The Gospel Coalition

In light of Paul Tripp coming to Coral Ridge this weekend, I’ve gone back through a lot of my Paul Tripp books–he’s such a huge gift to the church!

In one of his books (co-authored with Tim Lane), How People Change, he identifies seven counterfeit gospels—-”religious” ways we try and “justify” or “save” ourselves apart from the gospel of grace. I found these unbelievably helpful. Which one (or two, or three) of these do you tend to gravitate towards?

Formalism. “I participate in the regular meetings and ministries of the church, so I feel like my life is under control. I’m always in church, but it really has little impact on my heart or on how I live. I may become judgmental and impatient with those who do not have the same commitment as I do.”

Legalism. “I live by the rules—rules I create for myself and rules I create for others. I feel good if I can keep my own rules, and I become arrogant and full of contempt when others don’t meet the standards I set for them. There is no joy in my life because there is no grace to be celebrated.”

Mysticism. “I am engaged in the incessant pursuit of an emotional experience with God. I live for the moments when I feel close to him, and I often struggle with discouragement when I don’t feel that way. I may change churches often, too, looking for one that will give me what I’m looking for.”

Activism. “I recognize the missional nature of Christianity and am passionately involved in fixing this broken world. But at the end of the day, my life is more of a defense of what’s right than a joyful pursuit of Christ.”

Biblicism. “I know my Bible inside and out, but I do not let it master me. I have reduced the gospel to a mastery of biblical content and theology, so I am intolerant and critical of those with lesser knowledge.”

Therapism. “I talk a lot about the hurting people in our congregation, and how Christ is the only answer for their hurt. Yet even without realizing it, I have made Christ more Therapist than Savior. I view hurt as a greater problem than sin—and I subtly shift my greatest need from my moral failure to my unmet needs.”

Social-ism. “The deep fellowship and friendships I find at church have become their own idol. The body of Christ has replaced Christ himself, and the gospel is reduced to a network of fulfilling Christian relationships.”

As I said two weeks ago in my sermon, there are outside-the-church idols and there are inside-the-church idols. It’s the idols inside the church that ought to concern Christians most. It’s easier for Christians to identify worldly idols such as money, power, selfish ambition, sex, and so on. It’s the idols inside the church that we have a harder time identifying.

For instance, we know it’s wrong to bow to the god of power—but it’s also wrong to bow to the god of preferences. We know it’s wrong to worship immorality—but it’s also wrong to worship morality. We know it’s wrong to seek freedom by breaking the rules—but it’s also wrong to seek freedom by keeping them. We know God hates unrighteousness—but he also hates self-righteousness. We know crime is a sin—but so is control. If people outside the church try to save themselves by being bad; people inside the church try to save themselves by being good.

The good news of the gospel is that both inside and outside the church, there is only One Savior and Lord, namely Jesus. And he came, not to angrily strip away our freedom, but to affectionately strip away our slavery to lesser things so that we might become truly free!

Scotty Smith helps us remember how desperately Christians still need the gospel. Here’s an excerpt from his prayer this morning based on Mark 8:31-33:

Dear Lord Jesus, one of the many things I cherish about the Bible is its unfiltered, no-hype, non-spin honesty. Who but God would write a book documenting the foibles and failures of his beloved sons and daughters? Who but God would chronicle the ways hischosen leaders limp along, and prove themselves to be in constant need of mercy and grace? This gives me great encouragement and hope. It also gives me freedom to acknowledge that I need the gospel today just as much as the first day I believed it.

This will be just as true tomorrow, and the next day and the next. Please keep me convinced of this, Lord Jesus… because I’m so much like Peter. It’s one thing for me to stress, stew and stamp about the ways this generation is decrying and denying the theology of your cross. But it’s quite another to see the subtle and not-so-subtle ways I try to keep you from the cross. As you dealt with Peter, so deal with me. Give me all the life-giving rebukes I need to keep me living in gospel-sanity.

We are excited to announce the arrival of Scotty Smith to our blogging network. “Heavenward” is Pastor Scotty’s effort to help us set our minds on things above through daily, gospel-rich, Bible-saturated, Christ-centered prayers.

In addition to being an author, blogger, and pastor (see Scotty’s bio here), Scotty is a Council member with The Gospel Coalition.

Welcome Scotty Smith! We thank the Lord for your ministry and look forward to looking heavenward with you!

The Leadership Education initiative at Duke Divinity School recently featured two stories on Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York where TGC co-founder and council member, Timothy Keller, serves as senior pastor. The articles highlight Redeemer’s Center for Faith & Work and one of the Center’s ministries, the Entrepreneurial Initiative. Here are the links to the articles:

• “Repairing the Garden” (on the Center for Faith & Work)
• “Block by Block” (on the Entrepreneurial Initiative)

These articles were published at Leadership Education’s new website, Faith & Leadership. This website provides an interesting look into leadership and ministry from a variety of denominational and theological perspectives. Here are a couple of interviews from the website that may be of interest:

• Andy Crouch: Christians, Culture and Power
• Os Guinness: Civility in the Public Square

We recently had an email inquiry to The Gospel Coalition asking for resources on “Christian Universalism.” And because we all learned in school why we should ask questions (i.e., other people probably have the same one), we are posting our recommendations here. (This list, of course, is not exhaustive and can be added to by our community in the comments below.)

Books

• Faith Comes by Hearing: A Response to Inclusivism (IVP Academic, 2008)
• Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment (Zondervan, 2004)
• Let the Nations be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd Edition (Baker Academic, 2010)

Audio

• Sermon: “Hell Isn’t Worth It” (Mark Dever)
• Sermon: “The Echo and Insufficiency of Hell” (John Piper)
• Sermon: “The Final Judgement” (Ligon Duncan)
• Lecture: “What Happens to Those Who Have Never Heard the Gospel?” (Mark Rogers)
• Q&A: “If Hell is real, how can God be loving?” (John Piper)

Video

• Q&A: “What is the importance of believing in Hell?” (Sandy Willson)
• Q&A: “How should pastors preach about Hell?” (John Piper)

Articles/Q&As

• “Is Universalism Biblical?” (Ron Rhodes)
• “Are those who have never heard of Christ going to Hell?” (R.C. Sproul)

Conference

• 1990 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors: “Universalism and the Reality of Eternal Punishment” (Sinclair Ferguson, John Piper, Greg Livingstone, Tom Steller)

TGC Confessional Statement

• Section 13: The Restoration of All Things We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.

In 2005 approximately 1.6 million Christians from the United States went on a short-term mission trip. That number represents a lot of ministry, cross-cultural engagement, time, and money.

If you are involved in leading or organizing short-term mission trips, you should take a look at Effective Engagement in Short-Term Missions: Doing It Right! (Pasadena: William Carey, 2008). It is edited by Robert J. Priest, a professor of mission at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and is filled with 22 helpful chapters on nearly every aspect of short-term missions. There are chapters dealing with cultural issues, the relationship of short-term and long-term missions, forging healthy and humble partnerships between churches, specialized trips such as medical and business trips, legal and liability concerns, and ways to improve the impact of short-term missions on participants.

From the Introduction, by Robert Priest:

Seminarians preparing for youth ministry will someday be expected to plan, organize and lead short-term mission (STM) trips for their youth. But nothing in their seminary education (in most seminaries until now) will provide preparation for this part of their future job description. Across America there are today thousands of mission pastors in local congregations. They will be expected to plan, lead, and coordinate STM trips, to set-up congregational partnerships, to choose, screen and train STM team leaders, but while their seminary education may well have included missiology courses, it is unlikely that such courses taught them about best practices in STM.

This book represents the single most ambitious effort to date to understand and improve upon patterns of ministry in short-term missions.