The Gospel Coalition

Counterfeit Gospels wasn’t the book I initially wanted to write, but it’s now the book I’m glad I wrote.

The Development of a Book Idea

As I wrapped up work on Holy Subversion, I remember thinking: Well, Trevin, this is it! Your first and last book. There’s no way you could come up with enough material to write another book. Writing is hard work. You pour so much of yourself into a book that when you finish, you doubt you could ever do it again.

Over time, that feeling went away. About a year after I completed Holy Subversion, I got to work on a second proposal. My idea was to lead readers through twelve chapters of theology in a way that underscores the breathtaking beauty of Truth – particularly the truth of the gospel and the grand narrative of Scripture. I titled the idea Beautiful Truth, a concept based on a post I had written called “Truth is Beautiful.”

Several publishers liked the concept, but the consensus was that my sample chapter was focused so much on getting the “truth” component right that I had failed to make it exceedingly “beautiful”. So, I went back to my notepad and began working on a sample chapter that would magnify the beauty of the atonement. I worked hard to make the sample chapter more devotional and less didactic. (Parts of that chapter eventually were included in Counterfeit Gospels.)

A New Direction

At the end of the day, the editors at Moody were very intrigued by the proposal. After a lot of discussion, they passed on Beautiful Truth but offered a different idea – a book that describes counterfeit gospels in light of the beauty of the gospel.

I had mixed emotions at the thought of writing a book on counterfeit gospels. At one level, I was excited at the prospect of writing about the beauty of the biblical gospel. I had been collecting dozens of “gospel definitions” on my blog from Christians throughout church history. I was encouraged by the “gospel-centered” movement and the ongoing discussions about the gospel, particularly how kingdom, justification, Christ as Savior, Christ as Lord make up the good news at the heart of our faith.

At another level, I was a leery of writing a book that would be focused on what’s wrong with everybody else. I didn’t want to encourage the huddle mentality that says, “We’re the only faithful ones who’ve got a hold on the true gospel.” I don’t believe we ever completely get a hold on the true gospel; the most we can pray for is that the God of the gospel would get a hold on us. But I thought there might be a pastoral way to move forward.

Tweaking the Idea

The initial idea of “counterfeit gospels” was to examine at a scholarly level some of the errant views of the gospel circulating in the ivory-tower of evangelicalism. I wasn’t interested in writing that kind of book, since I was convinced others could tackle that problem better than me.

Instead, I wanted to do two things:

1. First, I wanted this book to present a compelling view of the biblical gospel so that common counterfeits would be less attractive.
2. Secondly, I wanted to deal with common counterfeits that are attractive to me and the people in my local church. I wanted to look deeply into our hearts and root out those counterfeits that tug at us in some way.

In other words, I didn’t want this book to be: “What’s wrong with everyone out there?” but “What counterfeits are affecting me in here, in my own heart and life?”

What are the counterfeits that we encounter on television, in bookstores, in conversation, in church? In short, I wanted the book to be pastoral in tone and intent.

The Central Idea: The Gospel as a Three-Legged Stool

In developing the central idea, I worked through my long list of gospel definitions. I read widely on the subject of “what is the gospel?” and studied how the word “gospel” is used in the New Testament.

Eventually, I began to see the contours of the truth at the heart of the book: the gospel as a three-legged stool. I’ll save the details of this proposal for a blog post next week. For now, the central idea can be summarized this way: the gospel is an announcement made in the context of a story, and the announcement births the community.

After doing the constructive work of seeing the gospel through the lens of story, announcement, and community, I set out to show how each counterfeit (I narrowed the list to six) focuses on one leg of that stool. My purpose in doing the constructive work before analyzing the counterfeits was so that we might be gripped by the true gospel in a way that exposes the flaws and faults of the counterfeits and thus weakens their attractive power.

The Book Comes Together

During the summer of 2010, I finished the book’s outline and began working on the content. Matt Chandler graciously agreed to write the foreword. Once the book was complete, a number of leaders I respect endorsed the book.

Now, the book is out of my hands. In just a couple months, it will be available. I pray every morning that God would lead His people to bask in the beauty of the biblical gospel in such a way that the many counterfeits would lose their luster. I am praying that the book would lead to missional living that comes from hearts enflamed with love for Jesus the Savior.

Like I said, Counterfeit Gospels wasn’t the book I initially wanted to write, but now it is the book I’m glad I wrote. I pray God uses it for His purposes and the good of His kingdom.

30 Ways to Bust Out of Writer’s Block:

Here are 30 different exercises I’ve used to get my piece rolling when it’s not coming to me easily (in no particular order). Some of these relate to writing blog posts, some articles.

Steps to Grace-Driven Marriage:

What Christians who claim to love the gospel should want is a marriage that makes as much of Jesus as possible.

Thom Rainer:

It’s cliché. But it’s true. Life can change in a second. Our neatly ordered plans are not always realized. Our dreams can seemingly be dashed in a moment, a blink of the eye.

Jess and Rachel Rainer woke up on February 3 with excitement and anticipation. They had moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee to plant a church. Jess was doing radio interviews about his book that he co-authored with me, The Millennials. And, more than anything else, they were soon expecting their second son, William Thomas Rainer. February 3 was also the date of a doctor’s appointment for Rachel. The doctor told Rachel in her previous appointment that she wanted to check a couple of items, but she really wasn’t that concerned. But the news was bad.

David Rogers reviews the new edition of Operation World:

My copy of the 2010 seventh edition of Operation World just arrived in the mail. For those of you who are not familiar with Operation World, but have a love for missions and a desire to see the Great Commission fulfilled, you need to get familiar with it. Operation World, in addition to being the quintessential prayer guide for world evangelization and missions, is likely, in many aspects, the best source available for getting a good overall picture of what God is doing around the world today.

Professor Richard Bauckham will deliver lectures on “The Gospels as Histories: What Sort of History Are They?” at Southern Seminary this week. Bauckham is Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and is a renowned New Testament scholar. You can watch a live stream of the lectures on Southern’s website.

“Making a hospital visit to a suffering family makes more of an impact than the three points you made in your message on Sunday.”

Occasionally, I hear statements like this at pastors’ conferences and preaching seminars. The idea? Pastoral presence is more important than a pastor’s preaching. The implication? It’s better to spend less time worrying about your preaching and more time engaging people at a personal level.

Sounds good. But it’s shortsighted. And ultimately unhelpful.

Sure, there are pastors who spend all day in the study and never among the people. Those kinds of pastors need to be prodded out the door so they can better serve the flock. (Not to mention that being with the flock greatly enhances your preaching!)

It’s also true that most of your congregation already forgot the main points from your sermon last week. And yes, church members will long remember your presence during their time of crisis. But the point of your preaching isn’t that everyone will remember all the information you present anyway. Neither should preaching preparation be forgotten in the attempt to increase one’s pastoral presence.

No, instead we need to consider the relationship between preaching and presence in a way that measures impact beyond what is immediate, powerful, and memorable. That’s why I say: Do not downplay the long-term, cumulative effect of your preaching.

Preaching is formative in ways that go beyond mere information retention. Every time a pastor opens up the Word and preaches the gospel, he is showing his church how to approach the Bible. Pastors who elevate the Scriptures week after week, sermon after sermon, lead their people to approach the Bible in the same way.

A Personal Example

From the time I was nine years old until I left for Romania at the age of 19, I belonged to a church where the pastor (Ken Polk) preached expository sermons every week. I remember the first (and second) time he took us through the Gospel of John. I still remember his 1 Corinthians series, or his sermons from Judges.

Of course, this pastor was also by our side when we had our first child. He has comforted us amidst trial and loss. He is a pastor, after all, not just a preacher. But I dare say – his Word-centeredness as a preacher is what made his pastoral presence so powerful during our time of trial. His presence was enhanced by his preaching.

I cannot calculate the formative influence that this pastor’s preaching has had on my life. For ten years, I listened to Bro. Ken preach. 10 years. 50 weeks a year. 2 times a week. That’s 1000 sermons.

No, I don’t remember the information contained in the vast majority of those sermons. I don’t remember all the titles or the points. But I have no doubt that his preaching has greatly impacted my life.

• I approach the text the way he does, looking to discover what’s there, not invent what’s not.
• I see Christ in the Scriptures because he saw Christ there.
• I respect the Bible because of the way he always made the purpose of the text more prominent than the personality of the messenger.
• We are on the same page theologically because he consistently preached a theology that came from the page.

An exhortation to pastors

Pastors, don’t underestimate the cumulative effect of your preaching. You are not dumping information into brains. You are forming the habits of your people, teaching them how to read and understand and apply the Bible for themselves. How you preach week after week matters just as much as what you preach.

Weekly confrontation with the Word of God slowly changes how we look at the world. We see God more clearly, our human state, and the future of the world within the Bible’s framework, even if we don’t remember all the information in an individual message. Sermons gradually change the way we think and feel and believe and hope.

Yes, your presence at the funeral home and the hospital bed is vital. It matters greatly. But there’s a reason why your presence during suffering is so powerful: The Word. A pastor’s visit is unique because the pastor is the one who speaks authoritatively from God’s Word week in and week out. That’s why Christians want their pastor to be by their side, and not just a fellow church member.

So let’s not pit pastoral presence against sermon preparation. Your preaching influences your presence, and vice versa. May the Lord open our eyes to see the quiet, subtle influence that 1000 sermons have on the people God has entrusted to our care.

The Final Interview of C.S. Lewis:

It was quickly evident that this interview was going to be different from any that I had ever been granted. I found Mr. Lewis in a wing of the brick quadrangle at Magdalene College, Cambridge University, where he is professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature. I climbed a flight of narrow, incredibly worn wooden steps, knocked at an ancient wooden door with the simple designation, “Prof. Lewis,” and was shown in by the housekeeper.

Not everybody in Russia is in love with Valentine’s Day:

Authorities in Belgorod province are urging schools and other state institutions to refrain from celebrations marking the heart-shaped holiday, seen by some conservative Russians as a unhealthy foreign phenomenon.

What Lincoln meant to the slaves:

Scholars and the interested public have long debated Lincoln’s views on slavery and how they influenced his policies as president. How committed was he to abolition? What was he prepared to do? Could he imagine a world in which white and black people lived together in peace and freedom? For many slaves, at least at first, the answer was clear: Lincoln’s election meant emancipation.

Egypt’s Christians after Mubarak:

Many Christian leaders believe that the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic political group banned in Egypt, will grow in political power with Mubarak’s ouster. The brotherhood maintains strong support among some Egyptians. Religious-freedom analysts believe the leaders of the brotherhood, famous for the slogan “Islam is the solution,” could very well usher in repression of all minority religious groups.

Lord Jesus, let me know myself and know You, and desire nothing but You.
Let me hate myself and love You.
Let me do everything for the sake of You.
Let me humble myself and exalt You.
Let me think of nothing except You.
Let me die to myself and live in You.
Let me accept whatever happens as from You.
Let me banish self and follow You, and ever desire to follow You.
Let me fly from myself and take refuge in You,
That I may deserve to be defended by You.
Let me fear for myself.
Let me fear You, and let me be among those who are chosen by You.
Let me distrust myself and put my trust in You.
Let me be willing to obey for the sake of You.
Let me cling to nothing save only to You,
And let me be poor because of You.
Look upon me, that I may love You.
Call me that I may see You, and for ever enjoy You.

- Augustine

Clarifying “Wonderful Plan” Language

- God’s “wonderful plan” for Christians may include times of suffering and persecution whereby we become more conformed to the image of Christ.

- The better, more biblical place to begin is to affirm that “God has a wonderful plan, period.” Salvation is not primarily about God’s plan for my life, but about God’s renewal of everything. It is only within the vision of the glorious new world that God has promised that we find the strength to cope with the fact that God may have a very difficult plan for our lives!

If you have ever looked at the backside of a quilt or a tapestry, you see that there seems to be no overall design or pattern. The quilt looks strange, without purpose or direction. But once you turn it around, you see how the individual patterns make up something that is beautiful.

Our lives do not always seem wonderful. But rather than trying to see what wonderful plan God has for giving us our best life now, Christians trust that the picture God is painting will be beautiful, so we look to experiencing our best life later. God has a wonderful plan, and because of his grace, we are part of that plan.

- from Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals

Seven links for your weekend reading:

1. Union with Christ: A Crash Course

2. Questions I Hope No One Will Ask: “Will God Protect My Children?”

3. How to Write a Sentence

4. Confessions of a Bibliophile

5. To Be Forgotten

6. Strokes are rising fast among young, middle-aged

7. God, Egypt, and the Fear of Freedom

Today, I’m privileged to have Collin Hansen and J.D. Greear join me for a conversation about ministry to Muslims and the boundaries of contextualization.

Collin wrote the February 2011 cover story for Christianity Today, “The Son and the Crescent”, which chronicles the debate over how best to translate the title “Son of God” in Arabic.

J.D. is pastor of Summit Church in Raleigh, NC and author of Breaking the Islam Code: Understanding the Soul Questions of Every Muslim. (See my review of the book, as well as a Q&A with J.D.)

Trevin Wax: Because of immigration and demographics, the landscape of the United States is quickly changing. Evangelicals have an unprecedented opportunity to share the gospel with Muslim friends and neighbors. Many Christians have answered God’s call to foreign fields to minister among Muslims, sometimes in places they cannot name for fear of retribution. At the same time, the increase in mission work in Muslim countries has been accompanied by a major debate over how much contextualization is possible without compromising core Christian convictions.

Collin, your recent cover story in Christianity Today records the debate surrounding the translation of “Son of God” and why some missionaries advocate other renderings. Can you start us off by briefly summarizing the discussion about how to translate “Son of God” and why it matters?

Collin Hansen: According to missionaries and translators in the field, nothing is so offensive to Muslims as the idea that God has a Son. They mistakenly assert that Christians believe God the Father had sexual relations with Mary.

Missionaries often avoid discussing Jesus’ sonship when sharing the gospel with Muslims, at least in their early interactions, in order to prevent the conversation from halting at an early roadblock. But translators cannot avoid this concept, for the Gospels are full of references to Jesus as the Son of God.

Trevin Wax: What has been the result of downplaying the concept of Jesus as the Son of God?

Collin Hansen: I learned from informed sources that some translations adopting a non-literal rendering of “Son of God” have contributed to growing numbers of Christians in predominantly Muslims countries. Presumably Muslims are willing to learn more about the God of the Bible when not immediately confronted by a phrase that offends them.

The question, though, is whether you can accurately convey Jesus’ sonship with less literal phrases than “Son of God,” such as “spiritual Son of God” or “beloved Son who comes from God.”

Trevin Wax: There’s a similar debate surrounding the use of “Allah” as the name for God in Arabic-speaking contexts. Some missionaries don’t want to use the Arabic for Jesus (Isa) or God (Allah), because they believe these titles are so connected to Islamic notions that they cannot be properly unpacked in a Christian context.

J.D., you did mission work in a predominantly Islamic country. How did you decide how best to address this issue?

J.D. Greear: Personally, I do not have a problem using the Arabic words for Jesus (Isa) and Allah (God). By “Isa” Muslims mean the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth and by “Allah” they mean the one Creator God, the God of Adam and Abraham and the prophets.

Our role, I believe, is to show Muslims where they are in error in their understanding of God. When Jesus confronted the Samaritan woman at the well, he did not tell her that she worshipped a different God. He told her that she didn’t know the God she thought she worshipped, and that He could teach her what God was really like.

Likewise, when the Jews of the Apostles day rejected Jesus (and thus the Trinity) the Apostles did not say that those Jews were worshipping an entirely different God, nor did they insist on calling God by a new Greek name. They simply maintained to the Jews that in rejecting Jesus they had rejected the very God they thought they knew.

Trevin Wax: Isn’t it true that plenty of non-Christians in our own context have errant conceptions of “God”? Many people envision God in Deistic fashion, the elderly grandfather somewhat distant from our life. Yet, we don’t change the English terminology for “God” in our evangelism; instead, we seek to fill that term with Christian content, right?

J.D. Greear: Yes. That’s why I don’t think we need to get hung up on the fact that Muslims have previously assigned wrong definitions to the words “Allah” and “Isa.” Our English word “God” has roots in the German “Gott,” a name often associated with a pagan tribal deity. Every time we use the word “God,” we are using a name that had its origins in idolatry. But when we use the word “God” today, we mean the one, Almighty Creator of heaven and earth.

That said, I think the questions of which names to use is more of a practical question, not so much a theological one. If a missionary determines that those to whom he is speaking just cannot separate “Isa” and “Allah” from the wrong conceptions Muslims have about God, I think they should feel free to use the Greek or Latin translations of those names instead.

Collin Hansen: Following Jesus’ example does indeed help us think through these issues more clearly. He understood that contextualization isn’t merely our ability to understand and respond to the nuances of every distinct culture.

Rather, he showed that we can relate to every human being in every culture by responding in truth and love to humanity’s universal need for a Savior from their sins. We should reject any and all evangelistic strategies that claim to unlock the secret to reach a culture but do not deal with this fundamental separation between Creator and creation.

Trevin Wax: So – whether or not you agree with the translation choices – you are saying that these missionaries are genuinely seeking to faithfully proclaim the gospel in a difficult context.

Collin Hansen: That’s right. The missionaries and translators I talked to said they wanted to help make God’s Word more comprehensible. They did not intend, as far as I could tell, to change the essential shape of Christianity to accommodate Muslims.

In fact, they see themselves following in the footsteps of missionary pioneer William Carey. When he translated the Bible into Bengali in 1809, he used the Hindu word for the supreme being, Ishwar, to refer to God. At the time, critics charged him with making a fatal compromise in the name of comprehension. Now we view him as a hero.

Trevin Wax: What about the debate over translating “Son of God”? This topic moves beyond Arabic translations of names to the question of how we can accurately transfer difficult concepts from culture to culture.

J.D. Greear: I do not believe that moderating the “Son of God” language in Scripture is allowable or helpful.

Trevin Wax: Why not?

J.D. Greear: Evangelicals believe the Bible is verbally inspired, meaning that not only concepts but individual words were chosen by the Holy Spirit. That means that Biblical analogies are chosen by God, and for reasons known ultimately only to Him. Altering the metaphor tampers with God’s self-revelation, and thus tampers with the formation of the faith itself in our hearts. Diluting the Sonship of God must also necessarily dilute the Father’s Fatherhood, a central component in biblical faith, and one that Muslims deeply yearn for (even though they may not recognize it).

Trevin Wax: So you’re saying that there are certain metaphors or expressions that need to be translated as literally as possible.

J.D. Greear: Yes. For example… Years ago I encountered in a journal a story about some missionaries who had gone to live in a Polynesian tribe where the pig was the sacred animal. This had never seen or heard about sheep. Some missionaries thus began to translate “Jesus the Lamb of God” as “Jesus the Swine of God.”

The problems with such a substitution should be obvious. Lambs have certain characteristics that God found useful in communicating His attributes to us, and simply substituting “lamb” for “favorite animal” or “lion” for “powerful, scary animal” seems to me to dilute the truth more than to help it.

Trevin Wax: What do you say, though, to the missionary who wants to remove this offensive language when preaching the gospel?

J.D. Greear: Muslims aren’t the first culture to be offended by the truth of the Gospel.

One might argue that Americans would be more likely to believe in Jesus if His teachings on exclusivity and sexual purity were muted or at least downplayed a little. The Samaritans would have been more likely to accept Jesus’ Lordship had He hidden His Jewish roots. But He plainly told the woman at the well “salvation is of the Jews.” To hide the Jewishness of the biblical faith may have won Him a convert more quickly, but it would also hinder the woman from developing true Biblical faith.

Collin Hansen: I hear what you’re saying, J. D., about expecting the gospel to confront and offend every culture.

Robert Yarbrough, a NT scholar who frequently works among former Muslims in Africa, said as much in my article. Islam and Christianity are radically different. “In one,” Yarbrough told me, “God is utterly transcendent and unknowable and without peer or parallel of any kind in creation. He is, quite simply, inscrutable; we cannot call him ‘Father’ and so forth. The God of Abraham and of David and of Jesus is not like this. The ‘Son of God’ language in the New Testament is the tip of an iceberg.”

At the same time, we need to acknowledge that none of us reads the Bible just as God said it. (Certainly not now that I’ve forgotten some of the Koine Greek Dr. Yabrough taught me in seminary.) Even our more literal translations take liberties with the ancient languages so we can understand God’s Word today.

To be sure, we should not jettison “Son of God” just because Muslims don’t like it. But might it be okay to explain Jesus as “the Beloved Son who comes (or originates) from God” if that helps avoid the ignorant initial opposition to reading Scripture?

J.D. Greear: Yes, Collin, that is fair, and perhaps I should have been a bit more tempered in my response. Those making the translation are not trying to obscure the fact that God is a Trinity, merely to communicate Jesus’ Sonship in a way that avoids some of the baggage.

Translators for years have struggled to put Greek and Hebrew concepts into words that cultures very far removed from the original context could understand. That said, it seems in this case that the additional/altered wording is not designed to make the original language clearer, but to obscure it (for the purpose of avoiding offense).

“Son of God” is not just a phrase to translate, but a dominant theme of Matthew and John. By pre-qualifying the title, we are pre-determining what people think when they see the phrase from there on out. “Spiritual Son of God” and “Beloved Son who comes (or originates) from God” certainly make the point that Jesus was not the offspring of sexual union, but do they not, at the same, limit the other ways Jesus relates to the 1^st Person of the Trinity as Father?

Trevin Wax: That’s my concern. Not that missionaries are denying Christ’s divinity, but that they are unintentionally altering our view of the Father-Son relationship so prominent in the Gospels.

J.D. Greear: Right. Jesus’ Sonship is not just “spiritual,” it is positional; Jesus does not merely “originate from” or “come from” God, He is God. I realize that “Son of God” does not make either of those points definitively, but it also does not limit them in the way “spiritual Son” or “Beloved Son who comes from” does.

So again, I’d rather err on the side of a much more literal translation than a translation that limits (and in some ways obscure) the author’s original meeting. I think the translator’s role should be to make the original intent as clear as possible.

Trevin Wax: So how would you recommend that we maintain “Son of God” and yet avoid the connotations that many Muslims have when they hear that title?

J.D. Greear: Why not keep the more literal translation as the text and put a footnote beside the text that explains what the passage does and doesn’t mean? Isn’t that where textual and study notes have historically been placed?

Trevin Wax: Is there any justification for avoiding “Son of God” language when ministering to Muslims?

J.D. Greear: I do think that because Muslims have such a misunderstanding of what Christians mean by Sonship, there is wisdom in leading with the equally-Biblical metaphors for Jesus such as “the Messiah” or “the Word.” These resonate more with Muslims and with less baggage, and I have found leading with them to be very helpful.

But when I place in their hands the Word of God, I want them to read it just as God said it. And what does the Muslim, who has been taught that even the pronunciation of the words of the Koran are inspired by God, do when he finds out that we felt the freedom to moderate the wisdom of the Almighty?

Trevin Wax: What about the reports of Muslims coming to Christ because of the ministries of these missionaries who choose to tweak the “Son of God” title?

J.D. Greear: As to the report that Muslims are coming to Christ more quickly in places where Bible translations downplay the Son of God, I am not really in a position to comment, as I have no access to those facts. That said, I am somewhat cautious about those kind of evidential claims, as everyone seems to have stories and evidence as to why their approach is the best.

God has chosen which images by which to reveal Himself, and His resurrection power accompanies those words. What Muslims most need is the regenerating power of God, and that power is found in His word. We cannot escape the need to contextualize the message, but when our contextualization causes us to compromise our doctrine of the Word of God, we have gone too far.

99 Words that Shakespeare invented

Ed Stetzer: The Son of God and Ministry to Muslims:

We had a good conversation in response to Collin Hanson’s article in Christianity Todayregarding ministry to Muslims and some how to approach the translation of “son of God.” In response to some of the material covered in that article, and other articles by Rick brown my friend, “Rod,” offers his thoughts below…

The four indispensable qualities of good preaching:

It seems to me there are four indispensable qualities of good preaching. You can have faithful preaching without all four, but truly good preaching-the kind that resonates with people and the kind God tends to employ to bless his people and convert sinners-will have these four attributes.

Super Bowl XLV Breaks Viewing Records:

History was made last night on FOX when Super Bowl XLV became the most-watched U.S. television program ever, and FOX became the first network ever to exceed 100 million viewers (100.9 million) for a night in prime time, according to fast-national ratings released today by Nielsen Media Research.