Tag Archives: Keller

Identity thoughts

Quotes,

A beautiful Monday morning, another day to marvel at God’s grace in giving us life and breath. O that we might use it to reveal that our identity has been radically changed — as we’ve been redeemed and adopted into Jesus Christ’s family… by His wondrous work alone!

Along the lines of a new identity, here’s Tim Keller from King’s Cross:

“Are you beginning to see how radical Jesus is? It’s not a matter of saying, ‘I’ve been a failure, I’ve been immoral, so now I’m going to go to church and become a moral, decent person. Then I’ll know I’m a good person because I am spiritual.’ Jesus says, ‘I don’t want you to simply shift from one performance-based identity to another; I want you to find a whole new way. I want you to lose the old self, the old identity, and base yourself and your identity on me and the gospel.'” 

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!

Religion, Gospel, Identity

Grace, In Christ, Righteousness,

Who am I?Just a quick thought stimulated by a recent book by Tim Keller (The Reason for God) that our church is reading in a men’s group.

I like the thought (which he makes) of distinguishing between religion and gospel. Religion as a whole pushes one toward salvation through moral effort. The Gospel is about salvation through grace, entirely by the work of another, Jesus Christ.

So there’s two ways to reject that gospel, that good news. Both ways are essentially being your own Lord and Savior.

The first way is to be a rebel: “I can live my life just how I want to!” This is obviously a desire to be one’s own Lord.

The second way is also to be a rebel… internally: “I can trust my own goodness, avoid sin, and live morally so God blesses me!” This is the same rebellion as the first, really – I will decide for myself the mode and method of God’s grace. I won’t submit to the way of Christ. This second rebel is who Jesus addressed throughout the gospels… folks we usually refer to as Pharisees.

Both ways of rebelling are a rejection of the gospel. You really can avoid Jesus as Savior as much by trying to keep all the rules you find in the Bible as by ignoring them.

I wonder how many of us are really Pharisees… internally driven by despair caused by sin, with no identity as a truly righteous adopted child, united to the Son of God through the blood and sacrifice of that Son, Jesus Christ. Pharisees… always wondering if we’re good enough, always comparing selves with others, always realizing that the inside doesn’t match the outside.

May we never build our identity on our moral achievements (religion), just as we rightly flee from building our identity on our job, our hobby, or our spouse. May our identity be foundationally grounded on the rock that is a relationship with Jesus Christ, the living God.

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live I in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

Who I was, my self-identity, self-righteousness, self-orientation – he is dead. My only hope is Christ. May I not return to trusting in who I was, in what that flesh through its own effort could do. May I trust wholly in Christ, in what He has done. By God’s Word and His mercy toward me, I know this is the gospel of grace.

Galatians 2:20 says that our life now is by faith in the Son of God. The content of that faith is that His righteousness truly does save me, that I have an eternal future with Him. My life now is wholly given over to Him, not as effort for more righteousness of my own, but for grateful living in His ways, building up other people, worshiping this God. The fruit of my mouth, praising Him; the fruit of my life, shining forth the result of the Spirit working in me. United to Christ forever.

Identity found!

Graceful Thoughts II

Quotes,

I am so thankful to the Lord for stimulating thoughts from other believers. Here are a couple to chew on.

From Tim Keller, in The Reason for God:

“When many first hear the distinction between religion and the gospel, they think that it just sounds too easy. ‘Nice deal!’ they may say. ‘If that is Christianity, all I have to do is get a personal relationship to God and then do anything I want!’ Those words, however, can only be spoken on the outside of an experience of radical grace. No one from the inside speaks like that. In fact, grace can be quite threatening.

Some years ago I met a woman who began coming to church… she said she had gone to church growing up and had never before heard a distinction drawn between the gospel and religion. She had always heard that God accepts us only if we are good enough. She said that the new message was scary. I asked her why it was scary, and she replied:

‘If I was saved by my good works then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with “rights” – I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner saved by sheer grace – then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.’

She understood the dynamic of grace and gratitude. If when you have lost all fear of punishment you also lose all incentive to live a good, unselfish life, then the only incentive you ever had to live a decent life was fear. This woman could see immediately that the wonderful-beyond-belief teaching of salvation by sheer grace had an edge to it. She knew that if she was a sinner saved by grace, she was (if anything) more subject to the sovereign Lordship of God. She knew that if Jesus really had done all this for her, she would not be her own. She would joyfully, gratefully belong to Jesus, who provided all this for her at infinite cost to himself.”

 

And from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in Spiritual Depression:

“The very essence of the Christian faith is to say that He is good enough and I am in Him. As long as you go on thinking about yourself saying, ‘I’m not good enough; Oh, I’m not good enough,’ you are denying God – you are denying the gospel – you are denying the very essence of the faith and you will never be happy. You think you’re better at times and then again you will find you are not as good at other times than you thought you were. You will be up and down forever.”