The Gospel Coalition

“Jesus’ essential call was to plant churches. Virtually all the great evangelistic challenges of the New Testament are basically calls to plant churches, not simply to share the faith. The ‘Great Commission’ (Matt. 28:18-20) is not just a call to ‘make disciples’ but to ‘baptize’. In Acts and elsewhere, it is clear that baptism means incorporation into a worshiping community with accountability and boundaries (cf. Acts 2:41-47). The only way to be truly sure you are increasing the number of Christians in a town is to increase the number of churches. Why? Much traditional evangelism aims to get a ‘decision’ for Christ. Experience, however, shows us that many of these ‘decisions’ disappear and never result in changed lives. Why? Many, many decisions are not really conversions, but often only the beginning of a journey of seeking God. (Other decisions are very definitely the moment of a ‘new birth,’ but this differs from person to person.) Only a person who is being ‘evangelized8 in the context of an on-going worshiping and shepherding community can be sure of finally coming home into vital, saving faith. This is why a leading missiologist like C. Peter Wagner can say, ‘Planting new churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven.’”

– Tim Keller, “Why Plant Churches” (pdf)

Audio and video from the 2013 Gospel Coalition Conference is now uploaded and ready to enjoy.

Also, the audio from the recent Men and Women of Wisdom Conference in Hingham, Mass. featuring Ray and Jani Ortlund and myself is now up.

C.S. Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham tells the story of Lewis and a friend walking along the street one day when a beggar approached them asking for money. Lewis’s friend kept walking, but Lewis stopped and emptied his wallet, giving the beggar its contents. After rejoining his friend, he was chastised. “You shouldn’t have done that, Jack. He’ll only spend it all on drink.” Lewis replied, “Well, that’s what I was going to do.”

The situation is a common one and ages old. We are no more faced with beggars today than the disciples were in the first century. In urban settings or rural, the specific approach and contexts may differ, but the neediness and the opportunities do not. What is your response when a stranger asks for money?

You are walking down the street or pulling out of the grocery store parking lot and you are confronted by a haggard figure, perhaps holding a sign, perhaps telling a familiar story about being homeless or hungry or needing to travel to a certain location or having a car out of gas. The stories can be eerily similar. I’ve heard the “I’m trying to get to _______ but don’t have money for gas” story quite a bit. I have offered before to go to the gas station and put gas in their car. Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they don’t. I have offered to get food instead of giving them cash for food. Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they don’t.

Let’s make the options simple for the sake of the gist of the argument. A hand is outstretched before you. Do you put money in it or do you decline?

Most of us at that point begin to measure up the man (or woman) before us. Do they look honest? Do they look authentically down and out? Do they look like an alcoholic or drug addict? Then the street smarts kick in. They will probably just spend it on alcohol. I am probably just supporting their drug habit. If they put just as much energy into finding a job as begging for money, they wouldn’t be in this situation. If they weren’t so lazy, they wouldn’t have to suffer this indignity. By giving them money I’m just enabling them, not actually helping them.

The street smarts — based on assumptions and presumptions, not actual knowledge of the person — are thinly veiled justifications for not helping. They help us feel better about saying no.

What does Jesus say?

The Sermon on the Mount is so impractical. So inefficient. If you were designing a religious system for maximum ease and self-actualization, this would not be it. The whole thing seems designed to make its adherents “get taken” left and right. Somebody asks for my coat, and I give them my shirt too? Somebody asks for a mile, and I go with them two? Somebody hits me, and I offer them my other cheek? This isn’t only not street smart, it isn’t even common sense. Jesus is asking us to put ourselves in some very vulnerable positions. And in Matthew 5:42, he says:

Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

Immediately we begin thinking of all sorts of loopholes and footnoted caveats to explain that this doesn’t mean exactly what it says. And maybe some of those caveats are right. For instance, if you know someone’s going to waste money on an addiction, not just suspect they are, it’s probably wiser to give them another form of help — a meal, loving counsel, a friendship. We only ought to take care that our refusal to give what is being asked is based on facts, not imagination, and is not the “plausible argument” we’re using to justify our disobedience to a pretty clear command that comes with no asterisks. “Give to the one who begs from you.”

Is Jesus smart? Does Jesus know the way the world actually is? Can he be trusted in this moment to give us sound counsel?

Here’s what I think Jesus wants us to do, and our response to a beggar gives us the opportunity to do it:

1) Hold our money loosely. I think that’s what Lewis was getting at in the exchange with his friend. He was comparing the beggar’s suspected frivolity with his own known frivolity. Only in the economy of self-justification is my spending $3 on a coffee or even a beer deemed more virtuous than, by presumption, a beggar’s doing the same.

2) Trust him with people’s sins. Maybe that person will squander what you give them. It’s not our job to manage the expected sins of others. It’s our job to be faithful to God, obedient to his commands. So the better hedging of the bets here is to give out of obedience and trust the beggar’s financial management to the only God who judges the living and the dead. Let us give, and let us let the Lord sort it out.

In one of his Letters to an American Lady, from which we get another version of the “spend it all on drink” story, Lewis writes these other pertinent words on giving to beggars:

It will not bother me in the hour of death to reflect that I have been “had for a sucker” by any number of impostors; but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need.

No, it’s not street smart or common sense to give to those who ask of you, but it is wise. Very, very wise. It is wise to obey Matthew 5:42 with as few loopholes as you can attach to it because doing so says you obey God, not your suspicions, and you hold your money loosely because God is your God, not money. What you do with your money bears witness to what you worship.

I was had for a sucker last week. I felt pretty sure I was even before I knew I was. I was not surprised later to find out I’d been had. I had reminded myself of Matthew 5:42 in deciding to give the money out, and I reminded myself of Matthew 5:42 after I realized it was a mistake. I should have helped in one of a variety of other ways. Only God has 20/20 foresight. But it wasn’t just Matthew 5:42 and the Sermon on the Mount’s kingdom ethos in general that got me. It was this:

I picture myself as I truly was, apart from Christ, in the light of God’s holiness. Unclean, undesirable, unjustified. A beggar. Jesus could have taken one look at me and come up with infinite excuses not to help. In fact, because he is God, with the omniscience of being God, he didn’t have to presume or predict — he knew that throughout my life, even after salvation, I would waste his grace like the prodigal moron. And yet, unhesitatingly, eagerly, with all the love of him who is Love, he gave me no mere pittance, but lavished on me the immeasurable riches of his kindness and mercy, united me to himself in spirit, and guaranteed for me the inheritance owed himself. Try being stingy and common-sensible with that reality crowding out your brain.

Video intros to the first slate of study guides in Crossway’s new Knowing the Bible series have been added to their website. I was honored to have contributed the installment on Paul’s letter to the Romans. Below is some of my rambling about the roaring ocean waves of grace in that great epistle.

Knowing the Bible Series: Romans from Crossway on Vimeo.

Via The Lookout:

On March 11 2005, Kevin Berthia wanted to take his life. He had climbed over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge and was prepared to take a fatal jump into the San Francisco Bay when he heard a voice calling out to him from above.

It wasn’t the voice of a spiritual presence, but rather that of California Highway Patrol (CHP) Officer Kevin Briggs. The two talked for 60 life-changing minutes before Berthia decided to climb back up the bridge and give life another chance.

Eight years later, the pair reunited as part of an emotional ceremony honoring Briggs and other members of the CHP whose job is to verbally persuade suicidal men and women from jumping off that bridge.

“It was phenomenal,” Berthia, 30, told Yahoo News about his reunion with Briggs at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention public service ceremony.

May I be vulnerable with you for a moment? I anticipate some pushback if only because of those names you see up there in the title, but this is part of my story, part of my gospel wakefulness, and it is a part I will never deny or disavow.

I have met John Piper just once, a couple of years ago, when I was in Minneapolis to record some material with Desiring God Ministries in promotion of my book Gospel Wakefulness. On the way to what would be a brief visit to his home, I clutched in my hand a copy of my book to give him. I was told I ought to sign it, because he’d like that. I don’t remember what exactly I wrote inside that front cover but I know it included this line: “God used you to save my life.”

That is not an exaggeration. I don’t mean that Piper’s work was instrumental in my conversion. I professed saving faith in Christ as a child, before I’d ever heard of the man. I mean he saved my life. In my twenties, mired in the rotten fruit of my sin — the wreckage of my marriage, the dead-endings of my aspirations, and the bottoming out of my spirit — I spent a lot of hours feeling nothing and contemplating taking my own life. I dare not describe all of that to you, but I was in a bad way. We had a church but the teaching we received there was in the order of “seizing the day” based on inner potential. I had none of the latter so I could not manage the former. What kept me alive?

I was clinging to the hem of Christ’s garment then, sleeping in our guest bedroom, by which I mean living in the guest bedroom and spending plenty of nights face down on the carpet groaning. I was picking up the crumbs where I could find them. Two sources of bread. The podcasts of the aforementioned Pastors Mark and John. I was getting a vision of a very big Jesus with a very big grace for sinners from them. And the Spirit used their preaching in those days to work a gospel renaissance in my life, a miracle really. My wife can attest to that.

I read the story of this fellow talked off the bridge by a friend he didn’t know he had, recently reuniting to thank him, and I think of the strange places we find ourselves in life. I think of sitting down with Pastor John for those few minutes, his thumbing through my book and looking up the Wikipedia entry for Middletown Springs, Vermont on his Macbook. I know I’m not supposed to be a respecter of persons but I can be an admirer of them, and I can certainly be a “thanksgiver” of and for them.

Providence does make strange friendships. A black man in despair and a white cop. Two animated preachers (one a bit on the scream-o side) and a neurotic, depressed, “stuttering wimp” (to quote a girl’s appraisal of me in the 4th grade — still remember that, don’t you know). The God of the Universe and sinners.

Don’t stop preaching the gospel. And if you don’t preach the gospel, start. Then don’t stop. You don’t know whose life you are saving. Not you, really, but God.
God is in his gospel faithfully proclaimed doing his thing, talking people off bridges. Me? I’ll never forget. So I’ll never stop.

“[I]f a king be reigning somewhere,but stays in his own house and does not let himself be seen, it often happens that some insubordinate fellows, taking advantage of his retirement, will have themselves proclaimed in his stead; and each of them, being invested with the semblance of kingship, misleads the simple who, because they cannot enter the palace and see the real king, are led astray by just hearing a king named. When the real king emerges, however, and appears to view, things stand differently. The insubordinate impostors are shown up by his presence, and men, seeing the real king, forsake those who previously misled them. In the same way the demons used formerly to impose on men, investing themselves with the honor due to God. But since the Word of God has been manifested in a body, and has made known to us His own Father, the fraud of the demons is stopped and made to disappear; and men, turning their eyes to the true God, Word of the Father, forsake the idols and come to know the true God.

“Now this is proof that Christ is God, the Word and Power of God. For whereas human things cease and the fact of Christ remains, it is clear to all that the things which cease are temporary, but that He Who remains is God and very Son of God, the sole-begotten Word.”

– Athanasius, On the Incarnation

For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
– 1 Chronicles 16:6

“For I know that the Lord is great,
and that our Lord is above all gods.
Whatever the Lord pleases, he does,
in heaven and on earth,
in the seas and all deeps.
He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth,
who makes lightnings for the rain
and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.”
– Psalm 135:5-7

What follows is the manuscript for a talk titled “The Gospel and Marital Sexuality” that I presented at the Men and Women of Wisdom Conference last weekend in Hingham, Massachusetts. The audio of the talk will be released shortly, I am told. I want to stress that this is my preaching manuscript, not a transcript of all I said, so there will be some differences. There is of course a bit more fleshing out in the preaching audio than in what I pre-composed for my reference’s sake. But since I’ve received some requests for the manuscript, I present it below — after the jump, as they say — for anyone’s interest and, I hope, their blessing.
Continue

Today is Ascension Day, traditionally marked on the 40th day after Easter Sunday. The doctrine of Christ’s ascension has many implications. Here are just five.

1. Jesus is really alive.

The reality of Christ’s ascension, inextricable from the resurrection event, tells us that he did not raise from the dead only later to die again like Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, Eutychus, or Tabitha. Jesus’ body will not be found because he took its glorified tangibility to heaven.

2. Heaven is thicker than earth.

We tend to think of heaven as the ethereal place of disembodied spirits. And in a way it is. But Elijah is there. And Enoch. And so is the risen, glorified, incarnate Christ. Jesus is there, taking up material space. He is touchable, present. Clearly, heaven is not less real than earth but more. It is a thicker reality than our four-dimensional space, more vibrant, more colorful, more real.

3. God’s plan for human dominion of earth is being realized.

The first Adam and his helper Eve were charged with filling the earth and subduing it. They screwed it up. But God’s plans cannot be thwarted. Man will reflect God’s glory in dominion over creation. In the Incarnation, then, God sends his only Son to right the course, reverse the curse, and begin the restoration of all things. The second Adam does the job, and even in his glorification, the incarnational “miracle of addition” (see below) persists, fulfilling God’s plan for man to reflect divine glory in dominion over creation. The God-Man, who is the radiance of the glory of God, rules over the earth and is even now subduing his enemies. “The ascension means that a human being rules the universe” (Tim Keller). Just as God planned.

4. The Incarnation is an enduring miracle.

The Incarnation was a humbling of God’s Son, but not a lessening of him. As I’ve argued in Gospel Deeps, the Son maintained his omnipresence even in his Incarnation. (Historical theologians have traditionally called this perspective the extra calvinisticum.) But what the ascension means is that Jesus Christ forever remains the Christ who is Jesus. He did not revert back to intangibility. But his ascended incarnational state then is not an eternal limitation but a part of his ongoing efforts to fill all things. He takes up more space in the heavens and the earth now, not less. The Incarnation is a miracle with no expiration date.

5. The ascension is gospel for sinners!

Why? Because if, among the many things the gospel means, it means we are united with Christ through faith, it also means that where he is we will be also. It means we will go to heaven in spirit, and heaven will come to us in body. The ascension is the full fruition of the promise of Christ’s resurrection being the firstfruits of our own. The ascension means the gospel is better news than we even thought, gooder than good! Because it holds out the promise, the blessed hope, not just of life after death, but as N.T. Wright says, life after life after death. What a gracious God we have!

Pastor Matt Kruse of 7 Mile Road Church near Boston reflects on turning 40 and being spectacularly unspectacular for the kingdom:

I am thankful for men and women who leave a global, historical mark for Jesus.

But for most of us, life will be a lot less spectacular.

And we should be good with that. Wait, thrilled is a better word.

Question: Instead of obsessing about changing the world, what if we just gave ourselves to living in glad obedience to Jesus in the trenches of an ordinary life?

For me, this means:

loving a particular wife (the one I vowed to love, in all of her awesomeness and sinfulness)

raising two sons and two daughters to know and fear and love God with all they’ve got

loving my neighbors as they are given to me in different seasons of life

plying a trade as well as I can (which happens to be, in my case, for some reason, planting a church-planting church that I hope will result in the next 10 years with seeing 1500 Bostonians believing the gospel together, which I am excited about, and which I don’t think betrays the thrust of this post: I am not saying don’t be ambitious about what the Spirit might do through you; I am saying don’t miss the glory of a well-lived, simple life.)

working hard to be a faithful witness to the grace and glory of Jesus in greater Boston for however many years he gives me.

In other words, Matthew Kruse’s “ceiling,” even if I hit it, will not make for a very sexy Wikipedia page.

What it will make for is some small number of people who were not ignored by me on the way to some unattainable pipe dream, but instead loved and compelled to believe and revel in Jesus and His Gospel. I need to be content with that.

Go read the whole thing.