Tullian Tchividjian's Blog, page 34

My Biggest Regret

Guest Post by Chuck Collins (read more about Chuck here)

I marvel when someone says, "I have no regrets."  That's not me; I have plenty. Perhaps my biggest regret, outside of not spending more time with my kids when they were growing up and not discovering Irish whiskey sooner, is that for much of my 30 years of ordained ministry I have not preached "the gospel."  By-and-large I have been a nice man standing in front of nice people, telling them that God calls them to be nicer (S. Brown).  And just about none of it was life-changing.

I have come to see that there are really just two ways to preach: one is the gospel, the other is get-better messages.  The first is based on God's goodness; the second on self-improvement.  Gospel preaching presupposes that, even though we deserve punishment for our sins,  Jesus Christ suffered the punishment in our place on the cross.  Get-better sermons, on the other hand, is moralistic advice in which a preacher mounts a pulpit to scold the people for not doing more or getting better (F Allison).

For more years than I care to think I preached get-better messages.  I cringe thinking about my old sermons.  I regret the lost opportunities of those messages that pounded home the idea that we just need to be better, try harder, pray and give more, read the Bible every day, attend church every week, and be nicer.  It was plain ole Phariseeism, works-righteousness under the guise of preaching – "an easy-listening version of salvation by self-help" (M Horton).  Those who came were vaguely entertained, I think, because I am a fairly entertaining personality (so they tell me on their way out of church), but they left mostly feeling beat up and like they don't measure up.  Instead of relieving guilt, get-better sermons reinforced guilt and our inadequacies.  They didn't touch people where they need most. "Whenever you feel comforted or elated or absolved as 'fresh as a foal in new mowed hay,' then you know you are hearing the gospel" (P Zahl).

My conversion to gospel preaching was gradual.  I don't remember what the initial catalyst was, except that people weren't getting better with sermons on discipline and how to improve your marriage.  Those moralistic sermons doled out plenty of advice about what to do, but it totally missed what God has done for us in his Son. Christ came, not to help religious people get better, but to help sinners realize that forgiveness and salvation is outside themselves: in Jesus Christ.

St. Paul, in Romans, explains the gospel as God's power and God's righteousness (1:16, 17).  This is exactly opposite of repairing your nature by a determined will.  It is what God has done for us when we couldn't do it ourselves.  He fulfilled the law. He took upon himself our sins.  He burst the bonds of death to give us new life. When this message of one-way love – God's love without strings attached – love when we are not lovely – reaches our hearts, it causes our spirits to come alive to God and it fills us with meaning and purpose. The gospel speaks to our heart's deepest need.

When you get to church to find out that the preacher is in the third of a 10-sermon series on "10 steps to cure depression" get up and run out of there as fast as your depressed legs can take you.  It's self-help, not the gospel.  Chalk it up to a well meaning preacher who hasn't yet realized that our real hope is in God, in the sufficiency of his work on the cross and in the salvation that is not found in get-better sermons.

Guest Bloggers

My family and I leave today for vacation (whoooohoooo!). While I'm away I've asked some friends to provide guest posts for my blog. I'm super grateful for their willingness to do this. You (the reader) are going to be mightily blessed. All of these guys are remarkably brilliant, pastoral, and fun. But most importantly, they are all gospel-addicts.

So, let me briefly introduce them to you (in no particular order):

Steve Brown

Steve Brown has known me my entire life. A dear friend of our family's and the former pastor of Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Miami, Steve is President of Key Life Network, a radio broadcaster, seminary professor and author. One of the funniest and freest guys I know, he also teaches on Key Life, a daily fifteen-minute syndicated radio show heard around the country on 300 stations. Steve serves as Professor Emeritus of Preaching and Pastoral Ministry at Reformed Theological Seminary. He is the author of numerous books including A Scandalous Freedom: The Radical Nature of the Gospel.

Ray Ortlund

Ray received a B.A. from Wheaton College, Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, M.A. from The University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Ray served as Associate Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois from 1989-1998. He currently serves as pastor at Immanuel Church, Nashville, Tennessee (an Acts 29 church) and as a Council member with The Gospel Coalition.

Justin Holcomb

Justin is a pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle and the Director of the Resurgence. Besides being my theological soul-mate, he's also an adjunct professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. He holds two masters degrees from Reformed Theological Seminary and a PhD from Emory University. Justin and his wife, Lindsey, wrote Rid of My Disgrace, a book on gospel hope and healing for sexual assault victims. His edited volume, Christian Theologies of Scripture, explores various views of the authority and nature of Scripture throughout the Christian tradition. I highly recommend both books!

David Zahl

David is the director of Mockingbird Ministries and editor of The Mockingbird Blog (one of the best blogs on the planet). Very few people are able to connect the ordinary world of pop-culture with the extraordinary word of the gospel better than David. He also serves on the staff of Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, VA. Mockingbird's next conference takes place Oct 28-29th in Birmingham, AL on the theme "Grace, Rest and the End of Scorekeeping." If you were smart, you'd go!

Dane Ortlund

Dane serves as Senior Editor in the Bible Division at Crossway Books in Wheaton, Illinois. He is the author of A New Inner Relish: Christian Motivation in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (Christian Focus, 2008) and is a graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary (M.Div., Th.M.) and Wheaton College (B.A., Ph.D.). Dane is married to his college sweetheart, Stacey, and they have two boys, Zachary and Nathan. He blogs at Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology.

Mark Galli

Mark is senior managing editor of Christianity Today. He has also been an editor with Christian History and Leadership. He is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and the author of many books including Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God. His newest book God Wins: Heaven, Hell, and Why the Good News is Better than Love Wins comes out in July (a must read in light  of the recent Rob Bell brouhaha). He is married and is a member of Church of the Resurrection in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Chuck Collins

Chuck is the founding pastor of Holy Trinity, a new Anglican church plant in San Antonio (2010).  Formerly he was rector of Christ Episcopal Church (San Antonio), the largest church in that diocese with 3,000+ members. He is the author of Cramner's Church: An Introduction to Anglicanism in America. He and his wife, Ellen, have four grown children, three son-in-laws, and one grandson.

Mike Allen

Mike is a Professor of Systematic Theology at Knox Theological Seminary (Coral Ridge's Seminary). He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. at Wheaton College. Prior to joining the faculty at Knox, he taught undergraduate and graduate students at Wheaton College. With Dr. Scott Swain, he serves as general editor of the prestigious T & T Clark International Theological Commentary. Among other books, Mike has written Reformed Theology: Doing Theology (London: T & T Clark, 2010) and published articles in various academic journals such as the Journal of Theological Interpretation, Scottish Journal of Theology, Horizons in Biblical Theology, Westminster Theological Journal and International Journal of Systematic Theology. He also regularly writes for Modern Reformation. When not busy teaching and writing, he enjoys time with his wife Emily and his son Jackson, watching NBA basketball (the Mavs, not the Heat–Boooo!), running, reading, the beach, and sweet tea.

You'll be hearing from all of them soon. You're gonna love 'em…

Our Robbing Addiction

In his book The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, Walter Marshall succinctly puts his finger on what our default mode is and how it can rob us of the joy of our salvation:

By nature, you are completely addicted to a legal method of salvation. Even after you become a Christian by believing the Gospel, your heart is still addicted to salvation by works. In your heart you still want to make the duties of the law come before the comforts of the Gospel. You find it hard to believe that you should get any blessing before you work for it. This is the mindset you tend to fall into: You sincerely do want to obey the laws of God. Therefore, to make sure you obey the law of God you make all of God's blessings depend upon how well you keep his law. Some preachers even tell you that you had better not enjoy the blessings of the Gospel! They tell you to diligently obey the law first and that only by doing this will you be safe and happy before God. Just keep in mind, however, that if you go this route, you will never enjoy your salvation for as long as you live in this world.

An Open Letter To Mr. Grace-Loving Antinomian

There seems to be a fear out there that the preaching of radical grace produces serial killers. Or, to put it in more theological terms, too much emphasis on the indicatives of the gospel leads to antinomianism (a lawless version of Christianity that believes the directives and commands of God don't matter). My problem with this fear is that I've never actually met anyone who has been truly gripped by God's amazing grace in the gospel who then doesn't care about obeying him. As I have said before: antinomianism happens not when we think too much of grace. Just the opposite, actually. Antinomianism happens when we think too little of grace.

Wondering whether this common fear is valid, my dear friend Elyse Fitzpatrick (in C.S. Lewis fashion) writes an open letter to Mr. Grace-Loving Antinomian–a person she's heard about for years but never met–asking him to please step forward and identify himself.

Enjoy…

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Dear Mr. Antinomian,

Forgive me for writing to you in such an open forum but I've been trying to meet you for years and we just never seem to connect. While it's true that I live in a little corner of the States and while it's true that I am, well, a woman, I did assume that I would meet you at some point in my decades old counseling practice. But alas, neither you nor any of your (must be) thousands of brothers and sisters have ever shown up for my help…So again, please do pardon my writing in such a public manner but, you see, I've got a few things to say to you and I think it's time I got them off my chest.

I wonder if you know how hard you're making it for those of us who love to brag about the gospel. You say that you love the gospel and grace too, but I wonder how that can be possible since it's been continuously reported to me that you live like such a slug. I've even heard that you are lazy and don't work at obeying God at all…Rather you sit around munching on cigars and Twinkies, brewing beer and watching porn on your computer. Mr. A, really! Can this be true?

So many of my friends and acquaintances are simply up in arms about the way you act and they tell me it's because you talk too much about grace. They suggest (and I'm almost tempted to agree) that what you need is more and more rules to live by. In fact, I'm very tempted to tell you that you need to get up off your lazy chair, pour your beer down the drain, turn off your computer and get about the business of the Kingdom.

I admit that I'm absolutely flummoxed, though, which is why I'm writing as I am. You puzzle me. How can you think about all that Christ has done for you, about your Father's steadfast, immeasurable, extravagantly generous love and still live the way you do? Have you never considered the incarnation, about the Son leaving ineffable light to be consigned first to the darkness of Mary's womb and then the darkness of this world? Have you never considered how He labored day-after-day in His home, obeying His parents, loving His brothers and sisters so that you could be counted righteous in the sight of His Father? Have you forgotten the bloody disgrace of the cross you deserve? Don't you know that in the resurrection He demolished sin's power over you? Aren't you moved to loving action knowing that He's now your ascended Lord Who prays for you and daily bears you on His heart? Has your heart of stone never been warmed and transformed by the Spirit? Does this grace really not impel zealous obedience? Hello…Are you there?

Honestly, even though my friends talk about you as though you were just everywhere in every church, always talking about justification but living like the devil, frankly I wonder if you even exist. I suppose you must because everyone is so afraid that talking about grace will produce more of you. So that's why I'm writing: Will you please come forward? Will you please stand up in front of all of us and tell us that your heart has been captivated so deeply by grace that it makes you want to watch the Playboy channel?

Again, please do forgive me for calling you out like this. I really would like to meet you. I am,

Trusting in Grace Alone,

Elyse

First Things First

God has hardwired me to thoroughly enjoy and be sharpened by good and friendly theological discussion about the gospel. So, for that reason I am deeply grateful to my friend Kevin DeYoung for engaging me in a good and healthy conversation regarding the role of the gospel in Christian growth (click here, here, and here).

We are both pastors who love Jesus, love the gospel, love people, and love the church. We both long for people to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are both theologically Reformed, blog at The Gospel Coalition, and therefore agree on more than we disagree (we actually disagree more about food than doctrine). Since we are both relatively public figures, my prayer during this conversation has been that people would resist the temptation toward divisiveness. Differences are good. Divisions are bad. Kevin and I are happily on the same team, laboring side by side and back to back.

Before I sign off on this particularly helpful conversation with my friend, I simply want to add one note of clarification, address the concern that Kevin said drove his original post, and make one crucial distinction.

The Clarification

First, when I say that remembering, revisiting, and rediscovering the reality of our justification every day is the hard work we're called to do if we're going to grow–I'm not simply talking about mental assent and meditation. Remembering, revisiting, and rediscovering the reality of our justification every day involves daily dying. My failure to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles is the direct result of my refusal to die to my natural proclivity toward attaining my own freedom, meaning, value, worth, and righteousness–not believing that, by virtue of my Spirit-wrought union with Christ, everything I need I already possess.

What is indisputable is the fact that unbelief is the force that gives birth to all of our bad behavior and every moral failure. It is the root. "The sin underneath all sins", said Martin Luther, "is the lie that we cannot trust the love and grace of Jesus and that we must take matters into our own hands." Therefore, since justification is where the guillotine for unbelief and self-salvation is located, we dare not assume it, brush over it, or move past it. It must never become the backdrop. It must remain front and center–getting the most attention.

In an excellent article entitled "Does Justification Still Matter?", Mike Horton raises the same concern I raise:

Most people in the pew are simply not acquainted with the doctrine of justification. Often, it is not a part of the diet of preaching and church life, much less a dominant theme in the Christian subculture. With either stern rigor or happy tips for better living, "fundamentalists" and "progressives" alike smother the gospel in moralism, through constant exhortations to personal transformation that keep the sheep looking to themselves rather than looking outside of themselves to Christ… The average feature article in [Christian magazines] or Christian best-seller's is concerned with "good works"-trends in spirituality, social activism, church growth, and discipleship. However, it's pretty clear that justification is simply not on the radar. Even where it is not outright rejected, it is often ignored. Perhaps the forgiveness of sins and justification are appropriate for "getting saved," but then comes the real business of Christian living-as if there could be any genuine holiness of life that did not arise out of a perpetual confidence that "there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1).

This is why the Reformers said that the article on which the church stands or falls is justification (the cause), not sanctification (the effect). The Roman Catholic church had it the other way around. In his book God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis makes the obvious point that "You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first." Justification is the first thing.

The Concern

Second, Kevin writes that the concern which prompted his first post was "that in our passion for glorying in the indicatives of the gospel we are in danger of giving short shrift to the necessity of obeying biblical imperatives." I have to admit that I've never met anyone who passionately glories in the indicatives of the gospel who then gives "short shrift to the necessity of obeying biblical imperatives." In fact, according to Romans 6:1-14, that's impossible. Paul makes it clear in those verses that anyone who concludes that grace sanctions and encourages disobedience clearly doesn't get grace.

As a pastor, one of my responsibilities is to disciple people into a deeper understanding of obedience—teaching them to say "no" to the things God hates and "yes" to the things God loves. But all too often I have wrongly concluded that the only way to keep licentious people in line is to give them more rules, intensify my exhortations–lay down the law.  In my desire as both a pastor and a parent to see those under my care become more radical in their obedience to God, I have often fallen into the trap of going from the law (cutting off hope) to the gospel (forgiveness and life) and then back to the law, as if the gospel of free grace handled justification but can't keep up with sanctification. The fact is, however, that the only way licentious people start to obey is when they get a taste of God's radical, unconditional acceptance of sinners.

As Mike Horton points out here, 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 Horton, "is not more imperatives, but the realization that the gospel swallows the tyranny as well as the guilt of sin."

So, if someone is giving short-shrift to the necessity of obeying biblical imperatives, it's because they are not glorying in the indicatives of the gospel. Their problem is not first and foremost that they aren't giving full-throat to the imperatives. It's that they're not giving full-throat to the indicatives. Disobedience and moral laxity happens not when we think too much of the gospel of free justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work of Christ alone from start to finish, but when we think too little of it. Radical grace is not the enemy of radical obedience–it is its fuel!

Writing in response to Jason Hood's Christianity Today article where Hood voices concern about the lack of emphasis on personal holiness and radical obedience in this generation of Christians, my friend Dane Ortlund (read Dane's full, gospel-drenched response here) shows how there are two ways to address this:

One way is to balance gospel grace with exhortations to holiness, as if both need equal air time lest we fall into legalism on one side (neglecting grace) or antinomianism on the other (neglecting holiness).

The other way, which I believe is the right and biblical way, is so to startle this restraint-free culture with the gospel of free justification that the functional justifications of human approval, moral performance, sexual indulgence, or big bank accounts begin to lose their vice-like grip on human hearts and their emptiness is exposed in all its fraudulence. It sounds backward, but the path to holiness is through (not beyond) the grace of the gospel, because only undeserved grace can truly melt and transform the heart. The solution to restraint-free immorality is not morality. The solution to immorality is the free grace of God—grace so free that it will be (mis)heard by some as a license to sin with impunity. The route by which the New Testament exhorts radical obedience is not by tempering grace but by driving it home all the more deeply.

The greatest danger facing the church is not that we take the commands of God lightly. That is a bonafide danger, but it's a surface danger. The deep, under the surface danger (which produces the surface danger) is that we take the announcement of God in the gospel too lightly. The only people who take the commands of God lightly are those who take the gospel lightly–who don't revel in and rejoice over what J. Gresham Machen called the triumphant indicative. Beholding necessarily leads to becoming. Or to put it another way, this wonderful and neglected view of justification by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone that I am championing does not deny the impulse toward holiness. Rather it produces it!

The Distinction

Third, one of the marks of a truly maturing Christian is that you begin to love the things God loves and hate the things God hates. In this regard, the law (all of the imperatives we find in the Bible) guides us as well, and it guides wisely. It tells us what God wants and who God is. Yes, the law is good.

But while the law guides, it does not give. It has the ability to reveal sin, but not the ability to remove sin. It points to righteousness but can't produce it. It shows us what godliness, is but it cannot make you godly, like the gospel can. The law shows us what a sanctified life looks like, but it does not, in and of itself, have sanctifying power, as the gospel does. So, apart from the gospel, the law crushes. The law directs us, but only the gospel can drive us. It's very important to keep these distinctions in mind.

Let me stress again that this is not a matter of whether obedience to God's law is important, either to us or to God. Of course it's important. The question is: Where does our power to obey God's commands come from? Does it come from the gospel—from what God has done for us? Or does it come from the law—from what we must do? That contrast is another way of saying, Does the power come from God or from you? At the end of the day, it's that simple.

Paul lays out the intensity of his struggle in Romans 7 to make it clear that although the law can no longer condemn us (because Jesus has kept it perfectly on our behalf), it's still unable to produce in us the desire to keep it. It can only tell us what God requires, which it does. But the law is not the gospel.

To say, however, that the law has no power to change us in no way reduces its ongoing role in the life of the Christian. We just have to understand the precise role it plays for us today. The law now serves us by showing us how to love God and others and when we fail to keep it, the gospel brings comfort by reminding us that God's infinite approval doesn't depend on our keeping of the law but on Christ's keeping of the law on our behalf. And guess what? This makes me want to obey him more, not less! As Spurgeon wrote, "When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so, and sought my good."

Therefore, it's the gospel (what Jesus has done) that alone can give God-honoring animation to our obedience. The power to obey comes from being moved and motivated by the completed work of Jesus for us. The fuel to do good flows from what's already been done. So again, while the law directs us, only the gospel can drive us.

One Final Word

One final word on something important that Kevin and I (and a number of our friends) agree on.

We share a common concern that while there's a lot of talk about gospel-centrality these days (something we're all encouraged by) this doesn't mean that everything which claims to be gospel-centered is. We both want you to be Berean-like in your evaluation of everything that comes in the name of gospel-centrality. So, here's a good litmus test: whether it's a sermon, a book, a blog post, or a tweet–if the lasting impression you get causes you to focus more on what you must do than on what Christ has done, the gospel has not been communicated and the communicator (albeit, unwittingly) is no better than the Pharisees who were charged by Jesus with "tying up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and laying them on people's shoulders" (Matthew 23:4).

It's very important to remember that the focus of the Bible is not the life of the redeemed but the life of the Redeemer. When the Christian faith becomes defined by who we are and what we do and not by who Christ is and what he did for us, we miss the gospel–and we, ironically, become more disobedient.

As Tim Keller has said, "The Bible is not fundamentally about us. It's fundamentally about Jesus. The Bible's purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible's purpose is to consistently and constantly show you how God's grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome."

So you be careful out there.

Keep thinking, wrestling, reveling, and rejoicing. As members of the same team, Kevin and I surely will.

Only The Gospel Fills Our Sails

Michael 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.

The Gospel Driven Life, pg. 143

Work Hard! But In Which Direction?

Yesterday my good friend Kevin DeYoung blogged about the need to "make every effort" in the Christian life. He rightly noted that "effort" is not a four-letter word and that throughout the New Testament we are told that growth in godliness requires exertion. He writes:

It is the consistent witness of the New Testament that growth in godliness requires exertion on the part of the Christian. Romans 8:13 says by the Spirit we must put to death the deeds of the flesh. Ephesians 4:22-24 instructs us to put off the old self and put on the new. Ephesians 6 tells us to put on the full armor of God and stand fast against the devil. Colossians 3:5 commands us to put to death what is earthly in us. 1 Timothy 6:12 urges us to fight the good fight. Luke 13:24 exhorts us to strive to enter the narrow gate.

Kevin rightly affirms the fact that the Christian life is not effortless–"let go and let God" is not biblical. Sanctification is not passive but active. My concern here is to add to what Kevin wrote and identify the direction of our effort.

There is no question that Christian's are to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12) and that the sanctification process will be both bloody and sweaty. After all, daily Christian living is daily Christian dying. Jesus likened the pain of Christian growth to "gouging out an eye" and "cutting off a hand"–indicating that growth in godliness requires parting with things we initially think we can't do without.

There does seem to be some question, though, with regard to the nature and direction of our efforts. And at the heart of this question is the relationship between justification and sanctification.

Many conclude that justification is step one and that sanctification is step two and that once we get to step two there's no reason to go back to step one. Sanctification, in other words, is commonly understood as progress beyond the initial step of justification. But while justification and sanctification are to be clearly separated theologically, the Bible won't allow us to separate them essentially and functionally. For example, citing 2 Peter 1:5-7, Kevin refers to the list of character traits that mark a Christian–faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. Notice, though, what Peter goes on to say in v.9:

For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

In her book Because He Loves Me, Elyse Fitzpatrick rightly says:

One reason we don't grow in ordinary, grateful obedience as we should is that we've got amnesia; we've forgotten that we are cleansed from our sins. In other words, ongoing failure in our growth is the direct result of failing to remember God's love for us in the gospel. If we fail to remember our justification, redemption, and reconciliation, we'll struggle in our sanctification.

In other words, remembering, revisiting, and rediscovering the reality of our justification every day is the hard work we're called to do if we're going to grow.

Similarly, in Colossians 1:9-14 Paul says: You will grow in your understanding of God's will, be filled with spiritual wisdom and understanding, increase in your knowledge of God, be strengthened with God's power which will produce joy filled patience and endurance (v.9-12a) as you come to a greater realization that you've already been qualified, delivered, transferred, redeemed, and forgiven (v.12b-14).

Sanctification is a grueling process. But it's NOT the process of moving beyond the reality of our justification but rather moving deeper into the reality of our justification. If sanctification could be likened to our responsibility to swim, justification is the pool we swim in. Sanctification is the hard work of going back to the certainty of our already secured pardon in Christ and hitting the refresh button over and over.

A couple chapters after Peter exhorts us to "make every effort" he succinctly describes growth in 3:18 by saying, "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Growth always happens "in grace." In other words, the truest measure of our growth is not our behavior (otherwise the Pharisees would have been the godliest people on the planet); it's our grasp of grace–a grasp which involves coming to deeper and deeper terms with the unconditionality of God's justifying grace. It's also growth in "the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." This doesn't simply mean learning facts about Jesus. It means growing in our love for Christ because of what he has already earned and secured for us and then fighting to live in a more vital awareness of that grace.

The reason this is such an important theme in the New Testament is because every temptation to sin (going all the way back to the Garden of Eden) is a temptation to disbelieve the gospel–the temptation to secure for myself in that moment something I think I need in order to be happy, something I don't yet have: meaning, freedom, validation, cleansing, forgiveness, a sense of identity, worth, value and so on. Bad behavior, therefore, happens when we fail to believe that everything I need, in Christ I already have; it happens when we fail to believe in the rich provisional resources that are already ours in the gospel. Conversely, good behavior happens when we daily rest in and receive Christ's "It is finished" into our rebellious regions of unbelief (what one writer calls "our unevangelized territories") smashing any sense of a self-aggrandizing and narcissistic need to secure for ourselves anything beyond what Christ has already secured for us.

Justification alone kills all of our self-salvation projects that fuel all of our bad behavior and moral failures (Read Romans 6:1-14).

So, going back to Philippians 2:12, when Paul tells us to "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" he's making it clear that we've got work to do—but what exactly is the work? He goes on to explain: "For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (2:13). As is often, and rightly, said: We work out what God has worked in. Well, what has God worked in and what are we therefore to work out? God works his work in you—which is the work already accomplished by Christ. Christ's subjective work in us is his constantly driving us back to the reality of his objective work for us. Sanctification feeds on justification, not the other way around. This is why in his Lectures on Romans Martin Luther wrote, "To progress is always to begin again." Real spiritual progress, in other words, requires a daily going backwards.

Sanctification involves God's attack on our unbelief—our self-centered refusal to believe that God's approval of us in Christ is full and final. It happens as we daily fight (with blood, sweat, and tears–"making every effort") to receive and rest in our unconditional justification. As G. C. Berkouwer said, "The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification."

It is in this context that I've said before how sanctification is the hard work of getting used to our justification. Sanctification, as someone once put it, is not something added to justification. It is, rather, the justified life.

So let's make every effort. Let's work. But let's not make the mistake of thinking that the hard work is anything smaller than daily going back to reality of our justification, allowing it to kill our self-centered unbelief (which is the root of all sin) over and over and over again.

Gospel Gold From John Calvin

A while back, a friend of mine sent me this nugget of gospel gold from John Calvin. It comes from a stunning preface to Pierre Robert Olivétan's French translation of the New Testament (1534). Another friend, Justin Taylor, added line breaks to make it easier to read.

Calvin wrote:

Without the gospel

everything is useless and vain;

without the gospel

we are not Christians;

without the gospel

all riches is poverty,

all wisdom folly before God;

strength is weakness,

and all the justice of man is under the condemnation of God.

But by the knowledge of the gospel we are made

children of God,

brothers of Jesus Christ,

fellow townsmen with the saints,

citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven,

heirs of God with Jesus Christ, by whom

the poor are made rich,

the weak strong,

the fools wise,

the sinner justified,

the desolate comforted,

the doubting sure,

and slaves free.

It is the power of God for the salvation of all those who believe.

It follows that every good thing we could think or desire is to be found in this same Jesus Christ alone.

For, he was

sold, to buy us back;

captive, to deliver us;

condemned, to absolve us;

he was

made a curse for our blessing,

[a] sin offering for our righteousness;

marred that we may be made fair;

he died for our life; so that by him

fury is made gentle,

wrath appeased,

darkness turned into light,

fear reassured,

despisal despised,

debt canceled,

labor lightened,

sadness made merry,

misfortune made fortunate,

difficulty easy,

disorder ordered,

division united,

ignominy ennobled,

rebellion subjected,

intimidation intimidated,

ambush uncovered,

assaults assailed,

force forced back,

combat combated,

war warred against,

vengeance avenged,

torment tormented,

damnation damned,

the abyss sunk into the abyss,

hell transfixed,

death dead,

mortality made immortal.

In short,

mercy has swallowed up all misery,

and goodness all misfortune.

For all these things which were to be the weapons of the devil in his battle against us, and the sting of death to pierce us, are turned for us into exercises which we can turn to our profit.

If we are able to boast with the apostle, saying, O hell, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? it is because by the Spirit of Christ promised to the elect, we live no longer, but Christ lives in us; and we are by the same Spirit seated among those who are in heaven, so that for us the world is no more, even while our conversation is in it; but we are content in all things, whether country, place, condition, clothing, meat, and all such things.

And we are

comforted in tribulation,

joyful in sorrow,

glorying under vituperation,

abounding in poverty,

warmed in our nakedness,

patient amongst evils,

living in death.

This is what we should in short seek in the whole of Scripture: truly to know Jesus Christ, and the infinite riches that are comprised in him and are offered to us by him from God the Father.

Do yourself a favor and read this over and over and over. It's nutritious!

The Pitfall Of Perfectionism

I recently read this from Steve Brown and had to share it with you:

She was only twenty-six years old. She was a Christian working in a church. After college she had served for a year on the mission field. I didn't know her well, but I liked her a lot. She was a strong witness for Christ and she was an articulate spokesperson for evangelical Christianity. This morning I got the message that she had taken her life. I was absolutely devastated. I didn't understand.

As if that were not enough, shortly after hearing about her suicide I got a call from a man who listens to my radio broadcast. "Steve," he said, "I haven't told anybody in the world what I'm going to tell you. I have decided to leave my wife and I told God that if I get through to you, I would do whatever you told me to do."

I asked him what prompted him to decide to leave her.

He told me, "I became a Christian at fourteen and all my life I've been seeking to live up  to the expectations of others. I work full-time in a ministry, I teach the Bible, and everyone thinks I'm the model Christian. I'm just tired of it. I've decided to do something for myself for a change."

Let me share a letter with you that I received a couple weeks ago. There was no return address and the  person gave me no name.

Dear Stephen,

Please pray for me as I am on the edge–a total failure as a Christian. I have  failed as a husband and as a father. God has probably given up on me. I feel so very alone and abandoned. It's a horrible feeling that words alone cannot describe. Please don't judge me. Pray for me.

At first these three incidents didn't seem related. They were just about individuals for whom I prayed. But in the silence of my prayer it dawned on me that they all had the same problem: They all had created a false standard of perfection (or accepted someone else's standard) and concluded they couldn't live up to it.

What advice would you give them? If you had talked to the young lady before her suicide, or the man thinking about leaving his wife, or the anonymous correspondent–what would you have said?

Most Christians would say that they should try harder. The problem is that all three already had–and they were at the end of themselves.

Others would try to help them trace their despair back to some unconfessed sin in their lives–drawing a straight line between their spiritual depression and their spiritual failure.

And still others would tell them to have faith. And yet, they discovered that the faith they needed couldn't be turned on and off like a faucet.

But what would Jesus have told them? We don't have to guess: "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give  you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).

Perfectionism (or performancism) is a horrible disease. It comes from the pit of hell, smelling like rotting flesh. Someone convinced these folks that they were called to measure up to an unattainable standard. They couldn't do it and each in his or her own way simply quit trying.

Nobody told them that Jesus was perfect for them, and because of that they didn't have to be perfect for themselves. They didn't understand that if Jesus makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Christian, please remember that Jesus plus nothing equals everything. That,

Because Jesus was strong for you, you're free to be weak;

Because Jesus won for you, you're free to lose;

Because Jesus was Someone, you're free to be no one;

Because Jesus was extraordinary, you're free to be ordinary;

Because Jesus succeeded for you, you're free to fail.

Preaching the gospel is the only thing that helps us take our eyes off ourselves and how we're doing and fixes our eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. Jesus fulfilled all of God's perfect conditions so that our relationship to God could be perfectly unconditional.

You're free!

The Prison Of Conditionality

Gerhard Forde puts his finger on why the gospel is so scandalous:

The gospel of justification by faith is such a shocker, such an explosion, because it is an absolutely unconditional promise. It is not an "if-then" kind of statement, but "because-therefore" pronouncement: because Jesus died and rose, your sins are forgiven and you are righteous in the sight of God! It bursts in upon our little world all shut up and barricaded behind our accustomed conditional thinking as some strange comet from goodness-knows-where, something we can't really seem to wrap our minds around, the logic of which appears closed to us. How can it be entirely unconditional? Isn't it terribly dangerous? How can anyone say flat out, "You are righteous for Jesus' sake? Is there not some price to be paid, some-thing (however minuscule) to be done? After all, there can't be such thing as a free lunch, can there?"

You see, we really are sealed up in the prison of our conditional thinking. It is terribly difficult for us to get out, and even if someone batters down the door and shatters the bars, chances are we will stay in the prison anyway! We seem always to want to hold out for something somehow, that little bit of something, and we do it with a passion and an anxiety that betrays its true source–the Old Adam that just does not want to lose control.

Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life, pg. 24