Dallas Willard writes:

Blessed are the physically repulsive,

Blessed are those who smell bad,

The twisted, misshappen, deformed,

The too big, too little, too loud,

The bald, the fat, and the old-

For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.

Then there are the ‘seriously’ crushed ones: The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burned-outs. The broke and the broken. The drug heads and the divorced. The HIV positive and herpes-ridden. The brain-damaged, the incurably ill. The barren and the pregnant many-times or at the wrong time. The over-employed, the underemployed, the unemployed. The unemployable. The swindled, shoved aside, the replaced. The parents with children living on the street, the children with parents not dying in the ‘rest’ home. The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid. The emotionally starved or emotionally dead. And on and on and on.

Is it true that ‘Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal?’  It is true! That is precisely the gospel of heaven’s availability that comes to us through the Beatitudes. And you don’t have to wait until you’re dead. Jesus brings to all such people as these the present blessedness of the present kingdom—regardless of circumstances. The condition of life sought for by human beings through the ages is attained in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus.

…Even the moral disasters will be received by God as they come to rely on Jesus, count on Him, and make Him their companion in His kingdom.  Murderers and child-molesters.  The brutal and the bigoted.  Drug lords and pornographers.  War criminals and sadists.  Terrorists.  The perverted and the filthy and the filthy rich.  The David Berkowitzs (‘Son of Sam’), Jeffrey Dahmers, and Colonel Noriegas.

Can’t we feel some sympathy for Jesus’ contemporaries, who huffed at him, ‘This man is cordial to sinners, and even eats with them!’ Sometimes I feel I don’t really want the kingdom to be open to such people. But it is. That is the heart of God. And, as Jonah learned from his experience preaching to those wretched Ninevites, we can’t shrink Him down to our size.

That’s who the gospel is for, what Eugene Peterson has called “dazzingly good”.

After all, what kind of good news would it be if it were reserved for good church people?

Of course, no one claims to have arrived at perfection, and yet, Calvin says many do claim “to have yielded completely to God, [claiming that] they have kept the law in part and are, in respect to this part, righteous.”Only the terror of the Law can shake us of this self-confidence. Thus, the Law condemns and drives us to Christ, so that the Gospel can comfort without any threats or exhortations that might lead to doubt. ~Michael Horton

There’s been a fair amount of discussion of late among evangelical writers I read regarding the vital distinction between what I’ll refer to as the Law/Gospel distinction. Now, let me begin this post with a disclaimer: I’m a far cry from a theological scholar (and neither do I claim to be as much, which will come as no surprise to those who’ve followed my blog/writing the last few years). So, instead of pretending, I’ll lean on a respected theologian to do the heavy lifting in this post.

Personally speaking, it’s been since the days of big hair and parachute pants that I began to understand the great divide between works and grace (see Romans 11:6 below). It was like walking into a surgeons well-lit operating room after having been locked up in a dingy-dark dungeon for what felt like eons (I mention “works and grace” because it wasn’t until last few years I’ve become more familiar with the Law/Gospel distinction, credit goes to being casual student of Luther’s).

Michael Horton, who I quote above, has written and lectured extensively on the topic, and in a manner I think any layman with half a desire to wrap their brain around this whole idea will benefit from. Horton explains in a way that can be not only understood, but should be appreciated. In his book “Christless Christianity”, he writes (pages 124-125):

We need the law and the gospel, but each does different things. When we confuse law and gospel, we avoid both the trauma of God’s holiness and the liberating power of his grace. We begin to speak about living the gospel, doing the gospel, even being the gospel, as if the Good News were a message about us and our works instead of about Christ and his works. The proper response is neither to dispense with the law nor to soften it from demand to helpful advice. Rather, it is to recognize the difference between law and gospel. We are not called to live the gospel but to believe the gospel and to follow the law in view of God’s mercies. Turning the gospel into law is a very easy thing for us to do; it comes naturally. That is why we can never take the Good News for granted.

Any form of doing the gospel is a confusion of categories. The law tells us what to do; the gospel tells us what God has done for us in Christ. When it comes the question about how we relate to God, doing is the wrong answer. Paul explains, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:4-5). It is not just some deeds on our part that are excluded here, but our works of any kind. “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (Rom. 11:6).

…The law tells us what God expects of us; the gospel tells us what God has done for us.

So the law and the gospel are not inherently opposed, but when it comes to how we are saved, these two principles could not be more antithetical.  And since our faith at every moment is threatened by our natural tendency to be distracted from its object—Christ—we need the gospel placarded before us not just at the beginning, but throughout the Christian life.  The gospel is for Christians too.  We need to be evangelized every week.  It is not by following Christ’s example but by being inserted into Christ, clothed with Christ, united to Christ—as the Spirit creates faith through the gospel—we are not only justified but sanctified as well.

On the surface, the Law/Gospel distinction might not look important, but when you get down into the trenches of Christian living and faith, the ramifications couldn’t be any more gargantuan.

Thoughts?

For further reading see:

The Resurgence: “The Law & The Gospel” by Michael Horton

Tullian Tchividjian’s Blog: “Horton On The Law And The Gospel”

Tullian Tchividjian’s Blog: Interview With Mike Horton: Part One 

Tullian Tchividjian’s Blog: Interview With Mike Horton: Part Two

Tullian Tchividjian’s Blog: Luther On Law

The Gospel is scandalous in its proclamation that God justifies the wicked by grace, through faith. Apparently, that scandal has now reached into the church itself, where it doesn’t take any effort at all to find evangelicals ready to contend that you can’t “just believe” and be saved without also becoming a “good” person. It seems that few evangelicals have contemplated just how radically different the Christian message is from the message of ‘self-improvement’ or ‘moral reformation’.

…What you can do, not what God has done, is the great theme of most of what is published and recorded in the evangelical world. Grace writers and poets stand out like lighthouses in a sea of mediocre legalism and do-it-yourself religion. Grace is an endangered species, and we all need to celebrate and promote any writer who truly, passionately communicates grace. This isn’t a matter of theological labels. We can quibble about the footnotes some other time. No matter who they are, when they wrote or where you find them, applaud, buy and give away the grace writers and artists. The beauty of what they are saying needs to be heard in a church choking on legalism, moralism and timidity about the Gospel.

Let me encourage to follow his advice. The reality is, there are far too many voices for legalism and moralism swirling around the church today and far too few heralding grace, God’s scandalous grace. Personally, it’s the biggest reason I bother with Facebook and Twitter.

So, when you run across these needles in a haystack, don’t hog them to yourself, gladly pass them along.

I remember the year, it was 1988 and I was what would be best described as a self-confident nineteen year old whippersnapper off to learn how I was gonna change the world. Yeah, me. All you’d have needed to do to confirm was ask me. Press 1 for Ken, press 2 you’re mistaken.

In my mind, God had called me to go and learn how to save people, and here I was being the obedient servant, “Her I am Lord, send me.” Surely the world was on its way to hell in a hand basket and I was gonna be the remedy.

God could certainly benefit from having a guy like, well… Me. No need for the Trinity. There was me, me and me. “I’m your go to guy, G.O.D.” The Father, Son and Holy Spirit could long at last take a breather, I had it handled. He’d pulled me out of a pile of garbage, and now I was gonna return the favor. What good could come from Detroit?… I was going to show the church world, the hour had come.

It was Dallas Texas, a place I had never been, and here I was at Bible College. Dealey Plaza , the legendary Cowboys and their plastic make pretend cheerleaders, Stars and Mavericks, and the Rangers in Arlington. On top of that, we’re talking Texas, a place annually competing for a top spot in the race to be God’s Country—Bible belt buckle material if there ever was such a place, and now they had me on their team.

My watch was ticking and my opportunity was ripe. I was gonna win the world, so I figured I’d better learn the lingo of a gospel preacher. The ins and outs and all that jazz. I’d shown up, I’d arrived and I was going places. My own Utopia. Shoot, I went to the most famous preacher on this planets church and sat in the front row, smack dab in the middle. Hands down, I was destined for this. It was the place to be if you were serious, and I was serious.

My pastor, most likely the country’s most well-known at the time, called me out of a crowd of maybe 3000 at a Sunday night gathering (and the joint sat more than that), “Young man, God’s on your life.” Turns out more than two decades later, he was spot on, but looking back (and hindsight does help), I didn’t take it the right way. Instead of seeing God was with me, I mistakenly thought God was hitching his train on me. Surely, in my mind, I’d be saving people soon. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions. I figured that God needed me. Me, God’s little big man, or big little man. But little did I remotely realize at the time, he was the big God.

All I needed was some fine tuning. No craftsman can master his trade without some tools. High profile speakers would arrive each week to share with us, some big shots, and others humble men and women of God (the ones who decided against fleecing the people of God). Some had some pretty outlandish and crazy other-worldly stories about exploits they’d done for God and warned, “Follow Jesus, expect trouble and be a soul-winner.” The message rarely was, “All people need is Jesus, not you, so just give them Jesus.”

People who’d traveled the globe winning souls, taking Malaria pills and saving the lost. And I figured I could save the lost too. Wrong turn.

Upon graduation I was eager and itching to hop on a plane and travel to the utmost ends of the earth myself and share all of the wisdom I had gleaned, spew all of the bible verses that had sunk into my thick skull and seeped into my haughty heart by osmosis, and of course those I’d diligently committed to memory.

Instead, I landed back at my home church in Michigan as a youth pastor at the ripe age of 21, and I was gonna make my mark. I’d preach and teach when I wasn’t taking a kid who’d lost his father to McDonalds, or packing up the church van to take a bunch of wild-eyed hormone raging rowdy teenagers up north for a winter retreat to eat some of the worst food this side of jail. But we had a blast, we made it fun.

As time passed I began to realize that my hubris and grandiose plans of saving the world might have been a bit misguided, and that as much as I wanted to jump in and save a rebel 16 year old from running off the cliff to destruction, I couldn’t.

Yes, Paul writes to his young protégé Timothy, ”Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” And Solomon wrote in his famed Proverbs, ”…he that winneth souls is wise.”

But neither of these verses mean that you, I, or SuperPastor can save a single soul. We merely point people to the Rescuer. There is only one Savior. If you, or I, get the honor to share his love with anyone, great, but to assume we can save a single soul is heresy. I like David Stanley’s bio on Twitter, “I’m just a nobody, trying to tell everybody, about Somebody who can save anybody!”

So, if you ever see a sign like this out in front of a church, you might think twice about attending. Remember the next time you’re tempted to think you’re God’s answer to a perishing world, you can’t save a flea with a bad case of the flu, let alone yourself or anyone else.

Point people to Jesus, ain’t a soul that will be belting out the grateful tunes of heaven thinking, ”Because of Ken I am here.” No, that won’t happen.

It’s only and solely because of Jesus anyone will be walking the streets of gold.

HT (for image): Rae Whitlock @Facebook via “Stuff Fundies Like”

Continuing Tullian Tchividjian’s series on the oft misunderstood Epistle of James. “You can read this book one way and become a Pharisee and read it another way and become a deeper lover of Jesus.”

On a personal note, I’ve been going through what you might call a gospel renewal of sorts the last few years in particular and have recently stumbled across Tullian’s teaching and have found it most helpful in sorting out just what a gospel-driven faith not only looks like, but what makes it tick. Tullian’s preaching just happens to be some of the best preaching I’ve ever heard in 25 years. Between his blog  and several messages I’ve listened to now, it’s safe to say Tullian is on to something, something big.

In part 7 of this series, Tullian explains how the gospel practically impacts the things we love, our thoughts and our actions. He points out that when we locate our significance in anything other than Jesus, that thing or person—no matter how noble—is sure to become our prison.

Enjoy.

In order for a pure and lasting work of spiritual renewal to take place within the church, multitudes within it must be led to build their lives on this foundation.  This means that they must be conducted into the light of a full conscious awareness of God’s holiness, the depth of their sin and the sufficiency of the atoning work of Christ for their acceptance with God, not just at the outset of their Christian lives but in every succeeding day. ~Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life (Downers Grove, 1979), pages 101-102, italics his.

HT: Ray Ortlund

Continuing Tullian Tchividjian’s series on the oft misunderstood Epistle of James. “You can read this book one way and become a Pharisee and read it another way and become a deeper lover of Jesus.”

On a personal note, I’ve been going through what you might call a gospel renewal of sorts the last few years in particular and have recently stumbled across Tullian’s teaching and have found it most helpful in sorting out just what a gospel-driven faith not only looks like, but what makes it tick. Tullian’s preaching just happens to be some of the best preaching I’ve ever heard in 25 years. Between his blog  and several messages I’ve listened to now, it’s safe to say Tullian is on to something, something big.

In part 6 of this series, Tullian asks and addresses the question: How does the gospel change the way that we live?… If you are rescued, redeemed and God has raised you from death to life—what will your life begin to look like?

Enjoy.