Law-Gospel Off the Rails

The last week or so has seen renewed calls for reflection and responsibility on the part of Tullian Tchividjian in responding to critiques in the debate on sanctification.  His most recent post on the Gospel Coalition website indicates that he is instead digging in his heels, employing his law-gospel cookie cutter with ever more reckless abandon.  As Michael Kruger recently pointed out, Tullian shows no signs of paying attention to careful and charitable criticism from those interacting with him.  Yesterday's exposition of 1 John 5:3-4 indicates that Tullian is not listening even to the text of the Bible which he is handling.  

Yesterday's post from Tullian, titled Unburdened, takes on the apostle John's statement that God's "commandments are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3).  Predictably enough, Tullian insists that the reason for this blessed condition is that the Christian does not do the commandments of God but Jesus Christ bears this burden for us.  At this point, we know to expect the automatic and context-ignoring download of Christ's wonderful fulfillment of the law for believers in justification.  To wit, Tullian explains: "Though the commandments are indeed burdensome, that burden has been laid on the shoulders of another.  Jesus Christ, who demands that we be perfect, achieves perfection in our place... God's commandments are not burdensome because we do not carry them."   Continue at Rick Phillips

What We All Agree On, and What We (Probably) Don’t, In this Sanctification Debate

First the low down, then a few statements, and then a lot of questions.

About two weeks ago Jen Wilkin wrote a piece called “Failure Is Not a Virtue” in which she registered her concern over celebratory failurisum–”the idea that believers cannot obey the Law and will fail at every attempt.” I thought her post was right to expose one of the possible errors in talking about sanctification, especially when some in the Reformed community have suggested that trying to help people stop sinning is a waste of time akin to teaching frogs how to fly.

In response, Tullian Tchividjian accused Jen of “theological muddiness,” saying that while failure is not a virtue, acknowledging failure most definitely is. After that, Michael Kruger jumped in, arguing that Tullian’s response failed to distinguish between the second and third use of the law. Then Mark Jones, whose excellent book on Antinomianism I commended here and here, came down on the side of Jen and offered to fly to Florida to debate law and gospel with Tullian, his fellow PCA pastor. Carl Trueman seconded the idea, and Jared Oliphint weighed in with a fine piece on the relationship between law and gospel in Reformed theology.    Continue at Kevin DeYoung

The Attraction Of Legal Preaching

Scott Clark has posted an important, creative, and compelling piece on the attraction of “legal preaching.” He writes:

 

A legal preacher is a preacher who majors in the law to the neglect of the gospel. In practice, he preaches nothing but law. He thinks that mentioning Jesus periodically or even regularly means that he’s not a legal preacher and he can’t imagine that people are concerned about the tenor of his preaching because he doesn’t see anything wrong with it. It’s the sort of preaching he heard as a young man and it’s the sort of preaching he heard in seminary and it’s the sort of preaching he admires in other preachers.

He turns every passage into a law, because he doesn’t know any other way to read the Scripture and he doesn’t know any other way to preach. He preaches the law and he doesn’t even know he’s doing he it, even when, in his mind, he’s preaching the gospel. When he finds a bit of good news in his passage, he doesn’t end with that because he doesn’t want his people to get the idea that there are no obligations to the Christian life.    Continue at Tullian Tchividjian

Is Jesus Plus Nothing a Formula for Sanctification?

When D. James Kennedy fell asleep in Jesus, Coral Ridge Presbyterian found itself in a bind. A church with a massive building (dedicated by Billy Graham), Kennedy was their founding pastor and an icon of American Christianity. A leader like that is impossible to replace, but the longer Coral Ridge went without a pastor, the more their attendance dropped, and the more pressure there was to find someone who could follow Kennedy.

Meanwhile, only a few miles away, one of Billy Graham’s grandsons was pastoring a church plant with swelling numbers, and no building. In a match straight out of E-harmony, the elders from both churches realized that each congregation was incomplete. One had a building, the other had none. One was growing, the other not so much. One was famous, the other unknown. One had a pastor, the other was on the hunt. One was dedicated in the 1970’s by Graham, the other was pastored by his grandson. You don’t have to be a Calvinist to see how God was setting this up.

Eventually, Coral Ridge called Tullian Tchividjian to be their pastor, and the two churches merged. What happened next though, is not the stuff of fairy tales. To make a long story short, Coral Ridge seemed to revolt, and after a while the elders called a congregational vote to consider removing Tchividjian as their pastor. Before the vote, Tchividjian went away on vacation, and spent his vacation studying Colossians.

Jesus + Nothing = Everything is the story of Tchividjian and Coral Ridge, interwoven around a commentary of Colossians. At the center is the spiritual epiphany he experienced through his study of that book.   Continue at Jesse Johnson

Tullian Keeps Digging

I’ve tried very hard to be diplomatic and restrained in my criticisms of Tullian Tchividjian’s writing (here and here). I’ve tried to communicate genuine appreciation for his books while also expressing my deep concerns. I’ve watched others  gently and wisely caution him about the theological trajectory he is on, and yet he seems to just keep on digging deeper and going further. I’ve watched with growing anxiety as his imbalanced and confusing theology gains popularity. But there comes a time when we have to move from concern to alarm.

Yesterday’s blog post God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbor does pushed me over that edge.

Using truth to eliminate truth

The headline, like much of the blog post contains truth. However Tullian uses that truth to eliminate another truth, a vitally important one. Of course God doesn’t need our good works. But Tullian uses that truth to argue that God is not interested in them, pleased by them, and nor does he respond to them.

Let’s start with this statement:

Forever freed from our need to pay God back or secure God’s love and acceptance, we are now free to love and serve others.

Yes we are freed from our need to pay God back or secure God’s love and acceptance. But please don’t use that truth as a proof that the Christian has no concern to show his love for God by worshipful and grateful service, or to deny that God’s revelation of His love to us, and our experience of it, can and does change depending on our love-stoked obedience (John 14:21, 23).   Continue at David Murray

God Doesn’t Need Your Good Works…But Your Neighbor Does

Pertinent to any discussion regarding justification and sanctification is the question of effort. In my recent back and forth with Rick Phillips on the nature of sin and its ongoing effect on the Christian, some have assumed that when I say there is no part of Christians that are sin free, I’m also endorsing a “why-even-try”, effortless approach to the Christian life–that I’m overlooking or understating the importance of “sanctification.” I suspect that one of the reasons for this is owing to my passion to help people understand the inseparable relationship between justification and sanctification. 

 Whether this was explicitly taught or implicitly caught, I grew up with the impression that when it comes to the Christian life, justification was step one and sanctification was step two and that once we get to step two there’s no reason to revisit step one. In my experience as a pastor, this is one of the reasons why it seems so new to people that the gospel is not just for non-Christian’s but for Christian’s too–that it doesn’t just ignite the Christian life, but fuels it as well. By giving people the impression that sanctification is progress beyond the initial step of justification, they have concluded that once God saves us (justification) he then moves us beyond his work into our work (sanctification). But justification and sanctification are both God’s work and while they can and must be distinguished, the Bible won’t let us separate them. Both are gifts of our union with Christ and within this double-blessing, justification is the root of sanctification and sanctification is the fruit of justification. Moralism happens when we separate the fruit from the root. Or, as I’ve said before, imperatives minus indicatives equal impossibilities. As G. C. Berkouwer said, “The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.” So, I think it’s fair to say that sanctification is the justified life.   Continue at Tullian Tchividjian

See also: The Problem with “Gospel-Centered” Sanctification

See also: Protecting a Gospel-Centered Culture in Your Church

Misconceptions about Justification and Sanctification

I have benefited from reading the comments on the wide variety of blogs that have picked up the discussion between Tullian Tchividjian and me on the subject of total depravity, the Christian, and the doctrine of sanctification.  In some respects, these conversations are most valuable in terms of the interplay that takes place in the comments.  I have been helped by reading what people are thinking and want to thank those who have commented, whether positively or negatively about me.  I have found, however, a number of misconceptions that it may help to have cleared up.  Here are five points that I hope will clarify this discussion:

      1. Total depravity is not proved by arguing for the on-going presence of sin in the believer.  The point of total depravity is the spiritual inability of the sinner so that he or she will not and cannot respond positively to God through faith (Rom. 8:7; 1 Cor. 2:14; Eph. 2:1-3).  To say that Christians cannot be totally depraved is not to argue that they do not continue to wrestle with sin, sometimes profoundly.  The point that I am making is that while Christians will continue to sin, it is not because we must do so.  We have been freed from the reign of sin (Rom. 6:6-12), though not from sin's presence (1 Jn. 1:8).  As Augustine put it, whereas before our conversion we were not able not to sin, in Christ we now are able not to sin.

2.  Luther's wonderful formula, simil justus et peccator (simultaneously just and a sinner), is the Reformation doctrine of justification, not sanctification.  To use this response to questions of sanctification is simply to change the subject.  With respect to sanctification, Christians are saints (1 Cor. 1:2).  To deny being a saint, as well as a justified sinner, is simply to deny being a Christian.   Continue at Rick Phillips    See also: We are Sanctified in Christ, but not Perfect Yet

 

Oh to Grace How Great a Debtor -- A Reply to Tullian Tchividjian

I was glad to see some some constructive dialogue in the comments section of Tullian Tchividjian's reply to my critique of his article on total depravity and Christians.  Let me say at this point (even though I look forward to the day when such statements are not necessary) that: 1) I bear no ill will to Tullian nor was I launching a personal attack against him; 2) I wrote an article expressing concern about something he had written, not heresy charges in a court of the church; and 3) it has been my impression that the whole point of blogging is to stimulate useful thinking among Christians.  This is why I engaged in a public response to a public article rather than private dialogue.  

Being something of an internet veteran, I was not surprised, however,  to see that it took only three comments to Tullian's reply for one of his supporters to accuse me of sin.  I hope in this response to allay such concerns and hopefully to advance constructive dialogue further.

 

My aim in this reply will therefore be simply to clarify my original concerns with Tullian's previous article.  They are these: 

1.  The doctrine of total depravity does not merely state that after the Fall all men and women are effected by sin in the totality of their beings.  The doctrine also states that they have no disposition towards God but only hostility and spiritual inability (see Berkhof, p. 247 for this definition).  I agree that Tullian specified the former and not the latter of these two components.  The problem is that the term "total depravity" includes both.  In his reply, Tullian gave numerous citations from Reformed confessions regarding the on-going depravity of Christians.  I would not quarrel with any of them, but would only note that none of these define Christians with the term "total depravity," nor with the definition of this specific doctrine.  So, in this respect, my critique of Tullian was saying, "Please don't use the term 'total depravity' for regenerate Christians, even while seeking to qualify the term, because it is not accurate."   Continue at Rick Phillips

Sin Remains: My Response To Rick Phillips

A couple weeks ago I posted a blog asking the question “Are Christians totally depraved?” The point I wanted to make was simple: “Because Christian’s never leave off sinning, they can never leave the Gospel” (Spurgeon).

The reason this is so important is because we will always be suspicious of grace (“yes grace, but…”) until we realize our desperate need for it. Our dire need for God’s grace doesn’t get smaller after God saves us. We never outgrow our need for Christ’s finished work on our behalf-we never graduate beyond our desperate need for Christ’s righteousness and his strong and perfect blood-soaked plea “before the throne of God above.”

But I had to tease out my answer a bit because for centuries theologians have acknowledged that “total depravity” means more than one thing. I wrote:

On the one hand, total depravity means that we are all born “dead in our trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1-3; Colossians 2:13; Romans 3:10-12; Romans 8:7-8), with no spiritual capacity to incline ourselves Godward. We do not come into this world spiritually neutral; we come into this world spiritually dead…In this sense, total depravity means we are “totally unable” to go to God. We will not because we cannot, and we cannot because we’re dead.

I continued:

So, in the sense above, Christians are obviously not totally depraved. We who were dead have been made alive.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…(Ephesians 2:4-6)

But once God regenerates us by his Spirit, draws us to himself, unites us to Christ, raises us from the dead, and grants us status as adopted sons and daughters, is there any sense in which we can speak of Christian’s being totally depraved?

Yes.

Theologians speak of total depravity, not only in terms of “total inability” to come to God on our own because we’re spiritually dead, but also in terms of sin’s effect: sin corrupts us in the “totality” of our being. Our minds are affected by sin. Our hearts are affected by sin. Our wills are affected by sin. Our bodies are affected by sin.    Continue at Tullian Tchividjian

Total Depravity and the Believer’s Sanctification

Tullian Tchividjian of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Ft Lauderdale, FL and Rick Phillips of Second Presbyterian Church, Greenville, SC have recently engaged with the doctrine of total depravity in its relation to Christians. That is, they are discussing not whether or not people in their natural state are totally depraved, but whether and in what sense believers may be spoken of as "totally depraved." This is a very important issue, so I am glad to have it put on the front burner.

 

Years ago, Tabletalk magazine asked me to write an article on this subject. I was interacting primarily with forms of Christian perfectionist teaching on the one hand and carnal Christian teaching on the other. But I think the article still speaks to issues that the Reformed and evangelical community is debating today. So, here it is.

Total depravity is a reality, both taught in Holy Scripture and experienced in life, with important implications not only for pagans but also for Christians. Very often we think of this Biblical doctrine in connection with those who are unregenerate, or with regard to Christians before their conversion, but we reflect less frequently on the depravity which still infects those who have been saved by grace and reborn of the Spirit. This is a serious omission, for misunderstanding or underestimating the continuing corruption in the believer leaves the Christian unprepared for the warfare of sanctification and leads to a variety of spiritual problems.  Continue at Ligon Duncan

Thank God that Christians Are Not Totally Depraved

One of the most pressing concerns in Reformed churches today is the importance of getting the gospel right. Recently, Reformed churches have had to oppose the Federal Vision theology, which compromises justification by inserting good works into the definition of faith.  Unfortunately, Christians tend to defend doctrines by erring in the opposite direction. So it is that Reformed churches are presently facing a corruption of the gospel by the virtual denial of sanctification and good works.

In the context of this situation, Tullian Tchividjian has written a blog post addressing the first of the five points of Calvinism, total depravity, which defines the full extent of man's problem in sin. Tchividjian asks, "Are Christians Totally Depraved?" and answers, Yes.  Regenerate believers in Christ are, he says, totally depraved. It is true, he admits, that Christians differ from unbelievers in that God's grace has enabled us to believe the gospel, yet total depravity describes both believers and unbelievers with respect to our inability to live so as to please God. He concludes his post with a punchy summary: "Because of total depravity, you and I were desperate for God's grace before we were saved. Because of total depravity, you and I remain desperate for God's grace even after we're saved."

What's wrong with a statement like this, the point of which is to exalt God's grace? The problem is that Tchividjian teaches that, apart from our change in legal status through justification, Christians are in the same spiritual condition after regeneration as before. Unbelievers are totally depraved and Christians are totally depraved; the same condition describes them both.   Continue at Rick Phillips

Deconstructing Puritanism

My friend Tullian picks up on a post by Trevin Wax, “Beware the Puritan Paralysis” in which the latter cautions us about a tendency to introspection. He makes a very important point:

Too many times, we dress up our introspection with flowery terms like “accountability” and “mortification” and “gospel-centered change.” Even if all these terms and concepts are good and needed, if our gaze is constantly inward-focused, then we are as self-centered as the Christian who is consumed with seeking personal pleasure apart from God.

To this we should all say “Amen!” Where we should dissent, however, is the broad brush with which British Reformed theology of the 16th and 17th centuries is painted.

The first problem is terminological. It was one thing for British Reformed writers to speak of themselves as “Puritans” and another for us to do it. Consider how difficult it is for us to define the noun “evangelical.” In Deconstructing Evangelicalism Darryl Hart has argued that there isn’t any such thing as “evangelicalism,” that there isn’t a sufficient number of commonalities to add up to a unified thing “evangelicalism.” If one wants to start an argument at the Evangelical Theological Society just give a paper reading popular “evangelicals” out of “the evangelical movement.” It was controversial to say that Clark Pinnock (who taught, among other things, that the future is genuinely open to God) is not an “evangelical.”   Continue at R. Scott Clark

The Kingdom of God: A Closer Look by Tullian Tchividjian

This week's essay from the Mission of God Study Bible focuses on the Kingdom of God. I've recently released a book on the Kingdom entitled Subversive Kingdom, but my friend Tullian Tchividjian is the author of today's post.

 

Many of you may remember the three-part interview (part one | part two | part three) I did here on the blog with Tullian when his book Jesus + Nothing = Everything came out. Tullian now has another book that just released called Glorious Ruin in which he takes an honest and refreshing look at the reality of suffering, the ways we tie ourselves in knots trying to deal with it, and the comfort of the gospel for those who can't seem to fix themselves--or others.

I'm giving away a copy of this Bible each week to commenters, so be sure to leave a comment below to be entered in the giveaway. You can also order your copy of the Mission of God Study Bible here.

The Kingdom of God

by Tullian Tchividjian

According to Jesus, it's impossible for Christians to properly understand the practical nature of the Christian life without properly understanding the nature of their citizenship in God's kingdom. In fact, one of the primary biblical descriptions of Christians is that they're citizens in God's kingdom.

So what is the kingdom of God? Sinclair Ferguson defines the kingdom as "the rule and reign of God, the expression of his gracious sovereign will. To belong to the kingdom of God is to belong to the people among whom the reign of God has already begun." George Eldon Ladd defines the kingdom as "the realm in which God's reign may be experienced." Simply put, the kingdom of God is a kingdom where God's appointed King--Jesus--is presently reigning in and through the lives of His people, accomplishing His will "on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt 6:10).   Continue at Tullian Tchividjian

Insecurity Produces Pride

If you have the reputation of being somewhat critical, “hard edged”, and defensive–it may reveal much more than you realize. Believe it or not, there is a direct and explicit connection between a lack of confidence in God’s unconditional love for you and your tendency to be critical, assertive, and defensive. When you function as if God’s love and acceptance of you depends on your spiritual achievements, your obedience, and your performance, you develop a “defensive assertion of your own righteousness and defensive criticism of others.”

Big thanks to Tom Wood for highlighting these insightful words from Richard Lovelace:

Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously insecure persons–much less secure than non-Christians–because they have too much light to rest easily under the constant bulletins they receive from their Christian environment about the holiness of God and the righteousness they are supposed to have. Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others.  Continue at Tullian Tchividjian

Blessed Self-Forgetfulness

The way many of us think about sanctification is, well, not very sanctified. In fact, it's downright narcissistic. We thinking about how we're doing, if we're growing, whether we're doing it right or not. We spend too much time brooding over our failures and reflecting on our successes. We seem to believe that the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian.

Reflecting this common assumption, someone who was frustrated with something I had written said to me not long ago, "Don't you know that the focus of the New Testament is the personal holiness of the Christian?"

What? Seriously? To keep calm, I replayed Mr. Miyagi in my head, "Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out …"

The truth is, we spend way too much time thinking about ourselves, and we justify this spiritualized navel-gazing by reasoning that this is what God wants us to be doing.

There is nothing in the gospel that encourages us to focus on ourselves. Nothing! It's never honoring to God when we take our eyes off of Christ. Never! In fact, the whole point of the gospel is to get us out of ourselves and to "fix our eyes on Christ" (Heb. 12:2). The truest measure of Christian growth, therefore, is when we stop spiritually rationalizing the reasons why we're taking our eyes off of Jesus to focus on ourselves.

It's sin that turns us inward. The gospel turns us outward. Martin Luther argued that sin actually bends or curves us in on ourselves. Any version of "the gospel," therefore, that places you at the center is detrimental to your faith—whether it's your failures or your successes, your good works or bad works, your strengths or weaknesses, your obedience or disobedience.  Continue at Tullian Tchividjian

One-Way Love

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 deserve it, but I’m giving it to you anyway,” we wonder, “What is this really about? What’s the catch?” Internal bells and alarms start to go off, and we begin saying “wait a minute…this sounds too good to be true.”

You see, everything in our world demands two-way love. Everything is conditional. If I achieve, we reason, only then will I receive everything I long for: love, approval, significance, respect, and so on. Be good. Bring home the bacon. Keep your act together….Then (and only then) will you have what you want. That’s how our world works. But grace isn’t from our world. It’s otherworldly. It’s unconditional. Grace is upside-down, to-do-list wrecking, scandalous and way-too free. It’s one-way love.  Continue at Tullian Tchividjian

Where Can I Find Assurance?

A month or so ago I made the point in this post that confidence in my transformation is not the source of my assurance. Rather, the source of my assurance comes from faith in Christ’s substitution. Assurance never comes from looking at ourselves. It only comes as a consequence of looking to Christ.

As a result, I had a few people raise this question: “But wait a minute…once God saves us and the Spirit begins his renewing work in our lives, shouldn’t that work of inward renewal become a source of our assurance? Isn’t that at least one way we can know we’re right before God?”

At this point we need to be very clear regarding what we’re talking about specifically when we talk about assurance of salvation.

To be sure, the sanctifying work of the Spirit in the life of the Christian bears fruit (Galatians 5:22-23). God grows us in the “grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In Christ, we have died to sin and been raised to newness of life (Romans 6:4). And this new life shows itself in new affections, new appetites, new habits. We begin to love the  things God loves and hate the things God hates. We begin to grow into our new, resurrected skin.  Keep Reading >>>

Are You Righteous?

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

Ethical behaviorism is a term Psychologists use which defines righteousness exclusively in terms of what a person does or does not do. In this sense, a righteous person is one who does the right things and avoids the wrong things. An unrighteous person is one who does the wrong things and avoids the right things. Defined this way, righteousness is a quality that can be judged by an observation of someone’s behavior. Virtue and uprightness is purely a matter of outer conduct without any hint of what goes on inside you.

William Hordern illustrates well how this definition of righteousness is the definition held by the world:

The law enforcement institutions of society are concerned with right behavior. They do not care why people obey the law, so long as they obey it. The person who breaks no laws is righteous in their sight regardless of the motivation that produces law abiding behavior.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus breaks radically from this definition of righteousness. He cuts through the outer behavior of a person and looks at what’s in the heart. Jesus insists that righteousness is not simply a matter of what we do or don’t do but rather a question of why we do or don’t do it.

A few years ago when my boys were younger, they would gather all the neighborhood kids in our yard to play football. And every once in a while a pass would be overthrown, landing in my neighbors grass. My neighbor (an angry, grumpy, old curmudgeon) would always come outside and scream at my boys and their friends, threatening to confiscate the ball if it happened again. My boys, being young at the  time, would always come inside with tears in their eyes, lips quivering, because they were scared of our neighbor. Well, being the scrapper that I am, there were countless times that I wanted to march over to my neighbor and give him a piece of my mind. I wanted to make it clear that if he ever yelled at my boys again…well, you get the idea. I never did, though. I would stare him down from time to time, but I never went next door to let him have it. Some would assume that my refusal to let loose on my neighbor was an act of righteousness: I was exercising love, patience, self-control. But was it?  Keep Reading >>>

What Is True Spirituality?

“The evangelical orientation is inward and subjective. We are far better at looking inward than we are at looking outward.” 

Sinclair Ferguson

The word spirituality conjures up all sorts of images and ideas. For non-Religious–or secular–people, spirituality is nothing more than “an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being…aspects of life and human experience which go beyond a purely materialist view of the world without necessarily accepting belief in a supernatural reality or divine being.” Of course, Christians reject this idea of spirituality. Whatever we Christians believe about spirituality, we assume that it has something to do with intimacy with a personal creator God who exists outside of us and has revealed himself to us.

There is, however, one area in which–it seems–both Christian and secular people agree when it comes to spirituality. Spirituality for both is purely subjective and private.

Whether it’s a secular or Christian version, a spiritual person (in the minds of most modern people) is a person who focuses on “the inside of life.” Most Christians I talk to think about spirituality exclusively in terms of personal piety, internal devotion, and spiritual formation. The focus is almost entirely on individual, inward renewal and private disciplines: praying, reading the Bible, meditation, spiritual retreat, contemplation, and so on. True spirituality, we conclude, is predominately quiet–focusing on the interior of life.  Keep Reading >>>

Does Grace Produce Disobedience?

There seems to be a fear out there that the preaching of grace produces serial killers. Or, to put it in more theological terms, too much emphasis on the indicatives of the gospel leads to antinomianism (a heretical version of Christianity that believes there is no place for God’s law in the life of a Christian). My problem with this fear is that I’ve never actually met anyone who has been truly gripped by God’s amazing grace in the gospel who then doesn’t care about obeying him. When our hearts are genuinely grasped by God’s unconditional love, the last thing we want to ask is, “What can I get away with?” Those who conclude, “Goody, I can now continue in sin til my heart’s content” prove that they don’t get grace. As I’ve said before: antinomianism happens not when we think too much of grace. 

Just the opposite, actually. Antinomianism happens when we think too little of grace. 

Wondering whether this common fear is valid, my dear friend Elyse Fitzpatrick (in C.S. Lewis fashion) writes an open letter to Mr. Grace-Loving Antinomian-a person she’s heard about for years but never met-asking him to please step forward and identify himself.

I posted this a while back but I just read it again myself and want to share it with those who may not have seen it the first time. It’s that good.

Enjoy…  Read it HERE