Here are 10 top take-homes for me from Jesus + Nothing = Everything

1. Functionally, living out the gospel does not come naturally, even for Christians

Obviously, before we were Christians, it was never our natural bent to seek all our satisfaction in Christ and the gospel; but even after God saves us, that isn’t where we naturally turn.

2. Therefore our Christian lives become focused on what we are doing rather than on what Christ has done. The results are disastrous.

Our rules become our substitute savior, and keeping those rules becomes our self-salvation project, with Jesus safely outside the picture. With enough rules and regulations set up, we don’t need Jesus.

3. Church makes things worse!

To make this situation worse, our idolatrous self-focus is only intensified by what is typically taught and preached in our churches. The fact is, a lot of preaching these days has been unwittingly unconsciously seduced by moralism. Moralistic preaching only reinforces our inner assumption that our performance for God will impress him to the point of blessing us.

4. The message we communicate is a denial of the gospel and a disincentive to non-Christians

Millions of people, both inside and outside the church, believe that the essential message of Christianity is, “If you behave, then you belong.” From a human standpoint, that’s why most people reject Christianity.

5. The truth of the gospel is that Jesus + nothing really does = everything. If only we would believe it.

If we are in Christ , then everything we need, we already possess…approved by God, accepted by God, redeemed by God, forgiven by God, and transferred from darkness to light by God.

6. Believing the gospel of justification deep down alone has the power to sanctify.

The gospel transforms us precisely because  it’s not itself a message about our internal transformation but about Christ’s external substitution…Sanctification is the daily hard work of going back to the reality of our justification.

7. All of our teaching and preaching must be an exposition of the gospel of justification

All theology is an exposition of the gospel, a further articulation of the gospel in all its facets, meticulously unfolding all its liberating implications and empowering benefits.

8. The gospel not only has the power to change us but to set us free to serve our neighbours

God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbour does – Martin Luther

9. Now you can spend your life giving up your place for others instead of guarding it from others, because your identity is in Christ.

10. It is hard work to keep the gospel central to our thinking, living, and preaching. Unless we persevere in doing so we will naturally revert to a life of self-justification.

I’m always amazed at how hard it is for my heart to embrace what my head affirms.

The evangelical orientation is inward and subjective. We are far better at looking inward than we are at looking outward. Instead, we need to expend our energies admiring, exploring, expositing, and extolling Jesus Christ. – Sinclair Ferguson

Tim Keller highlights what Martin Luther describes below when Keller says the problem with Christians is that we believe and yet don’t believe the gospel at the same time. The goal of Christian thinking and living is to work out the gospel in all of its dimensions. That is Paul’s message in Romans 12v1-2. Here is Luther from his Preface to Galatians commentary;

There is a righteousness that Paul calls “the righteousness of faith”. God imputes it to us apart from our works–in other words, it is passive righteousness…So then, have we nothing to do to obtain this righteousness? No, nothing at all! For this righteousness comes by doing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing, but rather in knowing and believing this only–that Christ has gone to the right hand of the Father, not to become our judge, but to become for us our wisdom, our righteousness, our holiness, our salvation! Now God sees no sin in us, for in this heavenly righteousness sin has no place.  So now we may certainly think, “Although I still sin, I don’t despair, because Christ lives, who is both my righteousness and my eternal life.” In that righteousness I have no sin, no fear, no guilty conscience, no fear of death. I am indeed a sinner in this life of mine and in my own righteousness, but I have another life, another righteousness above this life, which is in Christ, the Son of God.

Christians never completely understand [this] themselves, and thus do not take advantage of it when they are troubled and tempted. So we have to constantly teach it, repeat it, and work it out in practice. Anyone who does not understand this righteousness or cherish it in the heart and conscience will continually be buffeted by fears and depression. Nothing gives peace like this passive righteousness. The troubled conscience has no cure for its desperation and feeling of unworthiness unless it takes hold of the forgiveness of sins by grace, offered free of charge in Jesus Christ, which is this passive or Christian righteousness….Once you are in Christ, the Law is the greatest guide for your life, but until you have Christian righteousness, all the law can do is to show you how sinful and condemned you are. But if we first receive Christian righteousness, then we can use the law, not for our salvation, but for his honor and glory, and to lovingly show our gratitude.

Martin Luther

In a short series of posts I want to ask Why read? What to read? How to read?

Why read?

1. Read because it will grow you as a Christian

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15

The number of theological books should…be reduced, and a selection should be made of the best of them; for many books do not make men learned, nor does much reading. But reading something good, and reading it frequently, however little it may be, is the practice that makes men learned in the Scripture and makes them pious besides.

Luther

Just think how reading can change you!

• Read to be inspired
• Read to be informed
• Read to be challenged
• Read to  be rebuked
• Read to be trained
• Read to be changed!

2.  Read because it will equip you for Christian ministry.

John Wesley wrote to a friend and fellow minister John Premboth the following on August 17^th , 1760.

‘What has exceedingly hurt you in time past, nay, and I fear to this day, is want of reading. I scarce ever knew a preacher read so little. And perhaps, by neglecting it, you have lost the taste for it. Hence your talent in preaching does not increase. It is just the same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep; there is little variety, there is no compass of thought. Reading only can supply this, with meditation and daily prayer. You wrong yourself greatly by omitting this. You can never be a deep preacher without it, any more than a thorough Christian. O begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises. You may acquire the taste which you have not: what is tedious at first, will afterwards be pleasant. Whether you like it or no, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a petty, superficial preacher. Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer. Take up your cross and be a Christian altogether. Then will all children of God rejoice (not grieve) over you in particular.’

3. Read because with a little effort you can achieve more than you would think

John Piper shows how just 15 minutes a day can make you a surprisingly well read person!

Suppose you read slowly like I do – maybe about the same speed that you speak- 200 words a minute. If you read fifteen minutes a day for one year (say just before supper, or just before bed), you will read 5,475 minutes in the year. Multiply that by 200 words a minute, and you get 1,  095,000 words that you would read in a year. Now an average serious book might have about 360words per page. So  you would have read 3,041 pages in one year. That’s ten very substantial books. All in fifteen minutes a day.

Or, to be specific, my copy of Calvin’s Institutes has 1,521 pages in two volumes, with an average of 400 words per page, which is 608, 400 words. That means that even if you took a day off each week you could read this great biblical vision of God and man in less than nine months (about thirty-three weeks) at fifteen minutes a day. The point is: The words and ways of God will abide in you more deeply and more powerfully if you give yourself to some serious reading of great books that are saturated with Scripture. It certainly does not have to be John Calvin – or my favourite, Jonathan Edwards – but not to read any of the great old books when you have access to them may be owing to nothing better than what Lewis calls “chronological snobbery.”

John Piper

Conclusion

So what’s stopping you? If reading is essential to growing as a Christian and serving as a Christian perhaps the only thing stopping us is the need to plan to read.

plan to read

1. Why not fix a time in your day for 15 minutes of reading.
2. Write it in your diary.
3. Create your own sticker chart and reward yourself (not too much) for say 5 consecutive days. Luther maybe didn’t need such an incentive but if it keeps you going just do it.
4. Tell others about your plan.  What you’re reading and how they can encourage you.
5. Fix to read with others – maybe your spouse or a facebook friend.
6. Commit to reading before say you switch the telly on or check your e-mails.

Find all the ways you can to keep reading for your good and God’s glory.

Next time: what to read?

‘I have no vices. I am a hero. Go and look it up in the dictionary and you will find a picture of me.’ That at least is what Chris Eubank told me.  But Chris was wrong for he was overlooking one crucial truth; pride is the greatest vice of all.

CS Lewis, who died this day 47 years ago, observes that pride is ‘ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling, concentration on the self’ and we surely as the ‘Hello’, ‘OK’, and Facebook generation are the generation most at ease with our pride.  We love life centred on ourselves.

And for those of us who doubt that pride has yet to infect us Lewis suggests a test.  ‘If you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronize me, or show off?’

The virus that infects everything

Pride is so dangerous because it turns everything I do, the good as well as the bad, into sin. It takes a great act of kindness and corrupts it into a self-serving sin. It’s a scary thought that even as I’m doing a favour for a friend a little voice is delivering a blunt message ‘don’t you feel good now’.

The silent killer

And then what does that look like when it comes to me and God? What if all that I do in God’s name is actually for my glory? No-one has put it more boldy that Martin Luther when he writes:

All those who do not in all their works or sufferings, life and death, trust in God’s favour, grace and good-will, but rather seek his favour in other things or in themselves, do not keep the [First] Commandment, and practice real idolatry. Even it they were to do the works of all the other Commandments, and in addition had all the prayers, fasting, obedience, patience, chastity, and innocence of all the saints combined.

It we doubt or do not believe that God is gracious and pleased with us, or if we presumptuously expect to please Him through our works, then all is pure deception, outwardly honouring God, but inwardly setting up self as a false saviour.  Note for yourself, then, how far apart these two are: keeping the first commandment with outward works only, and keeping it with inward [justifying faith]. For this last makes true, living children of God, the other only makes worse idolatry and the most mischievous hypocrites on earth.

Pride has only one cure – the gospel. For as we will see to truly know God is to humble ourselves and to truly know ourselves is to cease to be proud and to truly know Christ is to live life at the foot of the cross that alone can cure our pride.