Honey, what do you think is God’s overall disposition toward you?” Her immediate response was, “Disappointed.” After probing why she might answer that way–wondering, perhaps, if the Holy Spirit had convicted her regarding something she may have said or done–I realized that she wasn’t feeling convicted about any particular sin, she simply sees God as someone whose feelings toward her are basically unhappy ones. She knows that God is perfect and that she is imperfect–she understands that God is holy and that she is sinful–and so it only makes sense to her that God is perpetually displeased with her.

Seizing an opportunity to preach the gospel to my daughter–AGAIN–I scrambled in my mind for an illustration that might help an 11 year-old grasp the liberating power of Christ’s imputed righteousness. Now, don’t be nit-picky. I know illustrations all break down at some point. But this was my best off-the-cuff attempt to help an 11 year-old sleep well knowing that God’s love for her is immutable (it’s actually kind of sad that I even have to say that).

I said, “Genna, imagine some stranger (let’s call him Steven) comes walking down our street right about the time Mommy is making dinner. He walks up our driveway, through our front door (without knocking), into our kitchen, looks at mommy and asks, ‘What’s for dinner?’ Now, you and I both know that Mommy is hospitable. But a complete stranger walking in our house would freak her out. She’d probably say something like, ‘Who are you? And if you don’t turn around and leave right now I’m going to call the police.’”

I continued, “Now imagine that same stranger comes walking down our street around dinner time with Gabe (Genna’s 17 year-old brother). The two of them together walk up our driveway, through the front door, and into our kitchen. Gabe looks at Mommy with his arm around his friend and says, ‘Mom, this is my friend Steven. Can he stay for dinner?’ Her response would be totally different, wouldn’t it? She would say something like, ‘Nice to meet you Steven. Of course you can have dinner with us.’ Then she’d get another place-setting and treat Steven like a son at our table. Why? Because he was with Gabe.”

I then went on to explain the difference between the way God feels toward those who come to him without Jesus and those who come to him with Jesus. Reminding her that, because of what Jesus did for her on the cross, God sees her as a friend and a daughter, not an enemy and a stranger, she smiled. I explained that God is a good Father and will discipline those he loves, but because she’s with Jesus, God’s affection for her is unchanging and his approval of her is forever.

Having talked to many, many Christians over the years, I know for a fact that a lot of them (like Genna) think that God is perpetually disappointed with them. Maybe it’s time the church spends more energy reminding Christians that God’s love for them is not dependent on what they do or don’t do, but rather on what Christ has done for them. For, as Luther said so well, “God does not love sinners because they are attractive; sinners are attractive to God because he loves them.”

I promise you, more Christians need to be reminded of this than you think–including you and me, if we’re being honest!

The Keys Are In Your Pocket

On at least two occasions in the last year I’ve been late for a meeting or an appointment and haven’t been able to find my car keys. Certain that either my wife or one of my three children have misplaced them, I’ve frantically run from room to room blaming someone with misplacing my keys: “Has anyone seen my keys? I’m late for a meeting. Who was playing with my keys? I put them right here on the counter and now they’re gone. They didn’t just vanish into thin air! Who picked them up? Where are they? I’m late. ” And right about the time I’m ready to order mass executions in my home, I’ve walked into my bedroom one last time to look (huffing and puffing, moaning and groaning), put my hand in my pocket and found my keys. They’d been there the whole time.

Every time I tell that story, people laugh. And rightfully so. What forgetful moron falls prey to frantically looking for car keys that are in his pocket? Me. That’s who.

The truth is, however, that this is the way we Christians typically live: frantically and frustratingly searching for something we already have. The gospel is God’s good news announcement that everything we need we already possess in Christ. Because of Jesus’ finished work, Christians already have all of the justification, approval, significance, security, freedom, validation, love, righteousness, and rescue that we desperately long for, and look for in a thousand things infinitely smaller than Jesus.

Through the Holy Spirit, God daily delivers the gospel to forgetful Christian’s like me, declaring, “The keys are in your pocket.”

God Doesn’t Need Your Good Works…But Your Neighbor Does

Pertinent to any discussion regarding justification and sanctification is the question of effort. In my recent back and forth with Rick Phillips on the nature of sin and its ongoing effect on the Christian, some have assumed that when I say there is no part of Christians that are sin free, I’m also endorsing a “why-even-try”, effortless approach to the Christian life–that I’m overlooking or understating the importance of “sanctification.” I suspect that one of the reasons for this is owing to my passion to help people understand the inseparable relationship between justification and sanctification.

Whether this was explicitly taught or implicitly caught, I grew up with the impression that when it comes to the Christian life, justification was step one and sanctification was step two and that once we get to step two there’s no reason to revisit step one. In my experience as a pastor, this is one of the reasons why it seems so new to people that the gospel is not just for non-Christian’s but for Christian’s too–that it doesn’t just ignite the Christian life, but fuels it as well. By giving people the impression that sanctification is progress beyond the initial step of justification, they have concluded that once God saves us (justification) he then moves us beyond his work into our work (sanctification). But justification and sanctification are both God’s work and while they can and must be distinguished, the Bible won’t let us separate them. Both are gifts of our union with Christ and within this double-blessing, justification is the root of sanctification and sanctification is the fruit of justification. Moralism happens when we separate the fruit from the root. Or, as I’ve said before, imperatives minus indicatives equal impossibilities. As G. C. Berkouwer said, “The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.” So, I think it’s fair to say that sanctification is the justified life.

Having said that, I think the best way to move this conversation forward is to introduce what was, in my opinion, one of Martin Luther’s most helpful contributions: his distinction between passive righteousness and active righteousness. This distinction was Luther’s way to describe the two relationships in which Christians live: before God vertically and before one another horizontally.

Luther asserted that our righteousness before God (coram deo) is received and defined by faith. Our righteousness before one another (coram mundo), on the other hand, is active and defined by service. The reason this distinction is so helpful is because one of the insinuations whenever the doctrine of sanctification is discussed is that my effort, my works, my pursuit of holiness, my faith, my response, my obedience, and my practice of godliness keep me in God’s good graces. This, however, undermines the clear Biblical teaching that things between Christian’s and God are forever settled because of what Jesus has accomplished on the cross (Romans 8:1; 31-39, Colossians 2:13-14). When we imply that our works are for God and not our neighbor, we perpetuate the idea that God’s love for us is dependent on what we do instead of on what Christ has done. We also fall prey to what John Piper calls “the debtors ethic”–paying God back for all he’s done for us.

However, when we understand that everything between God and us has been fully and finally made right–that Christian’s live their life under a banner that reads “It is finished”–we necessarily turn away from ourselves and turn toward our neighbor. Forever freed from our need to pay God back or secure God’s love and acceptance, we are now free to love and serve others. We work for others horizontally (active righteousness) because God has worked for us vertically (passive righteousness). The Christian lives from belovedness (passive righteousness) to loving action (active righteousness). As Jono Linebaugh puts it, “We are objects of love before we are subjects who love.” Because everything I need, in Christ I already possess (passive righteousness), I’m now free to do everything for you (active righteousness) without needing you to do anything for me. I can now actively spend my life giving instead of taking, going to the back instead of getting to the front, sacrificing myself for others instead of sacrificing others for myself. This is what Paul was getting at when he says in Galatians 5:6, “The only thing that counts is faith (passive righteousness) expressing itself through love (active righteousness).”

Passive righteousness tells us that God does not need our good works. Active righteousness tells us that our neighbor does. The aim and direction of good works are horizontal, not vertical.

So, on the horizontal plane–in creature to creature relationships (active righteousness)–I’m happy to talk about effort, action, working out our salvation, practicing Godliness, etc. But the two crucial things I try to remember are:

It is the passive righteousness of faith that precedes and produces the active righteousness of love for others. Or, to put it another way, our active righteousness for others horizontally is the fruit of our passive righteousness from God vertically.


Also, be aware of the fact that our hearts are like a “magnet” that is always drawing the horizontal (non-saving) plane towards the vertical–we are always burdening our love for others (which fulfills the law) with soteriological baggage. In other words, we see our good works as a way to keep things settled with God on the vertical plane instead of servicing our neighbor on the horizontal plane.

It is for these reasons that it is so important for us to exert effort to pray, read the Bible, sit under the preached Word, and partake of the sacraments. It’s in those places where God confronts our spiritual narcissism by reminding us that things between he and us are forever fixed. It’s at those “rendezvous points” where God reminds us that the debt has been paid, the ledger has been put away, and that everything we need, in Christ we already possess. This vertical declaration forever secures us and therefore sets us free to see the needs around us and work hard horizontally to meet those needs. Freed from the burden and bondage of attempting to use the law to establish our righteousness before God, Christians are free to look to “imperatives”, not as conditions that have to be met in order to get more of God’s love, but as descriptions and directions as they seek to serve their neighbor. The law, in other words, norms neighbor love–it shows us what to do and how to do it. Once a person is liberated from the natural delusion that keeping the rules makes us right with God, and in faith believes the counter-intuitive reality that being made righteous by God’s forgiving word precedes and produces loving action, then the justified person is unlocked to love–which is the fulfillment of the law.

This is also why it is important to fight sin and resist temptation. Sin and temptation is always self-centered. It is, as Augustine put it, “mankind turned in on himself.” Failing to believe that everything we need we already have in Christ, we engage in “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Galatians 5:19-21), desperately looking under every worldly rock and behind every worldly tree for something to make us happy, something to save us, something to set us free. The works of the flesh are the fruit of our self-salvation projects. The root of these deadly behaviors is unbelief. Luther said, “The sin underneath all sins is the lie that we cannot trust the love and grace of Jesus and that we must take matters into our own hands.” Out for ourselves, we become selfish indulgers of the flesh. We become so obsessed with having to get for ourselves that we don’t have time to love and serve others. Real freedom in “the hour of temptation” happens only when the resources of the gospel smash any sense of need to secure for myself anything beyond what Christ has already secured for me. We, therefore, “preach the gospel to ourselves everyday” because we forget it everyday. We mortify the selfish misdeeds of the body, not because our sin blocks God’s love for us, but because our sin blocks our love for others. To affirm that Christian’s are capable of grieving the Holy Spirit when we look out for ourselves and not others (Eph. 4:30) does not mean that God’s love for Christian’s fluctuates depending on how we’re doing (Rom. 8:38-39).

So, I’m all for effort, fighting sin, resisting temptation, mortification, working, activity, putting off, and putting on, as long as we understand that it is not our work for God, but God’s work for us, that has fully and finally set things right between God and sinners. Any talk of sanctification which gives the impression that our efforts secure more of God’s love, itself needs to be mortified. We must always remind Christian’s that the good works which necessarily flow from faith are not part of a transaction with God–they are for others. The Reformation was launched by (and contained in) the idea that it’s not doing good works that make us right with God. Rather it’s the one to whom righteousness has been received that will do good works.

There’s so much more that can be said, but I hope this serves to clarify that my understanding of the Christian life is not “let go and let God” but “trust God and get going”–trust that, in Christ, God has settled all accounts between him and you and then “get going” in sacrificial service to your wife, your husband, your children, your friends, your enemies, your co-workers, your city, the world.

I also want to thank my friends Rick Phillips, Ligon Duncan, Mike Horton, Jono Linebaugh, Scott Clark and many others for taking this conversation seriously and being willing to think these things through, not to prove a point, but to serve the church. These are important matters and I’m grateful for all my friends (even when we disagree) for being open to pushing the conversation forward. It’s an honor to stand side by side and back to back with you all on the field of battle.

Cheers!

What Kind Of A Pastor Do Sinners Need?

Sinclair Ferguson answers this question from his Marrow Controversy Lectures:

But when your people come and have been broken by sin and have fallen into temptation and are ashamed to confess the awful mess they have made of their life, it is not a Calvinistic pastor who has been sanctified by vinegar that they need. It is a pastor that has been mastered by the unconditional, free grace of God. It is a pastor from whom ironclad orthodoxy has been torn away and the whole armor of a gracious God has been placed upon his soul-the armor of one who would not break the bruised reed or quench the dimly burning wick.

You see, my friends, as we think together in these days about a Godly pastor we have to ask, what is a Godly pastor? A Godly pastor is one who is like God, who has a heart of free grace running after sinners. The Godly pastor is the one who sees the prodigal and runs and falls on his neck and weeps and kisses him and says, “This my son was dead, he was lost and now he is alive and found.”

Pastors, when sinners are drowning (and trust me…they are!), don’t tell them to paddle harder and kick faster. Throw them the life-line of amazing grace.

Sin Remains: My Response To Rick Phillips

A couple weeks ago I posted a blog asking the question “Are Christians totally depraved?” The point I wanted to make was simple: “Because Christian’s never leave off sinning, they can never leave the Gospel” (Spurgeon).

The reason this is so important is because we will always be suspicious of grace (“yes grace, but…”) until we realize our desperate need for it. Our dire need for God’s grace doesn’t get smaller after God saves us. We never outgrow our need for Christ’s finished work on our behalf-we never graduate beyond our desperate need for Christ’s righteousness and his strong and perfect blood-soaked plea “before the throne of God above.”

But I had to tease out my answer a bit because for centuries theologians have acknowledged that “total depravity” means more than one thing. I wrote:

On the one hand, total depravity means that we are all born “dead in our trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1-3; Colossians 2:13; Romans 3:10-12; Romans 8:7-8), with no spiritual capacity to incline ourselves Godward. We do not come into this world spiritually neutral; we come into this world spiritually dead…In this sense, total depravity means we are “totally unable” to go to God. We will not because we cannot, and we cannot because we’re dead.

I continued:

So, in the sense above, Christians are obviously not totally depraved. We who were dead have been made alive.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…(Ephesians 2:4-6)

But once God regenerates us by his Spirit, draws us to himself, unites us to Christ, raises us from the dead, and grants us status as adopted sons and daughters, is there any sense in which we can speak of Christian’s being totally depraved?

Yes.

Theologians speak of total depravity, not only in terms of “total inability” to come to God on our own because we’re spiritually dead, but also in terms of sin’s effect: sin corrupts us in the “totality” of our being. Our minds are affected by sin. Our hearts are affected by sin. Our wills are affected by sin. Our bodies are affected by sin.

The point is that even after God saves us there is no part of us that becomes sin free-we remain imperfect in all of our capacities, in the “totality” of our being. This is what J.C. Ryle was getting at when he wrote, “Even the best things we do have something in them to be pardoned.”

This is nothing more and nothing less than classic Reformed theology, which is why I was surprised that Rick Phillips wrote a critique of my post.

Rick writes:

Tchividjian asks, “Are Christians Totally Depraved?” and answers, Yes. Regenerate believers in Christ are, he says, totally depraved. It is true, he admits, that Christians differ from unbelievers in that God’s grace has enabled us to believe the gospel, yet total depravity describes both believers and unbelievers with respect to our inability to live so as to please God.

First of all, I clearly answered “yes” and “no”, not just “yes.” To say that I answered only “yes” is either a misunderstanding at best or a misrepresentation at worst.

Second of all, I never said total depravity describes believers and unbelievers with respect to our inability to please God. Never. In fact, nothing I wrote could even be interpreted that way.

For whatever reason, Rick is uncomfortable with the phrase “total depravity” being applied to Christians even though I specified what I did and did not mean by it. However, there have been a great number of Reformed theologians who do not have a problem with the phrase “total depravity” being applied to Christians as a way to describe sin continuing to plague us in the “totality” of our being even after God saves us.

As Ligon Duncan rightly points out in his post on this subject:

We reflect less frequently on the depravity which still infects those who have been saved by grace and reborn of the Spirit. This is a serious omission, for misunderstanding or underestimating the continuing corruption in the believer leaves the Christian unprepared for the warfare of sanctification and leads to a variety of spiritual problems…Depravity is still part of the believer’s reality. We not only fall victim to the depravity of others in this life, we continue to see the fruits of depravity in our own character and conduct. As the Westminster Confession puts it: “The corruption of nature remains in the regenerate during this life, and although it has been pardoned and mortified through Christ, yet both itself and all its tendencies are truly and properly sin” (WCF 6.5).

Identifying this problem was the simple goal of my short post. Nothing more, nothing less.

Reformed creeds, confessions, and catechisms have explicitly made the point I was making. Here’s just a small sampling:

The Heidelberg Catechism #62:

But why cannot our good works be the whole or part of our righteousness before God? Because the righteousness which can stand before the judgment-seat of God must be perfect throughout and wholly conformable to the divine law; whereas even our best works in this life are all imperfect and defiled with sin.

The Heidelberg Catechism #114:

Even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience….

The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion IX:

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated.

Belgic Confession Article 24:

…we can do no work but what is polluted by our flesh, and also punishable; and although we could perform such works, still the remembrance of one sin is sufficient to make God reject them.

Westminster Confession of Faith 6:5:

The corruption of nature remains in the regenerate during this life, and although it has been pardoned and mortified through Christ, yet both itself and all its tendencies are truly and properly sin.

Westminster Confession of Faith 13:2:

This sanctification is throughout, in the whole man; yet imperfect in this life, there abiding still remnants of corruption in every part….

Westminster Confession of Faith 16:5:

…and as good works are wrought by us [Christians], they are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment.

Westminster Larger Catechism #78:

…their [believers'] best works are imperfect and defiled in the sight of God.

Even though Rick gives some theological lip service to the sin that continues to plague the redeemed, his tenor and tone downplay the seriousness of our ongoing corruption and the Christians desperate need of God’s grace. He seems to suffer from an over-realized eschatology when it comes to the the doctrine of sanctification. This is extremely dangerous for the reason that Ligon Duncan points out above: “Misunderstanding or underestimating the continuing corruption in the believer leaves the Christian unprepared for the warfare of sanctification and leads to a variety of spiritual problems.” Missing from Rick’s perspective is the unique dynamic explained here.

Furthermore, Rick levels this speculative charge:

One must ask if, under Tchividjian’s scheme, the Christian’s regeneration has any effect other than justification. When a Christian was born again, was this merely a judicial event? Was he changed so that in vitally important ways he is no longer the person he was before? Is there any meaningful transformation of the sinner by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit? In short, if unbeliever and believer are alike totally depraved, what has union with Christ achieved other than justification?…When it comes to Tchividjian’s application of total depravity to the Christian, the effect is the virtual denial of the transforming effects of regeneration.

No where in my post did I deny the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit or the good works that necessarily flow from saving faith. To insinuate that I did is, again, a misunderstanding at best or a misrepresentation at worst. How Rick concludes that a blog post on remaining sin in Christians leads to “a virtual denial of the transforming effects of regeneration” is baffling. No where in my post did I downplay (or even address) the new nature that marks a Christian and the vitally important ways that Christian’s differ from non-Christians by virtue of their union with Christ–the fact that the Holy Spirit creates a love for the things God loves and a hatred for things God hates; the fact that the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit sets us free from sin and death and sets us free to love God and neighbor. The truth is, as my friend John Dink has said, “Regeneration is not a move away from our total need for grace. It is a rescue from our natural aversion to grace.”

If Rick takes issue with something else I’ve said or written, well, I’m happy to engage with him privately. But as it concerns the particular post I wrote, I’m scratching my head wondering how he (as a Reformed pastor) could disagree with my clear thesis that even after God saves us there is no part of us that is sin free.

Two Ways To Run

In an essay on sanctification, Gerhard Forde writes about the two ways we can run from God–breaking the rules and keeping the rules:

If our righteousness depends totally on Jesus, and is appropriated only in the relationship of trust (faith), then we begin to see that God has two problems with us. The relationship can be broken in two ways.

The first would be our failure, our immorality, our vices, our rule breaking. Since we lack faith and hope in God’s cause, the relationship is threatened or broken; we go our own way. That problem is usually quite obvious.

But the second problem is not so obvious. It is precisely our supposed success, our “morality”, our virtues, our rule keeping. The relationship with God is broken to the degree that we think we don’t need unconditional justification, or perhaps even to the degree that we think we are going to use God to achieve our own ideas of sanctity. The relationship is broken precisely because we think it is our holiness.

The first problem, our failure and immorality, is usually most easily recognized and generally condemned because it has consequences both personally and socially. But the second problem, while generally approved in human eyes because it is advantageous and socially useful, is more dangerous before God because it is praised and sought after. It is the kind of hypocrisy Jesus criticized so vehemently in the gospels: “like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean” (Matt. 23:27).

LIBERATE 2013

We’re three months away from LIBERATE 2013. Make plans today to join us in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, February 21-24.

Liberate 2013 Promo from Coral Ridge | LIBERATE on Vimeo.

The Puritans Were Not Perfect

In a blog post entitled Beware the Puritan Paralysis, Trevin Wax boldly goes where very few in the Young, Restless, and Reformed crowd are willing to go: pointing out one of the weaknesses of the Puritans. While there are many things about who the Puritans were and what they said that are of great benefit to the modern church, they were not infallible. And too many of us have treated them as if they were. Of course, we would never say that the Puritans were perfect, but all too often even our gentle critiques of them come with qualifications that subtly shrink the critique.

I’m grateful to Trevin for highlighting what was, in my opinion, one of their glaring weaknesses (and one of ours!).

I spoke at a leadership conference recently, and one of the points I made was that the ministry is not about you. In the Q&A, there was some discussion regarding how pastors can focus their attention on making sure it’s not about them. At that point I said, “If you focus all your energy on making sure it’s not about you, then it is still about you.”

The key for a gospel-driven leader is this: remember to forget yourself.

Too many times, we dress up our introspection with flowery terms like “accountability” and “mortification” and “gospel-centered change.” Even if all these terms and concepts are good and needed, if our gaze is constantly inward-focused, then we are as self-centered as the Christian who is consumed with seeking personal pleasure apart from God.

We can avoid this type of introspection by avoiding the pitfalls of some of the Puritans. Though the Reformers sought to emphasize the assurance we can have because of God’s grace in election and salvation, their descendants sometimes undercut the beauty of assurance by stressing the fruit of sanctification more than the fact of justification. Self-examination was a “descending into our own hearts” to root out every possible sinful tendency and desire.

Read the full post here.