The Gospel Coalition

Here’s Part 2 of the Commit Magazine interview that my friend (and founder of the magazine) Justin Buzzard did with me.

You can read Part 1 here.

3. What are some of the dangers you’ve seen show up in Christian community when the gospel is not understood, believed, and applied together?

Segregation is the biggest danger that shows up inside the church when the gospel is not grasped. Since the gospel is the good news that God reconciles us not only to himself but also to one another, the church should be breaking down barriers, not erecting them. God intends the church to be demonstrating for the watching world what community looks like when the reconciling power of the gospel is at work. Sadly, however, segregation seems to be as fashionable inside the church as outside.

Most churches would agree that any segregation arising from racial or economic bigotry runs contrary to the nature of the gospel and should not be tolerated. But there’s another segregation, perhaps more subtle, that many churches today have embraced. Following the lead of the advertising world, many churches and worship services target specific age groups to the exclusion of others. They forget that, according to the Bible, the church is an all-age community, and instead they organize themselves around distinctives dividing the generations: Busters, Boomers, Millennials, generations X, Y, and Z.

I understand the good intentions behind these seemingly harmless efforts, but they evidence a fundamental failure to comprehend the heart of the gospel. We’re not only feeding toxic tribalism; we’re also saying the gospel can’t successfully bring different groups together. It’s a declaration of doubt about the unifying power of God’s gospel. Generational appeal in worship, for instance, is an unintentional admission that the gospel is powerless to join together what man has separated.

Building the church on stylistic preferences or age appeal (whether old or young) is just as contrary to the reconciling effect of the gospel as building it on class, race, or gender distinctions.

In The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis mentions two friends, Ronald and Charles. After one of them died, Lewis realized there was no consolation to be found in the possibility that he and the surviving friend might now actually “get” more of each other as a result. “Far from having more of Ronald, having him ‘to myself’ now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.” He would never again, for example, observe Ronald’s unique reaction to one of Charles’s jokes. Lewis notes, “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I need other lights than my own to show all his facets.”

The soul-shrinking byproduct of segregation is that it prevents us from knowing God deeply because the only way to know him deeply is to have many different types of Christian people in your life, since each person will help to reveal a part of God that you can’t see by yourself. This means the great tragedy of segregation isn’t so much that we see less of each other but that in separating from each other we see less of God. All of us need other lights than our own to see more of his facets.

4. Why have you given your life to pastor a local church?

I realized many years ago that God has only oath-bound his blessing to one institution—the church. And while the church is universal in nature, it’s local in expression. Therefore, if I wanted to be where the gospel-action is, I needed to give my life to the local church.

I really believe a central component to my calling is to help a new generation understand the beauty and necessity of the local church. A few years ago I was in Starbucks with our music director, Brandon. As we waited in line to get our afternoon caffeine kick, the young barista behind the counter overheard us talking about our church, which at that point was only a year old, and we started chatting. Brandon soon invited her to visit our church one Sunday. She responded in typical postmodern fashion, saying, “I’m into spirituality, but I’m not really into organized religion.” Brandon, who has a wonderfully quick wit, replied, “Don’t worry, we’re really not that organized.”

The barista’s statement illustrates what many people believe today, namely that they can have a meaningful relationship with God without being connected to a local church. But it’s just not possible to have Christ the head without Christ the body—his church (Ephesians 1:22–23; Colossians 1:18). The two are inseparable. Christians do not worship a decapitated Jesus. The Bible does not drive a wedge between Christ and his body. To neglect the body of Christ is to neglect Christ. Just as no one can survive without air, so Christians can’t survive without the church. Without the church, Christians suffocate.

The best place for me to help people understand this is in the role of local pastor.

I’m doing what I am. I can’t doing anything else–thank God!

My buddy Justin Buzzard interviewed me recently about the nature and necessity of community for his magazine Commit. Commit is a gospel-centered magazine that engages vital issues of our time. To find out more about it click here. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, here’s part 1 of the interview. I’ll post part 2 in a couple days.

1. Why is understanding and taking part in Christian community especially important in today’s cultural climate?

I’m convinced that one of the reasons the church is not having a greater impact in our world is because, like the world around us, Christians have succumbed to individualism.

Individualism is a fundamentally worldly way of understanding what it means to be human. Stamped into the fabric of our modern society is the idea that the individual is the primary center of reality, the ultimate standard of value. We live in a culture where there are no longer any obligations to others. The locus of all authority is squarely fixed on the individual self. This approach devalues the role of “the many” in favor of “the one.” Togetherness and community are radically diminished. It’s all about “me,” not “we.”

In the Bible, however, we discover that while we’re called by God as individuals, we’re called into his new community, the church. One of my all-time favorite quotes about the church comes from an excellent little book entitled Total Christianity by Frank Colquhoun. He writes, “The fellowship of the church is part of God’s good news to men. It imparts to the gospel one of its most thrilling notes—that when Christ saves a man he not only saves him from his sin, he saves him from his solitude.”

In our day the word church tends to make us think of buildings and institutions; we assume it refers exclusively to a particular structure or establishment. In the Bible, however, the word for church literally means “the called-out ones”—those individuals who have been called out of darkness and called together into the light, thus forming God’s new community (what the early church fathers called the communio sanctorum, or the communion of saints). Therefore the church is first about community, not construction; about people, not programs.

This means there’s no such thing as Christian individualism; it’s an oxymoron. The church is meant to be a God-formed community of people who have abandoned the notion that life can and should be lived in isolation. Christians are connected people—connected to each other by God the Father, through God the Son, in God the Spirit.

One of my goals as a senior pastor is to lead our pastoral staff to embody gospel-centered community so that we serve as a model to the rest of our church. We strive to laugh with one another, cry with one another, love one another, serve one another, exhort one another, and forbear with one another. We pray together, read the Bible together, and serve together. We share in one another’s pleasures and pains. And we try, by God’s grace, to “stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). We work hard at becoming the kind of community we want our church to become.

Not surprisingly, our commitment to demonstrate gospel-centered community has spread throughout our church, and our church has increasingly become what we long for our surrounding area to become. As this continues to happen, our church models what human life and community can look like when fueled by the gospel. I think it’s really important to remember that God’s great evangelistic tool is the church—this new, counter-cultural community in which the fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit comes to expression in the unity, community, and joy of God’s people. As we live together in a way that’s consistent with who we’ve been remade to be, we become a blessing to the world by showing them how sweet life can be in a community of individuals who love one another, care for one another, defer to one another, are patient with one another, and serve one another. The world will take notice of a community of men and women who refreshingly and joyfully bear one another’s burdens and who actively look to lay down their lives for others in need because Jesus laid down his life for them. When the world sees that Christians want to help people because God has helped them, they’ll begin to ask what makes us so different. A faithful presentation of the gospel to our world, in other words, requires Christian community on full display.

2. How should the gospel shape what Christian community looks like?

The gospel turns everything upside down. It defines success in terms of giving, not taking; self-sacrifice, not self-protection; going to the back, not getting to the front. It shows that we win by losing, we triumph through defeat, we achieve power through service, and we become rich by giving ourselves away. In fact, gospel-centered living means we follow Jesus in laying down our lives for others; serving instead of being served, seeking last place, not first.

Well, all of this ought to mold and shape the church at every point and in every way. For instance, when you understand that if you have Christ you have nothing to lose, it enables you to live a life of great sacrifice and generosity. Gospel-centered people are those who love giving up their place for others, not guarding in their place from others, because their value and worth is found in Christ, not their place. When you understand that your significance and identity is anchored in Christ, you don’t have to win—you’re free to lose. In Christ, my identity and significance is secure which frees me to give everything I have because in Christ I have everything I need.

To live a gospel-centered life is to treat others horizontally the way God has treated us in Christ vertically. The gospel motivates us to treat people right by reminding us that God in Christ has treated us right. We’re to be kind and tenderhearted and forgiving because God in Christ has been kind and tenderhearted and forgiving toward us. We serve those around us because God in Christ has served us. We forgive those who wrong us because we who have wronged God have been forgiven by God in Christ.

Let me give you another example. While I may enjoy kindness from Kim (my wife), I don’t “need” it. In Jesus I receive all the kindness I need. This enables me to be kind to her without the fear that she might not return the favor. I get to revel in her enjoyment of my kindness without needing that kindness to be reciprocated. I get kindness from Christ so that I can give kindness to her.

When you multiply that freedom across every relationship you have, you’re liberated to lay down your life for others without needing anything from them in return, because in Christ you’ve been given everything you need. Living out this reality would transform our relationships with our spouse, kids, neighbors, coworkers—everyone. As the church increasingly becomes a community that devotes itself to being kind and tenderhearted and forgiving, we warm up this cold world, making it more livable for everyone. We show this world how freeing, safe, warm, and secure life can be when it’s marked by tenderheartedness and kindness and forgiveness—when it’s marked by the gospel.

Given the recent uproar in Washington this past week, I thought it might be helpful to post a short section from my book Unfashionable regarding the role of politics and cultural change. Wherever you might land politically, it’s helpful for all Christians to remember that the Kingdom of God is not flying in on Air Force One.

When it comes to engaging culture, many Christians think exclusively of political activism. I fully agree that Christians need to be involved in the political process; as I’ve argued so far, Christians are to bring the standards of God’s Word to bear on every cultural sphere, politics included.

But political activism isn’t the only thing—definitely not the main thing—God had in mind when he issued the cultural mandate to mankind. Nor is politics a particularly strategic arena for cultural renewal, as theologian Vern Poythress writes:

Bible-believing Christians have not achieved much in politics because they have not devoted themselves to the larger arena of cultural conflict. Politics mostly follows culture rather than leading it. . . . A temporary victory in the voting booth does not reverse a downward moral trend driven by cultural gatekeepers in news media, entertainment, art, and education. Politics is not a cure-all.

After decades of political activism on the part of evangelical Christians, we’re beginning to understand that the dynamics of cultural change differ radically from political mobilization. Even political insiders recognize that years of political effort on behalf of evangelical Christians have generated little cultural gain. In a recent article entitled “Religious Right, R.I.P.,” columnist Cal Thomas, himself an evangelical Christian, wrote, “Thirty years of trying to use government to stop abortion, preserve opposite-sex marriage, improve television and movie content and transform culture into the conservative Evangelical image has failed.” American culture continues its steep moral and cultural decline into hedonism and materialism. Why? As Richard John Neuhaus observes, “Christianity in America is not challenging the ‘habits of the heart’ and ‘habits of the mind’ that dominate American culture.”

For a long time now I’ve been convinced that what happens in New York (finance), Hollywood (entertainment), Silicon Valley (technology), and Miami (fashion) has a far greater impact on how our culture thinks about reality than what happens in Washington, DC (politics). It’s super important for us to understand that politics are reflective, not directive. That is, the political arena is the place where policies are made which reflect the values of our culture—the habits of heart and mind—that are being shaped by these other, more strategic arenas. As the Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher said, “Let me write the songs of a nation; I don’t care who writes its laws.”

In preparation for my sermon this past Sunday, I re-read the opening lines of Michael Horton’s book Christless Christianity. He writes:

What would things look like if Satan really took control of a city? Over half a century ago, Presbyterian minister Donald Grey Barnhouse offered his own scenario in his weekly sermon that was also broadcast nationwide on CBS radio. Barnhouse speculated that if Satan took over Philadelphia (the city where Barnhouse pastored), all of the bars would be closed, pornography banished, and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The children would say, “Yes, sir” and “No ma’am,” and the churches would be full every Sunday…where Christ is not preached.

There is a great difference between moralism and the gospel. Moralism, in fact, inoculates us from the gospel by giving us something of “the real thing” ensuring that we miss out on the true gospel all together. We must remember that Christ came first not to make bad people good but to make dead people live. If we forget that, our Christianity will turn out to be Christless.

When it comes to social science (the technical term for the academic discipline of cultural analysis) there isn’t anyone more capable and qualified than Dr. James Davison Hunter. He is one of the leading social scientists in the world today and he happens to be an Evangelical Christian. Dr. Hunter came to Reformed Theological Seminary to teach a class while I was a student and it was one of the best classes I took in seminary. The class was entitled “The Cultural Quandaries of Late Modernity” and proved to be both probing and practical.

He teaches at the University of Virgina and also heads up the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. The following article is a transcript of a lecture he gave at the Trinity Forum on how to think about cultural change. This lecture eventually turned into his new book To Change the World–a book that promises, in the words of my friend John Seel, “to change the entire conversation.”

The article is a bit heady, but definitely worth working through. This is the kind of hard thinking about culture that Christians need to do. For too long we’ve fancied ourselves to be “culturally relevant” if we can simply identify the latest “cultural fads” and then mimic them. Hunter goes way beyond this. If you care about understanding our times, read this article–and then buy the book!

In a recent article, Dr. Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and host of the Albert Mohler program, rightly identifies the false gospel of moralism. He writes:

In our own context, one of the most seductive false gospels is moralism. This false gospel can take many forms and can emerge from any number of political and cultural impulses. Nevertheless, the basic structure of moralism comes down to this –the belief that the Gospel can be reduced to improvements in behavior.

The seduction of moralism is the essence of its power. We are so easily seduced into believing that we actually can gain all the approval we need by our behavior. Of course, in order to participate in this seduction, we must negotiate a moral code that defines acceptable behavior with innumerable loopholes. Most moralists would not claim to be without sin, but merely beyond scandal. That is considered sufficient.

Moralists can be categorized as both liberal and conservative. In each case, a specific set of moral concerns frames the moral expectation. As a generalization, it is often true that liberals focus on a set of moral expectations related to social ethics while conservatives tend to focus on personal ethics. The essence of moralism is apparent in both — the belief that we can achieve righteousness by means of proper behavior.

Read the rest of Dr. Mohler’s article here.

My dear friend and brother, Scotty Smith, has joined the Gospel Coalition blogging network. You can go here and read Scotty’s gospel-soaked prayers everyday! Please add the link to your favorites. It will do your soul very good to make Scotty’s prayers your own.

Here’s a taste from today’s prayer:

When I mute my heart to the insult of grace, I deny your cross. When I think, even for one moment, that my obedience merits anything, I deny your cross. When I put others under the microscope and measure of performance-based living, I deny your cross. When I wallow in self-contempt and do more navel-gazing than repenting, I deny your cross. Though I hate the bumper-sticker, when I actually live like you’re my co-pilot, I deny the cross.

In light of Paul Tripp coming to Coral Ridge this weekend, I’ve gone back through a lot of my Paul Tripp books–he’s such a huge gift to the church!

In one of his books (co-authored with Tim Lane), How People Change, he identifies seven counterfeit gospels—-”religious” ways we try and “justify” or “save” ourselves apart from the gospel of grace. I found these unbelievably helpful. Which one (or two, or three) of these do you tend to gravitate towards?

Formalism. “I participate in the regular meetings and ministries of the church, so I feel like my life is under control. I’m always in church, but it really has little impact on my heart or on how I live. I may become judgmental and impatient with those who do not have the same commitment as I do.”

Legalism. “I live by the rules—rules I create for myself and rules I create for others. I feel good if I can keep my own rules, and I become arrogant and full of contempt when others don’t meet the standards I set for them. There is no joy in my life because there is no grace to be celebrated.”

Mysticism. “I am engaged in the incessant pursuit of an emotional experience with God. I live for the moments when I feel close to him, and I often struggle with discouragement when I don’t feel that way. I may change churches often, too, looking for one that will give me what I’m looking for.”

Activism. “I recognize the missional nature of Christianity and am passionately involved in fixing this broken world. But at the end of the day, my life is more of a defense of what’s right than a joyful pursuit of Christ.”

Biblicism. “I know my Bible inside and out, but I do not let it master me. I have reduced the gospel to a mastery of biblical content and theology, so I am intolerant and critical of those with lesser knowledge.”

Therapism. “I talk a lot about the hurting people in our congregation, and how Christ is the only answer for their hurt. Yet even without realizing it, I have made Christ more Therapist than Savior. I view hurt as a greater problem than sin—and I subtly shift my greatest need from my moral failure to my unmet needs.”

Social-ism. “The deep fellowship and friendships I find at church have become their own idol. The body of Christ has replaced Christ himself, and the gospel is reduced to a network of fulfilling Christian relationships.”

As I said two weeks ago in my sermon, there are outside-the-church idols and there are inside-the-church idols. It’s the idols inside the church that ought to concern Christians most. It’s easier for Christians to identify worldly idols such as money, power, selfish ambition, sex, and so on. It’s the idols inside the church that we have a harder time identifying.

For instance, we know it’s wrong to bow to the god of power—but it’s also wrong to bow to the god of preferences. We know it’s wrong to worship immorality—but it’s also wrong to worship morality. We know it’s wrong to seek freedom by breaking the rules—but it’s also wrong to seek freedom by keeping them. We know God hates unrighteousness—but he also hates self-righteousness. We know crime is a sin—but so is control. If people outside the church try to save themselves by being bad; people inside the church try to save themselves by being good.

The good news of the gospel is that both inside and outside the church, there is only One Savior and Lord, namely Jesus. And he came, not to angrily strip away our freedom, but to affectionately strip away our slavery to lesser things so that we might become truly free!

I was asked by my publisher to write a brief summary of my forthcoming book Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels for ByFaith magazine. This is what I wrote:

Most Christians assume that the gospel is something non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, but after we believe it, we advance to deeper theological waters. The truth is, however, that once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel but to move them more deeply into it. After all, the only antidote to sin is the gospel—and since Christians remain sinners even after they’re converted, the gospel must be the medicine a Christian takes every day.

For me, it was through probing the story of Jonah that I came face-to-face with the fact that the gospel is not just for non-Christians but also for Christians.

Jonah is a storied presentation of the gospel, a story of sin and grace, of desperation and deliverance. It reveals the fact that while you and I are great sinners, God is a great Savior, and that while our sin reaches far, his grace reaches farther. This story shows that God is in the business of relentlessly pursuing rebels (a label that ultimately applies to us all) and that he comes after us not to angrily strip away our freedom but to affectionately strip away our slavery so we might become truly free.

I wrote Surprised by Grace because we all need to be.

Surprised by Grace (Crossway) will be available in May 2010.

As I consider the verses I will be preaching from this upcoming Sunday (Colossians 1:24-29), I went back to John Piper’s newest book Filling up the Afflictions of Christ. In the book Piper reprints this remarkable letter from John Calvin to five young Frenchman about to be martyred in 1553 for carrying the gospel into France:

We who are here shall do our duty in praying that He would glorify Himself more and more by your constancy, and that He may, by the comfort of His Spirit, sweeten and endear all that is bitter to the flesh, and so absorb your spirits in Himself, that in contemplating that heavenly crown, you may be ready without regret to leave all that belongs to this world.

Now, at this present hour, necessity itself exhorts you more than ever to turn your whole mind heavenward. As yet, we know not what will be the event. But, since it appears as though God would use your blood to seal His truth, there is nothing better for you than to prepare yourselves for that end, beseeching Him so to subdue you to His good pleasure, that nothing may hinder you from following whithersoever He shall call…Since it pleases Him to employ your death in maintaining His quarrel, He will strengthen your hands in the fight and will not suffer a single drop of your blood to be shed in vain.

Your humble brother,

John Calvin

Piper goes on to say, “When we suffer with Christ in the cause of [the gospel], we display the way Christ loved the world and in our own sufferings extend his to the world. This is what it means to fill up the afflictions of Christ (Colossians 1:24).”

Our suffering, whatever it might be, is never wasted by God. The history of Christianity’s expansion proves what Tertullian said hundreds of years ago: The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. In other words, “God intends for the afflictions of Christ to be presented to the world through the afflictions of his people.” When we suffer for Christ’s sake, we demonstrate for the watching world His magnificent sufficiency.

So keep suffering with a smile because everything that Satan means for evil (even our suffering) God will use to extend and expand His Kingdom–he will use “our blood to seal His truth.”