Ladd broke through the sterile debates about whether the kingdom of God was a present, spiritual reality or a future, earthly reality. He popularized a view of the kingdom as having two dimensions: “already/not yet.” Ladd was also one of the first solid evangelical scholars to go outside the fundamentalist camp in order to interact with liberal scholars in the academy, men like Rudolph Bultmann.

For a biographical overview of Ladd’s life and work, I suggest A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America. See my review of this book here:

A Place at the Table is much more than a biographical sketch of Ladd’s life. D’Elia cautiously enters into the theological discussion he describes in order to spotlight Ladd’s contributions to evangelical scholarship and his interactions with scholars from outside the evangelical world. Those who read D’Elia’s book will receive an education, not merely regarding the historical aspects of Ladd’s interesting life, but also regarding the theological debates of the time.

I’ve also interviewed Ladd’s biographer, John D’Elia, about his work and his legacy:

Ladd’s legacy within evangelical scholarship is hard to overstate. I argue in the book that he carved out a place for evangelicals in what was then the threatening and bewildering world of critical biblical scholarship. By demystifying the methods of critical scholarship, Ladd made them available to evangelicals who wanted to use them in their study of the Scriptures. Historic premillennialism, then, is really an incidental part of Ladd’s story. The real achievement in Ladd’s career can be found in the wide range of biblical scholars who sat at his feet and then went on to make their own mark. Those scholars are as diverse as John Piper and Robert Mounce on the
one side, and Eldon Epp and Charles Carlston on the other.

If you’re going to start reading Ladd, let me suggest his book, The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God. Check out my review here:

The Gospel of the Kingdom is illuminating, clarifying and (thankfully) brief. It is amazing that Ladd manages to fit all of this great theological teaching into 140 pages.

There is a reason this book is still in print. It is unmatched in its clarification of what the kingdom of God is, and how the kingdom of God can be already present but not yet here in its fullness.

I’ll close this post with Ladd himself. Here are two ways Ladd defined “the gospel,” one personal and the other in light of God’s kingdom:

“I can only bear witness at this point to what Heilsgeschichte means to me. My sense of God’s love and acceptance is grounded not only in the resurrected Christ but also in the Jesus of history. He taught something about God that was utterly novel to his Jewish auditors: that God is not only gracious and forgiving to the repentant sinner but is also a seeking God who, in Jesus’ person and mission, has come to seek and to save the lost…

God has shown me that he loves me in that while I was yet a sinner, Christ died for me (Rom. 5:8). This is not faith in history; it is not faith in the kerygma; it is not faith in the Bible. It is faith in God who has revealed himself to me in the historical event of the person, works and words of Jesus of Nazareth who continues to speak to me though the prophetic word of the Bible.”

- George Eldon Ladd, “The Search for Perspective,” Interpretation 25 (Jan. 1971), 56 and 57.

“This is the good news about the kingdom of God. How men need this gospel! Everywhere one goes he finds the gaping graves swallowing up the dying. Tears of loss, of separation, of final departure stain every face. Every table sooner or later has an empty chair, every fireside its vacant place. Death is the great leveller. Wealth or poverty, fame or oblivion, power or futility, success or failure, race, creed or culture — all our human distinctions mean nothing before the ultimate irresistible sweep of the scythe of death which cuts us all down. And whether the mausoleum is a fabulous Taj Mahal, a massive pyramid, an unmarked spot of ragged grass or the unplotted depths of the sea one fact stands: death reigns.

“Apart from the gospel of the kingdom, death is the mighty conqueror before whom we are all helpless. We can only beat our fists in utter futility against this unyielding and unresponding tomb. But the good news is this: death has been defeated; our conqueror has been conquered. In the face of the power of the kingdom of God in Christ, death was helpless. It could not hold him, death has been defeated; life and immortality have been brought to life. An empty tomb in Jerusalem is proof of it. This is the gospel of the kingdom.”

- from The Gospel of the Kingdom

This discussion over methods and terms has been bubbling under the surface for a good while now. A younger generation of pastors look out at the state of evangelicalism and are rightly concerned that many people with cultural Christianity in their background cling to assurance they are saved despite an overwhelming lack of evidence of genuine conversion. It’s no surprise that some pastors are blaming the methods and terms that became prevalent in the previous generation. That’s why we hear a pastor like David Platt consider a phrase like “asking Jesus into your heart” to be “dangerous” and “damning.”

The response to this critique has been to trot out the biblical and historical precedent for using such terminology. That’s not hard. The idea of “receiving Christ” is all over the New Testament. It is certainly a part of the good news that we are not only in Christ, but that Christ is in us. Pastor Steve Gaines’ rebuttal to David Platt, for example, focused on the biblical preponderance of such language and how it offers a full-orbed view of what takes place when a sinner places faith in Jesus Christ.

A Global Perspective

The first time I questioned the legitimacy of expressions like “ask Jesus into your heart” was when I was a student in Romania. Several Romanian pastors challenged the use of such terminology. They considered it to be another example of the American tendency to water down the nature of true repentance, and they recommended the use of such phrases only if fully explained. They saw these expressions as distinctively “American” and worried that they did not give sufficient weight to the idea of surrendering one’s life to King Jesus in repentance and faith.

Though some in the Southern Baptist Convention want to make this a debate between Calvinists and non-Calvinists, a broader perspective shows that this is part of an ongoing conversation between Christians in the U.S. and Christians in other parts of the world. The pastors I knew who had concerns with this language were not Calvinistic at all. Still, they were afraid of creating false converts and offering them false assurance. It ought to at least give us pause that many Christians in other parts of the world are uncomfortable with this terminology.

The Real Issue is False Assurance

At the end of the day, the conversation about “the sinner’s prayer” and “asking Jesus into your heart” is not really about the legitimacy of such methods or the biblical justification for using expressions like “having a personal relationship with Christ” or “receiving Jesus.” I believe that properly understood and explained, any of these methods and terms can be used, to good effect. And I bet David Platt would have no problem at all with the careful way that Steve Gaines explains what it means to “receive Jesus.”

The real issue comes down to finding our assurance in these methods and phrases. False assurance is when a pastor says, either explicitly or implicitly, “as long as you walked an aisle, prayed a prayer, or asked Jesus into your heart at some point in time, you’re safe.” It’s the kind of false assurance that doesn’t take into account a Christian’s fruitfulness (as Jesus commanded us to) and tries to convince tares they are wheat. The debate is not really about the usefulness of a sinner’s prayer, but the grounding of one’s assurance in a particular moment in time where one felt remorse for sin, regardless if true repentance was present or later evidenced.

Growing up in independent Baptist circles, I recall how much emphasis was placed on the moment of conversion. Revival speakers would come into town and scare us as teenagers, telling us, “If you don’t remember the when, the where, the how, and the who of when you got saved, you’re probably not. So come down and get it settled today!” Multiple baptisms were good for the evangelist’s PR and dozens of teens getting re-baptized made the church feel good (“Look what God is doing in our young people!”).

Despite the hype, I never got re-baptized. I couldn’t articulate all the reasons why this was wrong, but I knew something wasn’t right. It felt like the shenanigans of these revival speakers put way too much emphasis on a moment in time and not on a life of fruitful faith.

True Conversion

This conversation about our methods and terminology in evangelism is an important one. I just hope that people who share a lot of the same concerns will understand the common ground they have and not impute mistakes to one another.

To my young pastor friends, we are often more apt to express concern about the precision of evangelistic language than we are to celebrate the passion of evangelistic outreach. Let’s not impute the excesses of revivalism to everyone who uses terms that are familiar within that stream of evangelicalism.

To my older pastor friends, please don’t assume that those who critique shallow evangelism are necessarily criticizing you or your ministry. And don’t think that young guys are gun-shy when it comes to evangelism, afraid to call people to personal faith and repentance, or have a problem with a moment of conversion.

Again, the issue is one of false assurance. No pastor wants to stand before God and find he offered false assurance to someone who showed no signs of genuine repentance and faith. We all ought to tremble at the thought.

Meanwhile, is it biblical to ask Jesus into your heart? Absolutely. We ought to say more than this when we evangelize, and our main focus ought to be on the biblical terminology of repentance and faith, but surely it is proper to speak of receiving Jesus.

Let’s just make sure we explain our terms and phrases so that the nature of true repentance and saving faith is communicated clearly, boldly, and graciously. I hope that’s something all of us can agree on.

In an age described by J. I. Packer as “a mile wide and an inch deep,” the blogosphere has become a place where critical thinking and sharp analysis are celebrated. I know firsthand. I am often pointing people to thoughtful book reviews, incisive critiques of theological developments, and pastoral warnings against compromise. I’ve posted a number of critiques myself.

Yes, I realize that some of the greatest authors and thinkers have been critics. Mark Twain was masterful in his critical commentary. And G. K. Chesterton was a critic who is celebrated even today, when the books and people he critiqued are largely forgotten.

But these kinds of critics stand out because they were always about ideas bigger than their own critiques. Twain had a wit that forced people to take him seriously. And Chesterton’s marvelous sense of humor infused all of his critiques with such joy that one wanted to be conquered by his logic and reasoning even if people ultimately rejected his position.

(Furthermore, both Twain and Chesterton were creators too. They gave us Huck Finn and Father Brown.)

Notice how that statement reads. Spurgeon doesn’t condemn the man who points out the church’s imperfections. After all, he himself did that… often! He condemns the one who takes pleasure in criticizing. The difference is instructive. It concerns the heart. Spurgeon recognized the difference between a critical mind (incisive, analytical, fair-minded) and a critical spirit (delighting in exposing the flaws of others, quick to judge, dismissive and proud).

By God’s grace, I now ask for the Lord to speak to me through His Word – no matter who is preaching or what the sermon is. And without fail, God does. The sermon may not be completely tied to the text, biblically faithful in all its particulars, or well illustrated, but God can use it. And thank God He does! Otherwise, how would those of us who preach ever have the confidence to open up the Word and deliver a message?

There will be times of confrontation. There will be times to call into question your brother’s words and actions. (Paul’s confrontation of Peter comes to mind.) But that was a big deal. Peter was denying the gospel with his actions. The stuff we get worked up about is usually not that critical.

But the Evil One would love nothing more than to infect such a movement with a critical spirit, to have us be theologically minded at the expense of mission-driven rather than having our theological acumen drive us toward mission. It’s a small jump from engaging in critical thinking to having a critical spirit.

I’ve made that jump before. Too many times. And I don’t want to go there again.

We will not critique our way to gospel-centered revival.

Jenell Paris thinks so. In an opinion piece at Christianity Today called “Both Chastity and Contraception: A Sacred Compromise” (responding to this article), she recommends that churches “uphold premarital chastity as the biblical ideal, and encourage and educate unmarried singles about the effective use of contraception.” In other words, we ought to “educate” unmarried singles about contraceptives without “affirming” their use.

The sense of revulsion you feel when reading this imaginary scenario is probably rooted in your God-given, biblically informed, gospel-sanctified idealism regarding the exclusive nature of the marriage bed. And as Christians who believe in the good gift of sexual expression within the beautiful confines of the marriage covenant, we ought to be repulsed by any proposal that cheapens, threatens, or denigrates that ideal.

Telling singles they ought to turn toward Jesus and contraception is an implicit denial that repentance is integral to the Christian life. It’s like Jesus telling the woman caught in adultery: “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin some more.“

Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity. 

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve probably seen me harping on the need for Christians to consider the inherent beauty of truthand how that beauty shapes the way we present Christian teaching. Brian Zahnd, author of Beauty Will Save the World, is saying something similar:

Zahnd sees beauty as inherently “cruciform.” Reorienting ourselves around the self-giving love at the center of our faith exposes the dangers that lurk behind Christian partnerships with the powerful and the implementation of worldly strategies to effect change:

But Zahnd is not clear on how we move forward when the world condemns as “ugly” what we know is inherently “beautiful” and celebrates as “beautiful” what Scripture would say is ugly.

Beauty is objective, yes, since beauty is an attribute of God. This means that true beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder. But it would help to know how to present the beauty of Christianity in a world where many subjective “beholders” remain implacably opposed to Christianity no matter how beautiful and cruciform our display is. We need to keep thinking on this…

I may not be experienced yet in developing children’s curriculum, but I am a father. And since my wife and I have the responsibility to disciple our kids, we know the message we want to give them at home as well as the message we want to see reinforced at church.

Children’s Curriculum Today

If you are looking for creative, fun-filled, and family-focused approaches to children’s discipleship curriculum, there are plenty of options available. But we’ve heard from a number of children’s pastors who are dissatisfied with what they’ve seen. Though they appreciate these offerings for their creativity and the way they connect to parents seeking to disciple their children, these leaders are concerned that the primary message we are giving our children is simply that they need to “be good.”

What sometimes gets lost in the journey through Bible stories is the good news of what Christ has done to save the lost. In other words, in focusing on behavior, we may be missing the heart-change brought about by the gospel.Even worse, we condition our kids to think that the Bible is all about them.

The Gospel Project for Kids is an attempt to bring a gospel focus back to children’s curriculum. In walking through the Bible stories chronologically, we want children to discover several truths:

Truth #1 - The Bible tells one big story.

When we take Bible stories out of context to glean moral lessons from them, we can leave kids with the impression that the Bible is much like Aesop’s fables—interesting tales with moral application.

But even though the Bible has moral application and does give us some terrific stories, it actually tells one overarching story. These stories fit together. They tell us the story of our world—where we’ve come from and where we are going.

We believe it’s important that children recognize how these Bible stories are connected.

Truth #2 - The Bible is about God.

Once we recognize that the Bible is telling us a great story, we discover that we are not the main characters. The Bible is first and foremost about God. He is the hero.

These stories provide us with moral application, yes. But before we get to application, we ought to ask, “What does this story tell us about God?” What attributes and characteristics of God are on display in this story? If the Bible’s big story is about God’s bringing about redemption of His fallen world, then what picture of God do we see in the smaller stories?

Truth #3 - The Bible points us to Jesus.

A statement I like to make from time to time (for shock value, I admit!) is “Bible study won’t necessarily change your life.” What I mean is this: Just because you know the Bible doesn’t mean the Word will bear fruit in your life. It is possible to know the Scriptures, read the Scriptures, revere the Scriptures, and study the Scriptures and miss the point entirely. Jesus told the Jewish leaders of the day that even though they had meticulous knowledge of the Old Testament, they had missed the truth that the Old Testament is ultimately about Him.

Whenever we study the stories of the Bible, we need to ask how they point us to Christ. The reason God’s Word changes our life is not because of our personal study but because in the Scriptures we are introduced to Jesus, the Author.

Truth #4 - The Bible calls for obedience that is grounded in the gospel and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, back to moral principles and application. Does the Bible have them? Absolutely. But biblical behavior should not flow from obligation and compulsion.

God cares about our hearts. Our hearts are not changed by the commands of the Law. Our hearts are changed when they overflow with love for the Savior. As we experience the grace of what God has done for us in Christ, our hearts are free to worship and obey.

It’s important that we take care not to give our children commands without showing them how the Holy Spirit, through the gospel, gives them the strength to obey these commands.

Conclusion

The purpose of our Bible study is to know God and make Him known. The Bible unveils Jesus Christ as the focal point of human history. All creation exists by Him, through Him, to Him, and for Him. Our children’s curriculum should exist for Him too. That’s the only kind of Bible study that will change your life.

Derwin Gray is a defensive back who played safety for five seasons with the Indianapolis Colts and one season with the Carolina Panthers. He now resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is the founding and Lead Pastor of Transformation Church in Indian Land, South Carolina.

Juan Sanchez is pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, and one of the advisory council members and writers for The Gospel Project. 

Trevin Wax: Welcome to the blog, guys. First off, why even have this conversation about multi-ethnic churches? Why is this important?

Juan Sanchez: The glory of God. A few weeks ago, I laid the biblical-theological foundation for multi-ethnic churches over at Ed Stetzer’s blog. In essence, through Christ God is gathering a multi-ethnic assembly that will dwell in His presence for all eternity, under His rule, for His glory and our joy. God is greatly glorified as wise when we witness this multi-ethnic assembly being manifested in local congregations and functioning as one (Eph. 4). So, ultimately, this conversation is about the glory of God in Christ.

Derwin Gray: Absolutely, and the gospel paints a glorious picture of humanity reconciled to God through Jesus and to each other! Jesus said “make disciples of all nations (ethnos),” or different ethnic groups. The gospel demands that if different ethnic groups are around the local church, as missionaries, we should be intentional in reaching them. And the multi-ethnic church displays the “mystery of Christ” and the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. 3:4-6,10-13).

Juan Sanchez: I think this conversation is important for another reason too. Due to various cultural factors, many churches were fairly segregated and remain so to this day. However, the church growth homogeneous unit principle (see Tim Chester’s helpful explanation) seems to have legitimized monoculturalism for the sake of evangelism. (I’m not fully knowledgeable about this history, so feel free to help me if I am missing the mark.) As a result, many churches remain fairly segregated for both cultural and evangelistic reasons.

I think that as our culture and economy have become more global and as international travel has become easier, we are realizing more and more that the body of Christ is diverse but that through Christ we have more in common with our Christian brethren throughout the world than with our unbelieving blood kin. Then we ask ourselves when we return from mission trips, if we have such a unity with brothers from different cultures and ethnicities in another country, why can’t we experience this same unity at home?

Trevin Wax: Do you think the homogeneity principle led to church growth but at the cost of multi-ethnic congregations? 

Derwin Gray: Great question. First, let’s define Dr. Donald McGarvan’s Homogeneous Unit Principle (HUP). In essence, HUP teaches that people come to faith faster when people are of the same ethnic and socio-economic background. HUP has worked pragmatically and fits very well in our consumer Christianity context. But it has not nor will it ever produce local churches that reflect the ethnic diversity of what the new heavens and earth will look like. Pastors and leaders, our goal should not be pragmatism but God’s glory.

The HUP has become the standard ministry model of church planting and the church in general. However, in his eBook Should Pastors Reject or Accept the Homogeneous Unit Principle? Mark DeYmaz quotes Dr. McGavran as saying, “There is a danger that congregations…become exclusive, arrogant, and racist. That danger must be resolutely combated.” McGavran saw the danger of HUP when it was not used correctly.

Juan Sanchez: Here in Texas, it is not surprising to see a new cowboy church plant (I don’t think they are in the Acts 29 Network!). The idea, born from a legitimate and genuine desire to reach a group presumably not being reached by traditional churches, is that “cowboys” don’t go to “church” but they need the gospel too. Agreed! In this approach, utilizing the homogeneous unit principle, that like attracts like and provides an easier path for profession of faith in Christ, “cowboys” get together and do church in the “cowboy” way in order to reach “cowboys.” As a church like this grows, I would say that growth occurs at the expense of multi-ethnicity AND multi-culturalism. At the end of the day, I’m left asking, “Is this just evangelical consumerism?”

The solution is not to have “cowboy” churches composed of African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Anglos, etc. Such a church would be more homogeneous than they might realize because they are gathering around “cowboy culture.” The picture I see the gospel presenting is not a “cowboy” church composed of various ethnicities but a “cowboys” and “Indians” church – a church where formerly hostile parties, having nothing previously in common but hate for one another, now worship and share life together. In Ephesians 2, we’re reminded that the gospel brings together two formerly hostile parties and makes them into one new man.

Derwin Gray: I don’t think church size has much to do with the lack of ethnic diversity in local churches in America.  Transformation Church (TC) was planted two years ago. God, in His grace, has grown TC from 178 people to a thriving, dynamic, multi-ethnic, multi-generational congregation of nearly 2000. We’ve seen over 800 commit their lives to Jesus. In our case, we’ve grown large very fast; we attribute our growth to our commitment to biblical theology and missiology, fueled by the gospel. Our target audience is whoever lives within the scope of our local church; therefore, our ministry reflects the diversity of our mission field. TC is 60 percent white and 40 percent other.

Juan Sanchez: On a clarifying note, though the homogeneous unit principle may be applied ethnically – let’s plant a “Black” church, it seems to me that it is applied more culturally within current church planting circles. Whatever “target” group is chosen (i.e., upper middle class, artists, musicians, college students, generation X, Y, Z, etc.), everything is tailored to reach that “target,” and that group becomes the majority culture. So long as one fits into that majority culture (regardless of ethnicity), then they will fit into that group. I wonder if perhaps this is what is happening in some “bigger” churches. They may look different (ethnically diverse) when in fact they are really the same (mono-cultural). In this sense, bigger churches may tend to be as homogeneous as smaller churches but for differing reasons. Reminder – all this is anecdotal; I would love to see the data on this!

Trevin Wax: What do you say to the pastor who has a very homogeneous congregation but wants it to be multi-ethnic? Where do you start? How can one begin moving the church in a direction that more clearly demonstrates the glory of Christ’s lordship over all nations?

Derwin Gray: First, the leaders’ hearts must be seized by the biblical conviction that God wants the local church to be multi-ethnic whenever possible. Multi-ethnic church is not in addition to the gospel, it is a result of the gospel.

As a pastor, I had to work through this for myself in the Scriptures and in prayer. The question that drove me was “What does a first-century church look like in the twenty-first century?” I worked through Acts, particularly Acts 2:42-47, to try and answer this question. The most mind-renewing passage of Scripture for me was Ephesians, specifically chapters 2 and 3. That was life- and ministry-changing. One book that was particularly helpful to me in my biblical study was J. Daniel Hays’ From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race. So, for the pastor, that’s where I would say to begin – the study of Scripture and prayer.

Derwin Gray: The next step would be to pray and fast for a leadership team at every level, from pastors to volunteers, to reflect the multi-ethnic diversity of the community in which God has placed you to be a missionary outpost (i.e., local church).

Hopefully, this process will bring everyone on the same page, allowing the leaders to address the congregation’s questions, not just you. This, then, is a direction from the leadership, not just the pastor’s latest “thing.” At this point, as a pastor, I would personally try to get my hands on every book written about multi-ethnic ministry and church to try to understand the practical dynamics involved in implementation. Choose the best and share one or two with your leaders.

Derwin Gray: I also think diversity in worship styles is crucial to developing a healthy, multi-ethnic church. It’s important to create a multi-ethnic ethos in the congregation. How do we do that? As the Lead Pastor, I must continually cast a God-sized, beautiful, compelling vision and teach from the sacred Scriptures that the outworking of the gospel produces a multi-ethnic, mission-shaped church.

Derwin Gray: I’d also recommend learning from leaders who have planted multi-ethnic local churches, such as Ken Hutcherson (Antioch Bible Church), Miles McPherson (The Rock Church), Efrim Smith, Mark DeYmaz (Mosaic). I’d love to help any leader who wants to plant gospel-centered, multi-ethnic, missional churches.

Juan Sanchez: Ultimately, we have to trust the Lord. He is sovereign, and only He can change you, the leaders, and the church. But remember that this is an issue of the heart and a renewed mind, first and foremost. You cannot concoct ethnic and cultural diversity in your church. You can’t announce, “We’re now a multi-ethnic church,” and expect that the next Sunday the crowd is going to be different. You also cannot concoct ethnic and cultural diversity where there is little.

Our call is to preach the gospel to all peoples and make disciples of them. A good question to ask is “How does the makeup of our church reflect the community that the Lord has sovereignly planted us in?” As your community changes, Lord willing, so should the makeup of your congregation if you are reaching those within your community regardless of who they are or where they come from.

• The truth of God’s absolute centrality is a wrecking ball to humanity’s constant desire to make ourselves the measure of all things. It dismantles the facade and proclaims the Godhood of God. It reminds us all of what we know deep down inside: We are creatures; we are not gods. We are not ultimate. God is God.

• Men naturally minimize sin insofar as it relates to God. If they could, they would make the concept disappear. But the truth about sin puts sin back where it belongs: directly between the God of the Bible and our guilty selves. Sin is defined by God and embraced by us to our own ruin.

• The world strives manfully to find fulfillment here and now. But the truth tells the world that it cannot itself bring meaning, and it cannot fulfill. For real meaning and eternal purpose and lasting joy, we must look away from the world and beyond the world.

• The world defines “healthy” as “normal.” It defines “normal” by statistics, polls, and studies of what people do. “Is” equals “should.” But the Bible teaches that the world is marred by sin. Normal human behavior is broken human behavior, abnormal behavior, when judged by the standards of God’s original intent and stated norms. God’s unchanging, transcendent moral and spiritual absolutes shatter the world’s echo chamber of self-serving back-patting.

• The world has tried to do all sorts of things with Jesus. It has tried hard to ignore Him. It has repeatedly tried to mash Him into its image for its own endeavors. But the world needs to hear the truth about the Jesus Christ who won’t be ignored, tamed, lassoed, or co-opted. If Jesus is real, all the world’s values and plans and tidy little sandcastles are doomed.

• The world is all about pulling itself up by its bootstraps. If that doesn’t work, it just redefines “up” down and doesn’t move. But the truth is that no program or set of rules will perfect man or even improve him. This truth points to the treasure trove that can only be found in the perfect Man, Christ Jesus, in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden away and in whom alone we can be filled full.

#9. The Vast Bounty of God’s Provisions for Us in Christ Enables and Obliges Us to Get on with It to His Glory

• The world is opposed to Christians getting on with it. To the degree that we walk with Jesus, we reflect His light, which the world finds repulsive. But in the name of God, we need to get on with it: take that gospel – that mighty, robust, saving, whole-Bible gospel – bust barriers, and turn the world upside down again.

Lots to chew on in this quote from N.T. Wright, particularly at this time of year:

The reason the Enlightenment has taught us to trash our own history, to say that Christianity is part of the problem, is that it has had a rival eschatology to promote. It couldn’t allow Christianity to claim that world history turned its great corner when Jesus of Nazareth died and rose again, because it wanted to claim that world history turned its great corner in Europe in the eighteenth century.

“All that went before,” it says, “is superstition and mumbo-jumbo. We have now seen the great light, and our modern science, technology, philosophy, and politics have ushered in the new order of the ages.” That was believed and expounded in America and France, and it has soaked into our popular culture and imagination. (George Washington contrasted the “gloomy age of ignorance and superstition” up to that point with the new epoch ushered in by the great revolutions of the late eighteenth century, when “the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined.”)

So of course Christianity is reduced from an eschatology (“This is where history was meant to be going, despite appearances!”) to a religion (“Here is a way of being spiritual”), because world history can’t have two great turning points. If the Enlightenment is the great, dramatic, all-important corner of world history, Jesus can’t have been. He is still wanted on board, of course, as a figure through whom people can try to approach the incomprehensible mystery of the “divine” and as a teacher of moral truths that might, if applied, actually strengthen the fabric of the brave new post-Enlightenment society.

But when Christianity is made “just a religion,” it first muzzles and then silences altogether the message the gospels were eager to get across. When that happens, the gospel message is substantially neutralized as a force in the world beyond the realm of private spirituality and an escapist heaven. That, indeed, was the intention. And the churches have, by and large, gone along for the ride.

- from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels

Newsweek’s

We inhabit a polity now saturated with religion. On one side, the Republican base is made up of evangelical Protestants who believe that religion must consume and influence every aspect of public life. On the other side, the last Democratic primary had candidates profess their faith in public forums, and more recently President Obama appeared at the National Prayer Breakfast, invoking Jesus to defend his plan for universal health care. The crisis of Christianity is perhaps best captured in the new meaning of the word “secular.” It once meant belief in separating the spheres of faith and politics; it now means, for many, simply atheism. The ability to be faithful in a religious space and reasonable in a political one has atrophied before our eyes.

Sullivan sees the problem of a politicized faith, one that focuses relentlessly on gaining power, changing laws, and regulating the morality of others. He sees contemporary Christianity as a faith obsessed with getting doctrines about Jesus right to the exclusion of what He actually taught us to do and be. This leads him to ask some piercing questions:

What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand? What is politics if not a dangerous temptation toward controlling others rather than reforming oneself?

From the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexuality to evangelical Christian support of torture, Sullivan makes his way through a long list of perceived threats to the centrality of Christ among believing people.

So what’s the solution? Sullivan points us toward Francis of Assisi and Thomas Jefferson. Francis – for the simplicity of his vision for following Jesus. Jefferson – for the way he stripped away all the miracles of incarnation and resurrection and got to the greatest miracle of all: Jesus’ message of love.

A Response

Where to start with an article like this?

On the one hand, Sullivan is absolutely right to point out the politicized nature of Christianity in the West. He has witnessed the counterfeit gospel of activism that gives us “culture warriors” from the Right and the world’s “errand runners” from the Left. He has seen what happens when churches unite around a cause rather than the cross, and the results are indeed repugnant. If we deny the shortcomings of the church or minimize the scandals, the abuse of power, or the existence of injustice behind our stained-glass windows, we are departing from the righteous vision of Jesus’ kingdom and joining the first-century Pharisees.

Likewise, we should admit that we have too often been known more for our denunciations of those outside our walls than for our passion to uproot our own self-righteous hypocrisy, something Jesus was always confronting in His day. Sullivan sees many of the problems within contemporary Christianity with a perception that should give us pause and bring us back to our knees.

Jesus without Jesus

Unfortunately, his solution is woefully inadequate. He wants to return to the simple message of Jesus as if that message can be divorced from the Man who delivered it. Despite his protests against a politicized faith, Sullivan is saying we should follow a Man whose primary message concerned a kingdom. You can’t get more political than that.

It’s interesting to see how those who advocate a return to the words of Christ often display a frightening ignorance of what Jesus actually said. The primary message of Jesus was not love – at least, not love in our sense of the world. The message of Jesus was Love with a capital “L” – meaning, His message was about Himself. It was about His kingdom, His identity as king, and the cross that became His throne.

So when Sullivan says that Jesus would have been “baffled” by current debates over homosexuality or abortion, I would counter that Jesus spoke to both of these issues and more, albeit indirectly:

• The sexual ethic He put forth is so radical that even a lustful thought after another human being is considered sinful.
• The picture of God’s intention of marriage – male and female from the dawn of creation – is reinforced so strongly that divorce ought to become unthinkable.
• Abortion? How can we listen to Jesus talk about God’s care for a fallen sparrow or watch Him bless the little children and believe He would have nothing to say to those who would still the heartbeats of those who are “more precious” to the Father than the birds of the air?

What’s more, Sullivan’s assertion that we should return to what Jesus asked us to do and be (“rather than the unknowable intricacies of what we believe he was”) flies in the face of Jesus’ own words to His disciples. Jesus is the One who raises the eternal stakes of understanding His messianic identity. Over and over again in the Gospels, we see the disciples asking, “Who is this man?” The wind and seas obey. The dead are raised. The lame walk. The deaf speak. Jesus is acting and talking like He’s in control. He’s either crazy or He’s king of creation.

Sullivan wants to take Christ’s teaching without Christ Himself. His vision tries to deliver Christ’s message of love without the atoning cross that gives love its meaning. It wants Christ’s justice without the victorious resurrection that launches the new world God has promised , the new world that totally changes the landscape for how we view everything: ethics, morals, politics, art, law.

Jesus’ teachings are not just about embarking on a new journey, embracing a new way of life, or experiencing a new spirituality. They are about His ushering in a new world order – a kingdom that encompasses everything.

Snip away at the miracles, like Thomas Jefferson, and you may be left with only the red letters. But even those red letters testify to the world-changing news of the kingdom’s arrival. This isn’t a Jesus whose message you can understand apart from His cross and resurrection.

The answer to Andrew Sullivan is to point back to everything the Gospels tell us. Let’s not isolate the sayings of Jesus we like and fit Him into our vision for how the world should work. Instead, let’s fall at the feet of King Jesus, ready and willing to do whatever it takes to fit our lives into His vision, a vision of the world to come that has crashed into the world that is.