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Revival is necessary because religion (“I obey; therefore I am accepted”) is so different from the gospel (“I am accepted by God through Christ; therefore I obey”) but is such an effective counterfeit. Though these systems of motivation and purpose have utterly different lineages, on the surface they may look like twins. Two people basing their lives on these two systems may sit right beside each other in church. Both strive to obey the law of God, to pray, to give generously, and to be good family members. Yet they do so out of radically different motives, in radically different spirits, and resulting in radically different kinds of inner personal character. One of them (the “religious” one) may even be lost altogether. Even the one operating out of the gospel will naturally drift into religion unless constantly challenged and renewed.
If these insights from the last chapter addressed the why of gospel renewal, the question for this chapter is the what of gospel renewal. What does the gospel do that actually changes people in a congregation? How can the distinct and unique theological truths of the gospel be formulated in ways that produce new, Spirit-led, Christ-centered motivation in people, whether their starting point is religion or irreligion? First we will look further at the distinction between religion, irreligion, and the gospel. Then we will see how these insights are applied to the heart.
Three Ways of Responding to God
Christians typically identify two ways to respond to God: follow him and do his will, or reject him and do your own thing. Ultimately this is true, but there are actually two ways to reject God that must be distinguished from one another. You can reject God by rejecting his law and living any way you see fit. And you can also reject God by embracing and obeying God’s law so as to earn your salvation. The problem is that people in this last group — who reject the gospel in favor of moralism — look as if they are trying to do God’s will. Consequently, there are not just two ways to respond to God but three: irreligion, religion, and the gospel.
Irreligion is avoiding God as Lord and Savior by ignoring him altogether. “Religion,” or moralism, is avoiding God as Lord and Savior by developing a moral righteousness and then presenting it to God in an effort to show that he “owes” you.1 The gospel, however, has nothing to do with our developing a righteousness we give God so he owes us; it is God’s developing and giving us righteousness through Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1:30; 2 Cor 5:21). The gospel differs from both religion and irreligion, from both moralism and relativism.
This theme runs the length of the Bible. When God saves the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, he first leads them out and then gives them the law to obey. Law obedience is the result of their deliverance and election, not the cause of it (Exod 19:4 – 5; Deut 7:6 – 9). As God makes a covenant with the Israelites, he warns them that it is still possible for them to be uncircumcised in heart (Lev 26:41; Deut 10:16; 30:6; Jer 4:4) — even as they are completely compliant and obedient to all the laws, observances, and rituals of worship. As we saw in the previous chapter, it took the New Testament to lay out what it meant to be the true circumcision (Phil 3:3). Paul tells us that the circumcised in heart do not rely on their law keeping for confidence before God. Paul explains the three ways to live according to the Old Testament: (1) literally uncircumcised (pagans and nonbelievers who do not submit to God’s laws); (2) circumcised only in the flesh (submitted to God’s law but resting and relying on it); and (3) circumcised in heart (submitted to God’s law in response to the saving grace of God).
In the New Testament, these three ways appear most prominently in Romans 1 – 4. Beginning in Romans 1:18 – 32, Paul shows how the pagan, immoral Gentiles are lost and alienated from God. In Romans 2:1 – 3:20, Paul counterintuitively states that the moral, Bible-believing Jews are lost and alienated from God as well. “What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one . . . who seeks God’ ” (Rom 3:9 – 11). The last part of this statement is particularly shocking, since Paul concludes that thousands of men and women who were diligently obeying and believing the Bible were not seeking God, even in all their religion. The reason is that if you seek to be right with God through your morality and religion, you are not seeking God for your salvation; you are using God as a means to achieve your own salvation. Paul proceeds in the rest of Romans to explain the gospel as seeking God in Christ for salvation through grace alone and through faith alone.
Throughout the Gospels, these three ways — religion, irreligion, and the gospel — are repeatedly depicted in Jesus’ encounters. Whether a Pharisee or a tax collector (Luke 18), a Pharisee or a fallen woman (Luke 7), or a respectable crowd and a man possessed by a demon (Mark 5), in every instance the less moral, less religious person connects more readily to Jesus. Even in John 3 and 4, where a similar contrast occurs between a Pharisee and an immoral Samaritan woman, the woman receives the gospel with joy, while Nicodemus the Pharisee evidently has to go home and think about it. Here we have the New Testament version of what we saw in earlier pages of the Bible — that God chooses the foolish things to shame the wise, the weak things to shame the strong, to show that his salvation is by grace (see 1 Cor 1:26 – 31).
It is so much easier to move from the gospel to religion than the other way round. One of Martin Luther’s fundamental insights is that religion is the default mode of the human heart. Even irreligious people earn their acceptability and sense of worth by living up to their set of values.2 And the effects of “works-religion” persist so stubbornly in the heart that Christians who believe the gospel at one level will continually revert to religion, operating at deeper levels as if they are saved by their works. Richard F. Lovelace develops this train of thought:
Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many . . . have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification . . . drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience. Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude . . .
Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons . . . Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others. They come naturally to hate other cultural styles and other races in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger.3
| A QUICK COMPARISON OF RELIGION AND THE GOSPEL4 | |
| RELIGION | GOSPEL |
| “I obey; therefore I’m accepted.” | “I’m accepted; therefore I obey.” |
| Motivation is based on fear and insecurity. | Motivation is based on grateful joy. |
| I obey God in order to get things from God. | I obey God to get God — to delight and resemble him. |
| When circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or myself, since I believe, like Job’s friends, that anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life. | When circumstances in my life go wrong, I struggle, but I know that all my punishment fell on Jesus and that, while he may allow this for my training, he will exercise his fatherly love within my trial. |
| When I am criticized, I am furious or devastated because it is essential for me to think of myself as a “good person.” Threats to that self-image must be destroyed at all costs. | When I am criticized, I struggle, but it is not essential for me to think of myself as a “good person.” My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on God’s love for me in Christ. I became a Christian by understanding these truths; therefore, in Christ, I can take criticism. |
| My prayer life consists largely of petition and only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of the environment. | My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration. My main purpose is fellowship with him. |
| My self-view swings between two poles. If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to people who fail. If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel humble but not confident — I feel like a failure. | My self-view is not based on a view of myself as a moral achiever. In Christ I am simul justus et peccator — simultaneously sinful and lost, yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad he had to die for me, and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility as well as deeper confidence, without either sniveling or swaggering. |
| My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work or how moral I am, so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral. I disdain and feel superior to others. | My identity and self-worth are centered on the One who died for his enemies, who was crucified outside the city for me. I am saved by sheer grace, so I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me. Only by grace am I what I am. I have no inner need to win arguments. |
| Since I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols. It may be my talents, moral record, personal discipline, social status, etc. I absolutely have to have them, so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, whatever I may say I believe about God. | I have many good things in my life — family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc., but none of these good things are ultimate things to me. None are things I absolutely have to have, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness, and despondency they can inflict on me when they are threatened and lost. |
Preaching the Third Way for Everyone
If you are communicating the gospel message, you must not only help listeners distinguish between obeying God and disobeying him; you must also make clear the distinction between obeying God as a means of self-salvation and obeying God out of gratitude for an accomplished salvation. You will have to distinguish between general, moralistic religion and gospel Christianity. You will always be placing three ways to live before your listeners.
The most important way to gain a hearing from postmodern people, confront nominal Christians, wake up “sleepy” Christians, and even delight committed Christians — all at the same time — is to preach the gospel as a third way to approach God, distinct from both irreligion and religion. Why? First, many professed Christians are only nominal believers; they are pure “elder brothers” (see Luke 15:11 – 32), and often making this distinction can help to convert them. Second, many genuine Christians are elder brotherish— angry, mechanical, superior, insecure — and making this distinction may be the only way to reach them. Third, most postmodern people have been raised in or near churches that are heavily “religious.” They have observed how religious people tend to bolster their own sense of worth by convincing themselves they are better than other people, which leads them to exclude and condemn others. Most contemporary nonbelievers have rejected these poisonous fruits of religion, but when they did so, they thought they had rejected Christianity. If they hear you calling them to follow Christ, even if you use biblical language such as “receive Christ and you will be adopted into his family” (see John 1:12 – 13), they will automatically believe you are calling them into the “elder brother,” moralistic, religious approach to God. Unless you are constantly and clearly showing them that they have misunderstood the gospel and that you are talking about something else besides religion, they won’t be listening for the true gospel.
Some claim that to always strike a note of “grace, grace, grace” in our sermons is not helpful. The objection goes like this: “Surely Pharisaism and moralism are not the current problem in our culture. Rather, our problem is license and antinomianism. People lack a sense of right or wrong. It is redundant to talk about grace all the time to postmodern people.” I don’t believe this is true. First, unless you point to the “good news” of grace, people won’t even be able to bear the “bad news” of God’s judgment. Second, unless you critique moralism, many irreligious people will not grasp the difference between moralism and what you are offering in the gospel. A deep grasp of the gospel is the antidote to license and antinomianism.
In the end, legalism and relativism in churches are not just equally wrong; they are basically the same thing. They are just different strategies of self-salvation built on human effort. No matter whether a local church is loose about doctrine and winks at sin or is marked by scolding and rigidity, it will lack the power it promises. The only way into a ministry that sees people’s lives change, that brings joy and power and electricity without authoritarianism, is through preaching the gospel to deconstruct both legalism and relativism.
Moralistic Behavior Change
People typically try to instill honesty in others this way: “If you lie, you’ll get in trouble with God and other people,” or, “If you lie, you’ll be like those terrible people, those habitual liars, and you are better than that!” What motivations are being encouraged? They are being called to change their behavior out of fear of punishment (“you’ll get in trouble”) and out of pride (“you’ll be like a dirty liar; you wouldn’t want to be like one of them”). Both fear of punishment and pride are essentially self-centered. The root motivation is, then, “Be honest because it will pay off for you.” This approach puts pressure on the will and stirs up the ego to more selfishness in order to force a person to curb his or her inclinations to do wrong. We can call this “moralistic behavior change” because its basic argument is this: “Will yourself to change your behavior, and you can save yourself.”
Christians who are taught to act morally primarily to escape punishment or to win self-respect and salvation are learning to be moral to serve themselves. At the behavioral level, of course, they may be performing actions of great self-sacrifice. They may be sacrificing time, money, and much more to help the poor, to love their family, or to be faithful to God’s law. Yet at a deeper level they are behaving this way so God will bless them, so they can think of themselves as virtuous, charitable persons. They are not loving God for himself. They are not obeying him simply because of his greatness and because he has done so much for them in Christ. Rather, they are using God to get the things they want. They want answered prayers, good health, and prosperity, and they want salvation in the afterlife. So they “do good,” not for God’s sake or for goodness’ sake, but for their own sake. Their behavior is being changed by the power of their own self-interest.
Stirring up self-centeredness in order to get someone to do the right thing does not get at the fundamental self-regard and self-absorption that is the main problem of the human heart. Consequently, it does nothing to address the main cause of the behavior you are trying to change (such as lying). Moralistic behavior change simply manipulates and leverages radical selfishness without challenging it. It tries to use that selfishness against itself by appealing to fear and pride. But while this may have some success in restraining the heart’s self-centeredness, it does absolutely nothing to change it. Indeed, it only confirms its power.
Moralistic behavior change bends a person into a different pattern through fear of consequences rather than melting a person into a new shape. But this does not work. If you try to bend a piece of metal without the softening effect of heat, it is likely to snap back to its former position. This is why we see people who try to change through moralistic behaviorism find themselves repeatedly lapsing into sins they thought themselves incapable of committing. They can’t believe they embezzled or lied or committed adultery or felt so much blind hatred that they lashed out. Appalled at themselves, they say, “I wasn’t raised that way!” But they were. For moralistic behaviorism — even deep within a religious environment — continues to nurture the “ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration on self that is the mark of Hell.”5 This is the reason people embezzle, lie, and break promises in the first place. It also explains why churches are plagued with gossip and fighting. Underneath what appears to be unselfishness is great self-centeredness, which has been enhanced by moralistic modes of ministry and is marked by liberal doses of sanctimony, judgmentalism, and spite.
To complete our illustration, if you try to bend metal without the softening effect of heat, it may simply break. Many people, after years of being crushed under moralistic behaviorism, abandon their faith altogether, complaining that they are exhausted and “can’t keep it up.” But the gospel of God’s grace doesn’t try to bend a heart into a new pattern; it melts it and re-forms it into a new shape. The gospel can produce a new joy, love, and gratitude — new inclinations of the heart that eat away at deadly self-regard and self-concentration. Without this “gospel heat” — the joy, love, and gratitude that result from an experience of grace — people will simply snap. Putting pressure on their will may temporarily alter their behavior, but their heart’s basic self-centeredness and insecurity remain.
Gospel Behavior Change
In light of all this, let’s look at how the Bible calls us to change. In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, Paul writes to believers to encourage them to give an offering to the poor, but he wants them to do so without a direct command from him. He does not begin by pressuring them into it or asserting his authority as an apostle. He doesn’t force their wills by saying, “I’m an apostle and this is your duty to me,” or, “God will punish you if you don’t do this.” Nor does he put pressure directly on their emotions by telling them stories about how deeply the poor are suffering and how much more money the Corinthians have than the sufferers. Instead, Paul vividly and unforgettably writes, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). When Paul states, “You know the grace,” he is reminding his readers of the grace of God by means of a powerful image, one that shifts Jesus’ salvation into the realm of wealth and poverty. He moves their hearts through a spiritual recollection of the gospel. Paul, in essence, urges, “Think about his costly grace, until the gospel changes you from the heart into generous people.”
We find another example in Ephesians, where Paul is addressing spouses — but particularly, it seems, husbands (Eph 5:25 – 33). Many of these men had no doubt retained attitudes and understandings of marriage from their pagan backgrounds, attitudes in which marriage was primarily a business relationship that entailed marrying as profitably as they could. In his letter, Paul wants not only to encourage husbands to be sexually faithful but also to cherish and honor their wives. Here again (as in 2 Cor 8 and 9), Paul exhorts his readers to change their lives by showing unloving husbands the salvation of Jesus, our ultimate Spouse in the gospel, who showed sacrificial love toward us, his “bride.” He did not love us because we were lovely (5:25 – 27), but to make us lovely.
In his letter to Titus, Paul calls his readers to “say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives” (Titus 2:12).6 Think for a moment of all the ways you can say no to ungodly behavior. You can say:
No — because I’ll look bad.
No — because I’ll be excluded from the social circles I want to belong to.
No — because then God will not give me health, wealth, and happiness.
No — because God will send me to hell.
No — because I’ll hate myself in the morning and lose my self-respect.
Virtually all of these incentives use self-centered impulses of the heart to force compliance to external rules, but they do very little to change the heart itself. The motive behind them is not love for God. It is a way of using God to get beneficial things: self-esteem, prosperity, or social approval.
Paul does not urge his readers to use any of these arguments to attempt to change themselves. In the Titus passage, how does he call Christians to gain self-control? Paul states that it is the “grace of God . . . that offers salvation . . . [that] teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness” (Titus 2:11 – 12). In Titus 3:5, Paul explains what he means by this grace: “[God] saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” Paul is saying that if you want true change, you must let the gospel teach you. This word we translate teach is a Greek word that means to train, discipline, and coach someone over a period of time. In other words, you must let the gospel argue with you. You must let the gospel sink down deeply until it changes your views and the structures of your motivation. You must be trained and discipled by the gospel.
The gospel, if it is truly believed, helps us out of the extreme neediness that is natural to the human heart. We have the need to be constantly respected, to be appreciated, and to be highly regarded. We need to control our lives — not trusting God or anyone else with them. We need to have power over others in order to boost our self-esteem. The image of our glorious God delighting over us with all his being (Isa 62:4; Zeph 3:14; cf. Deut 23:5; 30:9) — if this is a mere concept to us, then our needs will overwhelm us and drive our behavior. Without the power of the Spirit, our hearts don’t really believe in God’s delight or grace, so they operate in their default mode. But the truths of the gospel, brought home by the Spirit, slowly but surely help us grasp in a new way how safe and secure, how loved and accepted, we are in Christ. Through the gospel, we come to base our identity not on what we have achieved but on what has been achieved for us in Christ.
And when the gospel, brought home to our hearts (see Eph 3:16 – 19), eats away at this sin-born neediness, it destroys the inner engines that drive sinful behavior. We don’t have to lie, because our reputation isn’t so important to us. We don’t have to respond in violent anger against opponents, because no one can touch our true treasure. The gospel destroys both the pride and the fearfulness that fuel moralistic behavior change. The gospel destroys pride, because it tells us we are so lost that Jesus had to die for us. And it also destroys fearfulness, because it tells us that nothing we can do will exhaust his love for us. When we deeply embrace these truths, our hearts are not merely restrained but changed. Their fundamental orientation is transformed.
We no longer act morally simply because it profits us or makes us feel better about ourselves. Instead, we tell the truth and keep our promises simply out of love for the One who died for us, who kept a promise despite the unfathomable suffering it brought him. The gospel leads us to do the right thing not for our sake but for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, out of a desire to know, resemble, please, and love the One who saved us. This kind of motivation can only grow in a heart deeply touched by grace.
The Bible’s solution to stinginess, then, is a reorientation to the gospel and the generosity of Christ, who poured out his wealth for us (2 Cor 8:9). We don’t have to worry about money, because the cross proves God’s care for us and gives us security. Likewise, the Bible’s solution to a bad marriage is a reorientation to the radical, spousal love of Christ communicated in the gospel. “You shall not commit adultery” (Exod 20:14) makes sense in the context of his spousal love, especially on the cross, where he was completely faithful to us. Only when we know this sacrificial, spousal love of Christ will we have real fortitude to combat lust. His love is fulfilling, so it keeps us from looking to sexual fulfillment to give us what only Jesus can.
What will truly make us sexually faithful spouses or generous persons or good parents or faithful children is not a redoubled effort to follow the example of Christ. Rather, it is deepening our understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out of the changes this understanding makes in our hearts — the seat of our minds, wills, and emotions. Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. It changes our hearts.7
Behavioral compliance to rules without heart change will be superficial and fleeting. The purpose of preaching, pastoring, counseling, instructing, and discipling is, therefore, to show people these practical implications of faith in the gospel.
The Importance of Idolatry
One of the most important biblical and practical ways to help people come to see how they fail to believe the gospel is by instructing them on the nature of idolatry.8 In his Treatise on Good Works, an exposition of the Ten Commandments, Martin Luther states that the call to “have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3) and the call to believe in Jesus alone for our justification (Rom 3 – 4) are, in essence, the same thing. To say we must have no other gods but God and to say we must not try to achieve our salvation without Christ are one and the same: “Now this is the work of the First Commandment, which commands: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods,’ which means: ‘Since I alone am God, thou shalt place all thy confidence, trust and faith on Me alone, and on no one else.’ ”9
Luther’s teaching is this: Anything we look to more than we look to Christ for our sense of acceptability, joy, significance, hope, and security is by definition our god — something we adore, serve, and rely on with our whole life and heart. In general, idols can be good things (family, achievement, work and career, romance, talent, etc. — even gospel ministry) that we turn into ultimate things to give us the significance and joy we need. Then they drive us into the ground because we must have them. A sure sign of the presence of idolatry is inordinate anxiety, anger, or discouragement when our idols are thwarted. So if we lose a good thing, it makes us sad, but if we lose an idol, it devastates us.
Luther also concludes from his study of the commandments that we never break one of the other commandments unless we are also breaking the first.10 We do not lie, commit adultery, or steal unless we first make something else more fundamental to our hope and joy and identity than God. When we lie, for example, our reputation (or money or whatever) is at that moment more foundational to our sense of self and happiness than the love of Christ. If we cheat on our income tax form, then money and possessions — and the status or comfort from having more of them — have become more important to our heart’s sense of significance and security than our identity in Christ. Idolatry, then, is also the root of our other sins and problems.11
So if the root of every sin is idolatry, and idolatry is a failure to look to Jesus for our salvation and justification, then the root of every sin is a failure to believe the gospel message that Jesus, and Jesus alone, is our justification, righteousness, and redemption.
What, then, is the essence of behavior change? What will help us lead godly lives? The solution is not simply to force or scare ourselves into doing the right thing, but to apply the gospel to our hearts’ idols, which are always an alternate form of self-salvation apart from Jesus. Our failures in actual righteousness, then, generally come from a failure to rejoice in our legal righteousness in Christ. Our failures in sanctification (living Christlike, godly lives) come mainly from a lack of orientation to our justification. We will never change unless we come to grips with the particular, characteristic ways our hearts resist the gospel and continue their self-salvation projects through idolatry.
Those who preach and counsel for gospel renewal should constantly speak about underlying idols, which show us our hearts’ particular, characteristic ways of failing to believe the gospel. To do so will prevent people from trying to solve all problems and make all changes through moralistic behaviorism, which leads to insecurity, suppressed anger and guilt, and spiritual deadness.12 Instead it keeps the focus on the gospel and the work of Christ. In the next chapter, we’ll look at how churches can cooperate with the Holy Spirit to bring about gospel renewal.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How would you articulate the three ways of responding to God? What are the differences and similarities between the two ways of rejecting God? How do both of these contrast with a response to the gospel?
2. Where do you find yourself in the chart titled “A Quick Comparison of Religion and the Gospel”? Go back and honestly take stock: Do the majority of your descriptors fall to the left column or to the right? In what situations do you find yourself turning to religion instead of the gospel? How have your patterns changed over the last five years, and why?
3. Keller writes, “The only way into a ministry that sees people’s lives change, that brings joy and power and electricity without authoritarianism, is through preaching the gospel to deconstruct both legalism and relativism.” Why is it necessary to confront and deconstruct both of these errors? Which is more prevalent in your context? Which are you more likely to confront, and what can you do to restore balance to your ministry?
4. The apostle Paul uses pictures of the gospel rather than pressure to lead people to change. This chapter gives three examples (generosity, husbands honoring wives, and self-control). Choose another area of life change and take notes on how you would bring the gospel to bear on the motivation of someone in your congregation. If you are in a group setting, practice this with someone else.