Timothy Keller
Grateful
It was an encouragement and a surprise to hear Dane Ortlund’s claim that the teaching on gospel renewal in this section of Shaped by the Gospel has “seeped into the evangelical consciousness” (p. 151) and has had an effect particularly on a younger (than me) generation of ministers and leaders. If this is true, I’m gratified, to say the least, but also humbled. And I’m not just saying “humbled” because we’re supposed to say that in these kinds of interchanges.
On this subject of renewal and revival, I see myself as bringing out, fairly intact, the wisdom of older times regarding this subject in the writings of men, especially Jonathan Edwards. It feels strange to get much credit for this material. It seems to be simply a popularization of the work of older masters. But whatever the causes may be for people giving this a hearing, I’m grateful.
I was also glad for Ortlund’s enrichment of the “Three Ways” model (pp. 152 – 56). Ultimately, this is nothing more than the classic distinctions between legalism, antinomianism, and the gospel. But he has discovered this “triad” described and expounded in imaginative ways also in the work of Martin Luther, Søren Kierkegaard, F. B. Meyer, Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal, Herman Ridderbos, and Karl Barth. I was aware of some of these but not others, and I’m delighted to be able to follow his citations and deepen my own understanding of how to present these three ways to listeners so that the gospel alternative is clearer in their minds.
Helpful
One of Ortlund’s two gracious critiques (which he kindly calls “proposals for moving the conversation forward”) is that the discussion in these chapters could lead us to be “clear on the gospel of grace” but without “Christ himself held forth.” He wonders if “readers of this content on gospel renewal will need to be extra careful not to unwittingly neglect Jesus himself ” (p. 162). He thinks that in this section “the glorious objectivity of the gospel of grace” is sparklingly clear, but there is not as much emphasis on Jesus himself. Others have described this as offering listeners the benefits of Christ’s salvation without offering them Christ. Does the Gospel Renewal material make this mistake?
Earlier in his essay, Ortlund expresses agreement and appreciation for my thesis that one primary means to gospel renewal is to preach Christ from every text, to show within every sermon how the particular content and themes of the scriptural passage point to and find their fulfillment and climax in Christ. He then writes, “Alongside this Christ-centeredness in Keller’s preaching strategy is a grace-centeredness” (p. 156). I would generally not put it that way. To be Christ-centered in preaching should be the way to be grace-centered. A text expounded without being tied to Christ’s person and work will be implicitly or explicitly a moralistic exhortation. Following the biblical theme of the passage through to Christ can embed the imperatives of the text within the indicatives of the saving work of Christ. And that is how to preach a grace-centered message.
We should add a caveat here. I have heard sermons that were ostensibly Christ-centered in that they spoke a lot about him, yet in the end held him up more as an example, or inspiration, or even as the “climax of our biblical theme” — but his saving benefits to us were not made clear. What we are looking for is what John Calvin spoke of: “This, then, is the true knowledge of Christ, if we receive him as he is offered by the Father: namely, clothed with his gospel.”1
That great phrase “Christ . . . clothed with his gospel” expresses what every preacher should be presenting to his listeners. Not an abstract offer of pardon or even simply a sermon that points to Christ as being admirable in various ways. It is to lift up Christ himself, full of all the benefits of his salvation for those who unite with him by faith.
Now, Ortlund feels that the material in these chapters does not make this crystal clear. Despite the brief section on Christ-centered preaching, the reader could get the impression that you could talk of the objective benefits but “neglect Jesus himself.” If that is true — and it may be — then Ortlund is rightly sensing a missing piece in the gospel renewal chapters. Originally, I was going to include in this part of Center Church a full chapter on preaching Christ for gospel renewal. But as I wrote it, it became too long to be a single chapter, and then for even inclusion in the book at all. It was determined that I should produce a separate book, which was recently published as Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Viking, 2015). What I say about preaching Christ in Center Church is quite brief — too brief to overcome Ortlund’s concern. And so it may be that readers and learners will need to read Center Church along with my book on preaching to avoid the mistakes against which he warns.
Intriguing
The other of Dane Ortlund’s gracious criticisms has to do with “union with Christ.” He notes that in the gospel renewal material, the primary motivation for godliness and holiness put forth is that of gratitude for gracious salvation. Paul, for example, in 2 Corinthians 8:9, motivates financial generosity through pointing listeners not only to Jesus’ substitutionary death (“though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor”) but also to our new standing before God due to his work (“so that you through his poverty might become rich”). Because we are rich with spiritual wealth that we did not earn, we, too, should be generous with our goods, even to the point of sacrifice. Ortlund agrees this is sanctification being motivated by gratitude for substitutionary atonement and justification. “This is rich and profound in explaining the psychological dynamic of living by grace,” writes Ortlund (p. 158).
However, Ortlund then asks why the gospel renewal material does not also motivate holiness the way Paul does in Romans 6, where he appeals not to our pardon and justification or to Jesus’ substitutionary work, but to our “union with Christ.” He also points out that in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul motivates Christians to avoid sexual immorality because we are united to Christ. Ortlund knows that elsewhere I use these motivations in my preaching. He just wishes that in the material about how to renew people with the gospel, I had brought in union with Christ as well, which he thinks “may provide an even deeper reality in which Paul grounds Christian discipleship and renewal” than does “fixing the mind on Jesus’ gracious work of gospel substitution” (p. 158).
I would not agree that union with Christ is a “deeper reality” than gospel grace, or that consciousness of union with Christ is a deeper motivation than gratitude for gracious salvation. The gospel is that sinners are saved by Christ’s work, not by our work. That means Jesus’ “gracious work of gospel substitution” does not secure only pardon and justification by sheer grace, but also everything else — adoption, the indwelling Holy Spirit, a new name or identity, fellowship and access through prayer, and union with him.
What lies behind the statement that union is “a deeper reality” is the truth that in some ways, “union with Christ” is not simply one more of the benefits of salvation but it is that which holds the rest together. There is a sense in which each of the benefits is simply an aspect of our union with Christ. Justification is our forensic or legal union with him, so that now Christ’s righteousness becomes ours. Regeneration and the indwelling of the Spirit are aspects of our vital, or spiritual, union with him. Adoption, identity change, and prayer reflect the personal union of love we have with him. Our membership in the body of Christ means we are brought into union with all those who are united to Christ. So being united with Christ is a crucial biblical concept that holds all these other benefits together. It prevents us from seeing them as discrete things that are dispensed to us if we do this or that. Becoming a Christian is being “in Christ” — a shorthand way of saying that we have received all these benefits by Christ’s work when we receive him. So when preachers call listeners to “enjoy the grace that is freely ours,” they do not need to say, “But also you are united to Christ.” Being united to Christ is by his work, not ours, and so it is not a different reality but is part of the grace that we are enjoying.
I will leave to one side the current theological controversy behind this topic. That controversy is occupied with questions about the relationship of justification, sanctification, and union. While that debate isn’t irrelevant to this discussion, our main concern is whether the doctrine of union with Christ is a way to motivate and renew people with the gospel, and whether I have neglected it somewhat, not in my own ministry and preaching, but in these pages.
My first response (there is a second!) is that the neglect of union with Christ in these chapters is more apparent than real. As Ortlund points out, it is not easy for preachers to preach on union with Christ, which at first sight is a “less concrete” concept. He then gives an example of one way to do it, namely, by talking about exile and the sense that we are cut off from our true home. That is indeed a fruitful way to do it.
Perhaps the main way of talking about union with Christ, especially in the Romans 6 passage cited by Ortlund, is that of a transfer from one “realm” — field of influence and power — to another, and from being under one master or lord to being under a new one. Doug Moo, in his masterful treatment of Romans 5 and 6, speaks about two realms — one of sin and death; one of righteousness and life. Each realm has a founding “act” — the disobedience of Adam and the obedience of Christ. Union with Christ happens when we are transferred from one realm, where we have been mastered by sin and death, to the realm of Christ. We were slaves in the old realm, but in the new realm we have freedom.2 The reason it should be unthinkable for a Christian to sin is that we have been given to a new master: “You are not your own; you were bought at a price” (1 Cor 6:19 – 20). We should not sin, because we no longer have to — we’ve been freed from its dominion. And we should not sin, because it would be a trampling on the work of the one who gave up everything to set us free.
So how do you preach about this without having it sound like a lot of remote theology to most listeners? One of the primary ways to get at the “realm transfer” teaching is to preach about sin in the form of idolatry — of having other “masters” besides God. Part of the Gospel Renewal material is devoted to this. Luther showed us that when the Bible declares that we are to have no other gods before God (Exod 20:2), and that we are to be justified by faith alone, not by our works (Gal 2:16), it is saying essentially the same thing. The way we try to justify ourselves, achieve our own honor and self-worth, craft an identity — without God — is by making created things into pseudo-saviors and gods. And the way to break the power of those masters over us is to say, “But Jesus has achieved for you, by grace, all the things you wrongly look for from those things.” When we slide back into idolatry, we do so because we forget where our true justification lies and who our true love and Savior is. We must look to him and who we are and what we have in him in order to say to our idols, “You cannot rule my life anymore.” This is a way to preach the basic principle of Romans 6 — that we are free from sin, yet we must not go back into it because we belong to Jesus and are united to him.
Now it is important to realize that we preachers don’t have to use the metaphor of “idolatry” every time to get across this crucial truth that we must not let sin continue to rule over us. Augustine talks about “disordered loves” — loving God too little and other things too much. Søren Kierkegaard talks about “false identities” — building a self on something besides God. There are many ways to convey, even to very secular people, the basic idea of slavery to sin and freedom through Christ’s saving benefits.
The concept of idolatry is a way of preaching gospel grace by using the Romans 6 definition of sin as slavery and of salvation as freedom, as expressions of our union with Christ. Therefore the gospel renewal material, I think, escapes reducing the gospel to just freedom from guilt or reducing motivation to simply thankfulness from pardon.
Having said that, my second response to Ortlund’s critique is that he is right in saying I should make clearer the connections of gospel renewal to union with Christ. And I think it is fair to say that here, too, these connections would be much clearer if we connected the teaching of gospel renewal dynamics with more thorough training in Christ-centered, expository preaching. If you preach through the Bible, you will constantly be getting to all the “facets” of gospel gratitude for grace. We are adopted; therefore we should pray to and resemble the Father (Matt 6:5 – 9; Eph 1:4 – 5). We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit; therefore we should not engage in unholy immorality (1 Cor 6:19). We bear his name now, and so we want to honor that name (Acts 5:41; 2 Tim 2:19). Our love makes us want to behold him by faith, and that changes us into his likeness (2 Cor 3:18). We should even fear Christ — have “reverence for” him (Eph 5:21). The “fear of God,” even in the Old Testament, increased with an increasing grasp of grace (Ps 130:4). The concept of “fearing Christ,” then, means we should live in joy-filled, trembling awe that one so holy and infinite should love us so sacrificially and wholly. So we obey him because we want to please him and resemble him, not dishonor or grieve him.
These motivations are different in many regards. But as John Owen points out in Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, any motivation for holiness that is not rooted in a deep grasp of the fact that our salvation is a gift unachieved by us turns the effort at holiness into a spiritually deadly attempt to put God in our debt and earn our own salvation.3 Such duties will not change our hearts but will only create external morality while the heart maintains a fatal self-sufficiency and rebellion. So at bottom, all of these different motivations, even the knowledge that I am united to Christ and thus should not sin, is a response to the grace of God.
I agree with Dane Ortlund that this rich complexity of biblical concepts and resources for gospel renewal is too implicit and not spelled out very well, and an awareness of this can give good guidance for enhancing future versions of this material.