Contact Tullian Tchividjian at WGTT@crpc.org

 

Apr

11

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|11:33 am CT

Grace Prevails
Grace Prevails avatar

When talking about "the law", we need to make an important distinction. We can call it big "L" Law and little "l" law. Big "L" law comes from God and is outlined in the Ten Commandments, reiterated in the Sermon on the Mount, and summarized by Jesus as the command to "Love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength...and love our neighbor" (of course, one could say more but that's the gist of it). But there's another law (little "l") that plays out in all kinds of ways in daily life. Paul Zahl puts it this way:
Law with a small "l" refers to an interior principle of demand or ought that seems universal in human nature. In this sense, law is any voice that makes us feel we must do something or be something to merit
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Apr

06

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|10:14 am CT

Law And Gospel: Part 4
Law And Gospel: Part 4 avatar

J. Gresham Machen counterintutively noted that "A low view of law always produces legalism; a high view of law makes a person a seeker after grace." The reason this seems so counter-intuitive is because most people think that those who talk a lot about grace have a low view of God's law (hence, the regular charge of antinomianism). Others think that those with a high view of the law are the legalists. But Machen makes the very compelling point that it's a low view of the law that produces legalism because a low view of the law causes us to conclude that we can do it--the bar is low enough for us to jump over. A low view of the law makes us think that the standards are attainable, the goals are reachable, the demands are doable. It's this low...

 
 
 
 

Apr

03

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|10:37 am CT

Law And Gospel: Part 3
Law And Gospel: Part 3 avatar

Believe it or not, the purity of the Gospel's proclamation depends on the distinction between Law and Gospel.

James Nestingen wrote:
When the Law and Gospel are improperly distinguished, both are undermined. Separated from the Law, the Gospel gets absorbed into an ideology of tolerance in which leniency is equated with grace. Separated from the Gospel, the Law becomes an insatiable demand hammering away at the conscience until it destroys a person.

When the Law and Gospel are properly distinguished, however, both are established. The Law can be set forth in its full-scale demand, so that it lights the way to order and, through the work of the Spirit, drives us to Christ. The Gospel can be declared in all of its purity, so that forgiveness of sins and deliverance from the powers of death and the devil are bestowed in the presence
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Mar

28

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|9:24 am CT

Law And Gospel: Part 2
Law And Gospel: Part 2 avatar

If we are going to understand the Bible rightly, we have to be able to distinguish properly between God's two words: law and gospel. All of God's Word in the Bible comes to us in two forms of speech: God's word of demand (law) and God's word of deliverance (gospel). The law tells us what to do and the gospel tells us what God has done. As I mentioned in my previous post, both God's law and God's gospel are good and necessary, but both do very different things. Serious life confusion happens when we fail to understand their distinct "job descriptions." We'll wrongly depend on the law to do what only the gospel can do, and vice versa.

For example, Kim and I have three children: Gabe (17), Nate (15), and Genna (10). In order to function as a community...

 
 
 
 

Mar

23

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|9:36 am CT

Law And Gospel: Part 1
Law And Gospel: Part 1 avatar

For centuries, Reformational Theologians have rightly noted that in the Bible God speaks two fundamentally different words: law and gospel. The law is God's word of demand, the gospel is God's word of deliverance. The law tells us what to do, the gospel tells us what God has done. So, when we speak of the distinction between law and gospel we are referring to different speech acts--or what linguist John Austin calls "illocutionary stances"--that run throughout the whole Bible. Everything in both the Old Testament and the New Testament is either in the form of an obligatory imperative or a declaratory indicative. "Hence," wrote Martin Luther, "whoever knows well this art of distinguishing between the law and the gospel, him place at the head and call him a doctor of Holy Scripture."


This may seem like a distinction that would fascinate only
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Mar

19

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|8:48 am CT

The Unstoppability Of Romans
The Unstoppability Of Romans avatar

I dare you to read Romans:

The Epistle to the Romans has sat around in the church since the first century like a bomb ticking away the death of religion; and every time it's been picked up, the ear-splitting freedom in it has gone off with a roar.

The only sad thing is that the church as an institution has spent most of its time playing bomb squad and trying to defuse it. For your comfort, though, it can't be done. Your freedom remains as close to your life as Jesus and as available to your understanding as the nearest copy. Like Augustine, therefore, tolle lege, take and read: tolle the one, lege the other--and then hold onto your hat. Compared to that explosion, the clap of doom sounds like a cap pistol.

Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and...

 
 
 
 

Mar

15

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|10:36 am CT

Jesus + Nothing = Everything In MODRef
Jesus + Nothing = Everything In MODRef avatar

Adapted from my book Jesus + Nothing = Everything, my friends at Modern Reformation Magazine published the following article I wrote for their March/April issue (only excerpted here). If you only subscribe to one theological magazine, I strongly suggest you subscribe to Modern Reformation.

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The virulence of opposition was more than I could bear. I was undergoing the shelling of my life. I was ready to quit and escape elsewhere. It would be so easy just to walk away and never look back.

All that is what I was going through when, mercifully, vacation time rolled around in June 2009.

On our first morning away, I woke up still saturated with the misery that had been intensifying for so many weeks. I opened up my Bible; in the reading plan I was following, it so happened that the day's...

 
 
 
 

Mar

12

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|8:21 am CT

My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less
My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less avatar

So then, have we nothing to do to obtain righteousness? No, nothing at all! For this righteousness comes by doing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing, but rather in knowing and believing this only--that Christ has gone to the right hand of the Father, not to become our judge, but to become for us our wisdom, our righteousness, our holiness, our salvation!

Now God sees no sin in us. For in this heavenly righteousness, sin has no place. So now we may certainly think, "Although I still sin, I don't despair, because Christ lives--who is both my righteousness and my eternal life." In that righteousness I have no sin, no fear, no guilty conscience, no fear of death. I am indeed a sinner in this life of mine and in my own righteousness, but I have another life, another righteousness above this...

 
 
 
 

Mar

06

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|9:45 am CT

One-Way Love
One-Way Love avatar

We love the "if/then" proposition: "If" you do this, "then" I will do that; we are inveterate slaves (at worst) or grumpy employees (at best). We militate against the freedom of inheritance and the dependency of sonship. We love living as though "what goes around comes around" conditionality were true. That kind of conditionality makes us feel safe. It's easy to comprehend. It's appropriately formulaic. And best of all, it keeps us in control. We get to keep our ledgers and scorecards. The equation: "If I do this, then you are obligated to do that" makes perfect sense to our grace-shy hearts.

Unconditionality, on the other hand, is incomprehensible. We are deeply conditioned against unconditionality because we've been told in a thousand different ways that accomplishment always precedes acceptance, that achievement always precedes approval. When we hear, "Of course you don't...

 
 
 
 

Mar

02

2012

Tullian Tchividjian|7:11 am CT

More, Not Less
More, Not Less avatar

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1)


However deep and wide you think the freedom offered to sinners in the gospel is--it's more, not less. As my friend Dane Ortlund says, "It's time to blow aside the hazy cloud of condemnation that hangs over us throughout the day with the strong wind of gospel grace."

Robert Capon expounds on this:
Saint Paul has not said to you, "Think how it would be if there were no condemnation"; he has said, "There is therefore now none." He has made an unconditional statement, not a conditional one--a flat assertion, not a parabolic one. He has not said, "God has done this and that and the other thing; and if by dint of imagination you can manage to pull it all together, you may be able
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