When Sinners Say "I Do"

Since learning of it I've been eager to read Dave Harvey's new book. The title hooked me and it's endorsed by men I admire and trust. Reading this interview with the author yesterday only heightened my anticipation. Here's Harvey's response to the question of why he's adding to the plethora of marriage books already on the market:

Though I’m grateful for some of these books, it’s common for marriage books to address the symptoms of marital challenges while neglecting the real problem. In this book, I say, “The cause of our marriage battles is neither our marriage nor our spouse. It’s the sin in our hearts—entirely, totally, exclusively, without exception. This is taught clearly and consistently in Scripture, from the first sin to the final judgment.” But don’t get me wrong—this book doesn’t merely bemoan the problem but exalts in the solution—the gospel! When Sinners Say “I Do”: Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage avoids the psychological discussions that fill the pages of many popular needs-based resources. Instead, it encourages readers to develop the tools to diagnose their hearts and then flee to the gospel for help. The most helpful summary I think I can offer is taken right from the book: “God wants Christians to delight in marriage. And He has made provision in the gospel to do so. But we can’t truly understand the gospel, or even the basic problems of every marriage, until we come to terms with the undeniable reality of sin. Men and women (and me!) find real hope and help when we realize that God uses marriage to reveal the heart and change the soul.”

You can view the book's table of contents, foreword by Paul David Tripp, and preface here.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Dave Harvey, marriage, gospel

Why the Gospel Often Seems Irrelevant (to Christians)

Yesterday, as I've done so frequently in the past, I reflected on my deep appreciation and gratitude for the Journal of Biblical Counseling and those responsible for producing it. In some ways, the title is misleading because it could give the impression that only those engaged in formal counseling ministry can benefit from it. To be sure, it's a valuable resource for pastors, so much so that I think it should be a staple in every minister's reading. However, every issue contains thoughtful, theologically-rich content that can aid any follower of Christ in his or her pursuit of spiritual maturity.

A conversation with a frazzled parent seeking help in how to deal with a child's explosive tantrums led me to read an article by Michael Emlet and David Powlison called "Helping the Parents of an Angry Child" (Winter 2007, Volume 25, Number 1). As is so often the case when I read JBC articles, I not only received guidance for helping others but was confronted about issues in my own heart and life. The following paragraph, especially the last sentence, stood out to me because it addresses something that I think about frequently:

A child needs to learn how her anger operates directly against God. Too often parents only focus on the horizontal aspect of their child's sinful behavior - what the child has done to them. Targeting the heart means helping the child understand that her attitude, words, and actions violate God's standards first and foremost. To be self-willed is to assault God's right to rule. This God-ward focus keeps the gospel front and center, because sin against God and others has a remedy. If we confess our sins honestly, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us (1 John 1:9). Opening up the vertical dimension presents the immediate relevance of the gospel.

When considering my own reactions to life's problems and from conversations with other believers, I often wonder why it is that the gospel seems so disconnected and unrelated to the here and now. When we're dealing with the complexities and difficulties that are bound to arise, I think our (usually) unspoken mindset is "Yeah, I'm a Christian and I believe all that Bible stuff but I'm talking about real life here." That attitude betrays an underlying assumption that the gospel is largely impractical in terms of its explanatory and transforming power as far as our everyday struggles are concerned. As Paul Tripp and Tim Lane note in their book How People Change, believers often live with a gap between the two "thens" of the gospel:

The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is a "then-now-then" gospel. First, there is the "then" of the past. When I embrace Christ by faith, my sins are completely forgiven, and I stand before God as righteous. There is also the "then" of the future, the promise of eternity with the Lord, free of sin and struggle. The church has done fairly well explaining these two "thens" of the gospel, but it has tended to understate or misunderstand the "now" benefits of the work of Christ. What difference does the gospel make in the here and now? How does it help me as a father, a husband, a worker, and a member of the body of Christ? How does it help me respond to difficulty and make decisions? How does it give me meaning, purpose, and identity? How does it motivate my ministry to others?

Emlet and Powlison have identified one of the primary reasons that the gospel is functionally distanced from our daily lives - to the extent that I fail to see misguided worship as my greatest problem and adopt alien anthropologies offering alternative visions of what it means to be human, to that extent the gospel's luster appears dull and its melody sounds flat to my ears.

Phil Johnson and John MacArthur Talk Election

Thanks to Brian Thornton for making an audio of John MacArthur being interviewed by Pyromaniac Phil Johnson on the doctrine of election available at his blog, Voice of the Sheep (HT: Brian McCrorie).

I haven't listened yet but I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of Brian's analysis:

This interview of MacArthur is so good for a number of reasons. It is what I would call a no-holds-barred, politically-incorrect, biblical look at the doctrine of election. Nothing is held back by either Phil or John, and the result is a straight-forward and truthful look at a doctrine that the unregenerate find so repulsive. I would encourage anyone who has struggled with this doctrine - or has professing family members or friends whose view of election is far from the truth - to listen to this interview themselves and also to direct others to it here. Then I would encourage you to contact Grace to You to see about getting a copy for yourself. It is a CD that every true believer needs to have in his/her library.

An Anglican's Call for Gospel Clarity and Courage

It's not a good sign when your non-Christian friends are curious about why you're not more actively seeking to persuade others of the message of salvation you claim to believe. Paul Eddy, a member of the ruling body of the Church of England, reports, "My Muslim friends say they can't understand why we Christians don't evangelise more, especially as they have a strategy to convert Britain."

Eddy recently accused bishops in the Church of England of avoiding the biblical mandate to evangelize so as not to offend minority groups and adherents to other faiths. To address this, he has made a motion intended to force the Church's General Synod to debate and clarify its position on the uniqueness and exclusivity of the gospel. From an article in the Telegraph:

[Eddy] said the Church's official statements tended to gloss over the issue of converting Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or followers of other religions. His motion calls on the bishops to report back on "their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in Britain's multi-faith society, and offer examples and commendations of good practice in sharing the gospel of salvation through Christ alone with people of other faiths and of none".

Eddy sounds a sobering exhortation to Christ-followers everywhere: "The Church needs to regain confidence in the God it professes to believe in, and a new confidence in the Gospel it should be proclaiming. And that starts with a clear steer from the bishops."

The Gospel Is Bigger Than We Think

Trinity professor of biblical and systematic theology, Graham Cole uttered one line in a brief conversation that I will never forget. He said, "We are creatures before we are Christians." Today, former Trinity prof Scot McKnight makes the same point with a few more words, all of which are worth reading carefully. Scot notes that the problem for which the gospel is the solution is only properly understood if Creation, rather than the Fall, is our starting point:

It is common to begin, rather abruptly, with the Fall and to see humans as sinners in need of forgiveness. I do not dispute either that we are sinners or that we all need forgiveness. Sometimes, so it seems to me, our sin is understood as little more than a legal standing or a judicial sentence against us, and that means that forgiveness follows in line: it, too, is understood as little more than a standing or judicially.

But, both of these problems — how we understand sin and how we understand forgiveness — are created by beginning at the wrong place.  Instead of beginning the gospel story with the Fall, I am suggesting we begin with the Creation of humans, both male and female, as Eikons of God. That is, as made in the image of God (imago Dei). The gospel begins, and only begins, because humans are Eikons of God.

Instead of seeing humans first and foremost as sinners, we need to see them as Eikons of God, created to relate to God, to relate to others, and to govern the world as Eikons. The Fall affects each of the previous: our relation to God, our relation to others, and our relation to the world. Humans, then, are cracked Eikons. There is all the difference in the world in depicting humans as simply sinners and seeing sinfulness as the condition and behavior of a cracked Eikon. Humans sin, but their sin is the sin of an Eikon. They can’t be defined by their sin until they are seen as Eikons.

The gospel, when it begins with Creation, is God’s work to restore and undo and recreate (whichever image you might prefer) what we were designed by God to be and to do. To begin here means the gospel is about restoring Eikons rather than just forgiving sinners. This gospel is bigger and it is bigger because the human condition is bigger than a Fallen condition.

I came across this gem during a study break and I couldn't resist pointing others to it. I don't anticipate posting much more for the next few days as I have a pressing deadline breathing down my neck. I hope the rest of you can enjoy life on the outside!

Joel Osteen Responds

Apparently a number of Joel Osteen's ministry supporters voiced concern about the ambiguity of his comments on Larry King Live (see yesterday's post), leading him to post this letter of clarification. He writes in part:

Jesus declared in John 14; I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father but by me.   I believe that Jesus Christ alone is the way to salvation.  However, it wasn’t until I had the opportunity to review the transcript of the interview that I realize I had not clearly stated that having a personal relationship with Jesus is the only way to heaven.  It’s about the individual’s choice to follow Him.

God has given me a platform to present the Gospel to a very diverse audience.  In my desire not to alienate the people that Jesus came to save, I did not clearly communicate the convictions that I hold so precious.

I still have major disagreements with the content and emphases of Osteen's ministry - enough that I do not commend it to others. Nevertheless, I admire the manner in which he dealt with this situation.

I've felt the desire to which Osteen refers - that of not wanting to alienate those I'm seeking to win to Christ. I'd like to think that the desire has always been pure but I know better. It's tainted by the fear of man - the dread of being thought a fool for the sake of Christ.
 
The gospel is intrinsically offensive in that it assaults self-righteousness. I have only to think back to how bitter I once found the gospel whose taste is now sweet. There's simply no way to state God's assessment of our condition in a positive, upbeat way that avoids offending those who hear. The preaching of the need for an alien righteousness will always alienate sinners. But by the sovereign grace of God that same preaching will draw men and women to saving faith in His Son.

I Want My MTD!

I just got around to reading an article that appeared in Easter Sunday's New York Times Magazine called "The Soul of the New Exurb." What are exurbs? Once small counties experiencing rapid growth "into dense communities of subdivisions filled with middle-class families likely to move again and again, settling in yet another exurb but putting down no real roots." The piece highlights Surprise, AZ and the megachurch of 5,000 that has grown in its midst. If the writer's description is accurate, it takes no stretch of the imagination to see why the authors mentioned in my previous post on "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" believe that the unorthodox theological beliefs of American teens don't differ all that much from those held by adults. Describing Lee McFarland, the church's senior pastor, Jonathan Mahler writes:

McFarland works under the assumption that people don't want to be intimidated by their pastors, that modernity has punctured the myth of the morally superior religious leader. He is replacing the sinner-be-damned fundamentalism that once characterized much of evangelical Christianity with forgiveness. McFarland never talks about transforming your life though struggle, surrender or sacrifice; he talks about being happier by accepting Jesus -- into your office, your kitchen, your backyard, your marital bed, everywhere. "People aren't looking for the elevated holy man who's got all of the answers," he told me one afternoon. "They want someone to be real with them."

There are more false dichotomies in that one paragraph than I know what to do with. Fortunately, we don't have to choose between taking a morally superior stance and telling a fellow sinner that he, just like us, is guilty of sin and in need of receiving God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ. It is exactly because I am under God's condemnation that the message of forgiveness is such good news. The pronouncement of forgiveness through faith in Jesus is not meant to replace the declaration that sinners will be damned but rather, presupposes it. Have we so imbibed the cultural concept of tolerance that we now think it self-righteous to preach the gospel?

The article notes that the church was built on Rick Warren's "Purpose-Driven Church" techniques. This included polling residents to find out what kind of music they listened to and why they believed people didn't go to church. The answers to these questions were then used to structure the services. Fuller Theological Seminary professor Eddie Gibbs, author of Church Next, warns: "The danger though, is that you end up with a Gospel that endeavors to meet your needs without challenging your priorities." He notes in his book that "Worship is designed not to make people feel good about themselves . . . but to make them holy" and offers the following caution concerning limiting worship music to sentimental praise songs: "Intimate worship that degenerates into a casual overfamiliarity is both presumptuous and embarrassing to those who see God from a transcendental perspective."