The Gospel Coalition

One of the gospel’s most thrilling, life-giving, notes is that in Jesus I have all the acceptance I long for. The gospel rescues us from the fear of being rejected.

That fear looms large in all of us, though some have become quite sophisticated in trying to suppress and silence it.

We think our lives will become meaningful and worth living if we can just get in the right relationships with the right people, especially those who can help us reach where we want to go and get what we want to obtain, wherever and whatever that is. It could be the right level of income, or entry into the right social strata, or the right career, or the right marriage. If we can’t make our dreams a reality, whatever they are, then life isn’t worth living. We seek to gain that acceptance especially through our appearance, or our achievements, or our performance.

In the movie Rocky, do you remember the scene on the night just before his big fight with Apollo Creed? Rocky knows he can’t beat Creed; he tells his girlfriend Adrian, “All I wanna do is go the distance” (something no other fighter has done with Creed). If Rocky can somehow stay standing the full fifteen rounds, then he’ll know for the first time in his life that he isn’t “just another bum from the neighborhood.”

In my moments of gospel-disbelieving self-centeredness, there are certain things I look to so I’ll know I’m not just another bum. That’s when I have to be reminded of the truth: If you embrace what Christ has done on the cross for sinners, you’re in.

In fact, all of our desires for acceptance are really just pointers to what we really long for. They point to the one place, the one person, where we find real acceptance that can be experienced forever.

If you’re a Christian, you’re forever, unchangeably accepted by God, the only one who matters. When we grasp this, we realize that all those other things where we’ve searched for acceptance ultimately don’t matter. They were never intended to be our saviors, our source of significance. They’re too limited. All gods but God are too small.

No one can save us like Jesus can, yet we all look elsewhere for our functional saviors. We all do that, even those of us who say, “I believe Jesus is my Savior.” We embrace that truth intellectually, but there are so many other things we look to daily, weekly, and monthly to provide us with the rescue, the meaning, the significance, and the acceptance we all long for.

Daily rescue happens as we continually reorient ourselves to what Jesus has done for us. When we remind ourselves that Jesus came to reconcile sinners to God, and that as a result we now possess all the acceptance we need, it frees us from our slavery. It frees us from our idols. We no longer have to depend on those small things that will never be able to rescue us the way we long to be rescued. We become free of self-reliance and self-dependence.

Tell me this isn’t good news–gospel?

Almost a week ago, 29 members of our church left for Les Cayes, Haiti. The team members are sharing God’s love in word and deed by providing medical and dental care to those in orphanages and their surrounding communities. The team is also participating in a construction project to build a school. We are partnering with El Shaddai Ministries International and we went along with Great Commission Alliance.

Click here to follow what’s going on down there (and maybe offer a comment of encouragement–I’m sure it would be greatly appreciated).

It’s amazing how small and insignificant our own issues become when we begin to consider the great needs of others such as those in Haiti that 29 of our members have gone to serve. 

Jean Larroux, the pastor of Lagniappe Presbyterian Church in Bay St. Louis, preached a sermon last year called “Bad People Make Good Missionaries.” In it he describes how much he dislikes the signs that you sometimes see leaving church parking lots which read ”You are now entering the mission field.” He would rather have signs hanging over the mirrors in church bathrooms that read “You are now looking at the mission field.” What does he mean?

He means that all of us need to realize our own continuing need of the gospel before we can be effective in reaching others with it. “How can we assure others that Jesus really is for sinners,” he asks, “if all they know about us is good things?” We are not offering a self-help program, we are presenting the good news that Jesus saves sinners. We are most effective in declaring the gospel when we become living demonstrations of it.

As I said during last week’s sermon, the Bible makes it clear that the Gospel is not for the strong and mighty. It’s not for all-stars; it’s not for overcomers. Rather, it’s for people who recognize that they are deficient but that God alone is sufficient. It’s for people who realize their inability to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. It’s for those who know they’re not gods. It’s for people who understand the bankruptcy of life without God. It’s not for the dominant; it’s for the defeated.

This is precisely what Jesus meant when he said, “those who are well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” This is what Paul meant when he said that “God chooses the weak things of the world to shame the strong; the foolish things to confound the wise.”

After all, it’s not our strength but God’s strength that this world needs to see and Paul tells us that God flaunts his strength through our weakness.

Thank God for Jesus–the only winner who has ever lived!

My friend Ed Stetzer from Lifeway Research interviewed me the other day about my book Unfashionable. You can read the interview here.

Amongst other things, the gospel is the good news that if we, by faith, embrace all that Christ has done for sinners, then we can be assured that absolutely nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). Once we know that we’re forever loved by Jesus, we’re free to love others regardless of the risk, because our deep need to love will be satisfied.

A friend once told me, “My home is an unloving place.” When he returned there everyday from work, he said he wasn’t loved the way he longed to be loved by his wife and kids. I listened to him, and we talked further. Eventually I responded, “Maybe, just maybe, you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective.” I suggested that for six months he ask himself the following question each day when he came home from work: “Who here can I love? Who here needs my love right now?” I told him to pray about this before he walked in the door, asking God to show him the answer to that question. This man did that, and things at home changed.

Unfortunately, the fear that our love toward others will not be reciprocated is something that paralyzes many of us. It prevents parents from properly loving their kids, and husbands and wives from properly loving each other. We come to this conclusion: I will love you only to the degree that you love me. It’s an attitude that enslaves us. But the gospel frees us from that.

I too enjoy receiving love from my family. I’m ecstatic when my kids love me and express affection toward me. Something in me comes alive when they do that. But I’ve learned this freeing truth: I don’t need that love, because in Jesus, I receive all the love I need. This in turn enables me to love my kids without fear or reservation. I get to revel in their enjoyment of my love without needing anything from them in return. I get love from Jesus so that I can give love to them.

The gospel tells us that God in Christ loved sinners even while we hated him. Fully realizing this will pave the way for us to love others unconditionally as well. We realize and experience this liberating truth: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16). This kind of lay-down-your-life love is the clearest indicator of a gospel-centered life.

But laying down your life for others is impossible. It’s too scary—unless you know you’ve been eternally loved by Christ. Then you’re free to give your life to others, because you’ve received so much yourself.

Do you realize how radically different this world would be if that was the rule instead of the exception in all our relationships? The most powerful way we can join God on his mission to bring heaven to earth—to warm this place up, and renew and redeem and fix this broken planet—is by applying the gospel in this way, in all our relationships.

In a post I made a few days ago, I quoted Paul Tripp who recently wrote, ”There is a Rock to be found. There is an inner rest to be experienced that’s deeper than human love, personal success, and the accumulation of possessions. There is a rock that will give you rest even when all of those things have been taken away. That rock is Christ, and you were hardwired to find what you are seeking in him.”

In these difficult days when everything seems unstable, all things are unpredictable, and the dangerous unknown looms around every corner, this reminder from the beloved Heidelberg Catechism serves as an anchor to my weary soul:

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong— body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

As many of you know, Tim Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC (a PCA church that Tim planted in 1989). Tim is a top-notch thinker, an excellent preacher, and a dear friend.

As a preacher, Tim knows how to unveil and unpack the truth of the Gospel from every Biblical text he preaches in such a way that it results in the exposure of both the idols of our culture and the idols of our hearts. His faithful exposition of our true Savior from every passage in the Bible painfully reveals all of the pseudo-saviors that we trust in culturally and personally. Every sermon discloses the subtle ways in which we as individuals and we as a culture depend on lesser things than Jesus to provide the security, acceptance, protection, affection, meaning, and satisfaction that only Christ can supply. In this way, he is constantly showing just how relevant and necessary Jesus is; he’s constantly proving that we are great sinners but Christ is a great Savior. His sermons, in other words, rightly sting and sing!

Personally, I am grateful for Tim’s friendship. His interest in me as a person and a preacher shows a side to him that many perhaps do not see. I know how busy he is and how many demands he has and yet he has always found time to talk with me, advise me, meet with me, and in a thousand other ways, help me out. So Tim, thanks for all you do and for who you are. Preach on brother—we’re all listening!

Christianity Today profiles Tim here. Whether you are familiar with Tim’s ministry or not, this article is well worth the read.