Brief notes on three books I’ve read recently:

Moral Apologetics for Contemporary Christians:
Pushing Back Against Cultural and Religious Critics
Mark Coppenger (B&H Academic)
My Rating: ****

Mark Coppenger believes Christians should not shy away from our ethical heritage when defending Christian truth claims. Instead, we should consider the ways in which a Christian ethic intersects with Christian apologetics. If true ideas bring life to society, one should expect life and culture to flourish where Christianity is embraced. Coppenger’s writing is feisty and persuasive as he argues for Christianity’s moral superiority. Here’s how Coppenger opens the book:

Foes of the faith often declare Christianity morally deficient… This book is designed to push back against such criticism, arguing that Christianity is morally superior as well as true. I will note uncomfortable realities, including the misbehavior of many Christians (and false professors) but will seek to demonstrate that the moral and cultural center of genuine Christianity is clearly superior to that of its competitors.

Beautiful Outlaw:
Experiencing the Playful, Disruptive, Extravagant Personality of Jesus
John Eldredge (FaithWords)
My Rating: **

The newest book from John Eldredge seeks to surprise readers with the powerful personality of Jesus. Eldredge is at his best when describing the awe-inspiring nature of Christ’s incarnation and humility. Unfortunately, he tends to pit Christ’s immanence against God’s transcendence, as well as Jesus against the church. The end result is largely a “me and Jesus” Christianity that focuses on personal experience more than God’s Word.

Good to Great:
Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
Jim Collins (Harper Business), 2001
My Rating: *****

This book was an eye-opener for me. It explains the success of Walgreens, Kroger, and other organizations that left their competition behind as they delivered unprecedented, sustained results.

What makes this book more helpful than other business books is that Collins didn’t just research the companies that succeeded; he and his team also researched the similar companies that declined during the same period. By comparing and contrasting the companies, the team was able to discern key findings related to leadership, discipline, technology, and perseverance.

It’s worth noting that some of the findings are counterintuitive (e.g., technological innovation is an accelerator, not a creator of growth, and effective leaders tend to be humble and more focused on the good of the company than their own renown). The book is an easy read thanks to Collins’ ability to distill his research into easy-to-remember concepts and illustrations (the Hedgehog, rinsing one’s cottage cheese, and the flywheel are three that immediately come to mind and will stick with me for a long time).

(Two of these reviews were first published in Christianity Today, October 2011.)

I’m thankful for pastors like Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert and count them both as friends. I appreciate them for their rigorous thinking imbued with pastoral sensitivity and a desire to be biblically faithful.

Recently, I read their new book, What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission, an ambitious work that seeks to place the church’s mission within the framework of the Bible’s story line and the New Testament gospel. DeYoung and Gilbert focus on the Great Commission texts in order to formulate this definition of the church’s mission:

The mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship and obey Jesus Christ now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father. (241)

I am largely in agreement with this definition, but I’m puzzled by the way the book unpacks it. I agree that the mission of the church is to make disciples, but I think I pack more into the definition of “disciple-making” than DeYoung and Gilbert do.

So instead of doing a full review, I thought it might be helpful to put forth five nagging questions about I have about their proposal, in hopes that these questions continue the conversation that DeYoung and Gilbert’s book has begun:

1. Can we reduce “making disciples” and “teaching Christ’s commands” to the delivery of information?

It seems to me that DeYoung and Gilbert tend to reduce “disciple-making” to teaching and then reduce “teaching” to the transferring of information. I agree that teaching is a central part of discipleship (which is one reason I am dedicating the next few years to the development of solid biblical curriculum). At the same time, we need to recognize that teaching also takes place in mentoring, in modeling, and in collaboration with others. So wouldn’t good deeds of love and justice fit within the overall definition of “teaching”? Isn’t part of disciple-making expressed in older Christians coming alongside new believers and together doing the good deeds Christ has called us to? If so, then doesn’t the making of disciples inherently include, at least in some measure, our work in the world? At the end of the day, I don’t think we can separate “making disciples” from “loving neighbor” in the way that it seems DeYoung and Gilbert do.

2. If we agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the gospel, can we also agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the mission?

I liked DeYoung and Gilbert’s chapter on the gospel, particularly the way they distinguish between two ways of conceiving the one gospel. In DeYoung and Gilbert’s conception, the gospel of the kingdom is integrally connected to the gospel of the cross. Or put another way, the cross is the fountainhead of the blessings of the kingdom. My question is: Why not use this approach in considering the mission? Can we not conceive of the church’s mission in wide lens and zoom lens as well? Evangelism is central (zoom lens), and yet evangelism is corroborated by any number of activities (wide lens) that demonstrate the reality of our gospel proclamation.

3. Isn’t there a sense in which worship is expressed through our life in the world, not just our corporate worship services?

At the corporate level, it’s clear that worship takes place within the church’s gathering. Yet the biblical story line begins with Adam and Eve worshiping God by obeying His commands in the garden. It was their cultivation of the garden that reflected their love and praise for their Maker. So when DeYoung and Gilbert claim that worship is integral to the mission of the church and yet want to separate worship from our deeds of justice, I worry that we are failing to remember that our good work in the world is part of our obedient worship to God.

4. Even if we recognize that the verbs related to the kingdom are passive (receiving, bearing witness to, etc.), does this necessarily preclude us from speaking of “work for the kingdom”?

When people use terminology like “work for the kingdom” or “build for the kingdom,” they usually mean that their good deeds are done at the bidding of King Jesus. They are doing these things on behalf of the kingdom. DeYoung and Gilbert are hesitant to allow any of our good deeds to be seen as contributing in some way to God’s work in establishing His kingdom. I understand their concern. Yet I think that propping up an unbendable category here might suppress kingdom work rather than inspire it. I think many people in our churches are unaware of how their “labor for the Lord is not in vain.” Connecting our good deeds to the kingdom that only God will establish can be a pastorally helpful and biblically faithful way of showing the relationship between kingdom work and the church’s mission. “Working for the kingdom” does not necessarily lead to burn-out and utopianism. For most of us, it infuses our current work with passion and excitement, knowing that God will take our work and use it for His purposes.

5. Is our representation of Christ not part of the mission?

DeYoung and Gilbert believe we must represent Christ, but it seems like they connect this representation so tightly to verbal proclamation of the gospel that little room is left for representing Christ through love and good deeds. I wonder if, in addition to the Great Commission passages, we also need to consider the New Testament metaphors for the church as we seek to discern our mission. Images like Christ’s bride, Christ’s body, and the holy temple and royal priesthood help us understand that being like Jesus is part of what it means to “teach all that He has commanded.” Christ-likeness is a part of the mission, and we cannot and should not separate proclamation of Christ from the representation of Christ we offer through our acts of service.

Update: Kevin and Greg have offered some clarifying answers to these five questions here. I encourage you to read their response. This is a conversation worth having.

Notes on two books I’ve read recently:

 Destiny of the Republic:
A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
Candice Millard
Doubleday, 2011
My Rating: *****

Remember our 20th president – James A. Garfield? Chances are, you probably don’t, which is why the new history Destiny of the Republic is so informative (and fascinating!). Garfield rose above the circumstances of his birth and family pedigree to become a scholar, hero of the Civil War, and popular congressman. In 1880, as the United States was still grappling with the divisions left in the wake of the Civil War, Garfield was nominated for president against his will. Four months after he won the election, a deranged man stalked Garfield for weeks and then shot him in the back.

Amazingly enough, the shot didn’t kill Garfield. In fact, had the president been treated the way many Civil War soldiers had been treated, Garfield would probably have survived and made a full recovery. Instead, a group of physicians (including Lincoln’s doctor from the night he died) botched Garfield’s treatment by dismissing powerful new evidence regarding the need for sterilization before surgery. A lunatic shot Garfield. But medical lunacy killed him. For more than two months, Garfield’s health deteriorated until he finally succumbed to massive infection.

Candice Millard’s historical account of this turbulent time in American history is one of the best popular history books I’ve ever read. Not only did I finish it feeling like I knew James Garfield, I also enjoyed the thrilling pace of the plot development. We follow assassin Charles Guiteau as he stalks the president. We watch Alexander Graham Bell, who had recently invented the telephone, work feverishly day and night on his metal-detecting invention. We see the White House staff invent the first air conditioner in order to keep the president cool during his convalescence in the White House. We are privy to letters and historical documents that reveal the doctors’ medical debates regarding Garfield’s care. And we watch a still-fractured country unite around their wounded commander-in-chief.

(Interesting tidbit: In the train station with Garfield when he was shot was Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s oldest son. Twenty years later, he was in Buffalo, NY when William McKinley was assassinated.)

 Curation Nation:
How to Win in a World Where Consumers Are Creators
Steven Rosenbaum
McGraw Hill, 2011
My Rating: ***

Anyone can start a blog or Web site today. But finding good blogs and important information can be difficult. Like looking for a needle in a haystack, Internet users are beginning to share their findings with others through blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. In the words of author Steven Rosenbaum:

“We’re becoming a Curation Nation, a place where abundance is assumed in the world of content. There’s no shortage of content makers of all shapes and sizes. But the avalanche of content makes finding the content you’re looking for significantly harder. Accidental curation is passive, anonymous endorsement. It’s curation for the crowds.”

What’s the difference between content creation and content curation? “Curation is about selection, organization, presentation, and evolution. While computers can aggregate content, information, or any shape or size of data, aggregation without curation is just a big pile of stuff that seems related but lacks a qualitative organization.” That’s why we need the human element. Rosenbaum believes that the “tsunami of data” makes human curation more important than computerized curation.

Curation is nothing new. Reader’s Digest perfected the magazine version decades ago. The Huffington Post and Time magazine are also good examples of curation. So how should businesses respond to the rise of a “curation nation”? Rosenbaum encourages people to embrace the new order:

“The idea that you can go back to a pre-Internet world where you can create walled gardens around content, and charge for admission, is simply futile. Those who try that are going to fail.”

Curation Nation is an intriguing book about the need for editors. Rosenbaum sees a need for people who can organize material into a coherent way of seeing the world. Of special interest to me was Rosenbaum’s emphasis on curiosity, something I have written about recently.

“What are the key traits that can make you successful in the new world that’s emerging? Scott Kurnit, who founded About.com, says it’s about curiosity. He says when he hires people he asks: ‘How do I figure out whether this person is curious or not? ‘Cause if they’re curious they’ll look around the corners, and then the trick is to make sure that they … that they either don’t look too far around that corner or that they don’t stick their head out … I think about when I stick my head out on Lexington Avenue, where this car is gonna whiz by … so, you know I guess it’s curiosity with careful, carefultude.’ Careful curiosity—is that you?”

Jared Wilson’s new book Gospel Wakefulness made me think. In a good way. In the “thinking that leads to worship” kind of way. That’s why, despite a couple of concerns, I endorsed Gospel Wakefulness and I commend it to you.

In the book, Jared makes the case that Christians need not only to believe the gospel but to delight in it to the point that sin becomes increasingly bitter and Christ becomes our supreme treasure. He defines gospel wakefulness as “treasuring Christ more greatly and savoring His power more sweetly than before” (24).

But Gospel Wakefulness goes against the grain of many current evangelical books for a number of reasons. First off, it doesn’t offer church leaders any ideas for increasing excitement among church people. You won’t find anything about making the church more hip, more contemporary, more “razzle-dazzle” in the attempt to keep people’s interest. Instead, this is a book about things “of first importance.” Jared believes that church ministry isn’t about “creating experiences” but centering our teaching, our worship, and our service on the gospel. The goal is that Christians would “find themselves utterly captivated by the gospel” so that they can hardly be entertained by anything else (18).

Second, Jared doesn’t offer a checklist for “how to live in gospel wakefulness.” One of the main points of Gospel Wakefulness is that we can’t wake ourselves up. The kind of affection-filled delight that Jared writes about is something that only God in His grace can give. He writes:

Really, there are only two steps to gospel wakefulness: be utterly broken and be utterly awed. But neither of these things are things you can really do. They are things only God can do for you. (35)

Third, Jared’s prescription for gospel wakefulness begins with profound brokenness. Asking God to break you is generally not the type of prayer request suggested by many evangelical books. Jared isn’t encouraging Christians to go looking for suffering (one hardly has to search for it!). He merely wants us to see how God uses the pain of life, the punishment of sinful consequences, and persecution for one’s faith to expose our deepest longings in a way that leads us to the joys of gospel wakefulness.

Brokenness leads to renewed affections. In Piper-like fashion, Jared maintains that our problem is not that we have desires and longings but that we seek to satisfy these desires in ultimately unsatisfying things. The problem with the American church is not that we want to be entertained; it’s that too often we’re satisfied with being entertained by something less spectacular than the gospel. “The Christian who knows gospel wakefulness is entertained consistently by the unsearchable wonders of Christ,” he writes (63).

One of the most helpful sections of the book concerns freedom from the chains of “hyperspirituality.” Jared’s warnings against turning gospel freedom into zealous duty are timely. Gospel Wakefulness also explores the effects of gospel wakefulness in a local congregation, particularly how it should lead to worship-fueled evangelism in which the overflow of our hearts leads naturally to fulfilling the Great Commission. This is not evangelism done for the sake of adding a notch on the belt. It’s evangelism that flows naturally from one’s gospel-soaked heart.

Despite the wise counsel offered by Jared in this book, I have a couple of misgivings. My hesitation didn’t preclude me from endorsing and recommending the book, but I would like to register my concerns here, in hopes that they will further the conversation this book will begin.

First, Jared recounts how his passion for the gospel resulted in a decreased passion for politics. He writes:

“What was happening? I couldn’t stop talking about the holiday at the sea, and I couldn’t figure out why I should be inordinately enamored with mud pies.” (65)

On one level, I agree wholeheartedly that many Christian political activists could use a strong dose of gospel wakefulness. We need to reorient our activism around our ultimate hope and set our sights on the unshakeable kingdom that will never fade.

But Gospel Wakefulness leaves little room for the reality that for some people gospel wakefulness will be best expressed through increased political action. It was gospel wakefulness that propelled the political activism of William Wilberforce and the heroic resistance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was gospel wakefulness that led John Wesley to speak against slavery and Charles Spurgeon to do something about the orphans in his city. Church history is full of examples of gospel wakefulness resulting in political involvement, not retreat.

I worry that the results of Jared’s personal experience of gospel wakefulness might be seen as normative and thus lead people to think he is advocating a quietist gospel of retreat. Misunderstanding Jared’s intentions might lead us to think that gospel wakefulness results in Christians just sitting at the table of the Lord, savoring His goodness, while never getting up and moving outdoors into society, energized by the gospel to do good works, change laws, challenge injustice, and promote peace.

My other reservation concerns the possibility of turning gospel wakefulness into a pseudo-Wesleyan version of the “second-blessing” experience. Jared explicitly writes against setting up tiers of Christian sanctification. There is no first-class discipleship and then a second-class, etc (31). Still, his emphasis on the sudden experience of gospel wakefulness could give the impression that there are Christians and then there are Christians. There are sleeping Christians and awakened Christians. At its best, Gospel Wakefulness is a simple proposal about sanctification and growing in grace. But a misunderstanding of the book’s intentions could easily lead to unhelpful division and categorization.

Overall, I repeat what I said in my endorsement. Anyone hungry and thirsty for righteousness will be refreshed by the invigorating streams of truth that flow from Gospel Wakefulness. Jared Wilson wants Christians to delight in the gospel to the point that sin becomes bitter and Christ becomes our supreme treasure. May this book awaken your affections toward the Savior who deserves all praise.

This review was first published in Credo Magazine.

Update: Jared has responded to my two concerns in a thoughtful blog post that helps us think carefully about these things and keep the gospel central. I recommend you read his full response.

Today, I’m happy to welcome a pastor-friend of mine, J.D. Greear, to the blog to discuss his new book, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary. J.D. is pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh, NC. Gospel also includes a small-group companion piece called Gospel Revolution. 

Trevin Wax:  J.D., few people would be so bold as to call their book Gospel. (I can think of four other books with this title, but they’re all in the Bible!) But that’s what you’ve done. You’ve expressed in laypeople’s terms the type of confidence and security that comes from believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In a nutshell, what is the insight into the biblical gospel that has revolutionized your spiritual life in the past few years?

J.D. Greear: Ha, yes. I figured with a title like “Gospel,” no one could really critique it. I hope readers will forgive the hubris.

The burden behind the book is that many of us who grew up in conservative, evangelical churches have failed to avail ourselves of the power of the gospel. We know it as the forgiveness of sins but not as the power of transformation.

The Great Commandment leaves us in a dilemma: it tells us that God’s expectation of us is that we love Him with all our hearts, souls, and minds. But how can true love be commanded? Obedience without desire is drudgery, both to us and to God.

What the law cannot do, however, the gospel does. It is only as we learn of the richness and beauty of God’s love for us that we grow in love for Him. The Spirit of God uses the message of God’s acceptance of us in Christ to produce in us what religion is entirely unable to produce: a desire for God.

Nothing we are commanded to do for God will change us as much as dwelling on the news of what He has done for us.This is where so many of our church traditions have gone wrong—not in emphasizing bad things but in emphasizing good things at the expense of the gospel.

Trevin Wax: You and I come from similar backgrounds – strict observance of the letter of the law, lots of focus on rules, church standards, check-list Christianity, etc. You’ve mentioned that, in the past, even some of your mission work and pastoring was done from this kind of mindset. What was the turning point for you?

J.D. Greear: Honestly, it was listening to Tim Keller preach at the Resurgence conference about 5 years ago. I don’t want to say it was all brand new, but in that moment it felt like so many things clicked—like Luther when he described how all in a moment a flash of light burst through all these truths sown into his mind over the years and he saw how every verse, every story, had always been about justification by faith. I saw how justification by faith had always been the point—not just for salvation but sanctification as well. All the verses I had learned as a child in AWANA, the mission trips I had gone on, and the John Piper books I had read in college had been pointing at standing in hushed awe of the God of the gospel, an awe that leads to worship and then to life change.

God wasn’t just trying to correct my behavior; He was recapturing my heart—and He wouldn’t do that through a list of what I was to do for Him but through the message of what He had done for me. Tim Keller certainly was not the first one to preach the gospel to me, but in that moment, by the grace of Jesus and the power of the Spirit, it all made sense. It was my “John Wesley listening to Luther’s commentary on Romans” moment. I get emotional just thinking about it. It’s one reason I was so honored to have Tim Keller write the foreword for this book.

Trevin Wax: As I read through your book (a second time!), I paid closer attention to the “gospel prayer” you use as a tool for spiritual formation in your own life. How has this prayer helped you, and why do you recommend it to others?

J.D. Greear: I didn’t write it all at once; it developed over the course of about a year and a half as I tried to grasp what it really means to align my thinking with the gospel. I taught it in several “versions” to our church before settling on the form it is in now.

Peace, joy, radical generosity, audacious faith, and unwavering trust are all the fruits of dwelling on the gospel. I have certainly seen that in the last 5 years. That is the “secret,” if you will, of the gospel: these fruits are not produced, at the heart level, by focusing on them; they come by focusing on Jesus. That is what makes the gospel truly a “revolutionary” message.

Trevin Wax: One of the statements from that prayer is “Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.” There are some who might interpret this line as sounding a little like a prosperity-gospel teaching. I can imagine a TV preacher twisting it to mean something like Be happy in Jesus because He loves you and is with you. How does the biblical gospel keep our need for God’s approval and presence from turning into a self-centered, sentimentalized view of status-quo living?

J.D. Greear: The prosperity gospel presents God as a means to an end. Cloaked in the language of faith, it teaches us to use God as a means to the things we really love. The true gospel makes God Himself the end. Faith’s desire is not a bunch of things from God; faith is seeking more of God Himself. After all, that’s what the forgiveness of the gospel is all about: not the rewards of heaven or escape from the punishments of hell but reunion with the God in whose presence is fullness of joy. So, in saying, “You are all I need for everlasting joy,” the point is not “You are all I need to gain access to other things that will give me joy” but “You Yourself are all I need for joy.” I hope I make all this clear in the book, but you’ll just have to buy it to see (smile). 

Trevin Wax: One last question… just out of curiosity. How in the world did you manage to get Tim Keller to write the foreword?

J.D. Greear: Ha! He told me that he doesn’t do that a lot anymore, but then I told him that my book was “simultaneously better than he ever imagined but more in need of his endorsement than he’d ever dared hope,” and that seemed to win him over.

My job requires me to read, write, and edit. Off the clock, I’m juggling speaking engagements, teaching opportunities, and preaching responsibilities. All that output requires significant input. My goal is to provide teaching and resources that are spiritually edifying, theologically consistent, and biblically faithful.

Perhaps you are in a similar position. You’re a pastor expounding on the Bible three or four times a week. Or maybe you’re a blogger trying to post daily. Maybe you are a writer or an editor or an entrepreneur tasked with finding creative solutions to pressing problems. Whatever your job may be, you probably know the pressure of delivering good ideas at a moment’s notice, which means you are familiar with the days when your creative juices aren’t flowing very quickly. Like a shallow river that is parched during the heat of summer, the idea flow slows to a trickle. But other times, you can’t type fast enough. The creative juices are flowing fast and furiously, sweeping you up in the rush of inspiration.

If you want the latter picture to happen more often, then take a look at a new book by Todd Henry titled The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice(Portfolio, 2011). This is a book that is refreshingly practical while grounded in common-sense ideas that go against the grain of much organizational thought regarding creativity and output.

“Creative” as a Noun

Henry starts the book by defining the term “creative” as a noun and then applying that description to a broader group than you might expect. He writes:

“In some circles, the word ‘creative’ has recently morphed from adjective to noun. If you are one of the millions among us who make a living with your mind, you could be tagged a ‘creative.’ Every day, you solve problems, innovate, develop systems, design things, write, think, and strategize.”

He then points out the benefits and difficulties to being a creative:

“There are tremendous benefits to doing creative work. You get to add unique value, carve out your own niche in the marketplace, and watch your notions and hunches go from conception to execution; could there be any type of work more gratifying? But the flip side of this is that whether you are a designer, manager, writer, consultant, or programmer, you are required to create value each and every day without reprieve. The work never ends, and as long as there is ‘just one more thing’ to think about, finding time to rest can be difficult. Your primary tool, your mind, goes with you everywhere. If your job is to solve problems—to create—then you are always looking for new ideas. In addition, you won’t always have the option of going back to your desk to quietly brainstorm, vetting your ideas one by one. As a creative, you will regularly find yourself in situations that require you to generate brilliant ideas at a moment’s notice. This is no easy feat.”

Henry helpfully reorients our perspective on work and productivity. He shifts away from the hours you put in each day and emphasizes the value of your work. “As a creative worker, you’re not really paid for your time, you’re paid for the value you create.” Very true. And in most cases, this doesn’t lead to less work but more, since people are creating value even when they’re away from their desk. He criticizes some organizations for measuring the productivity of creative workers in much the same way they would measure the productivity of a copy machine. Harnessing creativity requires a new outlook on idea generation and implementation.

Structure and Creativity

The bulk of this proposal is directed to the creative, not the organization. The solutions Henry offers are structural. “Structure and creativity are two sides of the same coin,” he writes. “We are not capable of operating without boundaries. We need them in order to focus our creative energy into the right channels. Total freedom is false freedom. True freedom has healthy boundaries.”

Many creatives bristle at the idea of putting up boundaries, but we shouldn’t. Discipline is essential for maximizing one’s creative output.

Some of his suggestions are just common sense. For example, as a creative required to generate ideas, you should be purposeful about what ideas you are putting into your head. Likewise, creatives need to establish practices around energy management. Henry writes:

“If we are wise in our energy management, we will find that ideas emerge when we least expect them. Our minds are constantly working in the background to solve whatever problems we give them.”

Though much creative work takes place in solitude, Henry recommends that creatives “systematically engage with other people, in part to be reminded that life is bigger than your immediate problems.” Relationships are key in the creative process, both in the collaboration stage and the need for companionship.

Assassins of Creativity

Once he has offered some basic suggestions, Henry identifies the three assassins of the creative process: dissonance, fear, and expectation escalation. By “dissonance,” he is referring to the difficulty of working in an environment in which the “why” of work doesn’t line up with the “what” of day-to-day activity. He writes:

“One of the first signs of the decline of many great companies is when they fail to recognize the ‘why’ behind their day-to-day activities.”

And then this:

“A lot of wasted creative energy goes toward figuring out the system rather than toward the actual work of the organization.”

These obstacles aren’t insurmountable, however. Dissonance just needs to be minimized so that good work can move forward.

Henry is also right to mention “fear” as an assassin of creativity. Sometimes creatives can fear success as much as failure, since the bar gets moved higher with every successful endeavor. But Henry is wise to remind us: “A lifetime of mediocrity is a high price to pay for safety. Paranoia undoes greatness.” It’s better to stretch. “Know your comfort zone and work hard to stay out of it,” he advises.

Conclusion

All in all, The Accidental Creative is one of the most helpful business/leadership books that I’ve ever read. It was immediately practical to my current situation in a variety of ways. I’ve already made some changes in regard to energy management and relationship-building as a direct result of Henry’s advice. This book is a great reminder that “tremendous value can be created in incredibly small amounts of time. You invest your time, focus, and energy in important problems, and you reap a return on the other side.” Hear, hear!

Notes on two books I’ve read recently:

 Not a Fan:
Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus
Kyle Idleman (Zondervan)
***1/2

In Not a Fan, Kyle Idleman, teaching pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, critiques a nominal Christianity that distorts the historic faith, focusing on the benefits of salvation while ignoring what it costs to follow Christ.

Idleman contrasts “fans of Jesus” (those content to remain passive spectators with a Christian label) with “followers of Jesus” (those who seek a life of submission to Christ’s lordship). His book is a restatement of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on dying to oneself in order to live for Christ.

 With:
Reimagining the Way You Relate to God
Skye Jethani
**** 1/2

We were made to live with God; sin cuts us off from Him. Unfortunately, many in the church adopt a posture toward God that only exacerbates the severed relationship. We try life over God, under God, from God, or for God – each posture offering a different way to manipulate God out of fear.

Skye Jethani calls Christians back to a life of intimate communion with God, made possible only by Christ’s work on the cross. In treasuring God for who He is, we are offered an enthralling vision of life with the only One who can satisfy the deepest longings of our souls.

- These reviews were first published in Christianity Today (August-September 2011). 

I like to read memoirs, but I rarely review them on the blog. (Dick Van Dyke’s was a notable exception.) But a recent book that caught my attention is Surprised by Oxford, a memoir written by Carolyn Weber, who came to faith in Christ during her time at Oxford University. The book is one part romance, one part Christian apologetic, yet all parts beautifully written, with prose that sings and paragraphs that beg to be read a second time. Carolyn was gracious enough to join me for a blog conversation based on her book, which I highly recommend.

Trevin Wax: Carolyn, what will probably ‘surprise’ the reader of Surprised by Oxford is the idea that one would attend this university and find a Christian witness powerful enough to break through the armor of an agnostic or skeptic. Was it the seriousness of the Christianity you encountered there or the vacuity of relativism that led you to deeper reflection about God and the world? (Or if it’s both, what was the role of each?)

Carolyn Weber: I think whenever seriousness bumps up against vacuity, a storm necessarily ensues. C.S. Lewis identified joy as the “serious business of heaven.” At Oxford, I was struck not only by the intellectual rigor of many Christians I came to meet but also by their deep joy. This combination intrigued me – taking one’s faith seriously but not oneself too much so.

Oxford is a fascinating place because many forms of dialogue about faith issues (among other things) coexist. So while there is certainly hostility toward the Christian faith (as there is everywhere, especially in much of secular academia), at Oxford there are also pockets of strategic Christian thinkers, activists, or at least curious and open-minded individuals willing to consider faith at face value and as a viable form of truth.

Trevin Wax: Your mentioning joy reminds me of the way G.K. Chesterton wrote – provocative, but funny, even when discussing serious matters. I thought your memoir did a great job of capturing the wonder you felt as you slowly stumbled closer to the Christian faith. Sometimes it’s easy for people raised in church who came to faith at young ages to lose that sense of wonder. How would you counsel someone who believes the gospel but has lost some of the joy associated with a rich Christian faith?

Carolyn Weber: This is a great question, and I think you are right to use the word “joy.” I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this topic lately (and was about to publish a new post on it), so your question is also timely.

Joy is not the same thing as happiness, nor is it contentment either. Rather, I think, joy runs so deep and clear, or blazes so bold and bright, precisely because it is purely a gift of God to His people. There is nothing we alone, without God, can do to generate, orchestrate, predict, secure, or micromanage it.

Without having a relationship with Christ, experiencing joy can certainly throw into relief our ache for such redemption through unspeakably immense mercy and love. It is even a means by which we are drawn closer to God. But for believers, joy not only reminds us of the eternal glory of God, it also re-members us into the body of Christ, in terms of communion and community. And so for Christians, I think it is possible to experience intense joy even in the midst of great sadness, loss, or isolation, perhaps even more so at times because of them. As a result, these spots of joy help us love and encourage – our only language for it, really, as joy is hard to “speak.”

Trevin Wax: I like how you are connecting joy to the body of Christ. One of the interesting aspects of your memoir is how you moved from being resistant to and even repelled by evangelical Christians at the beginning to being open to believers and their worship services, even before you came to Christ. How central was Christian friendship and Christian worship in your journey from agnosticism to faith? How might you encourage others to see these two pillars as a means of evangelism?

Carolyn Weber: Christian friendship and worship are indeed two pillars of sharing the gospel, and they were certainly key components in my journey to faith. I had the blessing of meeting many engaging, dynamic believers early in my quest and then being led to churches that were intelligently, sensitively, and unapologetically evangelical.

For many of us living in mainstream culture, maybe even because of mainstream culture, Jesus can seem remote, unknowable, even irrelevant. But when you meet and begin to engage with thoughtful followers of Christ, folks who not only purposely examine and grow in their faith but who also model it in a myriad of ways, well, that’s a powerful testimony. You can see the eternal life-giving water of Scripture at work in “real time”; you can put your hand in the wound, so to speak, and be transformed.

Christians should never underestimate the power of their priesthood among nonbelievers. I was hooked, and drawn deeper into the faith, by the character of various believers and how it spoke of their God: by their humility, humor, compassion, perspective, even priorities.

Christian worship echoes this, so that liturgy, or tradition, becomes alive, a deeply reverent relevance to our own lives. I tried to capture it in my chapter titled “Church Going.” Worship can be an alienating experience at first for a seeker or new believer; I think the savvier a church can be about creating a comfort zone in which people feel safe to explore and ask questions, the better. And yet a balance must be struck, and Biblical truths must not only be taught but upheld by the Church itself as an extension of Christian friendship and fellowship, even when this makes people uncomfortable in the face of what the world says.

Trevin Wax: Was there any particular doctrine or Christian teaching that you had difficulty accepting?

Carolyn Weber: Eternal damnation is not one of my personal favorites, though I do think of not having a personal relationship with Christ as pretty hellish in the very here and now. I have been haunted by the old arguments, such as what happens to the person who hasn’t “heard” the gospel, when babies die, etc., etc. As I ask in my book, how can heaven be heaven without those I love in it?

Since becoming a believer, scholarship such as Randy Alcorn’s or John Piper’s or Dallas Willard’s has helped me with such hauntings. In the end, however, I have to ultimately trust in God’s goodness and that His judgment and design and plans therefore must be more perfect and just than I could ever conceive. So, as I like to say, and truly mean, thank God I’m not God!

Trevin Wax: What do you hope your book will accomplish?

Carolyn Weber: I pray that the book touches hearts as readers come through the looking glass with me into Oxford. I hope that some will be startled – or at the very least, invited – into the abundant-life-everlasting of Christ, and I hope that others will deepen an already existing relationship and be encouraged to help others toward and along the path.

I pray, too, that the reading net is cast wide. This may seem obvious, but when I look back at my own educational experience in mainstream North American society, I am shocked and saddened at the lack of opportunities our schools and other forums of “ideas” offer for the young in particular to learn about faith, to even consider it a place from which to make informed decisions about their lives. Given my own experiences and varied relationships, I don’t feel particularly pigeonholed in my life; I tried to include characters and scenes that reflected this reality for me in the book.

I hope this way of trying to live in the world but not of it also speaks of how greatly I admire Jesus’ preference for discernment over discrimination. All we need to do is open the Bible to find identification with ourselves and reconciliation with God. We can find every single facet of our beings there, literally, I believe, every single one. So when God, the great Author Himself, enters the story as a character crucified to save the very reader, He not only makes the Word flesh but reconciles the dissatisfactions and satisfactions of being human with the perfect Holy Spirit moving among us, breathing within us. “The kingdom of God is within you,” He whispers, shouts, signs, teaches, reminds: “you know the way to the place where I am going.” When we have the courage, trust, or enough beseechment of wisdom to look (whether long and hard or short and clear) into our hearts, we do know the way. Absolutely.

Yesterday, we began looking at Scot McKnight’s provocative new book, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Zondervan, 2011), in which he gives us his answer to the important question: “What is the gospel?” I laid out four points of agreement with Scot’s proposal.

1. Evangelicalism has a problem, and the problem goes back to our conception of the evangel itself.
2. Going back to the Bible is the only way forward.
3. The words “gospel” and “salvation” are closely related but do not refer to the same thing.
4. The gospel needs the Old Testament story in order to make sense.

Today, I hope to articulate a few of my concerns regarding The King Jesus Gospel. I agree with Scot that we can’t afford for the church to be “in a fog” about the gospel, which is why I have appreciated books such as What Is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert, Recovering the Real Lost Gospel by Darrell Bock, and why I have attempted to delineate between true and counterfeit gospels myself. But I worry that there are some places where The King Jesus Gospel might lead to increasing fogginess rather than clarity. Here are three concerns:

1. Sharp Distinctions Can Lead to Subtle Distortions

One of my quibbles with the whole “keep the gospel and its implications separate” discussion within the gospel-centered movement is the unfortunate tendency for very important things to get diminished over time. A few months ago, I had a robust dialogue with John Starke on why we should never let the church (gospel community) out of sight when thinking about the gospel announcement of Jesus crucified and raised. I agree that certain distinctions must be made, and yet I want to stay true to the way the Scriptural authors hold the announcement and its purpose (creation of the church) together. Making too sharp a division is more problematic than keeping them too close together.

Now, Scot is essentially taking the “gospel and its implications” discussion one step further, separating even personal salvation from the gospel announcement. To be fair, Scot does not in any way seek to diminish the saving effects of the gospel. He writes:

“The Plan of Salvation flows out of the Story of Israel/Bible and the Story of Jesus. The Bible’s Story from Israel to Jesus is the saving Story. Just as we dare not diminish the importance of this Story if we wish to grasp the gospel, so also with the saving effects of the story.” (37)

So far so good. But then Scot writes this:

“This Plan of Salvation is not the gospel. The Plan of Salvation emerges from the Story of Israel/Bible and from the Story of Jesus, but the plan and the gospel are not the same big idea.” (39)

From an exegetical standpoint, I agree that the gospel can’t be reduced to the Plan of Salvation. The gospel is the saving story of Jesus Christ, which results in salvation. It’s not the order of salvation itself or a plan for sharing the gospel. And yet, in 1 Corinthians 15, it seems clear to me that Paul has in mind Jesus’ work and its application to sinners. It’s both Story and Plan, not either-or.

In short, the Bible doesn’t separate the story from its significance for sinners. Both are included in the apostolic proclamation. Scot’s decision to so sharply distinguish between the gospel and its saving effects is ultimately unhelpful. It seems to set up categories needlessly, and even when we don’t intend to set up false dichotomies, we wind up with them anyway. Case in point:

“When the plan gets separated from the story, the plan almost always becomes abstract, propositional, logical, rational, and philosophical, and most importantly, de-storified and unbiblical. We separate ourselves from Jesus and turn the Christian faith into a System of salvation.” (62)

I don’t think we have to pit a propositional presentation of the gospel against the narrative of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We need the Story so that the gospel doesn’t get reduced to merely a System, yes. But both are important, biblical, and clustered together when it comes to the apostolic thinking about the gospel.

It’s clear that Scot is seeking to avoid reductionism. He writes:

“We are tempted to turn the story of what God is doing in this world through Israel and Jesus Christ into a story about me and my own personal salvation.” (62)

But I fear that he is being reductionistic on the other side of the debate, framing the gospel in such a way that personal salvation is minimized. Like N.T. Wright, Scot is saying that soteriology is not the gospel. But when I examine the sermons in Acts or the letters of Paul or even the preaching of Jesus, I don’t see Story and Soteriology separated. Instead, I see them so deeply intertwined that we can’t grasp one without the other.

Don’t get me wrong. Scot is not denying the saving effects of the gospel. He writes:

“The apostolic gospel, the gospel that Paul ‘received’ and ‘passed on’ to the Corinthians, like every other apostolic church then and forever, is a gospel that has at its center that Jesus died ‘for our sins,’ and this death achieved the forgiveness of sins. As such, this story saves and brings people into the kingdom of God and ushers them into eternal life.” (88)

And he is right to see proper gospel proclamation as calling for a response. He goes so far as to state:

“There is no such thing as gospeling that does not include the summons to respond in faith, repentance, and baptism.” (127)

That’s the heart of an evangelist speaking, for sure! But even in his discussion of evangelism, he pits Jesus as Savior against Jesus as Lord:

“The gospeling of Acts, because it declares the saving significance of Jesus, Messiah and Lord, summons listeners to confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord, while our gospeling seeks to persuade sinners to admit their sin and find Jesus as the Savior.” (133)

Even though he immediately follows up that statement by saying, “We are not creating a false alternative here,” I worry that most people will choose one alternative over the other.

Sharp distinctions can sometimes lead to subtle distortions. Baptists who too sharply distinguish between repentance and baptism can unintentionally minimize the importance of baptism. Christians who too sharply distinguish between the gospel and its purpose (the church) can unintentionally minimize the importance of the church. And too sharply distinguishing between the gospel and personal salvation can lead us to unintentionally minimize the importance of justification by faith alone. That’s my next point.

2. Don’t Neglect the Power of Justification by Faith Alone.

It’s hard to imagine Scot McKnight agreeing with Martin Luther that the article of justification by faith alone is the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls. I am not calling into question Scot’s view of justification or his Protestant credentials. I know that justification is part of his theology. He affirms the penal substitutionary view of the atonement. He even argues for double imputation as a result of union with Christ.

My concern with The King Jesus Gospel is not that justification is denied or distorted but that it’s not as central in Scot’s understanding of the gospel as it was for the Apostle Paul. Granted, I am not equating justification with the gospel. The gospel is what saves. Justification is how one is saved. But surely these things are inseparably connected. Otherwise, how do we interpret Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where a denial of justification by faith is tantamount to denying the gospel itself?

Of justification, Scot writes:

“The Plan of Salvation leads to one thing and to one thing only: salvation. Justification leads to a declaration by God that we are in the right, that we are in the people of God; it doesn’t lead inexorably to a life of justice or goodness or loving-kindness. If it did, all Christians would be more just and more filled with goodness and drenched in love.” (40)

It seems that Scot thinks we’ve overemphasized justification at the expense of the broader, all-encompassing good news of Jesus as the climax of the Old Testament story. But I sense that Scot is underestimating the power of justification by faith alone when he says, “it doesn’t lead inexorably to a life of justice or goodness or loving-kindness.” For Scot, the solution is to look elsewhere for results. In my mind, the solution is to be better grounded in the reality of justification by faith alone, which – when properly understood – awakens our affections to the goodness of God shown to us in the face of Jesus Christ in such a way that we are led to a life of goodness. In my opinion, we need more emphasis on justification nowadays, not less.

3. A View of the Story That Is Not Soterian?

One of the central claims of The King Jesus Gospel is that evangelicals have missed the biblical gospel by reducing it to a plan of salvation. We’ve made our own personal salvation so central that we deserve the label “soterians.” Scot wants us to frame the gospel according to the Old Testament storyline rather than according to our need for salvation. He writes:

“The apostles were not like our modern soterians because they did not empty the gospel of its Story, nor did they reduce the gospel to the Plan of Salvation. In fact, the apostles were the original, robust evangelicals. It all has to do with how the gospel is framed.” (117)

Agreed. That’s why I mentioned yesterday that one of my points of agreement with Scot is that we need the Story in order to make sense of the Jesus announcement. But then I read this:

“Gospeling was not driven by the salvation story or the atonement story. It was driven by the Story of Israel, and in fact makes most sense in that story.” (134)

And this:

“Look again at that gospel summary in 1 Corinthians 15: there is nothing direct about being reconciled to God or to others, nothing direct about being declared righteous, nothing about God’s wrath being pacified, and nothing about being liberated from our entrapments to sin, self, the system, and Satan.” (134)

It seems to me that this kind of statement does not take into account Paul’s declaration in 1 Corinthians 15 that Christ’s death was “for our sins,” which has Old Testament echoes of Isaiah 53 and which Paul unpacks in more detail in other texts. “For our sins” is freighted with soteriological meaning.

The heart of my differences with Scot’s proposal is not in defining the word “gospel.” It’s not in the gospel announcement’s need for the Story. It’s in the way we read that Story. There’s the rub. The reason I think it’s ultimately unhelpful to distinguish between a story gospel and a soterian gospel is because I think the story is soterian, that is, the grand narrative of Scripture is telling us about God’s glory in saving sinners through the cross and resurrection of His Son. The heart of Israel’s story is hope for salvation delivered by the coming Messiah-King.

When I read the Old Testament narrative, I can’t get through the Pentateuch and not tremble at the thought of standing before God without an animal sacrifice. I can’t read the story of Judges without shuddering at the pervasiveness of sin and the need for a Messiah-King. I can’t read Isaiah and not recognize my need for a righteousness that comes from outside myself.

Scot reads the announcement of 1 Corinthians 15 and wants to emphasize that Jesus is Messiah and Lord. I see the announcement of 1 Corinthians 15 as the gospel presentation by which we are being saved. The big story that the Bible is telling is a story of salvation – its promise and provision through the coming kingdom of a crucified Messiah. And this is why pitting the Old Testament storyline against atonement theology makes little sense to me. It’s not just that I view the gospel as a soterian. I view the story that way as well.

Conclusion

Overall, The King Jesus Gospel has been one of the most thought-provoking, challenging, and stimulating books I’ve read this year. Scot McKnight is prompting some good (sometimes strong) conversations. I hope that this review has been a charitable exercise in encouraging one another along as we seek to be true to the original gospel of the apostles.

Scot McKnight believes that the most important question the church can ask today is: “What is the gospel?” If the church is “in a fog” about this question, we will not be a gospel people – a community of faith that lives according to the gospel and announces the good news to the world around us.

Scot’s new book, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Zondervan, 2011), seeks to answer the gospel question by transcending the tired debates between Jesus’ gospel (kingdom) versus Paul’s gospel (justification by faith). Scot believes there is only one truly biblical way to think about the gospel, and it’s to see that the one gospel proclaimed by Jesus Himself, the Gospel writers, the apostles in Acts, and Paul in his letters is Jesus as the completion of Israel’s story. 

In December of 2010, Scot wrote the cover story for Christianity Today, laying out this new proposal. We had a blog conversation about his article here at Kingdom People. The King Jesus Gospel is a book-length treatment of the main point expressed in the CT article. Scot is undergirding his proposal by showing why he believes it makes the best sense of the Bible as a whole as well as the Bible in its individual parts.

The King Jesus Gospel deserves an award for being the “most marked up” book I’ve read this year. I’ve got all sorts of passages highlighted, with notes in the margins, question marks here and there, exclamation points (both good and bad!), and worn-out pages. Put simply, I agree with much of Scot’s proposal, and yet there are places where I think he presses us into making some false choices. Today, I want to highlight the points of agreement. Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at my concerns.

So, to start us off, here are four points that Scot makes and with which I am largely in agreement:

1. Evangelicalism has a problem, and the problem goes back to our conception of the evangel itself.

Like a skilled doctor, Scot’s diagnosis is right: we need to revisit the heart of Christianity in order to gain clarity on the gospel. The problem within many evangelical churches today is that we have a gospel-less culture. Why? Because the biblical gospel has not been at the center of our preaching and teaching. When people are fuzzy on what the gospel is, it’s no wonder they don’t live much differently than those who don’t know the gospel. And it’s really no wonder that they don’t share the message with others. To live according to the gospel, you have to know what the good news is. To proclaim the gospel, you have to know the gospel.

Pastors within the gospel-centered movement will resonate with Scot’s distaste for “decisionism.” McKnight may be an Arminian theologian, but he is as far from Charles Finney as you’ll get. He writes:

“Most of evangelism today is obsessed with getting someone to make a decision; the apostles, however, were obsessed with making disciples.” (18)

True enough. But Scot is going further than just critiquing an obsession with numbers. He believes this lopsided understanding of Christianity is actually keeping us from making disciples:

“Focusing youth events, retreats, and programs on persuading people to make a decision disarms the gospel, distorts numbers, and diminishes the significance of discipleship.” (20)

Tough words. But don’t assume that Scot is content with a decisionless Christianity that is not centered on personal conversion. He chides the state church tradition (whether in its Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant form) for neglecting personal conversion:

“Making the conversion process automatic – and I’m doing my best to be dead-level honest in saying that – is disastrous for the vitality of faith and church life. This kind of gospel can deconstruct a local church, and I would finger this issue as one of the, if not the, origins of the demise of the church in European cultures.” (31)

Three cheers from this Baptist! Scot’s diagnosis is correct. Both extremes (automatic church membership and mere decisionism) usually fail to result in people becoming “The Discipled,” which according to the Great Commission, should be our goal.

Scot also points out the difference between “the gospel” and someone’s “method of persuading people to trust the gospel.” By canvassing the variety of evangelistic encounters in the New Testament, Scot is able to uphold distinctive methodologies in getting across the one message.

“Our preferred Method of Persuasion and the gospel are not one and the same,” he writes (42). “Methods shift and conform to the needs of the evangelist and the audience.” (32)

2. Going back to the Bible is the only way forward.

One of the hallmarks of The King Jesus Gospel is Scot’s looking to the Scriptures as our primary authority. Though he recommends studying the creeds, church history, and evangelical tradition, he clearly lifts up the Bible as the place where we will discover the biblical gospel and how it integrates the key themes of the Bible. In fact, “Back to the Bible” is one of the most common phrases in the book.

• “We need to go back to the Bible to find the original gospel.” (24)
• “… Our current answer isn’t biblical enough.” (24)
• “My plea is that we go back to the New Testament to discover all over again what the Jesus gospel is and that by embracing it we become true evangelicals.” (29)
• “We are in need to going back to the Bible to discover the gospel culture all over again and making that gospel culture the center of the church.”

Whatever one might think of the specifics of Scot’s proposal, it’s clear that sola Scriptura is a driving force in his work. So, naturally, he turns to the sections of the New Testament that most clearly lay out the basics of the gospel. In summarizing 1 Corinthians 15, he writes:

“To gospel is to announce the good news about key events in the life of Jesus Christ. To gospel for Paul was to tell, announce, declare, and shout aloud the Story of Jesus Christ as the saving news of God.”

In my opinion, the most helpful chapter in the book is “The Gospel of Peter,” in which Scot considers the oft-neglected sermons recorded in Acts.

“There are seven or eight gospel sermons or summaries of gospel sermons in the book of Acts… If we have any Protestant bones in our body, we want to know what they gospeled and how they gospeled, and we want our gospeling to be rooted in and conformed to this gospeling.” (115)

3. The words “gospel” and “salvation” are related, but they do not refer to the same thing.

One of the central contentions of The King Jesus Gospel is that the gospel should not be confused with its implications. It is somewhat odd to see someone outside of the Gospel Coalition stream making this case so forcefully, but that is what Scot is attempting. Readers will quickly see, however, that Scot is making the distinction between the gospel and its implications even sharper than his Reformed friends. The issue that will ruffle many evangelical feathers is that Scot thinks of “personal salvation” as an implication of the gospel, not the center of the gospel itself. Salvation flows from the gospel, but salvation is not the message of the gospel. Hear him out:

“We evangelicals (mistakenly) equate the word gospel with the word salvation. Hence, we are really ‘salvationists.’ When we evangelicals see the word gospel, our instinct is to think (personal) ‘salvation.’ We are wired this way. But these two words don’t mean the same thing…” (29)

From a lexical standpoint, Scot may be right. The word “gospel” does not specifically refer to “my personal salvation.” Yes, the gospel secures my salvation. Yes, it is the power of God unto salvation. But it’s the message of Jesus that brings personal salvation, not the message of personal salvation itself. (Interestingly enough, Scot finds allies for this position in both N.T. Wright and John Piper, particularly Piper’s book God is the Gospel, in which he makes the case that the Person of Jesus Christ Himself is the good news, not just the saving benefits we receive from union with Him.)

But from a pastoral standpoint, I have some concerns about making distinctions this sharply. I wonder if in our parsing of these closely related words we aren’t separating what should be joined together. The gospel is the “word of salvation” after all, and it is the instrument by which we are being saved. All this leads me to think that we might be overlooking the biblical authors’ hints that “gospel” and “salvation” are more closely related than some exegetes want them to be. More on that tomorrow.

For now, let me express what I like about Scot’s proposal: he is seeking to show that the one gospel we believe in contains justification by faith and the coming of the kingdom, but that the specific message is bigger than both. He sees the good news as the announcement that the story of Israel is being resolved in the story of Jesus. That’s great, as long as we remember that the announcement is about Christ’s death and resurrection for sinners.

In other words, when considering the gospel, Scot claims that the way forward is not to ask, “Did Jesus preach justification?” or “Did Paul preach the kingdom?” The better questions to ask are “Did Jesus preach Jesus?” and “Did Paul preach Jesus?” Over against Bultmann, who argued that over time, the proclaimer of the gospel (Jesus) became “the proclaimed” (early church), Scot helpfully demonstrates that the picture of Jesus we see in the Gospels is of a Savior “who unequivocally and without embarrassment nominated himself for Israel’s president.” (105)

4. The gospel needs the Old Testament story in order to make sense.

One of the central points of my work on Counterfeit Gospels is that to rightly understand the gospel announcement (Jesus Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and exaltation), one must have some knowledge of the worldview, or Story, within which that announcement makes sense. I am on the same page with Scot when it comes to our need to place the gospel announcement within the context of the story. This is a refrain that Scot echoes multiple times in the book.

• “This story is not the same as the gospel… The gospel only makes sense in that story.” (36)
• “One reason why so many Christians today don’t know the Old Testament is because their ‘gospel’ doesn’t even need it.” (44)
• “The gospel Story of Jesus Christ resolves or brings to completion the Story of Israel as found in the Scriptures (our Old Testament).” (50)
• “Any real gospeling has to lay out the story of Scripture if it wants to put back the ‘good’ into the good news.” (85)

Scot is also right to note that the grand narrative of Scripture is not just the backdrop for the gospel but also the forward-looking story that culminates in final restoration at the end of time, when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. When it comes to matters of life after death, final judgment, and hell, Scot doesn’t hold back.

“Gospeling must involve the Story of final judgment in order for humans to see that they ultimately will stand before God and not before a human tribunal.” (135)

He then quotes Jonathan Edwards approvingly, saying, “Perhaps we need more of Edwards today, not less.” (136)

Points of Concern

These are the four main areas in which I am largely in agreement with  The King Jesus Gospel. There are, however, a few points that cause me concern and may lead to unintentional confusion for the reader. I’ll elaborate on my concerns tomorrow.