Southwood Presbyterian Church

Jesus + Nothing = Everything

Monday, November 14, 2011

Looking for the perfect Christmas gift for the Pharisee in your life? How ‘bout a book that you will love to hate? Trying to find a handbook on how to exorcise your inner legalist? Tullian Tchividjian has written Jesus + Nothing = Everything. Its not a ‘how to’ book, it is a ‘how He’ book. It is about Jesus and how He has indeed done all things necessary for us to die well and LIVE well. If you are thinking of buying this for someone other than yourself, because they need it, then grab yourself a copy while you are at it. You, like me, need to read this book!

“The fact is, a lot of preaching these days has been unwittingly, unconsciously seduced by moralism. Moralistic preaching only reinforces our inner assumption that our performance for God will impress him to the point of blessing us. A Christian may not struggle with believing that our good behavior is required to initially earn God’s favor; but I haven’t met one Christian who doesn’t struggle daily with believing—somehow, someway— that our good behavior is required to keep God’s favor.

So many contemporary sermons strengthen this slavery to self. “Do more, try harder” is the constant refrain. “Here is what you need to do; you’re not doing it, so get out there and do it.” Many sermons today provide nothing more than a “to do” list, strengthening our bondage to a performance-driven approach to the Christian life. It’s all law (what we must do) and no gospel (what Jesus has done).

The world insists that the bigger we get and the better we feel about ourselves, the freer we become. Absorbing this narcissistic assumption, the modern church is all too often guilty of producing worship services that are little more than motivational, self- help seminars filled with “you can do it” songs and sermons. But what we find in the gospel is just the opposite. The gospel is good news for losers, not winners. It’s for those who long to be freed from the slavery of believing that all of their significance, meaning, purpose, and security depend on their ability to “become a better you.”

Moralistic preaching is stimulated by a fear of the scandalous freedom that gospel grace promotes and promises. The perceived fear is this: if we think too much and talk too much about grace and the radical freedom it brings, we’ll go off the deep end with it. We’ll abuse it. So to balance things out, we need to throw some law in there, to help make sure Christian people walk the straight and narrow.

It’s part of a common misunderstanding in today’s church, which says there are two equal dangers Christians must avoid. On one side of the road is a ditch called “legalism”; on the other is a ditch called “license” or “lawlessness.” Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law, on rules. Lawlessness, they say, happens when you focus too much on grace. Therefore, in order to maintain spiritual equilibrium, you have to balance law and grace. If you start getting too much law, you need to balance it with grace. If you start getting too much grace, you need to balance it with law. This dichotomy exposes our failure to understand gospel grace as it really is; it betrays our blindness to all the radical depth and beauty of grace.

I believe it’s more theologically accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel—legalism—but it comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (I call this “front-door legalism”). Other
people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (“back-door legalism”).

In other words, there are two “laws” we can choose to live by apart from Christ: the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules,” and the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” Either way, you’re trying to “save” yourself, which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects.

So what some call “license” is just another form of legalism. People outside the church are typically guilty of break-the-rules legalism, while many inside the church are guilty of keep-the- rules legalism.

The biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that it’s dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check. By believing that lie, we not only prove we don’t understand grace, but we violate gospel advancement in our lives and in the church by perpetuating our own slavery. The truth is, disobedience happens not when we think too much of grace, but when we think too little of it.

As a pastor, one of my responsibilities is to disciple people into a deeper understanding of obedience—teaching them to say no to the things God hates and yes to the things God loves. All too often I’ve wrongly concluded that the only way to keep licentious people in line is to give them more rules—to lay down the law. The fact is, however, the only way licentious people start to obey is when they get a taste of God’s radical, unconditional acceptance of sinners. Grace alone melts hearts and changes us from the inside out. Progress in obedience happens only when our hearts realize that God’s love for us does not depend on our progress in obedience.

A “yes, grace—but” disposition is the kind of fearful posture that keeps moralism swirling around in our hearts and in the church. Subtly, the force of that falsehood gets transferred into sermons in which the driving dynamic is to get Christians behaving properly. Those messages appeal to our self-centered hearts, which are proudly pleased to latch onto such teaching.”

Order @ Crossway.org Ebook $9.99, Hardcover $18.99

Taken from Jesus + Nothing = Everything, Crossway Books 2011, pp.49-52, used without permission