By Tim Chester here.
Tag: gospel
The 50/50 Gospel – II
In an effort to recenter church methods debate back onto the gospel, I recently proposed that we should be debating the strength of our gospel, not the effectiveness of our methods. There are varieties of methods from organic house church to attractional mega church that have been used by God to advance the gospel. But what kind of gospel?
The 50/50 Gospel
I attempted to answer that question by suggesting that some church methods operate on a 50/50 gospel, an understanding of the good news that relies on 50% of our behavior and 50% God’s grace. This gospel assumes that people are good enough to chose Christ but that they simply need to be reminded how good Christ is. Broken marriages, patterns of sexual sin, deep-seated anger, and financial hardships are primarily the product of our failure to behave like Jesus. Enter the Church. The church can reminds us, exhort us, even train us to be like Jesus, to make good moral decisions, not bad ones. We need the grace of God’s example and a faithful commitment to behave accordingly. This is the 50/50 gospel, and it is anathema.
50/50 Concoctions: Morality, Community, & Mission
The 50/50 gospel relies, not on the power of grace, but on the power of morality. As a result, the Church becomes a half-way house between our moral failures and our moral successes. We rehabilitate our decision-making under the faithful instruction of a faithless institution. But the 50/50 gospel is sometimes mixed differently. Try 50% mission, 50% grace. We need the grace of Jesus example and the goal of Jesus mission. In this concoction, churches serve as a inspiring non-profit, moving us from missional failure to missional success. We soften our social consciences under the weight of a missional institution. And then there is the 50% community, 50% grace combo. We need the grace of God to become “like the early church,” to have real community, to jettison our individualism in order to truly become “the church.” The gospel becomes a quick-fix to our lack of community.
100 Proof Gospel
Each concoction of the 50/50 gospel is actually quite dangerous. They propose that churches should attract as many people as possible to their moral-laden messages, missional activities, and communal experiences. The goal of the Church is reduced to converting people to a better way of living, not to better God to be believing. What we need is a gospel that is 100 proof grace, the work of Spirit to violate our dulled taste for what it good, true and beautiful and to get us drunk on God. We need more than changed behaviors; we need changed hearts, new affections, from which a life of worship flows. We need churches that are more concerned about pointing us to the multi-faceted splendor of Jesus Christ, than the innovative ways we can be the church through community or mission. What we need is 100% gospel.
Erwin Raphael McManus: Gospel Lite?
Justin Taylor cites from Phil Johnson on the gospel-lite writing of Erwin Raphael McManus:
. . . my fundamental quarrel with McManus is not about whether he repudiates this or that label. It’s not even about the menagerie of high-flown titles he does load his resumé with. It’s this: clear gospel truth is almost impossible to find in the material he publishes and posts for public consumption. And in that regard, I don’t see a whole lot of difference between Erwin McManus and Joel Osteen. He’s Osteen with blue jeans and an occasional soul patch rather than a shiny suit and a perpetual grin.
Am I being too hard on McManus? I expect we’ll get lots of commenters (including the usual suspects and some first-time drive-bys) who will insist that I am. McManus seems to have lots of passionate devotees online. To them I say: Welcome to our blog. Convince me. It should be easy to do if I’m wrong. Simply show me a few places where McManus makes the gospel plain and clear for his audience, with straightforward, biblical explanations of sin, atonement, and justification for sinners—including a distinct and compelling summons for sinners to repent.
Choose-Your-Own Adventure Jesus
At some point in their lives, most Americans have been asked, “Is Jesus your savior?” Though the American Jesus has stripped the historical Jesus of many things (deity, Trinity, truth-telling), the notion that he is a savior still remains in the general consciousness of our nation. Most people that lay any claim to Jesus do so in favor of his morality not his deity.
However, Jesus does not offer us different versions for different desires–human or divine, moral guide or righteous God, healer or comforter. Jesus unequivocally claimed to be God and to be a savior. He is not a choose-your-own-adventure savior. Remember those books? You got to choose the ending by picking a page number for a different scenario. With Jesus we don’t get topick what he is and what he isnt. He is who he is, all or nothing, take him or leave him. To pick and choose is to end up with no Jesus at all, a fictional Christ, made in our own image.
The domestication or nationalization of Jesus has been to embolden Jesus to rise up and overthrow his Father as the dominant person of the Trinity. Separating Jesus from the distant grand-Father, many have chosen to emphasize Jesus’ humanity. He saves us from sickness, from pain, from hurt, from depression, from loneliness, but not from our sin. He is a healer not a sin-confronter, a comforter not a heart-changer.
Interestingly, the Bible does not reserve the title of “Savior” for Jesus alone. It is used repeatedly in the Old testament and New to refer to God the Father. Separating Jesus from God the Father is not an act that Jesus would approve of. In fact, he longed for communion with his Father while he walked the earth.
Long before Jesus was on the planet, God the Father was savior. He was savior to Israel, rescuing them from slavery, oppression, and despair in Egypt. Then from exile, first with the Assyrians then with the Babylonians. Israel wanted God as provider but not as king. A choose-your-adventure approach to God got Israel into crisis.
Inevitably, Israel would cry out to God from exile, recognizing the soul-wrenching pain of separation from God. And God’s mercy got them out. God the Father is savior both spiritual and physical, restoring Israel into his love and rescuing them from deplorable conditions of slavery and exile.
Jesus is a savior in cooperation with, not distinction from the Father. The Father desires that none would perish and so sent Jesus as the mediator of salvation. Yes, we are hurt, broken and in need of comfort. However, these things are the product of personal sin—our own or someone else’s against us.
Jesus came to reconcile us to God, not displace him. His loving sacrifice for sin—an ancient electric chair—was not an accident. It was for you and me, to bring us into his heart-changing, world-renewing agenda. To redeem the creation project he started with the Father and to magnify their creativity, mercy, love and power in making this the best of all possible worlds. The Jesus we would choose is vastly inferior to the Jesus who is.