Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry on Gospel Sanity for Pastors

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Sam Allberry
Welcome. Thank you so much for being here. It’s good to be with you. I’m Sam. He’s rave we’ve not met you want to get us around the right way. Ray, thank you for being here as well. Oh,

Ray Ortlund
it’s a privilege. Thank you, Sam. Let me tell you something about Sam Albury. I trust Sam such that I would comfortably put my life in his hands, and I think that’s what Jesus died and rose again to create among us. So I’m thankful for you. I’m thankful for the Lord’s grace upon you and what you’ve come to mean to me, and we just, we just want that to just go everywhere, flow over all of us. So I’m thankful for you. Sam, thank

Sam Allberry
you, Ray. I say appreciate that. So where our theme is, you’re not crazy. Gospel sanity for weary churches. That the reason why we’ve, we’ve titled it this is because there can be so much weirdness, so much disconnect in the church today that if, if we’re thinking, surely in times such as this, church should feel like the sweetest place on earth to be, if you’re thinking that, we want To say you’re not crazy. Yeah, and we’ve called it gospel sanity, because, again, we’re wanting to assume that the gospel will sweeten and transform all of our relationality in church life and touch every single aspect of our of our life together.

Ray Ortlund
Sam, if, if you could summarize in one brief statement what you hope for our friends here today and thank you for coming, thank you for sharing this time with us. We feel honored that you would be here. We want to serve you well. What would be one thing you would really like to impart to our friends that this book represents,

Sam Allberry
yes, I think, and I’ve borrowed this language from from you over many years of us talking about it, but I think the big idea we really want to try and get across and commend is that that our our Gospel doctrine, that We so cherish, that we so Revere, should create its own kind of culture in our churches. It should make churches not just a new community, but a whole new kind of community. But there should be something about the life we lead together that is shaped by the gospel, such that it feels like nowhere else on earth and with the Lord’s help, and only with the Lord’s help, to try and move forwards towards that together. Yeah. So my question to you would be, why do we Why do we really need that now?

Ray Ortlund
Well, it’s a perennial issue, but right now, our mission field, which Jesus perceives with the eyes of compassion, perceives us with the eyes of suspicion, and in large measure, we’ve done it to ourselves. Every church is communicating at two levels simultaneously all the time, at the level of its official message, its doctrine, and at the level of its culture, its human reality. And our mission field, may or may not even care to attend to our doctrinal statement and how we exegete Romans, they do notice and rightly care about the human realities of every church. Is there beauty there? The question, it seems to me, in our generation is, how on earth are we going to get along and not destroy each other. The ministry that you and I Sam as pastors, we don’t regard gospel doctrine, creating gospel culture as a legitimate option. We don’t regard it as an interesting trend. We believe Jesus died and rose again for his message to create his community so the message doesn’t hang in midair as a naked abstraction, but becomes embodied in the beauty of human relationships. If he lived and died for it, we want to live and die for it. You and I feel that way. We want to persuade everybody to jump into this with that level of all in this. That’s what we’re hoping for.

Sam Allberry
Yeah, I’m thinking John 1335 where Jesus famously said, By this, will all people know that you are my disciples by your love for. One another. And it was you put me on to this Francis Schaeffer, wonderful Christian leader from the last century, commenting on those words, said, Jesus is giving the world permission to judge whether we are true Christian disciples on the basis of whether we actually do love one another. So actually, the it’s not just there’s the gospel and then, if we’ve, if we’ve got a bit of time left over, can we be a bit nicer to each other? No, what we’re talking about is that which will make the gospel credible and plausible. Yeah.

Ray Ortlund
Okay, here’s the difference between me and you and most of you, I’ve just lived longer, sinned more. God has been gracious so amazingly, and I have so many regrets, I’ve never in my ministry paid, played fast and loose with Scripture and with doctrine, but for decades, I honestly with every good will in the world, did not perceive what that doctrine itself, by its own natural authority, its own built in tendencies, what God gave it to us to accomplish, not mere agreement in principle with a doctrinal statement, but important as that is but the creation of relationships of trust, properly defined, safety, relaxedness, healing, where we can exhale and let our guard down with one another in our churches, and start admitting how we’re not doing well and what’s really going on, and join together in prayer before the Lord, and healing begins to flow, and something profound can happen in this generation.

Sam Allberry
Ray, we have written this book together. You’re not crazy. The book, some of you may know. The book is based partly on on the podcast we’ve been doing the last couple of years by the same title, originally conceived to be particularly a way of encouraging younger pastors, but we realize that most of the people listening didn’t always self identify as younger all pastors, but trying to trying to get that conversation going about how the gospel is meant to have that effect on our our life together. What was your way in to that realization that actually doctrine isn’t just an end in itself, but is meant to be a catalyst into that kind of transformation.

Ray Ortlund
Thank you. I want to turn that question around in a minute for me, and I’m going to guess I’m not the only one. The most wonderful experiences I’ve had in life have been in churches, and the most horrible experiences I’ve had in life I’ve been in churches, I came to a point some years ago when I had to explain that to myself. I had to account for that. What is going on here? This keeps happening, why? And very gradually, with the help of my son, Dane, we were talking about this, the category, I had the category gospel doctrine very clearly established, and I’m grateful for that. I revere that. But flowing out of that, the whole point of that being gospel culture, that category gradually began to dawn on me and Galatians two was the passage that got up in my face in Galatians chapter two, the apostle Paul chews out the apostle Peter. John Stott says in his commentary, here, we have one of the most tense and dramatic episodes in the entire New Testament, as the Apostle Paul confronts Peter openly, and why is Paul so adamant? J Gresham machen says that verse 21 of Galatians two is the key to the whole book of Galatians, where Paul says, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. And as Martin Luther points out in his commentary, nullifying the grace of God, trivializing the cross of Christ, those are serious sins. And yet, Luther said they’re common. Nullifying the grace of God and trivializing the cross of Christ is not just a problem for cults out on the fringe of things. They’re not just a Christian problem. Here in the first century, it was an apostolic problem. Right? So let’s not be surprised when, without even realizing it, we start moving in directions that in effect nullify the grace of God and trivialize the cross of Christ. It’s horribly unthinkable, but if Luther is right, common. So then I began to think, Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is intense. What did Peter do that nullified the grace of God and trivialized the cross of Christ? What he did was he reestablished the kosher laws of Leviticus, such that Gentile converts had not only to put their trust in Jesus to be justified, but they had to trust Jesus in the garb, in the culture of in Levitical culture. And Peter even knew better. Back in Acts chapter 10, God made very clear to Peter that Cornelius, this new Gentile convert, could come just as he was, with all his gentileness and all his ritual defilement and the cross of Christ was enough to justify that man. So the the jumbo jetliner taking us from earth to heaven does not have first class with extra legroom and prior boarding, and then the rest of us are in the back riding coach. There is only one class there, everyone complete, everyone writing first class, everyone having Christ. He is enough, that understanding and that culture where people can come as they are and they’re just holding out the empty hands of faith, clinging to Christ, receiving Christ in his merit for the undeserving, that belief and that relational dynamic does not nullify the grace of God and does not trivialize the cross of Christ. Peter did not see that. Paul saw it if, if Paul hadn’t confronted Peter in Generation One of the early Christian movement, they would have departed. But what would it look like for a church together to have such a sense of the greatness of Christ, through and according to the gospel and his all sufficient merit? That there’s this there’s this shared feeling. Culture is all intangibles, and it’s a vibe and a feel and a tone. There’s this shared feeling, I’m a complete idiot. I don’t belong here. What am I doing here? The Lord will take anybody and everybody there is thinking the same thing. We have fallen into the arms of Christ. We fall into the arms of one another. Oh, my goodness, Sign me up. So what I’ve come to believe, what you believe, Sam, is that the Lord has called us to give our lives to preaching gospel, doctrine and nurturing gospel culture among people so that the world can see the beauty of Jesus. What was your breakthrough? How did this land on you? Sam, with, I

Sam Allberry
think two, two verses, one, one, a negative example, as with, with Paul rebuking, Peter and one, a positive example. The negative example came from First Timothy five, where I was just reading through First Timothy and minding my own business, and then a verse just kind of again, got up in my face. But Paul is talking about provision for widows. And he then generalizes a bit more, and he says in First Timothy Five, Verse eight, if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for the members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. And I, I had the category in my head already of denying the faith, but I had that category exclusively for those who are false teachers. False teachers deny the faith. They literally deny. And you know, key tenets of the faith, what Paul is showing you here in First Timothy five, is that you can be denying the faith by a failure to love in the way that God has called you to love. So you can be on one level, apparently, theologically Orthodox, whilst denying the faith at the level of the way you are living and behaving. So that just alerted me to actually, there’s, there’s more than one way to deny the faith, not just creedily, but also behaviorally. And then that the second passage, which is the sort of encouraging flip side of that is. Is in Hebrews chapter 10.

Ray Ortlund
I remember when you You pointed this out. I’d never thought of this before, yeah,

Sam Allberry
well, I’d read this verse so many times before actually noticing what it said. But in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 2425 let us consider how to stir up one another, to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more, as you see the day drawing near, so the writer to the Hebrews is is urging us not to not to stop gathering as God’s people, not neglecting to meet together, as evidently, was the habit of some, but I would have completed that sentence, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but being disciplined in coming to church each week. Whereas the writer actually says the opposite of of not going to church isn’t going to church. The opposite of not going to church is encouraging each other. Yes. So the writer there is assuming that under, you know, the the umbrella over every single different thing that goes on at church, the overall net effect of all those different necessary elements of church life, the overall net effect should be, we’re encouraging each other. And so that made me think, okay, everything we’re doing at church should be towards that end. Now there’s lots of components to that. Sometimes there’s exhortation, sometimes there’s correction, sometimes there’s consolation, lots of different one anothers that come under that umbrella. But ultimately, the net effect should be. We come out of church more encouraged than when we entered, rather than feeling like I’ve just been to gym class and I’m just worn out, and you know, I’ve now got more stuff to do, and I feel worse than when I walked in, and the fact that he says encourage one another means that each of us should be coming to church with the intent both of them will be at least one person we can be an encouragement to. And the intent that we will in our hearts we are preparing to receive encouragement that’s good, and there have been times when I felt out of sorts with church. Have been times when I’ve not wanted to go and I thought, No, I’ve got to go with the attitude, even if I’ve even if I’m not happy with my church, I’ve got to go with the attitude that I am willing to be encouraged by the Ministry of my church and by the people gathered around me, yes,

Ray Ortlund
and you embody that, Sam, you do that magnificently. You know what? What I’m trying to say here, in my own way too, Sam is, is that the category faithfulness has been enlarged for me. You’re here at the gospel coalition because you care about that. You rightly care about faithfulness to the gospel. We all deeply care if God gave us the privilege we would willingly give up our lives for the truth of the gospel. Faithfulness entails not only just not getting weird theologically, let’s all agree, by God’s grace for His glory, for the rest of let’s just not get weird theologically. But it also that theology, when we are faithful to it, creates beauty. And those two realities together comprise faithfulness, for example, let me show you the opposite of faithfulness. Here’s a photograph that is ugly and disturbing, but it is. It will help me make my point. All right. This is a church, I think, in Portland, Oregon in the 1920s and I look at that photograph, and I Yes, churches are always communicating at two levels, simultaneously, theologically and relationally. Theologically, I ask myself, what is the doctrine of that church? Well, they’re declaring the heart of it in that banner up in the what do you call that part of the church? Sam, I

Sam Allberry
call it the wall on the wall. Quite sophisticated.

Ray Ortlund
Okay, so the theology is, Jesus saves and we all go, Yep, we believe that too, right? Then I ask the question, what is the culture of that church? And the culture is not just an option for that doctrine. The culture violates the doctrine. The culture denies the doctrine. The culture UN says by the human realities, what the doctrine says by its principial declarations. So this very tragic, bizarre situation illustrates we as faithful Christians, we earnestly desire to attend to gospel culture as much as we do to gospel doctrine. This is why Francis Schaeffer, again, who was a prophetic voice to my generation, when I was in university and so forth, meant so much to me. I revere his memory. Schaefer used to speak of the two orthodoxies, orthodoxy of doctrine and orthodoxy of community. So there might be a difference between our orthodoxy of doctrine and our orthodoxy of community, if there is we will not experience this overflowing joy and healing and calm ourselves and our churches will have nothing to say to this generation. But if we let the orthodoxy of doctrine percolate down into we need to talk about what that looks like, how that works. If we let the orthodoxy of doctrine percolate down into the relationships, intangibles, human realities, vibe, feel, tone, oh, Sinclair Ferguson in his wonderful book the whole Christ. Have you guys read that?

Sam Allberry
It’s on the bookstore. I saw it this morning. That’s

Ray Ortlund
one of the best books I’ve ever read. It’s about the marrow controversy in 18th century Scotland. And in the opening section, Sinclair talks about how, as the gospel, there was a renewal movement going on. And it says the interestingly, the tincture of pastoral ministry changed. What would you I mean if I were to say, if Sam were to say, Well, Ray preached biblically and true doctrine on Sunday, but it was sort of a sarcastic vibe going on. You would rightly feel, wait a minute, that’s significant. Tincture, the sense of it, this, this drop of beauty that that lands in a sermon, for example, that is biblical expositional. But it’s more than that. It is melting, heart melting. That kind of preaching is what Jesus died and rose again to create. And that kind of preaching and pastoring can really help churches just get into the green pastures and decide the still waters of of gospel culture. Well, let’s, let’s think about what it looks like. What does gospel culture look like? How help us think that through? Sam, yes. So

Sam Allberry
one of the things we try and do in the book is to walk through different aspects of this, different elements of it. But we’ll share a couple of those. Now, one of the elements we we keep coming back to me, when you see it in the Scripture, you can’t then unsee it is, is honesty, not honesty in the sense of non lying, that’s that’s good, but honesty is, is a step further than that. Honesty is, is a sense of letting people into the reality of what’s actually going on in your life. And gospel culture is, is creating an environment where it is safe to be honest. So a key verse for us at our our church in in Nashville. We’re at Emmanuel church. If you ever in Nashville on a Sunday, come join us. We’d love to, we’d love to welcome you. First John one, verse seven says, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. In the context of that passage, us walking in the light is us coming clean. It’s not pretending that we’re fixed up, that we’ve got our lives together, that we’re all sorted out. It’s it’s being honest about what what the state of our heart actually is on a given Sunday saying, and that’s important because James, chapter five, verse 16, says, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. Our confession is not only vertical, it does need. To be vertical, we do need to confess our sins to the Lord. But James is also saying we need to confess our sins at a horizontal level to others. And he says, if we do that and we pray for one another, we may be healed. And I used to look at that verse in James and and get stuck on the word healed, and think what’s he talking about is that a miraculous physical healing. Is that some kind of emotional healing? Is it spiritual? Is it something else? What’s the Greek word? Does anyone else use that Greek word? What did they mean by it? Has anyone done a PhD on this? And then I finally realized actually, that the best way to find out what James means is to confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. Because whatever James is promising is going to happen when we do that. But the point James is making is that there is, there is something in that opening up about ourselves to others that actually pours health and healing into us. It’s counterintuitive, because our instincts say, Ray, if you really knew the worst thoughts that went through my mind, you might not want to be my friend anymore, and so I’m not going to tell you what those thoughts are, but when we sit down and we we confess our sins to one another, not only do you not run out of the room when I confess my worst sins, you you reassure me of the truth of the gospel, amen, and which is why John says there in first John one seven, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. Fellowship isn’t merely two or more Christians in the presence of coffee. That’s that’s nice, that’s chatting, that’s hanging out. Fellowship is what happens when we relate to each other at this level of I’m going to I’m going to be real with you about my sin. And neither First John nor James five is saying that every Christian has to Confess every sin to every other Christian. But it is saying that there needs to be someone in our lives who, who knows what we’re really dealing with, amen, and knows how to pray for us at that level?

Ray Ortlund
Yeah, yeah. It’s like, I think of it as a Saturday evening dinner party with really good friends, and the food is great, the laughter is great. Conversation is great. It’s wonderful to be together, and then somebody at that table gets real at a deeper level, and immediately everybody at the table senses, oh, we’re going there. And it gets quiet, almost reverent, that’s walking in the light. That’s why it says when we walk in the light as He is in light, we have fellowship with one another, that that moment around the table, when it gets quiet, everybody leans in. That’s fellowship, yeah,

Sam Allberry
because you, if you are opening up to me about something deep and personal like that, I’m now thinking, I have a I have a stake in you. Yes, I have a responsibility to pray for you, to encourage you, to minister the gospel to you and the other way around. It really deepens our felt stake in one another,

Ray Ortlund
and it frees me to tell you what’s really going on, what I’m how I’m not doing well. It’s it’s powerful in binding us together. Then the verse says, And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin, real time, present tense cleanses. That is when we That’s how, when we go there together, prayerfully, carefully, that’s when the cleansing blood of Jesus starts feeling more real, because we have put out on the table in his presence, the things we really would rather not talk about, but they’re just there. So it’s very powerful. I

Sam Allberry
sometimes think in terms of I I don’t need a hypothetical Jesus for my hypothetical sins. I need a real Jesus for my real sins,

Ray Ortlund
and I need real friends to confess to, and I have them. And so do you run to them? Keep going back to them regularly. Here’s another aspect of gospel culture, and this is very precious to me. I love this. Romans 1210, says outdo one another in showing honor. It’s competitive, and everybody wins. It doesn’t say honor one another. It says outdo one another in showing honor. This is the doctrine of glorification. CS Lewis’s amazing sermon, weight of glory. Weight of glory, where he talks about, there are no mere mortals. There are no ordinary people, everybody we’re relating to and interacting with you. Is is going to become either tragically horrible or amazingly glorious. And we who are in Christ, our Lord, is not just going to patch you up a little bit here and there. You’re going to be amazing. You’re going to have an IQ of 10,000 maybe on a bad day, and, and, and you’re you’ll have a fabulous sense of humor, and your, your very countenance will sparkle, and everybody will like you. You

if that’s this guy To my immediate right, right here, Sam Mulberry, this man. Think of the doctrine of creation. This man is a handmade original. Created by God. If I saw a Rembrandt original, I wouldn’t dare touch it, but I’d want to look at it and see the very brush strokes of Rembrandt. A Rembrandt original is nothing compared with Sam, with you, and as you taught me, Sam, the day the Lord made you, he was having a good day,

Sam Allberry
I taught that about other people. Specifically, that’s what

Ray Ortlund
we pastors do. It’s always for other people. Okay, that’s the doctrine of creation. Now let’s think the doctrine of redemption. All right, this man, right here is indwelt by the Holy Spirit of the risen Christ, that spirit which will someday renovate the universe. You It is a privilege to know this man. It is a privilege to be his friend when, in Acts chapter 10, when Cornelius bowed down to Peter, all right, now that was the wrong thing to do. Let’s not do that. And Peter was right to say, we just don’t do that around here. But if we’re never tempted to bow down at this amazing human being. I have the privilege of knowing who is indwelt created by God and dwelt by Christ. Have I really thought about who this person is and to mistreat you or trivialize you or dishonor you? Any snarky put down it when the Gospel itself, doctrine of creation, doctrine of redemption, the Gospel itself makes such foolishness unthinkable and creates wonderful new possibilities for looking at one another, or here’s how honoring one another can get weird, but I’m willing to take the risk. Just yesterday at church, I looked in the eyes of two people in particular. They’re just they’re just the pillars of this church. They’re just fantastic, faithful, steady, magnificent people, I told them so, and it was awkward, and I wondered afterwards, if to them, it felt like flattery, and maybe they wondered, but I’m willing to take that

Sam Allberry
risk. The difference between honoring one another and flattery is flattery is normally nonspecific. It’s generic. It’s you’re just awesome, whereas honoring one another is more specific. Paul gives us a real time example in Philippians two, where he honors the guy whose name begins with Epaphroditus, and he talks about what Epaphroditus has given up for the sake of the ministry. And then he says, Honor such as him. So honoring is is not just saying, Hey, I think you’re amazing in some conveniently non specified way. Honoring someone is saying, This is how I this is the here are some particular ways I see Jesus in you. Here are some particular ways I’m seeing that future glorified reality that you will be already becoming evident now I’m seeing part of your heavenly reality in the present.

Ray Ortlund
We do. Stumbled onto this at Emmanuel, Nashville, during our Tuesday night Men’s Ministry. Emmanuel theology for men. And I don’t know even how we got going Sam, but we had time to walk in the light together, and we would break up in twos so that guys could just get right to the point everybody would have a chance to speak and be prayed for and turn it around for the other guy. Then we would come all together again for honor time. And I would quote Romans 1210 explain how we do this. And the guys would just it was like popcorn going off. I had to shut it down after a while, because so many of us had never experienced healthy, honest, sincere, uplifting, brotherly relationships. And it could go like this. One guy could raise his hand and say, point to another guy on the other side of the room, Jim, I want to honor you tonight. Here’s why, because last Friday night, I felt like looking at porn. I texted you. You called me immediately, and we talked together for you know, 45 minutes and and I calmed down. I walked away from that cliff, and, man, I honor you for that. And Jim, since this is competitive, he’s not going to take that. He’s he said, Well, I want to honor you because you trusted me. You texted me. I mean, who does that? That was fantastic. Thank you so much for letting me into that very delicate moment in your life. And I’ll probably be texting you next week, and as we experienced that together, we went to a deep place of respect and safety together. Romans, 1210, is just gold

Sam Allberry
well, and you’ve said on many occasions, no one suffers because they’re too encouraged. We need that we often it’s very hard for us to track progress in our own Christian lives. Sometimes it can actually really encourage us when someone else can point to something real and say, This is real evidence of the real Holy Spirit in you, because we might not have noticed it. We might not even have been aware of it, actually, okay, God is God is in me doing something, yeah, Ray, let’s do something fun. What? So we dedicated this book to a man called TJ Tims, Oh, yeah. So I don’t know if TJ is even in the room, but we could just

Ray Ortlund
honor him. Is TJ here?

Sam Allberry
We will never know he’s probably not shadowy and rest of it, but TJ is our lead. Why would he want to be identified with us? Well, that’s very true. There’s, there’s a lot of other micro events to be we dedicated that book to TJ. And you know, the way we would honor TJ, whether he’s in the room or not, is, is, I would want to say he’s, he’s one of the people i i find easiest to entrust my spiritual health to. He’s my pastor, and he’s my friend as well, but he’s my pastor and I, I trust him. I know that he doesn’t think he’s the expert on everything, but I know he wants me to to genuinely flourish in Christ and will labor hard to that end.

Ray Ortlund
Yeah, here’s why I trust TJ. Watching him over the years, I’ve never seen him hold back and not give Jesus everything he’s got. So he’s a faithful husband and father and pastor, and I’ve never seen him calculating. I’ve only seen him all in and that makes me trust him all the more. So I really respect that. Isn’t it great? Gosh, isn’t it great to be here we are with Christian friends, and we can talk about the most wonderful things in the universe openly, sincerely, put our hearts right out here. And nobody is thinking, This is so weird. We’re all sensing, oh, this is where the gospel takes us, and we would love it.

Sam Allberry
Maybe most of us will be sat in this room, maybe with one friend or two friends. If that is the case, maybe think, Okay, before the maybe before the end of the day, certainly before the end of this conference. One of these people I’m sat with, I’m going to, I’m going to honor them to their face, yeah. Doesn’t have to be as you’re walking out. Up, because that might feel like it’s it’s token, but at some point, think of a specific way you can point to evidence of grace in their lives. Ray, we’ve talked about honesty. We’ve talked about ordering each other these I always think these two pair well, because honesty is not holding back about some of the the shameful realities in my own life. Yeah, and honoring is not holding back about some of the positive things that’s good I see in you. And the sinful nature wants to invert that. The sinful nature wants, wants honor, but doesn’t want to do confession. And so it’s a good way of saying, Okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna die to self by telling you my sins, yeah, and they’re gonna be embarrassing. They’re gonna be shameful. And I’m gonna make sure that you know the ways in which you remind me of Jesus,

Ray Ortlund
who couldn’t flourish in a world like that. Can

Sam Allberry
I mention one other verse? This is a verse we’ve we’ve enjoyed a lot together over the years. Romans, 15, verse seven, Paul concludes a whole long section of that letter by saying, therefore, welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God, and you’ve got that is gospel doctrine and gospel culture, gospel doctrine. Well, you know, Christ has welcomed you. That’s the gospel. Paul has spent 15 chapters explaining the gospel, and his forward summary is, Christ has welcomed you. There’s other ways of formulating the gospel, but it’s, it’s not less than Jesus pulling us into his own heart. And you talk about regrets we have in life. For me, one of my regrets in my own Christian life and in and in ministry, is seeing the gospel more in terms of what I’m saved from, and not sufficiently paying attention to what I’m saved into. So I’d always think the gospel is being saved from hell and being forgiven my sins. That is true. But there’s even more than that. Christ hasn’t just canceled my debt and said, Okay, I now don’t have a problem with you. Christ has welcomed me. So it’s not merely Sam, we’re okay. Now you can go off on your way. It’s Sam, we’re okay. Now, in a way, that means actually you you come in. The gospel is divine hospitality. Christ has welcomed you. Therefore gospel culture welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. And if you have a truncated gospel of gospel is merely my sin has been dealt with and there’s nothing else. What that translates into horizontally is, I’m going to try not to have a problem with anyone else around me. But if the gospel is Christ has welcomed me and pulled me in into his very heart, then actually i i believe that and embody that when I am welcoming others in the way that Jesus has welcomed me, I’m not I’m actually willing to open up my heart, my home, my life, my reality, and pull people into it. Actually begin to want to do that, the more I understand the welcome of Jesus.

Ray Ortlund
Gosh, so well said. Okay, let me make one more point, and then why don’t you wrap it up? Okay, almost 50 years ago, 1974 Jan and I had the privilege of participating in the Lausanne Congress on world evangelization over in Switzerland, one of the speakers was Francis Schaeffer again, and he said, if we want to see something profound happen in our generation, we want our churches to be marked by two contents and two realities. Two contents, two realities. First. Content, strong doctrine. Second content, honest answers to honest questions. So a strong doctrine from the Bible and then interacting with our mission field, honest answers to honest questions. Two contents, then two realities. One True spirituality, that we move forward together in prayer and in dependence upon the Holy Spirit of God, not in the power of the flesh. True spirituality. Then the second reality was, and I love this, the beauty of human relationships. And that’s a great summary of gospel culture. We’ve got a photograph here of how I the picture I paint in my mind of the beauty of human relationships. These are American soldiers in Vietnam. In some ways, it’s a hard. Picture to look at, but when I think of schaefer’s phrase the beauty of human relationships, that’s what I think of, the kind of thing I think of. That’s what I want, because who isn’t wounded and who doesn’t need support and encouragement this we are all sensing this is for weary churches. This is not easy, but we’re plowing through. But we can go there, and by God’s grace, for His glory, we can get through this with beauty. And as a pastor, I feel responsible before the Lord that is my ministry. I don’t feel authorized. I don’t feel permitted to have any other purpose, the beauty of human relationships. So Sam,

Sam Allberry
thank you. What we’ve been talking about, the vision we’re trying to cast for this really is what we’re seeing throughout the Bible. It’s not just superficial niceness, yes, it’s something supernatural. It’s something that will catch the eye of the world around us. One of the things I often find myself praying for, for our church and for other churches I have friends at, is that even even a culture that might even hate some of the things we believe, yes, would nevertheless be able to see the kinds of relationships we have, the kind of dynamic we have, and actually think I I Can’t explain that, other than maybe God really is with them, yes, which is what Jesus is talking about back in John 1335 this is how all people will know that you are my disciples, not because your life is more put together than everybody else’s, but by your love for one Another. And we have such a mushy, sentimental view of life that the New Testament fleshes it out in such wonderfully granular, yes, real time kinds of ways. But, you know, a good argument can make someone think. But I think it’s our pastor TJ, who I heard, used this, this phrase, beauty turns heads. And it may be that the beauty of our church cultures can begin to turn even hostile heads, and maybe the first step in people coming to Christ. I think one of the things that is at stake in this is, is the credibility of the gospel. Jesus puts it that way by this will people know if you’re my disciples, not because you say you are, but by your love for one another, because Jesus is recognizing the truth of who he is and what he’s done for us needs to be socially embodied in order for it to be convincing and compelling to a watching world. So the cause of the gospel in this kind of crazy cultural moment, actually, there’s lots about our cultural moment I don’t understand. I’m trying to understand, I want to be a good evangelist and understand the times in which I live, but I also feel reassured, let’s, let’s do all that we can to have our local churches shine. Yes, because actually, that will be the thing that really moves the needle, and

Ray Ortlund
we are equipped in every essential with the gospel. Yeah, and open hearts. The crossway folks tell us that over here on the right is that where? Yeah, yes, see Yeah, they’re waving your left, our right, yes. And apparently they’re practically giving these away, like half price on so there we go, right.

Sam Allberry
Would you close in prayer,

Ray Ortlund
Lord Jesus Christ, we pray for awakening, renewal, revival and outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the display of your beauty in our generation, to that we consecrate ourselves and for that we pray bless your precious servants here today, oh Lord, lift them up through this conference. We pray. May we go home all of us encouraged. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.