Tullian Tchividjian's Blog, page 44

Worship Is A Big Deal: Part 3

(Read part 1 and part 2 of this series)

In the opening verses of Isaiah 6, what the prophet encounters first in the house of God is the glory of God: "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple" (v.1). It doesn't first say he encountered well-dressed people or hot coffee or influential power brokers or a booming sound system or a great organ. What he caught site of first was God's glory.

There's a growing trend in some churches to...

Worship Is A Big Deal: Part 2

(This post is part 2 in a series on corporate worship that I began a few days ago. You can read part 1 here)

Contrary to what many modern people believe, we can't approach God any way we please. Trying to do so is extremely dangerous, as the Bible makes clear (see Cain, Nadab, and Abihu, for example). In the Bible, God provides us with commands, instructions, examples, and stories to illustrate how he wants us to worship him. Our worship, therefore, is to be regulated by God himself through...

The Gospel Of God

Darryl Dash nails it with these thoughts on the Gospel:

The Gospel is about what God has accomplished through the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is big news. It involves rescue from judgment for sin and a restored relationship with God, and his restoration of creation.

The Gospel is good news about what God has done, never about what we must do or have done. It's good news, not good advice.

The Gospel is:

Good news for the poor and victims of injustice because God (not us) has...

Worship Is A Big Deal: Part 1

(Today I begin a multi-part series of posts on corporate worship: what it is and why it's important)

At sixteen I dropped out of high school. And because my lifestyle had become so disruptive to the rest of the household (I'm the middle of seven children), my grieving parents had no choice but to kick me out of the house.

Having successfully freed myself from the constraints of teachers and parents, I could now live every young guy's dream. No one to look over my shoulder, no one to breathe...

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 Ongoing Need For The Gospel

One of the most important discoveries of my life has been that the Gospel is not just for non-Christians; it's for Christians too. I used to think the Gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in to be saved, while afterward we advance to deeper theological waters. But what I've come to understand is that once God saves us he doesn't then move us beyond the Gospel. Rather he moves us deeper into the Gospel. The Gospel, in other words, is every bit as important for growing as a C...

Contextualization Without Compromise

On April 26-27, 2010, I had the privilege of joining men I admire and respect at the Advance the Church conference in Durham, North Carolina. My assignment was to speak on "contextualization without compromise." I address this very issue at length in my book Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different. The organizers of the conference asked me to share some of my thoughts on contextualization. So, for better or for worse, here they are (taken straight from...

Theology Destroys Small Thoughts Of God

I love these lines from Mike Horton's excellent little book, Too Good To Be True: Finding Hope in a World of Hype:

Christian theology is specifically charged with the task of making problematic our relationship with God, of presenting God to ourselves and others in such a way as to be confronted with a person who cannot be conformed to the narrow and sinful precincts of our own longings, expectations, and concepts. The God who comes to us in revelation is not a projection, but a person...

Making All Things New

For a long time now, I've been convinced that the way most Christians think about redemption is influenced more by ancient Greek philosophy than by the Bible. We think of ultimate redemption as being redemption from the body, not of the body; redemption from the world, not of the world; redemption from the material, not of the material. This, however, goes against what the Bible clearly teaches about redemption.

In the Lord's Prayer we see that God's ultimate goal for earth is that it become l...

The Supremacy Of Christ

Yesterday was a bitter-sweet day for me. I concluded a twenty-two part series on Paul's letter to the Colossians that I entitled "Jesus plus Nothing equals Everything" (you can listen to, or watch, the entire series here).

The Apostle Paul wrote to show the superiority of Christ over all–over all human philosophies, traditions, personalities, and accomplishments. He wrote to remind Christians of what they already possess in Christ. He wants us to understand that everything we need, in Christ, ...