It is Christ

[T]he Holy Spirit turns our eyes entirely away from self: He tells us that we are nothing, but that "Christ is all in all." Remember, therefore, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee--it is Christ; it is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee--it is Christ; it is not even faith in Christ, though that be the instrument--it is Christ's blood and merits; therefore, look not so much to thy hand with which thou art grasping Christ, as to Christ....

      We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, or our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul. If we would at once overcome Satan and have peace with God, it must be by "looking unto Jesus."

       Keep thine eye simply on Him; let His death, His sufferings, His merits, His glories, His intercession, be fresh upon thy mind; when thou wakest in the morning look to Him; when thou liest down at night look to Him.

-Spurgeon

The Sum of the Christian Life

"It is exceedingly difficult to get into another habit of thinking in which we clearly separate faith and [works of] love…. Even though we are in faith … the heart is always ready to boast of itself before God and say: "After all, I have preached so long and lived so well and done so much, surely he will take this into account."  But it cannot be done.  With men you may boast … But when you come before God, leave all that boasting at home and remember to appeal from justice to grace.  [But] let anyone try this and he will see and experience how exceedingly hard and bitter it is for a man, who all his life has been mired in his work righteousness, to pull himself out of it and with all his heart rise up through faith in the one Mediator. 

            I myself have been preaching and cultivating it (grace) for almost twenty years and still I feel the old clinging dirt of wanting to deal so with God that I may contribute something, so that he will have to give me his grace in exchange for my holiness.  Still I cannot get it into my head that I should surrender myself completely to sheer grace; yet [I know that] this is what I should and must do"

-Martin Luther

Not the Level but the Object

"People think that we are saved by a strong belief and trust in and love for God, along with a life committed to Him. Therefore, they feel they must begin by generating a high degree of spiritual sorrow, hunger, and love in order to get Christ's presence. Then they must somehow maintain this if they are going to 'stay saved'. So functionally--that is, in actual reality--a church is teaching the idea that we are saved because of the level of our faith. But the gospel says that we are saved through our faith. The first approach really makes our performance the savior, and the second makes Christ's performance the Savior. It is not the level but the object of our faith that saves us."

-Tim Keller

Growth

"The hard work of Christian growth, therefore, is to think less of ourselves and our performance and more of  Jesus and his performance for us. Ironically, when we focus mostly on our need to get better, we actually get worse. We become neurotic and self absorbed. Preoccupation with our effort instead of with God's effort for us makes us increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective

Again, think of it this way: sanctification is the daily hard work of going back to the reality of our justification. it's going back to the certainty of our objectivity secured pardon in Christ and hitting the refresh button a thousand times a day. Or, as Martin Luther so aptly put it in his Lectures on Romans, "To progress is always to begin again." Real spiritual progress, in other words, requires a daily going backwards."

-Jesus + Nothing = Everything p. 95

Religion vs. Gospel

Winnie the Pooh Theology

Winnie the Pooh: "You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think!"

Tim the Pastor: "You are more sinful than you could ever dare imagine, yet more loved an accepted than you could ever dare hope"

Paul the Apostle: "Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord"

"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

No Fishing Allowed

Per Tucci and Lawrenz ... thanks for reposting this fellas. Awesome. Get back here for Egg Harbor and 2v2. I got the new Droses. Get wrecked.

Tullian:

"What the Pharisee, the prostitute, and everyone in between, need to remember every day is that Christ offers forgiveness full and free from both our self-righteous goodness and our unrighteous badness. This is the hardest thing for us to believe as Christians. We think it’s a mark of spiritual maturity to hang onto our guilt and shame. We’ve sickly concluded that the worse we feel, the better we actually are. The declaration of Psalm 103:12 is the most difficult for us to grasp and embrace: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” To be convinced in our hearts, said Martin Luther, “that we have forgiveness of sins and peace with God by grace alone is the hardest thing.” Or, as Corrie ten Boom once said, “God takes our sins—the past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing allowed.’” This seems too good to be true…it can’t be that simple, that easy, that real!

It is true! No strings attached. No but’s. No conditions. No need for balance. If you are a Christian, you are right now under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ. Your pardon is full and final. In Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re clean. It is finished."

He Has Mercy on Those Who are Wretched

"Therefore, God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life to only the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to the unwise fools. In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched, and gives grace only to those who are not in grace. Therefore no proud saint, no wise or just person, can become God's material, and God's purpose cannot be fulfilled in him. He remains in his own work and makes a fictitious, pretended, false, and painted saint of himself, that is, a hypocrite."

-Martin Luther, "The Seven Penitential Psalms."

Well, This is Awesome.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology: The Gateway Gospel vs. the Pathway Gospel: When Jesus told his disciples that he himself was 'the way' (John 14:6), he meant not just 'direction' in some general sense (though not les...

Lewis on Theology and The Gospel

C.S. Lewis, responding to an acquaintance who claimed his experience with God was all he needed to know him

"Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real, to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning form real waves to a bit of colored paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only colored paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America."

Later in the same piece Lewis expounds on the differences between other religions and Christianity, a thread that Keller has drawn out

For when you get down to it, is not the popular idea of Christianity simply this: that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that if only we took his advice we might be able to establish a better social order and avoid another war? now, mind you, that is quite true. But it tells you much less than the whole truth about Christianity and it has no practical importance at all. It is quite true that if we took Christ's advice, we should soon be living in a happier world. You need not even go as far as Christ. If we did all that Plato or Aristotle or Confucius told us, we should get on a great deal better than we do. And so what? We have never followed the advice of the great teachers. Why are we likely to begin now? Why are we more likely to follow Christ than any of the others? Because He is the vest moral teacher? But that makes it even less likely that we shall follow Him. If we cannot take the elementary lessons, is it likely we are going to take the most advanced one: If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference. But as soon as you look at any real Christian writings, you find that they are talking about something quite different from this popular religion..."

Readings From C.S. Lewis, "The Joyful Christian." p. 33-35

Western Wall, Religion, and the Gospel

Two nights ago we had the unique opportunity of going to the Western Wall during Shabbat, which is the Jewish Sabbath. As I drew closer to the wall I encountered an increasing number of men, dressed identically, bowing back and forth with great fervor, praying with what seemed like a mouth full of fear and angst. Their eyes were tight, bodies tensed, fingers frantically racing across the pages of the torah. These men were certainly religious. But is their religion joy giving? Or slave driving? Where was the gospel? Where was the “good news?”

Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Church in NYC explains the difference between religion and the gospel.

            Religion says, “I obey, therefore I am accepted.”

            The Gospel says, “I am accepted unconditionally, therefore I obey.”

Do you see the paradigm shift? I believe these men at the wall two nights back were very, very religious. This notion of religion pervades our culture. Our visceral instincts breed religion. Think of a resume before an exacting boss. Religion says we have to clean up our act before we can be presentable before God. I believe this religion was prevalent at the wall two nights ago, and I reject it.

 Conversely, The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that it is finished. We no longer have to work for our acceptance. No hoops to jump through. This is the essence of freedom. Our loveliness in God’s sight is not contingent on our action. Again, we must ask ourselves, how do we know? How can we be sure? The answer again, as always, is look to the cross. Just look at it. What happened here? Why is the cross significant? All other religions are essentially man’s endless pursuit of God. The cross is a bold, cosmic statement of eternal, everlasting significance that shows God’s endless pursuit of man. It flips this notion of religion completely on its head.

Now, because of Christ, we no longer have to live under a cloud of fear, constantly wondering if we are acceptable before God. Jesus was sent to the cross to absorb the full weight of sin, and suffer in our place. No more fear. No more ritual. No more angst. Not tensed. We’re freed from the shackles of justifying our existence through our job, parenting, kid’s success, relationships, social status, grades, financial security, accomplishments, and morality. Through the lens of the gospel we ask ourselves, “how do we qualify?” The answer now is…know we don’t. Our disqualification is our qualification.   Because of Christ, we have full confidence that the God of eternal, soul-satisfying comfort is looking down on us, so proud of us he could bust.

Do we still see God as an exacting boss looming over our heads, examining every action? Do we see him as a slave driver? Do we see him as some quasi-deity that we must allure with our action and ritual? Or do we see him as a loving father, Immanuel, God with us, guiding our path and eagerly anticipating our arrival home?

Galatians 4:3-7 – In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”