The Gospel Coalition

“It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if, being in his grace, you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a sloppail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should.”

–Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cindy Swanson writes about how modesty is gaining attention and momentum. However, she cautions:

All young girls know what attracts the average boy, and that’s the more skin, the better. Today’s popular music, especially the hip-hop genre, glorifies girls who show it all. As far as the entertainment industry goes–even those young actresses and singers who start out with wholesome, squeaky-clean images, seem to end up shedding those values along with their clothes.

So what would prompt a beautiful young girl with a terrific body to keep it relatively covered up? In my view, only Biblical and/or religious principles would be the motivating factor.

Read the rest of her post here.

My friend John Seel just sent me a link about this new project, The Church in the Matrix, based on David Wells’ new book The Courage to be Protestant. 

The Church in the Matrix is a series of probing studies that explores how the matrix of culture is eroding historic, biblical Christianity. It offers practical guidance that combines culture wisdom with biblical faithfulness. It is plain talk visually illustrated. It includes a five-part DVD documentary and discussion guide, The Church in the Matrix Study Bible, The Church in the Matrix Guide for Young Adults, and The Church in the Matrix Electronic Resource Library. The project will also include a series of Town Hall conversations hosted by key churches across the United States.

You can find out more about this project and who’s involved here.

(Here’s an excerpt from a chapter for Unfashionable that I finished on Saturday. I’m getting close to the finish line!) 

The work of God the Son reconciling us to God the Father is to result in the reconciliation of people to one another. When we come to God through repentance and faith in Christ, one result is that we come into a new relationship with God’s people—many of whom are quite different than we are (some of my closest friends today are people who I would have never hung out with in high school). In Romans 10, Paul argued for the Gentiles’ place in God’s redemptive plan when he said, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon him” (Rom. 10:12). Also, in Galatians where Paul decried certain Jewish leaders for teaching that the sign of circumcision was a condition for justification, he said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). And then in Colossians 3:11, Paul addressed class distinctions which were threatening to divide the church by declaring the new creation in Christ—a newness in which “there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.” In these ways, Paul affirms a foundational reality that always accompanies true Gospel belief: When God makes us one with Christ he also makes us one with each other.

This means that, in contrast to the tribal-mindedness of the world around us, the church is to be the one social structure in our segregated culture that brings people together who, in any other sector of society, would remain separated. Our society groups people together according to fundamentally worldly notions of class, race, economics, age, and so on. These divisions prove to be root sources of loneliness, fragmentation, and alienation in the modern world. Their effects are ones which the Church should strive against in establishing a new community. For, the Gospel is not simply the good news that God reconciles us to himself, but also to one another. Therefore, the church should be the one community breaking down barriers—not erecting them. God intends the church to be demonstrating what surrounding communities could look like where God’s reconciling power is at work. Sadly, however, the church is often as tribal as the world.

Most churches would agree that racial or economic segregation runs contrary to the very nature of the Gospel. Most would also acknowledge that any sort of class bigotry is antithetical to the Gospel and should therefore not be tolerated. But there’s another, perhaps more subtle, type of segregation that many churches today have actually adopted and embraced. Following the lead of the advertising world, many churches today (and more specifically worship services) are targeting specific age groups to the exclusion of others. For years now churches have been organizing themselves around generational distinctives: busters, boomers, Generations X, Y, and Z. Many churches offer a “traditional service” for the tribe who prefers old music and a “contemporary service” for the tribe who prefers new music. I understand the good intentions behind some of these efforts but something as seemingly harmless as this evidences a fundamental failure to comprehend the heart of the Gospel. When we offer, for instance, a contemporary worship service for the younger people and a traditional worship service for the older people, we are not only feeding tribalism (which is a toxic form of racism) but we are saying that the Gospel can’t successfully bring these two different groups together. It is a declaration of doubt in the reconciling power of God’s Gospel. Generational appeal in worship is an unintentional admission that the Gospel is powerless to “join together” what man has separated. Plainly stated, building the church on age appeal (whether old or young) or stylistic preferences is as contrary to the reconciling effect of the Gospel as building it on class, race, or gender distinctions. Negatively, when the church segregates people according to generation, race, style, or socio-economic status, we exhibit our disbelief in the reconciling power of the Gospel. Positively, one of the prime evidences of God’s power to our segregated world is a congregation which transcends cultural barriers, including age.

As I and others have mentioned, Tim Keller’s new book The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith comes out in October. Based on Tim’s classic exposition of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, this book is intended to help believers and unbelievers understand the Gospel of grace in a fresh and compelling way. 

Tim, however, has been asked by a fair number of people about the title of the book. Some have concluded that using the word “prodigal” in reference to God is saying something about God that the Bible itself does not say. So instead of trying to answer these questions myself, I sent a note to Tim asking him if he would be kind enough to explain his use of the word “prodigal” in reference to God. This is what he wrote back to me:

The word ‘prodigal’ does not appear in the Greek text. It is an English word that has become attached to the parable of the two lost sons in Luke 15. But it is a good, suggestive word that helps us understand the parable’s teaching.

The word ‘prodigal’ is an English word that means recklessly extravagant, spending to the point of poverty, of ‘being in want’ (Luke 15:14.) The dictionaries tell us that the word can be understood in a more negative or a more positive sense. The more positive meaning is to be lavishly and sacrificially abundant in giving. The more negative sense, is to be wasteful and irresponsible in one’s spending. The negative sense obviously applies to the actions of the younger brother in the Luke 15 parable of the two sons. But is there any sense in which God can be called ‘Prodigal’?

First, the elder brother is offended by the father’s extravagant and (to him) irresponsible welcome of his younger brother. The father, of course, represents God, and legalists are always offended by the gospel of free grace. They see it as wasteful and unfair. After all, they worked for their acceptance. These are the people to whom Jesus was telling the parable in the first place—the Pharisees who objected to Jesus’ lavish grace to tax collectors and sinners. They certainly thought Jesus was being far too free and irresponsible with the love and favor he was promising them from God. Jesus depicts them in the parable as the elder brother upset with his father’s prodigality.

Second, the positive meaning of the term ‘prodigal’ is definitely true of God. He spent himself to the uttermost on the Cross. He did so ‘recklessly’ in the sense that he did not reckon the cost to himself. Jesus was someone who spent himself into helpless poverty (2 Cor 8:9) and was ‘in want’ in the most extreme way.

So, in summary, the title ‘Prodigal God’ calls attention not only to the mistaken way that legalists regard God’s gospel of grace, but also to how Jesus, though he was rich, spent everything without thought for himself, that we might be saved.

Thanks for the explanation Tim!

(Here’s another excerpt from Unfashionable. I’m almost finished. Thank God!)

For too long, many church leaders have been saying that in order for us be relevant we must revamp both our structures and our ideas. They’ve been telling us for a long time that the church’s cultural significance depends ultimately either on its ability to keep up with the changing structures (technological innovation, for instance) or the latest intellectual fad (postmodernism, for instance).

Recently I was flipping through a couple of well-known Christian magazines. I counted six full-page advertisements for upcoming conferences designed to help churches adapt in order to meet today’s unique needs — “new ways for new days.” Some emphasized improved techniques, programs, methods, and advertising strategies. Others stressed our need to “emerge” from preoccupation with traditional truth claims and theology and to focus instead on what’s most important — relationships, caring for the poor, and social justice issues — forgetting that right practice (orthopraxy) flows from right belief (orthodoxy).

Here’s what struck me: All this comes at precisely the time when our culture is growing weary of slick production and whatever’s new, and growing hungry for authentic presence and historical rootedness. They don’t want trendy engagement from the church; they want truthful engagement with historical and theological solidity that facilitates meaningful interaction with transcendent reality. They want desperately to invest their life in something worth dying for, not some “here today, gone tomorrow” fad. Ironically, just when our culture is yearning for something different, many churches are developing creative ways to be the same. Just when our culture’s looking back in time, many churches are pronouncing the irrelevance of the past. Just when our culture is seeking after truth, many churches are turning away from it. And as a result, these churches are losing their distinct identity as a people set apart to reach the world.

I have good news for all of us who are becoming weary of this pressure from church leaders to fit in with the world: We don’t have to. The relevance of the church doesn’t depend on its ability to identify the latest cultural trends and imitate them. “The ultimate factor in the church’s engagement with society,” says Guinness, “is the church’s engagement with God”  — not the church’s engagement with the latest intellectual or structural fashion. This means that, contrary to what we have been hearing, the greatest need for the church in the 21st century is not structural, but spiritual. We need to remember that God has established His church as an “alternative society” — not to compete with or copy this world, but to offer a refreshing alternative to it.

When we forget this, we inadvertently communicate to our culture that we have nothing unique to offer, nothing deeply spiritual and profoundly transforming. And our culture is forced to look elsewhere for the difference they crave.

By continuing to pursue worldly relevance so emphatically, Christians will ironically render themselves completely irrelevant to the world. There’s an irrelevance to pursuing relevance just as there’s a relevance to practicing irrelevance. For, to be truly relevant you have to say things which are eternal, not trendy. It is those things that are timeless which are most relevant to most people, and we dare not forget this fact in our pursuit of relevance. Realizing that “there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9) we are wasting time when we make it our chief aim to be innovative.

In an article about younger generations “returning to tradition,” Lauren Winner notes that young people today “are not so much wary of institutions as they are wary of institutions that don’t do what they’re supposed to do.”  What Christians are “supposed to do” is remind our culture that the things of this world isn’t all there is, and that human beings aren’t left to the resources of this world to satisfy our otherworldly longings. Christians alone can provide our culture with that longed-for transcendent difference, because only the Christian gospel offers a true spirituality, an otherworldliness grounded in reality and history. Only the Christian story fuses past, present, and future with meaning from above and beyond. That’s what we’re supposed to proclaim.

“There is only one way to live: all-out, go-for-broke, risk-taking, pedal-to-the-metal, ferociously joyful and grateful enthusiasm for the Lord Jesus Christ. Halfway Christianity is the most miserable existence of all. Halfway Christians know enough to feel guilty about themselves but haven’t gone far enough to get happy in Christ. Wholehearted Christianity is very happy.” Ray Ortlund, Sr.

(HT: Ray Jr.)