The Heart of the Gospel
August 28, 2008
(For a version of this devotion that is easier to print, follow this link.)
What is the heart of the Gospel? What does the Gospel teach at its core?
In our adult Core Seminar this week, we consider this issue by means of J.I. Packer’s “The Heart of the Gospel,” chapter 18 from Knowing God (republished by Crossway this year in In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement). In this chapter Packer explains the central importance of propitiation - that is, of averting God’s anger over sin by an offering. He explains the reason why so many take offense at the idea, the biblical support for the idea, and the importance of the idea in our Christian walk.
Here is a brief outline of the chapter to whet your appetite. Please read it if at all possible, and join us this Sunday as we glory in Christ’s work on our behalf.
Section I: Propitiation is Biblical
Paganism centers on propitiation: Offering a sacrifice to appease capricious, potentially angry gods.
We might expect the Bible, which repudiates paganism, to repudiate the idea of propitiation also. But it doesn’t. Instead “the ‘propitiation’ word-group appears in four passages of . . . transcendent importance:”
- Romans 3:21-26, the rationale of God’s justification of sinners
- Hebrews 2:17, the rationale for the incarnation
- 1 John 2:1-2, the continuing, present ministry of the risen Christ
- 1 John 4:8-10, the definition of the love of God
Many today are offended by this doctrine, thinking of it as vestigial paganism. But “a gospel without propitiation at its heart is another gospel than that which Paul preached.”
Section II: Expiation vs Propitiation
Some translations substitute the word (or the idea) of expiation for propitiation. Expiation is “the covering, putting away or rubbing out of sin so that it no longer constitutes a barrier to friendly fellowship between man and God.”
Propitiation includes that biblical idea, but goes further; it also denotes the pacifying of the wrath of God.
In Romans 3:25, the context - building from the statement in 1:18 that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” - demands the idea of the pacification of God’s wrath.
Section III: The Nature of God’s Wrath
God’s wrath is not capricious, bad-tempered, or malicious.
It is instead the logical result of His perfect holiness. It is the “right reaction of the moral perfection in the Creator towards moral perversity in the creature.”
He is the moral authority in the universe, and He must inflict on sin the penalty it deserves.
Section IV: Three Facts about Propitiation
1) Propitiation is the Work of God Himself
In paganism, humans work to avert God’s anger. In the Bible, God Himself provides the propitiation in His Son.
It is not that the Son decided to avert His Father’s anger. The Father Himself sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:9-10).
2) Propitiation was Made by the Death of Jesus Christ
The sacrificial system teaches the necessity of death, the spilling of blood, to make atonement (Leviticus 17:11). Thus Paul says propitiation is “by His blood” (Romans 3:25). It is Jesus’ death rather than His perfect life or His moral example that averts God’s wrath. He died as our representative substitute (Galatians 3:13, 2 Corinthians 5:14, 18-21). This fulfills the idea acted out in both the regular sacrificial system and on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 4 and 16).
3) Propitiation Manifests God’s Righteousness
In Romans 3:25-26, Paul says that propitiation is necessary to show that God is just. He had passed over former sins by guilty people, not since the flood condemning all mankind as they deserved. Jesus’ death on the cross was the payment, the punishment required, for all the sins of all those who trust in Him, before and after the cross.
Section V: The Heart of the Gospel
The Gospel fundamentally is the solution of man’s problem with God’s wrath. The Gospel is not fundamentally the solution of man’s problem with man, or man’s problem with his environment (though the Gospel has implications for these areas of concern). Any biblical presentation of the Gospel must make this distinction clear.
The idea of the need for and God’s provision of propitiation pervades the New Testament, often using different vocabulary, such as reconciliation, redemption, sacrifice, self-giving, sin-bearing, and blood-shedding. All these words portray different facets of the work of propitiation.
Understanding propitiation is necessary for understanding other central biblical issues; the remainder of the chapter looks at five of these.
Section VI: The Driving Force in the Life of Jesus
Read the Gospel of Mark straight through and your impression of Jesus will include at least four features: He is a man of action, He knew He was divine, He knew He came to die, and His experience of death was a fearful ordeal.
Note in particular the last. Socrates and others faced death fearlessly. Why Gethsemane? Why the forsaken cry from the cross?
The doctrine of propitiation makes all this clear. On the cross Jesus was made to be sin; He had to take on Himself the eternal punishment deserved by millions of sinners. “The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).
Section VII: The Destiny of Those Who Reject God
We get a notion of the destiny of those who remain under God’s wrath by looking at the cross. There we see “withdrawal and the deprivation of good.” Jesus lost His sense of the Father’s presence, all enjoyment of the Father, and experienced instead loneliness, pain, and human malice. While there was terrible physical pain, the spiritual and mental suffering was far greater.
Similarly, those who remain under God’s wrath will lose all good. In ordinary life, we enjoy a great deal of good that we rarely notice: health, friendship, respect. Ultimately all that we value will be lost if we remain under God’s wrath.
Section VIII: God’s Gift of Peace
God’s peace does not mean being shielded “from life’s hardest knocks.” Instead it is peace with God, as our status changes from His being against us to His being for us (Colossians 1:20). We cannot understand this concept unless we see our original state, and the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ that was required to change our state.
Section IX: The Dimensions of the Love of God
In Ephesians 3:18-20, Paul prays that his readers might be able to comprehend God’s love that surpasses knowledge. The context shows us what Paul means by God’s love: The redemption that is ours through Christ’s blood (1:7, 2:13). Paul also emphasizes the free nature of that love, shown to those under His wrath (2:1-8), the eternal nature of that love, decided upon by God toward sinners before the foundation of the world (1:4); and the assured nature of that love, guaranteed, despite our sinfulness (1:14).
Section X: The Meaning of God’s Glory
After Judas leaves the Last Supper, Jesus says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him” (John 13:31). Jesus sees the cross as a display of God’s glory: His “wisdom, power, righteousness, truth, and love . . . in the making of propitiation for our sins.”
Packer closes the chapter with these words: “The joyful news of redeeming love and propitiating mercy, which is the heart of the gospel, spurs [the heirs of heaven] to never-ending praise. Are you among their number?”
Beth on the Race of Faith
August 7, 2008
My sweetheart Beth has been elaborating on the present sermon series on her blog. Here is an excerpt from one of her posts. Read the whole thing:
Will my children remember their mother reading the Bible consistently? Will they picture in their minds a straw basket with Bible, Valley of Vision prayer book, journal, and prayer notebook? Will they picture their mother swinging gently on the porch swing, Bible in hand or curled up in the wing chair in the music room, head bowed. Will it be a consistent memory?
It is certainly not just for the memory in my children’s minds that this consistency is important. Oh no. It is vitally important for now, for every day, for wisdom and discernment, for knowledge and understanding, for contentment and spurring on. It is as vital to my life as an Olympic athlete’s consistent training is. No, it is more vital. Because, unlike the Olympic athlete who may only take his gold medal as far as the grave, the benefits of consistency in walking with God are eternal.
Coty said in the sermon, “consistency makes a statement to yourself, ‘I am a child of God‘.” That’s who I am. Spending time in the word is simply what a child of God does, like running is what a runner does. I can’t live without it.
Submission and Disagreement
July 19, 2008
(For a version of this devotion that is easier to print, follow this link.)
In Sunday’s sermon, we looked at Hebrews 13:17, which reads in the NIV:
Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.
In discussing this verse, I said, “Submission only comes into play when there is a disagreement.”
Several of you have asked (respectfully and submissively!) if this is correct, particularly considering that God the Son submits to God the Father. Surely there is no disagreement between them!
This is an excellent point, and many thanks for the input. I’ll correct my statement briefly next Sunday; here let me elaborate on the idea more fully than will be possible in the sermon. Consider first the nature of God the Son’s submission to God the Father:
The Son is indeed in submission to the Father, from all eternity, to all eternity. 1 Corinthians 11:3 tells us that “the head of Christ is God,” and that this headship/submission relationship is similar in some ways to the relationship of husband to wife. Note that this statement is not limited to a particular point in time, such as during the period of Jesus’ life on earth. Paul makes a general, timeless statement.
We see this underlined later in the same letter. In 1 Corinthians 15:28, Paul says that at the last day, when all things are subjected to the Son, “then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.” (Note that the verb translated “be subject to” is the same word translated “submit” elsewhere.)
What does this submission mean, if the Father and Son don’t disagree about how to proceed?
Two Old Testament Scriptures are especially helpful here. First, Psalm 40:8 (which the author of the book of Hebrews applies to Jesus in Hebrews 10:5-10):“I delight to do your will.” Second, Deuteronomy 8:3, which Jesus quotes to counter Satan’s temptation: “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” God the Son exists continually in an attitude of joyful submission to God the Father. Equal in essence, equal in power, equal in might, He takes great delight in doing whatever God the Father wills. He has a role as God the Son which differs from the role of God the Father (and from the role of God the Holy Spirit); this role, this ordering, requires that He follow the Father’s lead; and this following is His great joy. It can even be called His sustenance.
So God the Son submits to God the Father in that He continually has an attitude of joyful submission to the leadership of God the Father.
What then are the implications for submission among us?
Just as in the Godhead, in human relationships we can and should have an attitude of joyful submission to those in authority over us – children to parents, wives to husbands, employees to employers, those in the church to elders, all of us to the government. We should delight to do their will – as long as that will does not involve sin.
How, then, should my statement about submission and disagreements be revised? In this way: “You are not submissive unless you obey joyfully and willingly when you disagree with an instruction from your head.” In this life, then, disagreements provide the critical test of submission.
In that light, let me rework the illustration I used in the sermon:
Suppose I tell my thirteen-year-old son Joel, “You must drink this Sonic strawberry limeade I bought for you!” Is that a test of his submission? No. He will indeed drink it joyfully and willingly – and such an attitude is consistent with his submission to me – but he would have drunk the limeade that way regardless of my command.
But suppose I say, “Joel, would you please clean out the kitty litter?” Joel does not have a particular fondness for cleaning the kitty litter. He does not naturally choose to take on that task himself. His preference would be for someone else to do it. But if he picks up the trash bag and the scoop and joyfully and willingly cleans out the litter, that proves that he is submissive to me.
Furthermore, when he does that, he is imitating the relationship of God the Son to God the Father. And that brings glory to God.
James 4:6-7 says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God.” We naturally want to exalt our power, our opinions, our status, our positions. God instead tells us in His Word and shows us in the very nature of the Trinity that we are to submit joyfully to those who rightly are heads over us. Yes, each of us is important, each of us has a valuable role, each of us is loved before the foundation of the world, each of us will be perfected, each of us will be the object of God’s great delight; and, each of us humbly accepts the role God gives us, now and in eternity, as we, like our Savior, delight to do His will.
So do you have that attitude of submission, accepting and delighting in your God-given role? Do you recognize God’s pattern of order, of headship and submission? That is, do you live on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God?
[For an excellent discussion of the submission of God the Son to God the Father, and the implications for human relationships, see Bruce Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Crossway, 2005), p. 72-85 and 137-151. For a wonderful example of joyful submission, see this post by Pam Bloom on today's Desiring God blog.]
Sins We Blame on Others
June 26, 2008
My friend Ben Reaoch, a pastor in Pittsburgh who frequently attends our church planter network meetings, has a challenging and convicting post on the Desiring God blog, listing 12 sins that we regularly blame on others. Here are the first two; read all twelve, and ask God to search your heart:
1) Anger
I wouldn’t lose my temper if my co-workers were easier to get along with, or if my kids behaved better, or if my spouse were more considerate.
2) Impatience
I would be a very patient person if it weren’t for traffic jams and long lines in the grocery store. If I didn’t have so many things to do, and if the people around me weren’t so slow, I would never become impatient!
Genocide and Forgiveness
April 11, 2008
Fourteen years ago, the genocide in Rwanda was at its height. See this link for a fascinating account - in the New York Times of all places - of the impact of the Gospel on reconciliation and forgiveness between perpetrators and relatives of victims. Here’s an excerpt: Words spoken by Jean Baptiste Ntakirutimana to the man who murdered his mother:
By the time he started explaining how he killed her I partly lost consciousness. I prayed to God to give me His spirit to revive me and give me more strength to continue, as I felt it was His mission I was on. Miraculously I felt warmth from my head to my feet, I felt like a big rock melting from my chest and my head. I felt very refreshed, cleaned up my tears and carried on the conversation tremendously relieved from my whole being. I then told him that I have personally been forgiven all my wrong from God and that it is in the same spirit that I was coming to him offering him pardon myself. Then it was like a huge veil off his face he started smiling with a lot of words of gratitude. He started holding my hands and telling me many other things I couldn’t expect about himself and the reality around the genocide. He agreed to go and see other people for whose family members he killed.”
Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift!
The Reason for God
March 7, 2008
The Reason for God by Tim Keller
Have you ever heard statements like these?
- “How could there be just one true faith? It’s arrogant to say your religion is superior. . . . Surely all religions are equally good and valid for . . . their particular followers.”
- “I won’t believe in a God who allows suffering.”
- “The Christians I know don’t seem to have the freedom to think for themselves. I believe each individual must determine truth for him- or herself.”
- “There are so many people who are not religious at all who are more kind and even more moral than many of the Christians I know.”
- “I have . . . a problem with the doctrine of hell. The only god that is believable to me is a God of love.”
- “My scientific training makes it difficult if not impossible to accept the teachings of Christianity.”
- “Much of the Bible’s teaching is historically inaccurate.” “My biggest problem with the Bible is that it is culturally obsolete. Much of the Bible’s teaching (for example, about women) is socially regressive.”
How do you respond? Are there good answers to such questions? And once you’ve tried to answer such questions, how do you move the conversation away from these peripheral issues and to the Gospel itself?
Tim Keller has been a pastor in Manhattan for almost twenty years. As he reaches out to unbelievers and hosts Q and A periods after sermons, he hears such statements and questions again and again. In a new book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Keller answers these questions, and then presents Christ as compellingly beautiful and the Gospel as rationally coherent.
The Reason for God is a valuable tool for Christians and an excellent gift for non-Christians. It is also becoming a cultural phenomenon: Only a few weeks after publication, it ranks number 11 on the New York Times Best Seller List for hardcover non-fiction, and as of today is among the top 25 best sellers among all books at Amazon. While, inevitably, I have qualms here and there about the way Keller addresses some issues, the overall approach is biblical and the arguments are solid. Don’t miss the endnotes, which frequently provide helpful elaborations on points in the text, and always point to valuable additional readings.
The first half of The Reason for God addresses the statements and questions above, presenting answers that aim to bring to light the speakers’ implicit assumptions. He then proceeds to show in each case that the assumptions behind the Christian worldview are at least as reasonable as those behind the speakers’ statement.
For example, to those who question whether only one religion could be true, Keller points out that often the underlying assumption behind such statements is “that this material world is all there is and when we die we just rot, and therefore the important thing is to choose to do what makes you happy.” But this is an assumption, not the conclusion of an argument. Indeed, this worldview is an “implicit religion,” since it contains “a master narrative, an account about the meaning of life along with a recommendation for how to live” (p. 15).
But Keller then argues that the very doctrine that Christians claim to be true should make them humble, not arrogant. Those who truly understand that Christ “died for his enemies, praying for their forgiveness” (p. 20) will reach out to those different from themselves and serve others with humility. Indeed, this is what we see in the early church – and among many Christians today.
Keller similarly addresses each of the six other issues raised in the quotes above. Perhaps the most powerful passage in these chapters is found on pages 104-106, where, while responding to attacks on the accuracy of Scripture, he deals with the theory that early Christian leaders composed or massaged gospel accounts to promote their own positions. He shows that topics of deep concern to the early church – such as whether or not Gentile converts should be circumcised – are never mentioned in the Gospels. But even more, why should early church leaders present the Apostles as “petty and jealous, almost impossibly slow-witted, and in the end . . . cowards”? Why relate that the first witnesses to the resurrection were women – in a society were such “testimony was not admissible evidence in court”? But most of all, if they could make up any story they chose, why should they present their Messiah as crucified when listeners would be repelled by the idea, thinking that such a person must be a criminal?
After these initial seven chapters, Keller has an especially effective, nine-page “intermission,” making the transition between arguing that “there are no sufficient reasons for disbelieving Christianity” to arguing that there are “sufficient reasons for believing it” (p. 115). He argues that the word “sufficient” does not require “a logical empirical argument . . . that is airtight and therefore convinces almost everyone” (p. 118). Indeed, while some skeptics such as Richard Dawkins claim that in the absence of such an argument they should not believe in any god, Keller argues that even most other atheistic philosophers reject this approach to discerning what is true.
What, then, is a rationally defensible way to ascertain truth? Keller’s approach is to produce “some arguments that many or even most rational people will find convincing, even though there is no [single] argument that will be persuasive to everyone regardless of viewpoint” (p. 120). Agreeing with Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne, Keller asserts and then attempts to show that “belief in God offers a better empirical fit, it explains and accounts for what we see better than the alternative account” (p. 121). And actually, this approach, rather than an airtight, logical argument, is what we should expect from the biblical storyline. “If there is a god, he wouldn’t be another object in the universe that could be put in a lab and analyzed with empirical methods. He would relate to us the way a playwright relates to the characters in his play. We (characters) might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright, but only to the degree the author chooses to put information about himself in the play.” So “we have a sense that the world is not the way it ought to be. We have a sense that we are very flawed and yet very great. We have a longing for love and beauty that nothing in this world can fulfill. We have a deep need to know meaning and purpose. Which worldview best accounts for these things?” (p. 122). The Christian claim is that God “wrote himself into the play” in the person of Jesus Christ. Does this make sense of the world?
The remainder of the book answers this question. Keller first presents clues for God, such as the regularity of nature and the deep impact of beauty on us. But he goes on to argue from the universal human sense of moral obligation that “belief in God is an unavoidable, ‘basic’ belief that we cannot prove but can’t not know” (p. 142). Evolutionary explanations for the development of moral obligation in the end lead to relativism – there are no moral absolutes. But he argues, “If a premise (‘There is no God’) leads to a conclusion you know isn’t true (‘Napalming babies is culturally relative’) then why not change the premise?” (p. 156).
From here Keller moves to a particularly helpful discussion of sin, clarifying the distinction between our culture’s common definition of sin and the biblical definition. Sin is “not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God.” By establishing our sense of self in this way, we destroy ourselves and our society. The solution to sin is “not simply to change our behavior, but to reorient and center the entire heart and life on God” (p. 171). Many people think Christians, having admitted their sinfulness, are pursued by guilt. But Keller argues that Christians and non-Christians alike “are all being pursued by guilt because we must have an identity and there must be some standard to live up to by which we get that identity. Whatever you base your life on – you have to live up to that. Jesus is the one Lord you can live for who died for you” (p. 172).
But this coming to Christ can only be by faith, not by our efforts. In the next chapter, Keller distinguishes between Christianity and the general religious principle: “I obey – therefore I am accepted by God.” Indeed, Christianity is not a religion in this sense, for it teaches that we do nothing to earn merit before God. “In Christ I . . . know I was accepted by grace not only despite my flaws, but because I was willing to admit them. The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued . . . that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to both deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less” (p. 181). And such unconditional acceptance leads to “the threat of grace:” “There’s nothing he cannot ask of me” (p. 183).
After explaining the nature of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and the importance of and evidence for the resurrection, Keller’s concluding chapter describes “The Dance of God.” He has argued that “Christianity makes the most sense out of our individual life stories and out of what we see in the world’s history” (p. 213). He here moves from truth to affection, from propositions to joy. The Trinity itself is the perfect picture of joyful love, and God created the universe to extend His happiness and joy and delight, thus magnifying His glory. “We were designed, then, not just for belief in God in some general way, nor for a vague kind of inspiration or spirituality. We were made to center our lives upon him, to make the purpose and passion of our lives knowing, serving, delighting, and resembling him. This growth in happiness will go on eternally, increasing unimaginably” (p. 219)
The epilogue begins with a quote from Flannery O’Connor: “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against the Truth, and not the other way around” (p. 227). That is, God is central, not we ourselves, and we must approach Him as the end, not as a useful means to an end. “We usually begin the journey toward God thinking, ‘What do I have to do to get this or that from him?’ but eventually we have to begin thinking, ‘What do I have to do to get him?’” (p. 228). And the answer is twofold: First, repent. But repentance, while including sorrow over individual sins, is much more. You must recognize your main sin: “Your self-salvation project . . . [as we] try to prove ourselves by our moral goodness or through achievement or family or career” (p. 233). We must realize that our “very efforts to be good or happy or authentic have been part of the problem” (p. 237) The second requirement is belief – a trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We must not trust in the purity or extent of our faith, for that just makes faith another work. But saving faith is a turning from ourselves to Christ, however imperfectly, and trusting in Who He is. Furthermore, once we repent and believe, we must also become part of a Christian community, a church.
Keller closes with an extended quotation from and discussion of Flannery O’Connor’s profound yet simple short story “Revelation,” concerning the salvation of a self-righteous, self-absorbed churchgoer. For that is one of the main messages of this book. Left to our own devices, every one of us is self-righteous and self-centered, satisfied with the merit we’ve earned from whatever judge we recognize (and that judge may well be ourselves), or struggling as we strive to achieve that merit, or despondent over our failure to achieve merit. By God’s Spirit, the Gospel breaks through the resistance of the religious and the irreligious, of Mormons and Moslems, of Yankee fans and Red Sox fans, of self-satisfied church members and self-abusing drug addicts, shining God’s light on us, displaying our ugliness – and welcoming us to His intimate family, His glorious Kingdom, in which He will rejoice over us with loud singing for all eternity. May God be pleased to use this volume to bring many into this Great Dance.
Coty
Footnote: Overall the book is well-edited, but there are a number of errors in the last 20 pages. Here are the major corrections; without them, some sentences are incoherent:
- p. 222: In the third line, add a comma and “self” after the word “lowest”.
- p. 228: In the sixth line, add “of” after “kind”.
- p. 232: In the first line of the last paragraph, add “that” before “may”.
