Good News Indeed

The heart of most religions is good advice, good techniques, good programs, good ideas, and good support systems. These drive us deeper into ourselves, to find our inner light, inner goodness, inner voice, or inner resources.

Nothing new can be found inside of us. There is no inner rescuer deep in my soul; I just hear echoes of my own voice telling me all sorts of crazy things to numb my sense of fear, anxiety, and boredom, the origins of which I cannot truly identify.

But the heart of Christianity is Good News. It comes not as a task for us to fulfill, a mission for us to accomplish, a game plan for us to follow with the help of life coaches, but as a report that someone else has already fulfilled, accomplished, followed, and achieved everything for us.
                                             — Michael Horton

Trigger-Happy Toward One Another

From Ray Ortlund:

“. . . a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”  Luke 7:34

What does it mean for a church to be gospel-centered?  That’s a popular concept these days.  Good.  What if we were scrambling to be law-centered?  But the difference is not so easy in real terms.

A gospel-centered church holds together two things.  One, a gospel-centered church preaches a bold message of divine grace for the undeserving — so bold that it becomes the end of the law for all who believe.  Not our performance but Christ’s performance for us.  Not our sacrifices but his sacrifice for us.  Not our superiority but only his worth and prestige.  The good news of substitution.  The good news that our okayness is not in us but exterior to us in Christ alone.  Climbing down from the high moral ground, because only Christ belongs up there.  That message, that awareness, that clarity.  Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.

Two, a gospel-centered church translates that theology into its sociology.  The good news of God’s grace beautifies how we treat one another.  In fact, the horizontal reveals the vertical.  How we treat one another reveals what we really believe as opposed to what we think we believe.  It is possible to say, “We are a gospel-centered church,” and sincerely mean it, while we make our church into a law-centered social environment.  We see God above lowering his gun, and we breathe a sigh of relief.  But if we are trigger-happy toward one another, we don’t get it yet.

A gospel-centered church looks something like this album cover — my all-time favorite.  A gospel-centered church is a variegated collection of sinners.  What unifies them is Jesus, the King of grace.  They come together and stick together because they have nothing to fear from their church’s message or from their church’s culture.  The theology creates the sociology, and the sociology incarnates the theology.  And everyone is free to trust the Lord, be honest about their problems, and grow in newness of life.

The one deal-breaker in a gospel-centered church: anyone for any reason turning it into a culture of legal demandingness, negative scrutiny, finger-pointing, gossip and other community-poisoning sins.  A church with a message of grace can quickly and easily stop being gospel-centered in real terms.

A major part of pastoral ministry is preaching the doctrine of grace and managing an environment of grace.  The latter is harder to accomplish than the former.  It is more intuitive.  It requires more humility, self-awareness and trust in the Lord.  But when a church’s theological message and its relational tone converge as one, that church becomes powerfully prophetic, for the glory of Jesus.

May the Friend of sinners grant beautiful gospel-centricity in all our churches.

To Leave the Rich Empty

“Jesus Christ came to blind those who saw clearly, and to give sight to the blind; to heal the sick, and leave the healthy to die; to call to repentance and to justify sinners, and to leave the righteous in their sins; to fill the needy, and leave the rich empty.”

Blaise Pascal, Thoughts

Why Jesus came is a post from: Ray Ortlund

The End of Religion

What role have I left for religion? None. And I have left none because the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ leaves none. Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion.

Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshiping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity has only two comments to make. The first is that none of them ever had the least chance of doing the trick: the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins (see the Epistle to the Hebrews) and no effort of ours to keep the law of God can ever finally succeed (see the Epistle to the Romans). The second is that everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, therefore, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade.

The church, instead, is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. It is not here to bring the world the bad news that God will think kindly about us only after we have gone through certain creedal, liturgical and ethical wickets; it is here to bring the world the Good News that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” It is here, in short, for no religious purpose at all, only to announce the Gospel of free grace.

---- Robert Capon in Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus

Such a Savior as your circumstances require.

“Jesus is no longer visible upon earth; but he has promised his spiritual presence to abide with his word, ordinances and people, to the end of time.  Weary and heavy laden souls have now no need to take a long journey to seek him, but he is always near them, and in a spiritual manner, where his Gospel is preached. . . . Therefore, come unto him.  That is, raise your hearts, and breathe forth your complaints to him. . . . He is just such a Savior as your circumstances require, as you yourself could wish for.”

John Newton, Works (Edinburgh, 1988), II:462.

Anyone Tired?

“To whom does the invitation of this cross come?  It comes to the failures, the people who know they have gone wrong, the people who are filled with a sense of shame, the people who are weary and tired and forlorn in the struggle. . . .

Do you despise yourself, kick yourself metaphorically, and feel you are no good?  Weary, forlorn, tired, and on top of it all, sad and miserable?  Nothing can comfort you.  The pleasures of the world mock you.  They do not give you anything.  Life has disappointed you, and you are sad, miserable and unhappy, and on top if it all, you have a sense of guilt within you.  Your conscience nags at you, condemns, raises up your past and puts it before you, and you know that you are unworthy, you know that you are a failure, you know that there is no excuse, you are guilty. . . .

And then on top of all this, you are filled with a sense of fear.  You are afraid of life, you are afraid of yourself and your own weakness, you are afraid of tomorrow.  You are afraid of death, you know it is coming and you can do nothing about it, but you are afraid of it. . . .

This is the amazing thing about the cross.  It comes to such a person, and it is to such a person above all others that it brings its gracious and its glorious invitation.   What does it say to you? . . . You are not far off, and the cross speaks to you with sympathy.  That man dying on that cross was known as the friend of sinners.  He was reviled by the good and the religious because he sat down and ate and drank with sinners.  He had sympathy. . . .

Not only that, he will tell you that he is ready to accept you.  The world picks up its skirt and passes by.  It leaves you alone, it does not want to associate with you, you have gone down, you belong to the gutters, and the world is too respectable to have any interest in you.  Here is one who is ready to receive you and to accept you. . . . Sit down, he says.  Wait, stop, give up your activities.  Just as you are, I am ready to receive you.  In your rags, in your filth, in your vileness.  Rest.

What else?  Pardon.  The cross speaks of benediction, of pardon, joy and peace with God.  It tells you that God is ready to forgive you.  It says, listen to me, your sin has been punished.  I am here because this is the punishment of sin.  Listen to me, says the blood of sprinkling.  I have been shed that you might be forgiven, pardoned, at peace with God.  Oh, thank God, there is also cleansing here.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross (Wheaton, 1986), pages 168-170.

Indians

By Jim Martin, of Crestview Church of Christ in Waco, Texas

Some years ago, I read through The Journal of John Wesley. In the journal, Wesley reflects on the mission effort among the American Indians. I was particularly moved by the following lines:


I went to America, to convert the Indians; but oh! who shall convert me? who, what is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of mischief? I have a fair summer religion. I can talk well; nay, and believe myself, while no danger is near; but let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. (Tuesday, January 24, 1738)

What a moving paragraph! Wesley went to these people believing that they needed the Gospel. Yet, Wesley knew that he also needed the Gospel. He not only knew that the world needed Jesus but that he too desperately needed Jesus. Perhaps this is a great challenge for anyone who is a Christian leader. How important to know that your need for the Gospel has not lessened because of your ministry. If anything, it ought to make us aware of how badly we need Jesus.


The other line that I found very moving was his comment about having “a fair summer religion.” Does this seem all too familiar?

I’m thankful for these words from Wesley over 250 years ago. They remind me that I need Jesus — desperately. His words are a reminder that our commitment to ministry does not exempt us from our own profound need for Jesus.

Three Ways to Spoil the Gospel

The Gospel in fact is a most curiously and delicately compounded medicine, and is a medicine that is very easily spoiled.

You may spoil the gospel by substitution. You have only to withdraw from the eyes of the sinner the grand object which the Bible proposes to Faith, — Jesus Christ; and to substitute another object in His place, — the Church, the Ministry … and the mischief is done …

You may spoil the Gospel by addition. You only have to add to Christ, the grand object of faith, some other objects as equally worthy of honour, and the mischief is done …

You may spoil the Gospel by disproportion. You only have to attach an exaggerated importance to the secondary things of Christianity, and a diminished importance to the first things, and the mischief is done. Once alter the proportion of the parts of the truth, and truth soon becomes downright error …  — J. C. Ryle, quoted by Peter Adam inHearing God's Word

Satan Won't Care

Pastor, Satan doesn’t mind if you preach on the decrees of God with fervor and passion, reconciling all the tensions between sovereignty and freedom, as long as you don’t preach the gospel. Homeschooling mom, Satan doesn’t mind if your children can recite the catechism and translate the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” from English to Latin, as long as they don’t hear the gospel. Churches, Satan doesn’t care if your people vote for pro-life candidates, stay married, have sex with whom they’re supposed to, and tear up at all the praise choruses, as long as they don’t see the only power that cancels condemnation—the gospel of Christ crucified. Satan so fears that gospel, he was willing to surrender his entire empire just to stave it off. He still is.

- Russell Moore from Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ

At your worst, At your Best.

Imagine your worst moment of guilt and shame, the memory that, when you let it, haunts you and threatens to hound you to the grave. In light of that sin, we sometimes cannot imagine how God could possibly forgive. Yet it was for that moment that Christ died for you. At your worst, God gave you his best. While you were still a sinner — of the worst kind — Christ died for you (Rom. 5:8).  The Passover teaches us that no debt of sin is too great to be forgiven because the precious sacrifice of Jesus pays it all.

Now imagine your best day. You’re on your winning streak, behaving well, keeping up with your spiritual disciplines, forgiving those who wrong you, helping those in need and leading non-Christians to Jesus. In light of such stellar Christian performance, we sometimes assume forgiveness, telling ourselves, ‘Of course God forgives me; I’m on his team.’ But the Passover teaches us that we don’t — and never could — deserve God’s forgiveness. Our debt of sin to him is so great that we couldn’t possibly pay God back, not with a thousand years of perfect performance (as if that were possible). On your best day, when you can most easily see yourself as God’s friend, your sin still makes you his enemy and requires Christ’s death so that you might truly become his friend despite yourself. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

 
— Mike Wilkerson
Redemption: Freed by Jesus from the Idols We Worship and the Wounds We Carry

Only One Thing

“There is only one thing in the world that blots out sins. It is not our acts of contrition, not our repentance, not our alms or our good works. It  is not even our prayers. It is the blood of Jesus Christ: ‘the blood of Jesus Christ … cleanses us from all sin’ (1 John 1:7).

All sin that the blood of Jesus Christ has covered is forever annihilated before God. God no longer sees it, and I could use even stronger language without straying from Scripture. ‘God himself seeks them,’ says a prophet, ‘and  no longer finds them’ (see Jer. 50:20). He has put our ‘sins behind his back’ (Isa. 38:17) so as not to look upon them any more. He will ‘hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea’ (Micah 7:19), and in beholding us in Christ, he beholds us without sin, just like Christ himself, who was made ‘to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor. 5:21).”

 

— Adolphe Monod
Living in the Hope of Glory

What would you fear if anyone found out about it?

What in your life would you fear if anyone found out about it?

What would horrify you if it were exposed before your family, your friends, your acquaintances?

In gospel repentance and faith, we fearlessly expose ourselves to Judgment Day in the present. That’s what the confession of sin is, a revealing of what Jesus already promises to reveal on the Day of Christ (Luke 8:17).

Our problem is that we often, like Adam before us, want to hide our temptations, and especially our sin, to cover it over to save face. Hiding, though, is exactly the opposite of what a Christian does when confronted with satanic designs. The darkness is where these evils latch onto us. Instead we can preemptively shine light on this, with God in prayer and in our authentic accountability to the Body of Christ, his church.

Our Christian reluctance to speak honestly about temptation is precisely why Christians often believe themselves to be unbelievers. All they see of other believers is this façade of smiling, peaceful Christ-followers. They assume then that the internal life of every other Christian is just a continual festival of hymns as opposed to their own internal life in which the hymns are interrupted with constant gossipy chatter, violent rage, and hard-core pornography.

This is exactly how the satanic powers want it. They want the prideful and oblivious to stay that way, until they fall and slink away in isolation, where they can be devoured.

Preaching the gospel to ourselves, though, reminds us continually that we are sinners and that we can stand only by the blood of Jesus. We can walk only by his Spirit prodding us on. We need one another, as parts of the same body together.

Russell Moore 
Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ

The Bread of Life

Let us never doubt for a moment, that the preaching of Christ crucified – the old story of His blood, righteousness, and substitution – is enough for all the spiritual necessities of all mankind. It is not worn out. It is not obsolete. It has not lost its power. We need nothing new – nothing more broad and kind – nothing more intellectual – nothing more effectual.

We need nothing but the true bread of life, distributed faithfully among starving souls. Let men sneer or ridicule as they will. Nothing else can do good in this sinful world. No other teaching can fill hungry consciences, and give them peace. We are all in a wilderness. We must feed on Christ crucified, and the atonement made by His death, or we shall die in our sins.

                 - J.C. Ryle

Gospel v. Legalism

Gospel v. Legalism

Great Quotes from recent sermon by Tullian Tchividjean (Billy Graham's Grandson)

Wrong:        My standing with God is based on what I do

Right:          My standing with God is based on what Jesus has done

Wrong:       Our actions are the root to God’s favor

Right:         Our actions are the fruit of God’s favor

Wrong:       Obey so that God will be Happy with you

Right:         Obey because God is Happy with you

Wrong:      Our obedience to him does not motivate his infinite happiness with us

Right:        God’s infinite happiness with us motivates our obedience to him

Wrong:      I am obligated to live for God so that God will love me

Right:        I am free to live for God because God has already loved me

Wrong:     Our works drive God’s love for us.

Right:       God’s love for us drives our works

Wrong:     I obey.  Therefore, I am accepted.

Right:       I am accepted, therefore, I obey.

Wrong:     I have to live this way in order for God to be happy with me

Right:       I get to live this way because God is happy with me

Wrong:    My daily relationship with God is based on my radical struggle for Jesus

Right:      My daily relationship with God is based on Jesus’ radical struggle for me

Wrong:     God’s approval comes from our improvement

Right:       Our improvement comes from God’s approval

Yet....the Good News!!

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through 

Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.  

For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, 

God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.  

And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law 

might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 

Romans 8:1

The bad news is far worse than making mistakes or failing to live up to the legalistic standards of fundamentalism. It is that the best efforts of the best Christians, on the best days, in the best frame of heart and mind, with the best motives fall short of that true righteousness and holiness that God requires.

Our best efforts cannot satisfy God’s justice. 

Yet the good news is that God has satisfied his own justice and reconciled us to himself through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. God’s holy law can no longer condemn us because we are in Christ.

 
— Michael Horton
Christless Christianity

The Gospel As Good News, Not Good Advice

Excerpt from Tim Keller’s new book:  King's Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus

The essence of other religions is advice; Christianity is essentially news.

Other religions say, “This is what you have to do in order to connect with God forever; this how you have to live in order to earn your way to God.”

But the gospel says, “This is what has been done in history. This is how Jesus lived and died to earn the way to God for you.” Christianity is completely different. It’s joyful news.

How do you feel when you’re given good advice on how to live? Someone says, “Here’s the love you ought to have, or the integrity your ought to have,” and maybe they illustrate high moral standards by telling a story of some great hero. But when you hear it, how does it make you feel? Inspired, sure. But do you feel the way the listeners who heard those heralds felt when the victory was announced? Do you feel your burdens have fallen off? Do you feel as if something great has been done for you and you’re not a slave anymore? Of course you don’t. It weighs you down: This is how I have to live. It’s not a gospel.

The gospel is that God connects to you not on the basis of what you’ve done (or haven’t done) but on the basis of what Jesus has done, in history, for you. And that makes it different from every other religion or philosophy.

This Gospel vs. Religion list is typed up from Tim Keller’s Gospel in Life curriculum:

Religious but not in Christ

Yet another amazing prayer by Scotty Smith.  Also, read the prior posts "The Problem with the Pigpen" and  "No Salvation at All":

You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope.   Galatians 5:4-5

Dear Jesus, this is one of the most sobering passages I’ve ever read about the gospel. Paul doesn’t describe “falling from grace” in terms of falling into immorality or godless living. Rather, to fall from grace is to lapse into performance-based spirituality—trying to gain and maintain a relationship with God based on my obedience to the law. How perilous and eternally destructive it is to move away from the gospel of your grace.

In reality, trying to be justified by law is the essence of godless living, for the righteousness we must have can only be received by faith, not by works. Everything else leads to alienation from you—a godless existence, indeed. So, more than any other form of accountability, we need accountability for believing the gospel.

If I maintain a daily regimen of Bible reading, memorization and quiet times, but don’t really believe the gospel, it will profit me nothing.

If I’m scrupulous to avoid evil, and even the appearance of evil, but no longer believe the gospel, I am self-righteous and lost.

If I should go on short term missions trips every month and give a big portion of my income to the poor, yet don’t trust the gospel-plus-nothing for my salvation, I’m a generous altruistic infidel.

If I am careful to obey every imperative—all the commands I find in the Bible, but no longer believe the indicatives of the gospel, I’m certainly religious, but I’m not in Christ.

If I cross every theological “t” just right, love the Bible, and correct heresy everywhere I find it, yet lasp into justification by works, I’m to be just as pitied as any other person outside of Christ.

If I weep many tears of sadness over my sin and earnestly repent, yet no longer cling to your cross as my propitiation and righteousness, I’m only a tearful pagan.

Jesus, by your Holy Spirit, hold us accountable for believing the gospel. Continuance in the gospel is the test of spiritual reality. And, should we participate in accountability groups, let us be most zealous to hold each other accountable for believing the gospel. Everything else will take care of itself. So very Amen, we pray, in your holy and righteous name.

A Prayer about Accountability for Believing the Gospel is a post from: Heavenward by Scotty Smith

Perfect, Blameless and Without Fault

“One of the most important things to remember in the Christian life is that we must always live in light of who God is, what Jesus has done, and what has happened to us as a result. Usually we tend to define ourselves by our successes or failures, our reputation, our sin, our intelligence, beauty, and abilities (or lack of them). 

Moreover, we often define other people by their weaknesses, failures, and sins. Hence we are quick to gossip and condemn others. 

The good news calls us to view ourselves and other Christians very differently. Jesus now defines who we are. Through Jesus’ work on the cross we have been declared perfect, blameless, and without fault. We have been forgiven and made right with God. We have become the dearly loved children of the living God, and nothing can separate us from his love.”

 

— Neil H. Williams
Living in Light of the Gospel Story

Christians Need the Gospel

By Tullian Tchividjian

The story of Jonah shows us that the gospel—the good news that God relentlessly pursues sinners in order to rescue them—is just as much for Christians as it is for non-Christians. Jonah’s life proves this, because Jonah, who knows God, obviously needs divine deliverance as much as anyone else in the story. In fact, his need for rescue gets far more emphasis than anyone else’s. It’s his destitution, not that of the Ninevites, that gets the most play. That alone should be enough to convince us that God’s rescue is a continuing requirement for Christians and non-Christians alike.

The gospel isn’t simply a set of truths that non-Christians must believe in order to become saved. It’s a reality that Christians must daily embrace in order to experience being saved. The gospel not only saves us from the penalty of sin (justification), but it also saves us from the power of sin (sanctification) day after day. Or, as John Piper has said, “The cross is not only a past place of objective substitution; it is a present place of subjective execution.”  Our daily sin requires God’s daily grace—the grace that comes to us through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Churches, for example, have for years debated whether their worship services ought to be geared toward Christians (to encourage and strengthen them) or non-Christians (to appeal to and win them). But this debate and the struggle over it are misguided. We’re asking the wrong questions and making the wrong assumptions. The truth is that our worship services should be geared to sinners in need of God’s rescue—and that includes both Christians and non-Christians. Since both groups need his deliverance, both need his gospel.

Christians need the gospel because our hearts are always prone to wander; we’re always tempted to run from God. It takes the power of the gospel to direct us back to our first love. Consciously going to the gospel ought to be a daily reality and experience for us all. It means, as Jerry Bridges reminds us, “preaching the gospel to yourself every day.”  We have to allow God to remind us every day through his Word of Christ’s finished work on behalf of sinners in order to stay convinced that the gospel is relevant.

I find that I especially need a gospel refocus to help steer me away from a constant tendency to drift into a performance-driven relationship with God. I’m not alone in that tendency; Jerry Bridges observes how pervasive it is among us all:

My observation of Christendom is that most of us tend to base our personal relationship with God on our performance instead of on His grace. If we’ve performed well—whatever “well” is in our opinion—then we expect God to bless us. If we haven’t done so well, our expectations are reduced accordingly. In this sense, we live by works rather than by grace. We are saved by grace, but we are living by the “sweat” of our own performance.

Moreover, we are always challenging ourselves and one another to “try harder.” We seem to believe success in the Christian life (however we define success) is basically up to us: our commitment, our discipline, and our zeal, with some help from God along the way. We give lip service to the attitude of the apostle Paul, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10), but our unspoken motto is, “God helps those who help themselves. The realization that my daily relationship with God is based on the infinite merit of Christ instead of on my own performance is a very freeing and joyous experience.”

As I’ve said before, the difference between living for God and living for anything else is that when we live for anything else we do so to gain acceptance, but when we live for God we do so because we are already accepted. Real freedom (the freedom that only the gospel grants) is living for something because we already have favor instead of living for something in order to gain favor.