I’m hoping to get back to weekly thoughts on Scripture and daily living… as we (hopefully) finish up with our several-month-long move to a new facility.
Today I’m tackling a particular catch-phrase that I’ve occasionally heard echoed through modern Christianity. A brief Google search reveals sermons from Seoul to California promoting this saying:
“God’s commands are his enablements.”
This is at best misleading, and when not understood correctly, hurtfully wrong.
What is meant, charitably, by this statement is that God helps us do what he wants us to do. He says what we are to do, and then he gives us the strength, the power, to do what he commands.
This is fine, as far as it goes (which isn’t far enough, but we’ll take a look at that in a moment).
But that charitable reading is not what the phrase actually says.
“God’s commands are his enablements” is a clear equation: the commands of God = (“are”) the enablements of God.
This equation does not appear to be in the Bible.
Perhaps the closest echo is in 2 Peter 1:3.
“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…”
So God’s power has given us what we need for godliness. Godliness in turn would seem to embody a life of keeping his commands. But it does not say that the commands are the power. Quite the contrary, the power is, as Peter goes on to write, “… through the knowledge of Him who has called us to his own glory… by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises.”
Catch that? The power is in the true knowledge of Jesus. The true knowledge of Jesus… by which we are implanted, united to Him. Made new by the power of the Holy Spirit. His promises are to make us a new creation… these very great and precious promises are the engine of our obedience.
In fact, the Bible consistently points to God’s commands, sometimes called law, as powerless rather than enabling (see, for example, Romans 8:3 or Galatians 3:21). That doesn’t make commands bad – to the contrary, they help reveal God’s heart and character and give us rails for living. But the commands aren’t shown to be empowering.
So if the commands themselves aren’t enabling, what does enable the believer?
What enables God’s commands is the gospel. The good news of Jesus. The indicatives of the Bible. The reality that your sin has been paid for, that a way has been made, that an inheritance is yours forever, the truth of a new birth.
Michael Horton uses the analogy of a sailboat:
“Think of a sailboat. You can have all the guidance equipment to tell you where to go, to plot your course, and to warn you when you’ve been blown off course. However, you can’t move an inch without wind in your sails… the law directs, but it cannot drive gospel sanctification.”
See the difference?
God’s commands are not his enablements. The gospel is. The gospel is the motivator, the gospel is engine, the gospel is what enables response to God’s commands. The desire for you and for me to follow God’s commands is in no way the commands themselves. It is a new heart.
This difference is incredibly important to Christian living in several ways. Here’s two:
First, if you realize that your enablement is Christ, when you fail… you run back to Christ. Your prayer focuses not on impartial empowerment to overcome a particular sin, but dependent pleading to have a life more focused on Jesus. Sin is a result of unbelief and pride… not only (or even primarily) the failure itself. Since that sin has been paid for by Jesus Christ, there’s not an accompanying guilt of despair with failure (as opposed to the ‘it is all up to you’ flavor of God’s commands being his enablements).
Second, omitting the gospel from the equation of keeping God’s commands blurs the distinction between moralism and true Christianity. True Christianity is firmly founded and centered on Jesus’ finished work. He kept the commands, so now I’m saved… and that salvation pushes me to want to keep God’s commands. That last phrase is decidedly subservient to the first. If it isn’t, I’m headed toward moralism.
Tim Keller puts it this way:
“…modern and post-modern people have been rejecting Christianity for years thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. Non-Christians will always automatically hear gospel presentations as appeals to become moral and religious, unless in your preaching you use the good news of grace to deconstruct legalism.”
It really is important not to skip over the gospel, nor to skip over how a gospel-driven life is fundamentally different from God’s commands themselves being the empowerment for your obedience.
So I’d propose we should stop using “God’s commands are his enablements.”
We could replace it with Tullian Tchividjian’s “Imperatives minus indicatives are impossibilities;” or “Jesus plus nothing equals everything”… or “God’s gospel is his enablement”… may we joyfully exult in following our Savior because of who he is and what he has done for us!