I love this. When he talked about being too busy to have a vibrant prayer life I really felt that because lately that's how my life has been. I'm in ministry and I am newer to it but I feel this large push to do do and I've been mentored and all I ever hear is strategy and it gets to a point where you feel guilty for not being active and if you have any free time you try to feel it with something to do related to ministry. And if there are times when you're not going out and doing something people will ask you why you're not or even give you unsolicited advice on what you might try doing since you're not so busy. And I rarely hear people talk about sitting down and having long hours of prayer or even days where it's just your prayer day. I think I'm going to start setting some boundaries and openly talk about the importance and necessity of it.
Interesting interview- Keller is always so thought provoking … but the weird, spooky background music is too loud & completely distracting!! If you must use it, please at least turn the volume down?
TOTALLY AGREE! I'm in England, it's 2022, September. Ooh. The weird music has stopped. Hurrah! But whatever, I'll listen on because I want to grow...grow up in Christ...be encouraged by the teaching...and be part of strengthening my church family, as PART of my church family. That's all. JESUS is Lord. End of. But SEVEN YEARS TRAINING? Lol
What is spooky to some is evokotove and lively to others. We never speak for everyone when it comes to dissonemt harmonics and anesthetics. They are different from culture to culture. God can use just about anything to get us thinking more clearly about amd loving Him.
I know CJ was only mentioned in passing but he was mentioned among men that displayed actual bad behavior. CJs reputation ought not be what it’s become. I love Tim Keller but to mention him among McDonald and Driscoll is a little unfair
Tim speaks about wanting to show that Christianity is respectable - desirable - believable - he believes that doing this is the most effective means of ensuring that people come into the kingdom. But the foundation for true conversion and ongoing faith is none of these things - it is God's holiness and justice. I turned to God because on the basis of his holiness, my sin, and his justice I was indebted in a way that I could not repay. His prevenient grace ensured that I was enlightened to these things and that I was made able to turn to him - and this drawing grace also revealed to me his want for me. The fact that God wanted me and my having incomplete insight into God’s being respectable - desirable - or believable - none of these was the reason nor the source from which divine resources emanated to enable me to offer God my entire life. The reason true converts repent - and the Holy Spirit resources by which to do so - reside ONLY in our indebtedness due to God’s holiness and justice and our sin. The sense I have listening to Tim is that Tim doesn't think that anything is lost at the heart of one's conversion if one is first able to make judgements about God as though equal with God - but this belief is the very thing that salvation is seeking to deliver us from. Tim wants to make the gospel "seeker friendly" - but he does so in a way that suggests that the foundation of our relationship with God is our judgement that he measures up - that he is respectable - desirable - and believable. This makes the truth harder to identify than if the non-believer was left to God’s inner testimony to their heart. I am now going to make an outrageous claim - although I suggest that it might not be so outrageous when one considers the way in which the church is fading in the first world. I believe that the heart of the gospel is now either absent or substantially hidden in the vast majority of churches in the first world. If I am right about that it would mean that what I explained below will be substantially different to what most people understand to be the gospel - and that is what I am promising to you reader. Of course there will be things I say below with which you are familiar - I ask though that you DARE to believe that it’s possible for the truth to be substantially unfamiliar since the implosion of the first world church can only be due to one of two things - either we have a substantially wrong understanding of the gospel - or for some reason this particular generation refuses to align itself with it. With that in mind I ask that you will take a chance on me - please allow me ten minutes of your time to explain the heart of the gospel in a way which I expect will in respect of both ideas and language not be like you have heard it explained before. And I ask that if the very first things I say below are not new to you that you persist - as I will soon be in unfamiliar territory. So - without further ado... The bible is absolutely clear - in John 3 Jesus explains that no person can be saved without being born again. But what is being born again? It isn’t a slogan - it isn’t a political position! To think of being born again only as a major awakening is to miss it. To be born again is two steps - first we must ‘die’ and then we must be “made alive’. As you might imagine it isn’t the being made alive which is the problem with our preaching - it’s the dying. What does it mean to die? If you are lucky you might have heard someone explain that dying is about turning from sin - no longer finding our identity in anything we have achieved separate from God. But while this is part of repentance it is a description which doesn’t fully reveal the nature of repentance - and the path to relationship with God. See my own replies to this post for the rest of my post.
Dying has two further characteristics which I NEVER hear preachers in the first world explain - these only have a place when we recognise that repentance is our responding to God’s holiness and justice and our sin: - to repent is to choose plan A before and without knowing whether that choice will turn out to be life to the person choosing. - to repent is to close the door to ALL plan B’s BEFORE knowing how plan A will turn out. Why is there doubt as to how things will turn out? Isn’t Tim’s point in this interview that he is first trying to show that if people come to God they can be sure that things will turn out well? No. To repent is not “I’ll say sorry to God and see how it goes”. To repent is to burn ALL bridges BEFORE having insight into whether there will be a path ahead and where it leads. We see two examples of this kind of repentance - this dying - in scripture. The thief on the cross repents without insight that his repentance will see him gain anything. He is offering himself to Jesus even when his only prospect is death. There is nothing obvious to be gained from doing so. Only AFTER he repents does he hear Jesus say “today you will be with me in paradise”. And while I acknowledge it’s a parable the prodigal son decides BEFORE arriving home that he will say to his father that he is no longer worthy to be called his father’s son - that he wishes instead to be a hired servant. He decides this without being assured of how the father will respond - and he decides that he will NO MATTER HOW the father will respond. Being saved is saying to God “Whatever you choose to do I choose to do this because I must”. Having said that it isn’t in fact true to say that God is asking us to turn to him while having zero insight into his mercy and grace - because all non-believers have experienced God’s mercy and grace in creation. And in addition all believers - at the moment when God requires them to repeat their conversion in daily discipleship - in ‘stepping out in faith’ - also have insight into God’s past faithfulness and the blessing of the promises of the word of God. However these by God’s design DON’T provide the necessary resources to turn to him. The key element in which God provides power to obey is our enslavement. So much so that a person who had little insight into God loving them AT ALL can become a Christian. A revelation of God’s holiness and justice and our sin is the foundation for all true conversion. The first thing the non-believer experiences is God revealing his holiness - leading them to see by contrast their sin - which then leads to God revealing his justice in relation to that sin. As a result of these things ALONE the non-believer is obligated - enslaved - yet still has the opportunity to make a free choice (free in the sense of not being subject to sin - due to the presence of enabling grace) whether or not to accept the truth - that they are in debt in a way that they cannot repay - enslaved - obligated - bound to God forever - and therefore obligated to live as if they are a sinner and God is holy and just. This is the first part of faith - it is a choice - not a gift - although it is a free choice only because of enabling grace - to live as if God is holy and just. This first part of faith is repentance. Every person must repent BEFORE being given insight into how God will respond. If it happened after such insight it would not be death - it would instead be adding new life on top of old life (an idea which is inconsistent with God being holy). So every person who is truly saved is enslaved by the gospel. The reason why people come to God is not because they find out what a great guy he is - the reason why people offer their lives in a way that burns all bridges is on the basis of obligation created by God’s holiness and justice and their sin. There is no being saved without having burned bridges in one’s heart - any preacher who fails to reveal that obeying the gospel requires people to burn every bridge is in that omission providing a path of escape - allowing someone to imagine it is possible to choose Jesus without the cross.
Once a person offers themselves without reservation - and without condition - to God - only when there is neither any visible path forward nor any path back - ONLY THEN does God reveal the fullness of his mercy and grace. This is what the death of being born again is. Whilst people have a choice as to whether to live as if God is holy and just - those who choose to live as though enslaved to God because of his holiness, their sin, and his justice then receive an impartation of mercy and grace which is an irresistible gift - not a choice. So the first part of faith - faith that God his holy and just - repentance - is a grace enabled choice - and the second half of faith is an irresistible gift - making saving faith both a choice and a gift - and all reliant on enabling grace. So why is being placed under obligation necessary to being saved? Because only in death do we escape sin. The gospel doesn’t destroy God’s holiness. God remains holy. The gospel - while satisfying his justice - doesn’t destroy his holiness. Jesus’ death pays for past sin - it doesn’t make it possible for an unrepentant person to walk into the presence of a holy God. There is an entire book of the Bible on this very subject - Leviticus. In that book Aaron's sons attempt to approach God unrepentant and end up dead. No sinful person can stand in front of a holy God “alive”. There are only two kinds of people who are able to be in the presence of God - perfect people - and there has only ever been one of them - and ‘dead’ people. So if we must be enslaved to God by the gospel - how is it that being enslaved turns out to be liberation? It does because while God’s holiness and justice enslave us, his mercy then makes that enslavement freedom, and his grace then makes that freedom overwhelming joy. The gospel isn’t freedom FROM slavery - it’s freedom IN slavery. If we refuse to enslave people we refuse to save them. If we do it knowingly we are a false teacher - and we are without love for those we may claim to love. Any gospel which implies that people are able to come to God after having been given a full insight into his love - any gospel which says that the reason people don’t come to God is they have yet to fully experience his love - or be convinced of what a great guy he is - is a false gospel. We don’t get to experience the fullness of God (at least the fullness of God this side of eternity) without first responding to what he first reveals about himself - (see John 7:17 and John 8:31 which says this in different words - and also James 1:22-24 which says that merely listening to the word of God without acting on it is a form of self-deception). God is the initiator in salvation. No-one ever becomes a Christian ONLY because they found out how much God feels love for them - no-one ends up repenting (the true kind of repentance I described above) after experiencing this alone. God makes sure this isn’t a sufficient reason - and doesn’t provide sufficient resources - for people to turn to him. The consequences of believing that we are able to make judgements about God as though equal with him is a ‘faith’ which is mind to mind. Instead of receive God - instead of God’s life operating in us in death - the best we can do is receive ideas to a fallen mind - and make fallen intellectual declarations - “You know God, you are God” - something which neither God nor any other human being needs our help to identify.
With these things in mind what can we say in summary about God’s love? His love (his holiness, justice, mercy and grace) is unchanging - but half the first world church draws wrong conclusions from this - some ignorantly - others deliberately. Just because God’s love is unchanging doesn’t mean that there aren’t different ways to be positioned in relation to his love. Even having turned to God we have the freedom to turn away from him. But this does not mean that we cannot have assurance of salvation. It is possible to have absolute assurance of salvation if we do not knowingly withhold anything from God. We can be assured of the fact that the way in will be the way on - God will continue to ensure that the reason and the resources to remain in him stay the same. This is what it means to be sealed - being sealed doesn’t mean that there is no freedom to turn from God having begun to believe (see Rom 11:22, Hebrews 10:29-31, 2 Pet 2:20 and Hebrews 6:4-6 for proof of that) - a seal is a guarantee that a letter is from a particular person. Our assurance is that the God with whom we begin will continue to be that God. This is how people endure to the end - they continue to accept the terms under which they began with God and he doesn’t change. This is why Paul is sure in Philippians 1:6 that God - who began his work in the Philippians - will carry it on to completion - not because coming to God and remaining with God involves him overriding our free will - but because God doesn’t change and therefore the terms of relationship with him don’t change. People should NOT be told that God accepts them because of Jesus' death on the cross before they repent. In letters to churches the bible speaks as if the cross has made people right with God - but this is being said to people who have already become right with God. In the Old Testament people didn’t offer sacrifices out of gratitude for already having been forgiven - they offered sacrifices in a right heart IN ORDER to be forgiven (see Leviticus 4:20). This is a sign that we must appropriate Jesus’ sacrifice in a similar manner. We aren’t able to experience the fullness of God’s love before accepting the terms under which he chooses to allow people to be under his love. Just as wise people don’t offer themselves without reservation to people on first contact neither does God. He is the first to reach out to people - even to those who oppose him - and we should be the first to reach out to others - even to those who oppose us - this being grace - however this isn’t the same thing as saying that we should trust those to whom we reach out before they have revealed themselves to be worthy of that trust. Whilst we should most definitely continue to reach out to people whose lives are dominated by sin we shouldn’t continue to reach out if those to whom we have been reaching out are specifically contemptuous of what we offer them. But how does this revealed step by step gospel work practically? Don’t people - as they hear the gospel preached - encounter all of the love of God in the cross? Don’t they hear about his holiness, justice, mercy and grace all at the same time? Yes - but it’s a different reality in respect of spiritual revelation. While people may hear the truth all at once they only get to EXPERIENCE the truth in the order I described above. They must respond to what God first reveals without insisting on having full insight into his character (which God - if they refuse to repent - will never give them). Any gospel which hides this truth - as is the case with a gospel which says that salvation is God embracing the unrepentant sinner (Calvinism) - is very damaging. It hides the heart of the gospel - the combination of God’s holiness, justice, mercy, and grace - the only circumstances under which people are able to know God. It places repentance after salvation instead of before it. It is the first half of liberalism - liberalism merely continues things by saying that God can embrace unrepentant sinners all the time (although strictly so does Calvinism - the Calvinist believes that even the believe is in the area in which they have yet to be sanctified unable to be repentant before God overrides their wills). Accepting this false gospel (I realise that some people merely say they believe it as part of paying the price of admission to particular churches and scholarly groups) leads people to imagine that it is not wrong to first determine whether God is of good character - when to do so is to behave as if we are capable of making judgements about what is and is not divine - as if we are God - as if we are perfect - not subject to sin - not subject to blindness. As if there is some standard by which God can be judged separate from God himself. It follows that if we have a darkened understanding that the only way for us to become enlightened is for God to initiate and for us to respond to his initiatives as soon they require a response. Those who instead attempt to judge God as if able to see clearly - who wait until he first reveals himself fully - never get to see or experience what they imagine themselves able to judge. They end up judging their own picture of God instead of responding consistent with the fact that God has already demonstrated his being entitled to judge them. They are really committed to a form of self-actualisation - they will serve God only if he proves compatible with their pre-existing attitudes and aspirations.
As part of reaching out to us God may give us insight into the fact that he feels love for us - that he wants to know us. However part of being responsible preachers is explaining that this experience isn’t itself right relationship with God. It is God wanting to say “I want to know you”. Instead many charismatics treat this kind of experience as if it is right relationship with God - as if to be right with God only involves Jesus having to die for us - instead of us also having to die with Jesus. In the face of these hard truths we may be tempted to think “I will first get people into the kingdom by telling them some of the truth and then fill in the details later”. But this isn’t possible - it isn’t possible to plant a seed of one variety and then transition it into a plant of another variety. The way we begin will be the only way in which the galvanised hearts of our hearers will allow us to continue - all our future words will be received through a filter which was put in place at the beginning. We are told in Hebrews 11:6 that without faith it is impossible to please God. We often hear people say that we are saved through faith - but we are also sanctified through faith. We call the latter ‘stepping out in faith’ - God requires us to continue to take steps while having insight into his holiness and justice and our sin - before having insight into how he will respond to our obedience. Conversion and ongoing obedience have the same foundation. It is therefore never correct to say that person X left the faith because of the way in which people were unloving to them. We don’t obtain the key resources necessary to obey God from people - or lose them when not loved by people. These things are “non-category” issues. Romans 1 says that God has already revealed himself in a way that leaves all people without excuse - there are no exceptions to this. Our resources for obeying God come from him and through the gospel. They aren’t found in people and cannot be taken from us by people behaving badly. No-one experiences hardship without God specifically allowing it as part of his working for their best welfare. Sinful acts of human beings towards a believer might be enormously painful but the true believer will still see them as unrelated to whether or not they continue to follow God. It follows from our having a right understanding of the basis for our being obligated and empowered to turn to God that having a sterner picture of God will not cause people not to turn to him. This was Charlie’s test in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. At the end of the factory tour he is subjected to justice without visible mercy by Willy Wonka (to which Grandpa Joe objects) - he is told that because he and Grandpa Joe broke one rule while touring the factory they are disqualified - they won’t be receiving a lifetime supply of chocolate. But Charlie responds as all people who wish to please God must do - he aligns himself with justice - he accepts the decision and then even hands back his everlasting gobstopper. Then he finds out that THIS was the test! He passed! He has revealed to Willy Wonka that he is the right person to take over the factory. And he then finds out that Willy Wonka is generous - good - kind - that he had a good purpose in testing Charlie. I know of no better analogy to explain the heart of the gospel than this movie scene. No-one is led to repent by any other means than God's holiness and justice and their sin. No-one who for example finds out ONLY that God feels love for them EVER repents - only a revelation of God’s holiness and justice and our sin provides the reason and resources to repent. When we talk about God’s kindness leading people to repentance - it doesn’t mean that people need to first experience the fullness of God’s mercy and grace in order to first have sufficient reason to repent. It is referring to God’s prevenient grace - which enlightens us in respect of his holiness and justice - THAT is kindness - and ensures that our choosing to turn to God is a free choice - not affected by our inclination to sin.
It should be clear then that to preach a gospel which centres on God’s feeling love for people will have two negative effects (although God does feel love for people - as proven in Jesus in Mark 10 where Jesus looks at the rich man “and loved him”) -: - it will in the incompleteness of the message allow a sinner to imagine that there must be something about them which is to their credit for God to feel about them in the way he does. - it causes the only path to right relationship with God to become hidden. To preach without revealing this is to refuse to reveal to people their need to turn to God. But what about those who are contrite in respect of their sin but doubt that God will accept them? Isn’t it true in their case that a revelation of God’s wanting them, his desiring to be with them, his being willing to show mercy to them - will lead to their taking a step towards him? No - in being contrite for their sin they have already chosen to receive God - they just don’t know they have. They are like the Samaritan woman in John 4 - they have already shown that they are wanting to worship God (her continuing sin was weakness not wilfulness) - the only thing that needed to happen was for Jesus to reveal that her attitude towards him was acceptable to him - which Jesus does - he connects her with his mercy and grace. So there are no exceptions. No-one comes to God without having FIRST responded to his holiness and justice. And no-one finds the resources with which to offer themselves entirely to God without first accepting themselves to be obligated as a result of encountering God’s holiness and justice and their sin. None of what I say above is to deny the following about God’s love - that there are two loves of God: - God FEELS love for us because we are his - God SHOWED love to us despite our behaviour My proposition is only that those who have experienced only the first love above aren’t led by it to the second love but those who have experienced only the second love (initially only in encountering God’s holiness and justice and enabling grace - not the fullness of God’s mercy and grace) ARE able to find out that God not only sacrificed for them but FEELS love for them.
Mark Driscol quote. "I read a book a day" hahaha what? straight up done finished. On every level this is not the Holy Spirit. You only need one book and even if it were possible he gloats about it.
Where things go wrong, is when we take our eyes off of Christ and put it on ourselves!
What a sweet, sensitive and insightful conversation.
I miss Tim Keller.
I love Tim Keller 🔥🔥🔥
Tim Kellor has been very helpful and insightful.
I don't know who invited him 😅 Tim Keller at his most passive aggressive. Great conversation, loved it.
I love this. When he talked about being too busy to have a vibrant prayer life I really felt that because lately that's how my life has been. I'm in ministry and I am newer to it but I feel this large push to do do and I've been mentored and all I ever hear is strategy and it gets to a point where you feel guilty for not being active and if you have any free time you try to feel it with something to do related to ministry. And if there are times when you're not going out and doing something people will ask you why you're not or even give you unsolicited advice on what you might try doing since you're not so busy. And I rarely hear people talk about sitting down and having long hours of prayer or even days where it's just your prayer day. I think I'm going to start setting some boundaries and openly talk about the importance and necessity of it.
Interesting interview- Keller is always so thought provoking … but the weird, spooky background music is too loud & completely distracting!! If you must use it, please at least turn the volume down?
Totally agree! I could hardly listen to the end of the conversation. The music is distracting and does a disservice to the content of the discussion.
TOTALLY AGREE! I'm in England, it's 2022, September. Ooh. The weird music has stopped. Hurrah! But whatever, I'll listen on because I want to grow...grow up in Christ...be encouraged by the teaching...and be part of strengthening my church family, as PART of my church family. That's all. JESUS is Lord. End of. But SEVEN YEARS TRAINING? Lol
What is spooky to some is evokotove and lively to others. We never speak for everyone when it comes to dissonemt harmonics and anesthetics. They are different from culture to culture. God can use just about anything to get us thinking more clearly about amd loving Him.
It's multisensory atmospherics, like a dramatized audiobook
great convo, distracting background music
DA Carson and Keller are mighty men of God.
they are frauds
many pastors are atheists and yet christians love them SMH
yall are lukewarm and dead to GOD thats why u seek these men
@@j919or DA Carson? No way. I am less familiar with keller but DA Carsons srudys were very biblical
@@marleneg7794 how would u know they were biblical?
Please erase the droning in the background. Sheesh!
I know CJ was only mentioned in passing but he was mentioned among men that displayed actual bad behavior. CJs reputation ought not be what it’s become. I love Tim Keller but to mention him among McDonald and Driscoll is a little unfair
This is truly disturbing information. I feel vindicated with my deconstruction.
The droning music speaks volumes about the attempt to manipulate the listener. Expect nothing less from Christianity Today though.
Tim speaks about wanting to show that Christianity is respectable - desirable - believable - he believes that doing this is the most effective means of ensuring that people come into the kingdom.
But the foundation for true conversion and ongoing faith is none of these things - it is God's holiness and justice. I turned to God because on the basis of his holiness, my sin, and his justice I was indebted in a way that I could not repay. His prevenient grace ensured that I was enlightened to these things and that I was made able to turn to him - and this drawing grace also revealed to me his want for me. The fact that God wanted me and my having incomplete insight into God’s being respectable - desirable - or believable - none of these was the reason nor the source from which divine resources emanated to enable me to offer God my entire life. The reason true converts repent - and the Holy Spirit resources by which to do so - reside ONLY in our indebtedness due to God’s holiness and justice and our sin.
The sense I have listening to Tim is that Tim doesn't think that anything is lost at the heart of one's conversion if one is first able to make judgements about God as though equal with God - but this belief is the very thing that salvation is seeking to deliver us from. Tim wants to make the gospel "seeker friendly" - but he does so in a way that suggests that the foundation of our relationship with God is our judgement that he measures up - that he is respectable - desirable - and believable. This makes the truth harder to identify than if the non-believer was left to God’s inner testimony to their heart.
I am now going to make an outrageous claim - although I suggest that it might not be so outrageous when one considers the way in which the church is fading in the first world. I believe that the heart of the gospel is now either absent or substantially hidden in the vast majority of churches in the first world. If I am right about that it would mean that what I explained below will be substantially different to what most people understand to be the gospel - and that is what I am promising to you reader. Of course there will be things I say below with which you are familiar - I ask though that you DARE to believe that it’s possible for the truth to be substantially unfamiliar since the implosion of the first world church can only be due to one of two things - either we have a substantially wrong understanding of the gospel - or for some reason this particular generation refuses to align itself with it. With that in mind I ask that you will take a chance on me - please allow me ten minutes of your time to explain the heart of the gospel in a way which I expect will in respect of both ideas and language not be like you have heard it explained before. And I ask that if the very first things I say below are not new to you that you persist - as I will soon be in unfamiliar territory.
So - without further ado...
The bible is absolutely clear - in John 3 Jesus explains that no person can be saved without being born again. But what is being born again? It isn’t a slogan - it isn’t a political position! To think of being born again only as a major awakening is to miss it. To be born again is two steps - first we must ‘die’ and then we must be “made alive’.
As you might imagine it isn’t the being made alive which is the problem with our preaching - it’s the dying. What does it mean to die? If you are lucky you might have heard someone explain that dying is about turning from sin - no longer finding our identity in anything we have achieved separate from God. But while this is part of repentance it is a description which doesn’t fully reveal the nature of repentance - and the path to relationship with God.
See my own replies to this post for the rest of my post.
Dying has two further characteristics which I NEVER hear preachers in the first world explain - these only have a place when we recognise that repentance is our responding to God’s holiness and justice and our sin:
- to repent is to choose plan A before and without knowing whether that choice will turn out to be life to the person choosing.
- to repent is to close the door to ALL plan B’s BEFORE knowing how plan A will turn out.
Why is there doubt as to how things will turn out? Isn’t Tim’s point in this interview that he is first trying to show that if people come to God they can be sure that things will turn out well?
No. To repent is not “I’ll say sorry to God and see how it goes”. To repent is to burn ALL bridges BEFORE having insight into whether there will be a path ahead and where it leads. We see two examples of this kind of repentance - this dying - in scripture. The thief on the cross repents without insight that his repentance will see him gain anything. He is offering himself to Jesus even when his only prospect is death. There is nothing obvious to be gained from doing so. Only AFTER he repents does he hear Jesus say “today you will be with me in paradise”. And while I acknowledge it’s a parable the prodigal son decides BEFORE arriving home that he will say to his father that he is no longer worthy to be called his father’s son - that he wishes instead to be a hired servant. He decides this without being assured of how the father will respond - and he decides that he will NO MATTER HOW the father will respond.
Being saved is saying to God “Whatever you choose to do I choose to do this because I must”.
Having said that it isn’t in fact true to say that God is asking us to turn to him while having zero insight into his mercy and grace - because all non-believers have experienced God’s mercy and grace in creation. And in addition all believers - at the moment when God requires them to repeat their conversion in daily discipleship - in ‘stepping out in faith’ - also have insight into God’s past faithfulness and the blessing of the promises of the word of God. However these by God’s design DON’T provide the necessary resources to turn to him. The key element in which God provides power to obey is our enslavement. So much so that a person who had little insight into God loving them AT ALL can become a Christian.
A revelation of God’s holiness and justice and our sin is the foundation for all true conversion. The first thing the non-believer experiences is God revealing his holiness - leading them to see by contrast their sin - which then leads to God revealing his justice in relation to that sin. As a result of these things ALONE the non-believer is obligated - enslaved - yet still has the opportunity to make a free choice (free in the sense of not being subject to sin - due to the presence of enabling grace) whether or not to accept the truth - that they are in debt in a way that they cannot repay - enslaved - obligated - bound to God forever - and therefore obligated to live as if they are a sinner and God is holy and just. This is the first part of faith - it is a choice - not a gift - although it is a free choice only because of enabling grace - to live as if God is holy and just. This first part of faith is repentance. Every person must repent BEFORE being given insight into how God will respond. If it happened after such insight it would not be death - it would instead be adding new life on top of old life (an idea which is inconsistent with God being holy).
So every person who is truly saved is enslaved by the gospel. The reason why people come to God is not because they find out what a great guy he is - the reason why people offer their lives in a way that burns all bridges is on the basis of obligation created by God’s holiness and justice and their sin. There is no being saved without having burned bridges in one’s heart - any preacher who fails to reveal that obeying the gospel requires people to burn every bridge is in that omission providing a path of escape - allowing someone to imagine it is possible to choose Jesus without the cross.
Once a person offers themselves without reservation - and without condition - to God - only when there is neither any visible path forward nor any path back - ONLY THEN does God reveal the fullness of his mercy and grace. This is what the death of being born again is. Whilst people have a choice as to whether to live as if God is holy and just - those who choose to live as though enslaved to God because of his holiness, their sin, and his justice then receive an impartation of mercy and grace which is an irresistible gift - not a choice. So the first part of faith - faith that God his holy and just - repentance - is a grace enabled choice - and the second half of faith is an irresistible gift - making saving faith both a choice and a gift - and all reliant on enabling grace.
So why is being placed under obligation necessary to being saved? Because only in death do we escape sin. The gospel doesn’t destroy God’s holiness. God remains holy. The gospel - while satisfying his justice - doesn’t destroy his holiness. Jesus’ death pays for past sin - it doesn’t make it possible for an unrepentant person to walk into the presence of a holy God. There is an entire book of the Bible on this very subject - Leviticus. In that book Aaron's sons attempt to approach God unrepentant and end up dead. No sinful person can stand in front of a holy God “alive”. There are only two kinds of people who are able to be in the presence of God - perfect people - and there has only ever been one of them - and ‘dead’ people.
So if we must be enslaved to God by the gospel - how is it that being enslaved turns out to be liberation? It does because while God’s holiness and justice enslave us, his mercy then makes that enslavement freedom, and his grace then makes that freedom overwhelming joy. The gospel isn’t freedom FROM slavery - it’s freedom IN slavery. If we refuse to enslave people we refuse to save them. If we do it knowingly we are a false teacher - and we are without love for those we may claim to love.
Any gospel which implies that people are able to come to God after having been given a full insight into his love - any gospel which says that the reason people don’t come to God is they have yet to fully experience his love - or be convinced of what a great guy he is - is a false gospel. We don’t get to experience the fullness of God (at least the fullness of God this side of eternity) without first responding to what he first reveals about himself - (see John 7:17 and John 8:31 which says this in different words - and also James 1:22-24 which says that merely listening to the word of God without acting on it is a form of self-deception). God is the initiator in salvation. No-one ever becomes a Christian ONLY because they found out how much God feels love for them - no-one ends up repenting (the true kind of repentance I described above) after experiencing this alone. God makes sure this isn’t a sufficient reason - and doesn’t provide sufficient resources - for people to turn to him.
The consequences of believing that we are able to make judgements about God as though equal with him is a ‘faith’ which is mind to mind. Instead of receive God - instead of God’s life operating in us in death - the best we can do is receive ideas to a fallen mind - and make fallen intellectual declarations - “You know God, you are God” - something which neither God nor any other human being needs our help to identify.
With these things in mind what can we say in summary about God’s love? His love (his holiness, justice, mercy and grace) is unchanging - but half the first world church draws wrong conclusions from this - some ignorantly - others deliberately. Just because God’s love is unchanging doesn’t mean that there aren’t different ways to be positioned in relation to his love. Even having turned to God we have the freedom to turn away from him. But this does not mean that we cannot have assurance of salvation. It is possible to have absolute assurance of salvation if we do not knowingly withhold anything from God. We can be assured of the fact that the way in will be the way on - God will continue to ensure that the reason and the resources to remain in him stay the same. This is what it means to be sealed - being sealed doesn’t mean that there is no freedom to turn from God having begun to believe (see Rom 11:22, Hebrews 10:29-31, 2 Pet 2:20 and Hebrews 6:4-6 for proof of that) - a seal is a guarantee that a letter is from a particular person. Our assurance is that the God with whom we begin will continue to be that God. This is how people endure to the end - they continue to accept the terms under which they began with God and he doesn’t change. This is why Paul is sure in Philippians 1:6 that God - who began his work in the Philippians - will carry it on to completion - not because coming to God and remaining with God involves him overriding our free will - but because God doesn’t change and therefore the terms of relationship with him don’t change.
People should NOT be told that God accepts them because of Jesus' death on the cross before they repent. In letters to churches the bible speaks as if the cross has made people right with God - but this is being said to people who have already become right with God. In the Old Testament people didn’t offer sacrifices out of gratitude for already having been forgiven - they offered sacrifices in a right heart IN ORDER to be forgiven (see Leviticus 4:20). This is a sign that we must appropriate Jesus’ sacrifice in a similar manner. We aren’t able to experience the fullness of God’s love before accepting the terms under which he chooses to allow people to be under his love. Just as wise people don’t offer themselves without reservation to people on first contact neither does God. He is the first to reach out to people - even to those who oppose him - and we should be the first to reach out to others - even to those who oppose us - this being grace - however this isn’t the same thing as saying that we should trust those to whom we reach out before they have revealed themselves to be worthy of that trust. Whilst we should most definitely continue to reach out to people whose lives are dominated by sin we shouldn’t continue to reach out if those to whom we have been reaching out are specifically contemptuous of what we offer them.
But how does this revealed step by step gospel work practically? Don’t people - as they hear the gospel preached - encounter all of the love of God in the cross? Don’t they hear about his holiness, justice, mercy and grace all at the same time? Yes - but it’s a different reality in respect of spiritual revelation. While people may hear the truth all at once they only get to EXPERIENCE the truth in the order I described above. They must respond to what God first reveals without insisting on having full insight into his character (which God - if they refuse to repent - will never give them). Any gospel which hides this truth - as is the case with a gospel which says that salvation is God embracing the unrepentant sinner (Calvinism) - is very damaging. It hides the heart of the gospel - the combination of God’s holiness, justice, mercy, and grace - the only circumstances under which people are able to know God. It places repentance after salvation instead of before it. It is the first half of liberalism - liberalism merely continues things by saying that God can embrace unrepentant sinners all the time (although strictly so does Calvinism - the Calvinist believes that even the believe is in the area in which they have yet to be sanctified unable to be repentant before God overrides their wills). Accepting this false gospel (I realise that some people merely say they believe it as part of paying the price of admission to particular churches and scholarly groups) leads people to imagine that it is not wrong to first determine whether God is of good character - when to do so is to behave as if we are capable of making judgements about what is and is not divine - as if we are God - as if we are perfect - not subject to sin - not subject to blindness. As if there is some standard by which God can be judged separate from God himself. It follows that if we have a darkened understanding that the only way for us to become enlightened is for God to initiate and for us to respond to his initiatives as soon they require a response. Those who instead attempt to judge God as if able to see clearly - who wait until he first reveals himself fully - never get to see or experience what they imagine themselves able to judge. They end up judging their own picture of God instead of responding consistent with the fact that God has already demonstrated his being entitled to judge them. They are really committed to a form of self-actualisation - they will serve God only if he proves compatible with their pre-existing attitudes and aspirations.
As part of reaching out to us God may give us insight into the fact that he feels love for us - that he wants to know us. However part of being responsible preachers is explaining that this experience isn’t itself right relationship with God. It is God wanting to say “I want to know you”. Instead many charismatics treat this kind of experience as if it is right relationship with God - as if to be right with God only involves Jesus having to die for us - instead of us also having to die with Jesus.
In the face of these hard truths we may be tempted to think “I will first get people into the kingdom by telling them some of the truth and then fill in the details later”. But this isn’t possible - it isn’t possible to plant a seed of one variety and then transition it into a plant of another variety. The way we begin will be the only way in which the galvanised hearts of our hearers will allow us to continue - all our future words will be received through a filter which was put in place at the beginning.
We are told in Hebrews 11:6 that without faith it is impossible to please God. We often hear people say that we are saved through faith - but we are also sanctified through faith. We call the latter ‘stepping out in faith’ - God requires us to continue to take steps while having insight into his holiness and justice and our sin - before having insight into how he will respond to our obedience. Conversion and ongoing obedience have the same foundation.
It is therefore never correct to say that person X left the faith because of the way in which people were unloving to them. We don’t obtain the key resources necessary to obey God from people - or lose them when not loved by people. These things are “non-category” issues. Romans 1 says that God has already revealed himself in a way that leaves all people without excuse - there are no exceptions to this. Our resources for obeying God come from him and through the gospel. They aren’t found in people and cannot be taken from us by people behaving badly. No-one experiences hardship without God specifically allowing it as part of his working for their best welfare. Sinful acts of human beings towards a believer might be enormously painful but the true believer will still see them as unrelated to whether or not they continue to follow God.
It follows from our having a right understanding of the basis for our being obligated and empowered to turn to God that having a sterner picture of God will not cause people not to turn to him. This was Charlie’s test in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. At the end of the factory tour he is subjected to justice without visible mercy by Willy Wonka (to which Grandpa Joe objects) - he is told that because he and Grandpa Joe broke one rule while touring the factory they are disqualified - they won’t be receiving a lifetime supply of chocolate. But Charlie responds as all people who wish to please God must do - he aligns himself with justice - he accepts the decision and then even hands back his everlasting gobstopper. Then he finds out that THIS was the test! He passed! He has revealed to Willy Wonka that he is the right person to take over the factory. And he then finds out that Willy Wonka is generous - good - kind - that he had a good purpose in testing Charlie. I know of no better analogy to explain the heart of the gospel than this movie scene.
No-one is led to repent by any other means than God's holiness and justice and their sin. No-one who for example finds out ONLY that God feels love for them EVER repents - only a revelation of God’s holiness and justice and our sin provides the reason and resources to repent. When we talk about God’s kindness leading people to repentance - it doesn’t mean that people need to first experience the fullness of God’s mercy and grace in order to first have sufficient reason to repent. It is referring to God’s prevenient grace - which enlightens us in respect of his holiness and justice - THAT is kindness - and ensures that our choosing to turn to God is a free choice - not affected by our inclination to sin.
It should be clear then that to preach a gospel which centres on God’s feeling love for people will have two negative effects (although God does feel love for people - as proven in Jesus in Mark 10 where Jesus looks at the rich man “and loved him”) -:
- it will in the incompleteness of the message allow a sinner to imagine that there must be something about them which is to their credit for God to feel about them in the way he does.
- it causes the only path to right relationship with God to become hidden. To preach without revealing this is to refuse to reveal to people their need to turn to God.
But what about those who are contrite in respect of their sin but doubt that God will accept them? Isn’t it true in their case that a revelation of God’s wanting them, his desiring to be with them, his being willing to show mercy to them - will lead to their taking a step towards him? No - in being contrite for their sin they have already chosen to receive God - they just don’t know they have. They are like the Samaritan woman in John 4 - they have already shown that they are wanting to worship God (her continuing sin was weakness not wilfulness) - the only thing that needed to happen was for Jesus to reveal that her attitude towards him was acceptable to him - which Jesus does - he connects her with his mercy and grace. So there are no exceptions. No-one comes to God without having FIRST responded to his holiness and justice. And no-one finds the resources with which to offer themselves entirely to God without first accepting themselves to be obligated as a result of encountering God’s holiness and justice and their sin.
None of what I say above is to deny the following about God’s love - that there are two loves of God:
- God FEELS love for us because we are his
- God SHOWED love to us despite our behaviour
My proposition is only that those who have experienced only the first love above aren’t led by it to the second love but those who have experienced only the second love (initially only in encountering God’s holiness and justice and enabling grace - not the fullness of God’s mercy and grace) ARE able to find out that God not only sacrificed for them but FEELS love for them.
Mark Driscol quote.
"I read a book a day" hahaha what? straight up done finished. On every level this is not the Holy Spirit.
You only need one book and even if it were possible he gloats about it.
“Christian celebrity” is an oxymoron.