Tag Archives: Horton

No, Commands don’t Enable

Grace, ,

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!

Thoughts from a Gospel-Driven Life

Grace, Quotes,

I’ve been blessed recently by Micheal Horton’s The Gospel-Driven Life.

Some excellent quotes:

“It is not Christian orthodoxy but moralistic liberalism that reduces the surprising news of the gospel to the bland repetition of what people already know.” (p.25)

“The bible is not a collection of timeless principles offering a gentle thought for the day. It is not a resource for our self-improvement. Rather, it is a dramatic story that unfolds from promise to fulfillment, with Christ at the center. Its focus is God and His action. God is not a supporting actor in our drama; it is the other way around…. Has it really hit you that no matter what your inner voice, conscience, heart, will or soul tells you, God’s objective Word on the matter trumps it all?” (p. 26)

“God’s law is not a tool that we can use; it is the rod by which God measures us. God’s law says, ‘Be perfect.’ God’s gospel says, ‘Believe in Christ and you will be reckoned perfect before God.’ The law tells us what must be done if we are to be saved; the gospel tells us what God has done to save us.” (p. 60)

“‘God justifies the wicked’ (Rom. 4:5). As counterintitive as it is simple, that claim which lies at the heart of the Good News has brought immeasurable blessing – and trouble – to the church and the world. Be nice, take out the trash, stop nagging your spouse, try to spend more time with your children, don’t get into credit card debt, lose some weight and get some exercise. Every one of these exhortations might be valid… however, it is not the big story. No wonder people – especially younger folks – are bored if this is the ‘news’ that the church has to bring to the world. This kind of news need not come from heaven; there are plenty of earthly sages who can communicate it better than most preachers.” (p. 64)

“So God justified the wicked — not those who have done their best yet have fallen short, who might at least be judged acceptable because of their sincerity, but those whare are the very moment of being pronounced righteous are in themselves unrighteous… Protestants [that’s me] are just as likely today to assume that the gospel gives us something to do rather than [sic] an announcement of something that has already been fully, finally, and objectively accomplished for us by God in Jesus Christ.” (p.73)

“I often hear believers say that it was wonderful when they first believed. Then and there they were promised forgiveness, God’s favor, and eternal life. But over time the message changed. Now it’s time to get busy. The gospel is for unbelievers, but Christians need a constant stream of exhortations to keep them going. Yet this is far from what the Bible itself reasons. Not only in the first instance, but throughout the Christian life, faith is born and fed by the gospel alone. Christ is sufficient even for the salvation of weak and unfaithful Christians.

The great divide… is between an objective, complete, perfect and finished justification by God alone in Christ alone and a subjective, progressive, incomplete and unfinished justification by the believer’s cooperation in grace.” (p.75)

“On my best days, my experience of transformation is weak, but the gospel is an announcement of a certain state of affairs that exists because of something in God, not something in me; something that God has done, not something that I have done; the love in God’s heart which he has shown in his son, not the love in my heart that I exhibit in my relationships.” (p.77)

“The gospel is not a general belief in heaven or hell or hope for a better life beyond… it is the announcement that Jesus Christ himself is our life, for he is our peace with God. He does not merely show us the way; he is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).” (p.80)

“We all want to be and to do something rather than to be made and to receive our identity from above. It is a blow to our spiritual ego to be told that everything has already been done. Yet that is the glory of the gospel! That is why it is Good News.” (p.93)

“It is often said that we must apply the Scriptures to daily living. But this is to invoke the Bible too late, as if we already knew what ‘life’ or ‘daily living’ meant. The problem is not merely that we lack the right answers, but that we don’t even have the right questions until God introduces us to his interpretation of reality.” (p.111)

Well… I’m only about halfway through the book right now. But what a refreshing and thoughtful treatment of the Gospel! How I need to hear it every day… as I, by God’s wondrous grace, am a light in a world that needs to hear the good news.

 This is not to say that I’m not progressively being changed, or that don’t I engage my will (gladly!) to follow my Father’s guides… but the center of our lives as believers is the story of the Gospel. May we hold on to the truth every day!

Graceful thoughts

Quotes,

Probably like you, sometimes I run across quotes that are worthy of chewing on… and I usually print them out, set them aside, and forget about them. Instead, perhaps, they can occasionally become a part of conversation. Here’s one such from Michael Horton, writing in “No Church, No Problem?”, Modern Reformation, July/August 2008.



“Christ has not only appointed the message, but the methods and, as we have seen, there is an inseparable connection between them. All around us we see evidence that churches may affirm the gospel of salvation by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone, but then adopt a methodology that suggests otherwise. Christ has appointed preaching, because ‘faith comes by hearing the word of Christ’ (Rom. 10:17); baptism, because it is the sign and seal of inclusion in Christ; the Supper, because through it we receive Christ and all of his benefits. In other words, these methods are appointed precisely because they are means of grace rather than means of works; means of God’s descent to us rather than means of our ascent to God. 

In this way, Christ makes himself not only the gift, but the giver; not only the object of faith, but the active agent, together with the Spirit, in giving us faith. And he not only gives us this faith in the beginning, but deepens, matures, and increases our faith throughout our lives. The gospel is not something that we need to ‘get saved’ so that we can move on to something else; it is the ‘power of God unto salvation’ throughout our pilgrimage. So we need this gospel to be delivered to us regularly, both for our justification and our sanctification…”