Book Review: The Prodigal God

With the possible exception of the story of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son is probably the most famous of Jesus's parables. You've heard it before. No doubt you've read it. You've even heard it preached on at church. If there's anything in the New Testament that you've got down by now, it's the story of the Prodigal Son. It is absolutely certain that what Jesus means by that parable is that no matter what we do, no matter how far we run, we can always come back to God.

While that's true, that's not all that the parable is about. It goes, in fact, much, much deeper. To discover that meaning, may I recommend to you Tim Keller's excellent book, The Prodigal God. You will never read the parable the same way again.

The key, Keller argues, is to recognize that there are two sons in the story, and both are lost. In fact, the younger brother may have captured the attention of the evangelical mind, but the story is really about the elder brother. It was originally told, after all, to a group of elder brothers called the Pharisees. The younger brother is lost because of his sin, but the elder brother is lost because of his righteousness.

Huh? How can that be? It is because the elder brother tried to manipulate and control his father by obeying all of the rules. "It is not his sins that create the barrier between [the elder brother] and his father, it's the pride he has in his moral record; it's not his wrongdoing but his righteousness that keeps him from sharing in the feast of his father." Like the younger brother, the elder brother never truly cared about his father; he only cared about the estate. While the younger brother was audacious enough to demand it, the elder brother quietly resented his father's presence whilst working slavishly to keep him happy. For elder brothers, "the good life is lived not for delight in good deeds themselves, but as calculated ways to control their environment."

Where Keller goes from here will absolutely astound you, and no doubt leave that impression on your spirit that, at last, this parable makes complete sense! This book will be a valuable resource not only for understanding the parable of the Prodigal Son, but also of discovering how to rightly relate to God.

Book Review: The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting

When I decided to go ahead with planting Ember Church in the fall of 2010, I was overwhelmed by the process. I knew there was a lot of work to be done, but I didn't know where to start. I found a lot of books on church planting, but couldn't tell which ones were good and which ones weren't. I tried judging those books by their covers, but this turned out to be a bad idea. The old saying is true after all, I suppose.

It wasn't until several months into the process that I finally picked up The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting by Aubrey Malphurs, and I immediately wished I had read this book sooner. This book is exactly what it says it is: the nuts and bolts of a project that can often seem overwhelmingly complex and about as solid as water. Malphurs helps the reader get his hands on and head around the process of church planting.

The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting demystifies the church planting process and gives new church planters (like myself) a plan and some solid direction for accomplishing their end of this task. He simplifies the ministry of the new church down to the overall mission of the Church, which is to make disciples. Keeping this mission in the front of your mind, regardless of how you frame it for your church, will keep you on track as you trudge through the difficult phase of church planning and planting.

As somebody who is doing this right now, I can't think of a better book to give to church planters than Aubrey Malphurs' The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting. It's simple, practical, readable, and comes with an abundance of support material (16 appendices!) to help guide you through this difficult process. If you're thinking about planting a church, read this book first. If you're on a church plant team, get it for your pastor! The more time you spend with this book, the more time you will save and the more frustration you will avoid in the church planting process.

Book Review: The Enemy Within

I've been told that John Owen, the Puritan pastor, is one of the most insightful Christian authors to have put pen to paper. Unfortunately, he is also one of the most difficult to understand. Reading his books is like running through mud. Here is a single sentence which appears in Owen's book, The Mortification of Sin:

I hope I may own in sincerity, that my heart's desire unto God, and the chief design of my life in the station wherein the good providence of God hath placed me, are that mortification and universal holiness may be promoted in my own and in the hearts and ways of others, to the glory of God; that so the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be adorned in all things: for the compassing of which end, if this little discourse...may in any thing be useful to the least of the saints, it will be looked on as a return of the weak prayers wherewith it is attended by its unworthy author.

Thank God Kris Lundgaard has taken Owen's thoughts and distilled them into an eminently readable book, The Enemy Within. The book deals with the question: "If God has redeemed me from sin, and given me his Holy Spirit to sanctify me and give me strength against sin, why do I go on sinning?" This is a crucial question, one that plagues every serious Christian at some point in their lives.

The reason we continue to sin, says Lundgaard via Owen, is because our flesh--our sinful nature--continues to live in us (Romans 7). He writes in chapter 4,

The flesh is more than God's enemy: it is the enmity, the hostility, the pure hatred [of God] itself.

The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. (Romans 8:7, NKJV)

Two enemies, no matter how deep the river of their bitterness runs, can make peace--but only if the hostility between them is destroyed. It is impossible to make peace with hostility itself.

The solution is, as John Owen wrote, is the mortification of sin. Our flesh, the sinful nature, must die. The sin inside each one of us will never accept a cease-fire peace treaty with God because sin is not the enemy, it is the hostility. In order for the believer to be free from the power of sin, it must die.

The good news is that our sinful natures were crucified with Christ.

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. (Romans 6:6-7)

The crucifixion of our sinful natures is what God is working out, what he is actualizing in our lives through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. The mortification of sin in us is the process of sanctification. The sinful nature dies every day, and every day the image of Christ lives more and more in and through us. Through this process, we, who were once enemies of God, become his friends as the hostility between us (our sinful natures) is destroyed.

I've not read John Owen, and probably never will. But Kris Lundgaard seems to have done an excellent job writing a book that distills Owen's meticulous thoughts on sin and sanctification into a readable form.

Black Genocide

On the recommendation of a friend, I watched a documentary called Maafa 21 the other day. Before I say anything about it, you should check out the trailer below.



The film runs about two and a half hours, but it's well worth your time. What you'll learn is that Planned Parenthood, the primary abortion provider in America, was born out of the Eugenics movement in the early 20th century. Eugenics is the science of improving the genetic composition of the human race. The Nazis pursued the science of Eugenics in their obsession with creating the master race, and we are all familiar with the horrifying results for 6 million Jews in their concentration camps.

What you may not know is that the Nazi Eugenics movement was aided by American Eugenicists who were closely associated with Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood. In America, the Eugenics movement directly targeted African-Americans, with claims that the black race was inherently inferior to the white race. The Eugenicists taught that the growth and propagation of the black race should be controlled by the government for the betterment of the human race.

Various attempts were made to control the growth of the black race, all of them failing. The final solution, so to speak, was the legalization of abortion in 1973. Before that time, most abortions were performed on white women. Since then, as you'll see in the film, black women have become nearly 5 times more likely than white women to have an abortion.

I live in Columbus, OH, where there are 4 metro area Planned Parenthood locations. All four locations are within a five mile radius of downtown Columbus, where the black population is much higher than in other parts of the city. There is no Planned Parenthood in Westerville (87% white), Worthington (91% white), New Albany (86% white), or Dublin (79% white but less than 2% black). Compare those numbers to Columbus proper (where 3 of the 4 centers exist) which has a 28% black population, and Whitehall (which has the fourth center) with a 29% black population.

It's no wonder that abortion is being called black genocide. It's becoming clear to me that abortion is not simply about women and their reproductive rights; it's about the extermination of the black race. The history of Planned Parenthood is every bit as racist as the KKK. Abortion providers are targeting poor, black women and their unborn children. They may see what they do as a service to the community, but the reality is that they are ending lives in the womb, and those lives are disproportionately black.

Abortion is the most horrendous evil that has ever been unleashed upon mankind. Not only is it the greatest injustice on the face of the earth, but in this country it is specifically targeted at African-Americans.

I believe that, one day, we will win the war on abortion. This cannot go on forever. Perhaps a key step toward that victory is uncovering the racist roots of legalized abortion and the racial targeting by abortion providers. God help us.

How We Live the Gospel: Part 2

Yesterday I wrote about the first two of five gospel perspectives that enable us to truly live out the gospel: The Extent and Gravity of Our Sin and The Centrality of the Heart. This is all part of a larger discussion about gospel substitutes and the true gospel, inspired by Lane & Tripp's book How People Change. (For crying out loud, if you read my blog and you still haven't ordered this book yet...I don't even know. You need to read it!) Without further ado, here are the final three gospel perspectives.

3. The Present Benefits of Christ

The Christian hope is more than a redemptive system with practical principles that can change your life. The hope of every Christian is a person, the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. He is the wisdom behind every biblical principle and the power we need to live them out. Because Christ lives inside us today, because he rules all things for our sakes (see Eph. 2:22-23), and because he is presently putting all his enemies under his feet (see 1 Cor. 15:25-28), we can live with courage and hope.

Our hope is not in our theological knowledge or our experience within the body of Christ. We are thankful for these things, yet we hold on to one hope: Christ. In him we find everything we need to live a godly life in the here and now. Paul captures it so well: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).

You have Jesus. He is with you through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Everything you need to live the gospel truly and fully--to live the life God has designed for you to live--is available to you because you have Jesus. You lack nothing because Jesus lacks nothing. Jesus didn't just die for your sins, he rose again from the dead for your righteousness. He is alive and with you in the person of the Holy Spirit.

4. God’s Call to Growth and Change

It is so easy to coast! We have been accepted into God’s family, and someday will be with him in eternity. But what goes on in between? From the time we come to Christ until the time we go home to be with him, God calls us to change. We have been changed by his grace, are being changed by his grace, and will be changed by his grace.

What is the goal of this change? It is more than a better marriage, well-adjusted children, professional success, or freedom from a few nagging sins. God’s goal is that we would actually become like him. He doesn’t just want you to escape the fires of hell—though we praise God that through Christ you can! His goal is to free us from our slavery to sin, our bondage to self, and our functional idolatry, so that we actually take on his character!

Peter summarizes the change this way: ‘Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires’ (2 Peter 1:4).

God has an end in mind, and it is to conform you into the image of his Son. God is out to make you like Jesus. Everything he's doing in you and through you and with you has a singular purpose: Christlikeness. This demands that we never stop growing and changing, because there will always be more of us that needs to be transformed. Never stop growing.

5. A Lifestyle of Repentance and Faith

God has blessed you with his grace, gifted you with his presence, strengthened you with his power, and made you the object of his eternal love. Because we belong to him, we live for his agenda. And if change is his agenda, then repentance and faith is the lifestyle to which we have been called.

There are always new sins for the Christian to address and new enemies to defeat. The Christian life makes God’s work of change our paradigm for living, while we celebrate the grace that makes it possible. ‘For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ’ (Titus 2:11-13).

In order to participate with God in his project of the transformation of our hearts, we must be committed to live lives of humility, characterized by repentance and faith. If you think you have nothing to repent of, then you are not working with God--you're working against him.

Remember that sin is extensive and weighty; it is more than just something we do, it is who we are. But praise God, through a lifestyle of repentance and faith, the gospel says, "That is who you were. Jesus is who you are becoming."

How We Live the Gospel: Part 1

I've recently been blogging about the ways in which we try and fail to live out the gospel. There are seven gospel substitutes, all focused on external behavior rather than internal transformation. They are Formalism (Volunteerism) and Legalism; Mysticism, Activism and Biblicism; Psychology-ism and Social-ism. Each of these contain elements of true Christian faith and practice, but they are poor substitutes for the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It would be silly of me to talk about how not to live the gospel without providing some perspective on how we actually do live out the gospel. Once again, I'm going to go back to Lane & Tripp's excellent book How People Change, where they offer five gospel perspectives to counter those seven gospel substitutes. To put all five in one post would be overwhelming, so I'm going to break it up a bit. I'll post the first two today and come back to the other three tomorrow.

1. The Extent and Gravity of Our Sin

The struggle to accept our exceeding sinfulness is everywhere in the church of Christ. We accept the doctrine of total depravity, but when we are approached about our own sin, we wrap our robes of self-righteousness around us and rise to our own defense.

Scripture challenges this self-righteousness with clarity and power. ‘The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time’ (Gen. 6:5), and ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’ (Rom. 3:10). The effects of sin twist every thought, motive, desire, words, and action. This disease has infected us all, and the consequences are severe.

Why is this perspective so essential? Only when you accept the bad news of the gospel does the good news make any sense. The grace, restoration, reconciliation, forgiveness, mercy, patience, power, healing, and hope of the gospel are for sinners. They are only meaningful to you if you admit that you have the disease and realize that it is terminal.

I've quoted from David Powlison before, but I'd like to do so again because this stuff is just so good.

Sin, in this popular misunderstanding, refers to matters of conscious volitional awareness of wrongdoing and the ability to do otherwise. This instinctive view of sin infects many Christians and almost all non‐Christians. It has a long legacy in the church under the label Pelagianism, one of the oldest and most instinctive heresies. The Bible’s view of sin certainly includes the high‐handed sins where evil approaches full volitional awareness. But sin also includes what we simply are, and the perverse ways we think, want, remember, and react.

Most sin is invisible to the sinner because it is simply how the sinner works, how the sinner perceives, wants and interprets things. Once we see sin for what it really is; madness and evil intentions in our hearts, absence of any fear of God, slavery to various passions (Eccl. 9:3; the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live); (Gen. 6:5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually); (Ps. 36:1 Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes.); (Titus 3:3 3For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.) –then it becomes easier to see how sin is the immediate and specific problem all counseling deals with at every moment, not a general and remote problem. The core insanity of the human heart is that we violate the first great commandment. We will love anything, except God, unless our madness is checked by grace.

How quickly we forget that the only difference between people with Christ and people without Christ is Christ. Apart from Christ, there is no difference between Christians and nonChristians. This seems obvious; if only it were. All seven gospel substitutes fail to deal seriously with sin. But sin is precisely what the gospel deals with so decisively. Failing to take into account the extent and gravity of our sin is to deceive ourselves. Beginning at any other point than the depth of our sinfulness is to replace gospel Christianity with positivist humanism.

2. The Centrality of the Heart

The average Christian defines sin by talking about behavior. For example, what is the goal of most Christian parents? Is it not to get their children to do the right things? We set up all kinds of relational, motivational, and corrective structures to constrain and direct our children’s behavior. These structures are not without value, but if this is your only response to your child’s rebellion and sin, you will leave him defenseless against sin once he leaves home and the structures are no longer there.

Beneath the battle for behavior is another, more fundamental battle—the battle for the thoughts and motives of the heart. The heart is the real or essential you. All of the ways in which the Bible refers to the inner person (mind, emotions, spirit, soul, will, etc.) are summed up with this one term: heart. The heart is the steering wheel of every human being. Everything we do is shaped and controlled by what our hearts desire.

That is why the Bible is very clear that God wants our hearts. Only when God has your heart does he have you. As much as we are affected by our broken world and the sins of others against us, our greatest problem is the sin that resides in our hearts. That is why the message of the gospel is that God transforms our lives by transforming our hearts.

Lasting change always comes through the heart. This is one of Scripture’s most thoroughly developed themes, but many of us have missed its profound implications. We need a deeper understanding of Proverbs 4:23, ‘Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.’

Your heart is not simply your emotional center, it is the core of who you are: thoughts, desires, motives, emotions, your will, etc. This is the place at which change must happen because your heart drives your behavior. Any attempt to control or change external behavior (which is what the seven gospel substitutes attempt to do) will ultimately fail because lasting behavioral change will only come through heart transformation.

Tomorrow we'll look at the final three gospel perspectives.

Happy 5th Birthday Cyrus!!!

Today is Cyrus's 5th birthday! He's such an incredible kid, and Breena and I are so blessed to have him in our family. He's been with us through thick and thin these past 5 years. We love you Cyrus!

Happy birthday buddy! I love you and I'm so very proud of you. You're a fantastic big brother. You're so incredibly smart. You have a way of flooring me with your insights and thoughts. I'll always be your dad, and you'll always be my dudeman.

Gospel Substitutes: Part 3

I've been posting on the seven ways that we falsely live out the gospel, as Lane & Tripp have written in their excellent book How People Change. If you haven't gotten the hint yet...READ THIS BOOK! In the first post I wrote about Formalism (Volunteerism) and Legalism. In the second post I covered Mysticism, Activism, and Biblicism. In this post we'll cover the last two gospel substitutes.

6. “Psychology-ism”

Jen always has a group of people ministering to her. She talks a lot about how many ‘hurting’ people are in her congregation, and how the church isn’t doing enough to help them. An avid reader of Christian self-help books, she is always recommending the latest one to someone. She often says that Christianity is the only place to find real help and healing, yet she doesn’t seem to find that healing herself. Jen spends much of her time discouraged and often leaves church meetings in tears.

Jen is right that our deepest needs are met in Christ, but she sees Christ more as a therapist than as the Savior. Jen is convinced that her deepest needs come out of her experience of neglect and rejection, and so she sees herself more in need of healing than redemption. She is blind to how demanding, critical, and self-absorbed she actually is.

Without realizing it, Jen has redefined the problem that the gospel addresses. Rather than seeing our problem as moral and relational—the result of our willingness to worship and serve ourselves and the things of this world instead of worshipping and serving our Creator (Romans 1)—she sees our problem as a whole catalog of unmet needs. But whenever you view the sin of another against you as a greater problem than your own sin, you will tend to seek Christ as your therapist more than you seek him as your Savior. Christianity becomes more a pursuit of healing than a pursuit of godliness. The gospel is reduced to the healing of emotional needs.

God wants to heal us. But the healing of our emotional wounds is not the end God has in mind for us. God wants to take us through healing and out the other side, toward godliness. Our fundamental problem is not our personal catalogue of unmet needs or emotional wounds--it is the sin of our hearts. All the sins committed against us are exacerbated by our sinful, unforgiving responses. The gospel of Jesus goes beyond psychology in that it both offers and demands forgiveness of sin.

7. “Social-ism”

George was so thankful for the relationships he had found in the body of Christ. They were unlike any friendships he had experienced before. He was so full of joy for his Christian family that he participated in any activity that put him in contact with other believers. George loved his twenty-something Bible study, but he particularly enjoyed going out with the gang afterward. He loved the retreats, the camping trips, and the short-term missionary projects. For the first time in his life, George felt alive and connected.

George’s trouble started when one of his closest friends was transferred out of state and another friend got married. Then his church called a new pastor who decided to de-emphasize ministry to singles. When the small groups at his church were reorganized, George felt that he was stuck with a group of older married people with whom he couldn’t relate. Church wasn’t the same anymore, so he quit going to his small group. Before long his attendance on Sunday began to wane. Going to church, he said, was like going to someone else’s family reunion.

George didn’t realize it, but fellowship, acceptance, respect, and position in the body of Christ had replaced his dependence on communion with Christ. The church had become his spiritual social club, and when the club began to break up, he lost his motivation to continue. For George, the grace of friendship replaced Christ as the thing that gave him identity, purpose, and hope. The gospel had been reduced to a network of fulfilling Christian relationships.

God has called us to live out our faith in the community of other believers. This is often where we see the gospel happen, but the fellowship of believers is not itself the gospel. Neither friendships nor community are an acceptable substitute for Christ himself. As a community of Christ-followers, it is our responsibility to point one another to Jesus, orienting our hearts toward him, rather than pointing each other back to the community. The Church exists for Jesus, not for herself.

These are the seven ways we get the gospel wrong. They are external, behavior-oriented systems of living out your faith. They do nothing to invite the power and presence of the Holy Spirit into our deep hearts, where the truth of the gospel of grace is worked out at the deep level of what we think, what we want, and how we remember. Only the gospel can change our hearts at the level of desire. To attempt to live out the good news of Jesus through any of these false, external-oriented systems is to completely fail to live out the power of the gospel.

Gospel Substitutes: Part 2

Last Thursday I wrote a post called Gospel Substitutes in which I began to outline the seven ways we falsely live out the gospel, per Lane & Tripp's excellent book How People Change. I included two of the seven: Formalism (Volunteerism) and Legalism. I had hoped to get to the remaining five sooner, but a garage sale at home sucked up all my time this past Friday and Saturday, so here are the next three of the seven. I'll post the final two later today.

3. Mysticism

Christine careens from emotional experience to emotional experience. She is constantly hunting for a spiritual high, a dynamic encounter with God. Because of this, she never stays with one church very long. She is more a consumer of experience than a committed member of the body of Christ. Yet in between the dynamic experiences, Christine’s faith often falls flat. She struggles with discouragement and often finds herself wondering if she is even a believer. Despite the excitement of powerful moments, Christine isn’t growing in faith and character.

Biblical faith is not stoic; true Christianity is dyed with all the colors of human emotion. But you cannot reduce the gospel to dynamic emotional experiences with God. As the Holy Spirit indwells us and the Word of God impacts us, most of the changes in our hearts and lives take place in the little moments of life. The danger of mysticism is that it can become more a pursuit of experience than a pursuit of Christ. It reduces the gospel to dynamic emotional and spiritual experiences.

It can be difficult to differentiate between our spiritual and emotional states. We feel discouraged, and therefore we think we are struggling spiritually. But the reality is that our spiritual state is entirely determined by Christ, and he does not change. We are in Christ by grace through faith. Our emotions change depending on the weather, our circumstances, or even our blood-sugar levels; Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

4. Activism

Shirley stands on the right-to-life picket line wondering why more Christians aren’t there. Of course, Shirley feels the same about the protests at the adult bookstore and her work on the coming local election. These causes define what it means to be a Christian. Her constant refrain is, ‘Stand up for what is right, wherever and whenever it is needed.’ There is something admirable about Shirley’s willingness to devote time, energy, and money to stand up for what is right.

But on closer examination, Shirley’s Christianity is more a defense of what’s right than a joyful pursuit of Christ. The focus of this kind of Christian activism is always on external evil. As a result, it can take on the form of a modern monasticism. The monastics essentially said, ‘There is an evil world out there, and the way to fight evil is to separate from it.’ But monasteries failed because they forgot to focus on the evil inside every monk who entered their walls!

Whenever you believe that the evil outside you is greater than the evil inside you, a heartfelt pursuit of Christ will be replaced by a zealous fighting of the ‘evil’ around you. A celebration of the grace that rescues you from your own sin will be replaced by a crusade to rescue the church from the ills of the surrounding culture. Christian maturity becomes defined as a willingness to defend right from wrong. The gospel is reduced to participation in Christian causes.

The trouble with activism is that we lose sight of the evil in our own hearts. We get so focused on the social evils of abortion or human trafficking that we forget about the sinful patterns of thinking, desiring, and remembering that lie deep within the recesses of our hearts. There are many worthy causes that Christians should get involved in, but participation in Christian causes is not the same thing as participation in the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is first and always a gospel of the heart, setting about to transform you at the level of desire by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

5. Biblicism

John is a biblical and theological expert. His theological library includes rare, antique Christian volumes, and he is always seeking to buy first editions. John frequently uses phrases like ‘biblical worldview’, ‘theologically consistent’, and ‘thinking like a Christian.’ He loves the Bible (which is a very good thing), but there are things in John’s life that don’t seem to fit.

Despite his dedicated study of Christianity, John isn’t known for being like Christ. He has a reputation for being proud, critical, and intolerant of anyone who lacks his fine-grained understanding of the faith. John endlessly critiques his pastor’s sermons and unnerves Sunday school teachers when he enters the room.

In John’s Christianity, communion, dependency, and worship of Christ have been replaced by a drive to master the content of Scripture and systematic theology. John is a theological expert, but he is unable to live by the grace he can define with such technical precision. He has invested a great deal of time and energy mastering the Word, but he does not allow the Word to master him. In Biblicism, the gospel is reduced to a mastery of biblical content and theology.

I see nothing wrong with this one. Let's just move on. ...Okay, fine, this is wrong, too. Many Christians are tempted to master God's Word and Theology in their minds. Heck, I have a Masters of Divinity degree! It's one thing to master God's Word in your mind, but it's another thing altogether to be mastered by it in your heart. Ultimately, the Bible is a book that reads you. Treating the Scripture as mere information, however holy that information might be, is to sin against the revelation of God. The trajectory of Scripture is the gospel, and the gospel is not merely information or a story; it is a world recreating event that continues to act in and through God's people today.

I'll post the last two ways we falsely live out the gospel later today.

Gospel Substitutes

In their excellent book How People Change (which I've reviewed here), Timothy Lane & Paul Tripp make the point that Christians often fail to live out the gospel in their daily lives. This is because we suffer from three blindnesses: 1) Our identity as sinners; 2) The all-sufficient provision God has made for us in Jesus; 3) God's processes of change. We are blind to these three crucial realities, and they create a gap in our understanding of the gospel. We inevitably seek to fill this gap with a gospel substitute.

If we do not live with a gospel-shaped, Christ-confident, and change-committed Christianity, that [gap] will get filled with other things. …The most dangerous pretensions are those that masquerade as true Christianity but are missing the identity-provision-process core of the gospel. They have their roots in the truth, but they are incomplete. The result is a Christianity that is mere externalism. Whenever we are missing the message of Christ’s indwelling work to progressively transform us, the [gap] will be filled by a Christian lifestyle that focuses more on externals than on the heart.

These gospel substitutes often look and feel like Christianity, but they are a perversion of it. "The lies that capture us as Christians usually seem to fit well within the borders of our Christianity." We are often at a loss for how the gospel works in our lives because we are living one of these gospel substitutes, rather than the good news of Jesus Christ.

As sinners, we like to be at the center of the universe. We like being the ones who control the agenda. Yet the gospel makes it clear that the only way to really live is first to die, and that those who strive to live, end up dying as a result. When the gospel is reduced to a catalog of isms where I choose the one most attractive and comfortable for me, I can participate extensively in Christianity without much personal sacrifice, and with my self, unchallenged, at the center of it all.

Tripp & Lane list seven gospel substitutes that plague Christians. I'll post two here and the other five in another post. Perhaps you'll find that you have been living a gospel substitute rather than the true good news of Jesus.

1. Formalism (Volunteerism)

If you want to know the church calendar, just look at Jim’s schedule. Whatever the meeting or ministry, Jim is there, Bible in hand. He’s done his stint as a Sunday school teacher and regularly volunteers for short-term missions trips. He is faithful in giving and a willing volunteer when work needs to be done around the church. But Jim’s world and God’s world never meet. All of his church activities have little impact on his heart and how he lives his life.

God railed against the formalism of the Israelites (see Isa. 1), and Christ condemned the formalism of the Pharisees (see Matt. 23:23-28). Why? Because formalism allows me to retain control of my life, my time, and my agenda. Formalism is blind to the seriousness of my spiritual condition and my constant need for God’s grace to rescue me. Jim sees his church participation simply as one healthy aspect of a good life. He has no noticeable hunger for God’s help in any other area. For him, the gospel is reduced to participation in the meetings and ministries of the church.

Formalism is more than just staying busy for Jesus; it's substituting church activity for Jesus himself. It seems innocent on the outside, but it's a false way of making yourself look spiritual while keeping your heart safe from the power of Jesus. The gospel goes far beyond mere participation in various church ministries or committees.

2. Legalism

Sally is a walking list of dos and don’ts. She has a set of rules for everything. They are her way of evaluating herself and everyone around her. Her children live under the crushing weight of her legalism. To them, God is a harsh judge who places unreasonable standards on them and then condemns them when they can’t keep them. There is no joy in Sally’s home because there is no grace to be celebrated. Sally thinks that performing her list gives her standing with God. She has no appreciation for the grace given her in Christ Jesus.

Legalism completely misses the fact that no one can satisfy God’s requirements. While Sally rigidly keeps her rules, her pride, impatience, and judgmental spirit go untouched. Legalism ignores the depth of our inability to earn God’s favor. It forgets the need for our hearts to be transformed by God’s grace. Legalism is not just a reduction of the gospel, it is another gospel altogether (see Galatians), where salvation is earned by keeping the rules we have established.

Legalism is familiar to far too many of us. It is nothing more than the futile effort to live an externally moral life. It's all about the things you don't do. Legalists frown a lot. Like the authors said, it's not simply a reduction of the gospel, it's another gospel altogether.

God and Genocide

Many people find certain parts of the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, abhorrent for their description of violence. What kind of God would claim to be good and loving but then order the killing of hundreds of thousands of people? Such a God is not good at all, these folks conclude. And who can blame them?

In Deuteronomy 7 God commands the Israelites to invade Palestine and kill everyone that lives there. "When YHWH your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations...and when YHWH your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally." What the heck, God?

This is a difficult statement for many. How can a loving God order a genocide? How can this be in the Bible? How does this square with what I know about God through Jesus Christ?

The answer to these difficult questions, I believe, goes beyond the fact that Israel had been promised that land by God or that war was inevitable in those days (and still is today). No, the answer is that God hates idolatry. Idolatry, the worship of gods who are not God, is a fundamental and vile betrayal of your relationship with the God who made you. Idolatry is the door by which sin, evil, and wickedness enter the world. The more idolatry, the more wickedness.

Why? Because of the nature of the gods we worship. These are gods that have no concern for humanity. The pagan myths bear this out. The ancient gods were like horrible, shallow, vindictive humans with divine powers. They were the worst of us. Idolatry is dehumanizing. Idolatry undoes all that God is trying to do in the world. The gods are fundamentally opposed to God.

Therefore, as far as God is concerned, it is better for you to die than to live as an idolator. To be an idol-worshipper is to invite wickedness into the world, and to undo the work of redemption that God is trying to accomplish. Deuteronomy 9 says this: "After YHWH your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, 'YHWH has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.' No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that YHWH is going to drive them out before you." Their wickedness stems from their idolatry.

You may not bow down to idols of wood or stone, but you have functional gods in your heart that are not the true God. They are, in fact, the same gods the ancients worshipped, but we have depersonified them, turning them into abstract concepts: Fame, Money, Power, Sex. What a trick the Enlightenment has played on us! But we are idolators, all of us, and you would do well to examine the desires of your heart to discover your own functional gods.

The people living in Canaan were killed because they were idolators, and their idolatry led them into wickedness. Idolatry always leads us into wickedness. You will find yourself doing things you never imagined to pursue the idols of your heart: Money, Fame, Sex, Power. You will invite great wickedness into your world in the pursuit of your idols--so much wickedness, in fact, that if you were to recover your right mind, you would look back and confess that it would have been better for you to die than to live as an idolator.

The Point of Church

What is the Church supposed to do? What is the mission of the Church? What are the tasks God has given her to accomplish? Why do churches exist? What is the point of going to church?

Have you ever asked those questions? Lots of Christians don't have a compelling reason to go to church or a clear understanding of what the church's mission is. Many people go to church simply because that's what they've always done. For ministers, the Sunday-to-Sunday grind has a way of making us forget why the Church exists and what she is supposed to do.

Do you go to church? If so, do you know why your church exists? Do you have a clear sense of what your church does and why it's so important? Do you see how you are a part of your church's mission, and do you participate in achieving that mission?

Jesus gave the church a mission after his resurrection. It's recorded in several places in the Gospels, but perhaps Matthew records it best: Go and make disciples of all nations... The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus. So how's your church doing with that? Is that the mission of your church? Is that what you're becoming? Is that what you're participating in?

The point of church is to make you a disciple of Jesus. Everything about church should be centered around Jesus. If he's not at the center, it's not a church, it's a pagan temple. Everything the church does should be with the aim of making disciples, that is, preaching the gospel to those who haven't heard it (evangelism), and helping those who have heard the gospel live it well (edification).

I'd love to hear how your church is doing. What are some creative ways that your church is making disciples? How have you been invited to participate in that process? What could your church do to more effectively evangelize nonChristians and edify Christians? Please leave a comment!