To Believe the Gospel

Today I said that the things we look to in order to accomplish spiritual formation (Learning, Resisting Temptation, Praying, Spiritual Disciplines, Community, etc) are not ends in themselves. They are the means - the tools - that the Holy Spirit uses to get us to believe the gospel.

• LEARNING helps me believe the gospel by revealing more deeply the holiness of God and the sinfulness of humanity
• RESISTING TEMPTATION helps me believe the gospel by reminding me how much I still need transformation
• PRAYING helps me believe the gospel by connecting my weakness to the power of God’s promises
• SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES help me to believe the gospel by preparing the soil of my heart to receive the seed of the gospel
• COMMUNITY helps me to believe the gospel by exposing my sin publicly and then reminding me of the promises of the gospel

But why do I say that all these things are tools to drive us toward the gospel? Does the Bible say as much? Yes:

John 6:29: Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."

Romans 1:17: In [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "But the righteous man shall live by faith."

Galatians 5:6: For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.

If the work of God is that we believe, and if the righteousness of the gospel is by faith, and if neither keeping God's law nor freedom from law means anything, but only faith working through love... then the primary work God requires of us is to believe the gospel. This belief is not passive, like believing in gravity or Santa Claus. It is work, Jesus says! I take this to mean that trust and faith and hope in the gospel doesn't come naturally or passively; it's something God must "beat into our heads continually" (Martin Luther) through his appointed means.

So hey: believe the gospel. Pray and study and obey and fast and commune with each other SO THAT you might actually believe that you are a sinner and Jesus is your only hope, TODAY.

Solitude

Fridays are usually my day off. But today, thanks to the graciousness of my wife and kids, I took a day of solitude instead. To be honest, the pressures of mission and church planting and leadership development have been heavy on my soul lately. I needed a day alone with Jesus.

Many thanks to the monks at St. Benedict Center in Schuyler, Nebraska, for creating a place of sacred rest. I am no friend of Roman Catholic theology. But their value for Sabbath and solitude and retreat, and their sublime ability to create spaces that reflect those values, is unsurpassed. I only hope missional Protestants can recapture a theology of rest and renewal. Lord knows we need it.

I did not use my vocal chords all day, apart from the obligatory greetings to the staff and monks I passed in the hallways. Some random reflections:

• How much of our conversation is utterly trivial!
• Silence is deeply spiritual; talk keeps us from having to solemnly consider our own mortality
• Silence and solitude are more refreshing to the soul than all the playful diversions that we consider “recreation”
• We are addicted to noise and music and friends and television and work. All our busyness and conversation keeps us from “meeting with God in adoring silence” (Tozer)
• We are awash in information, yet most of us lack the ability to converse thoughtfully and meaningfully about the things of God. Could it be that our lack of solitude and prayerful silence affects our ability to “filter” and process the information all around us?

Thanks, wife and kids, for the day of retreat. And thanks, people of Coram Deo, for valuing the deep things of spiritual leadership. I trust I will be a more effective and Christ-centered leader as I spend less time doing and more time being with Jesus.

Communal Reflection on Heart Idols

Last week's comment thread had some insightful thoughts about heart idols from some in our community. I thought I'd put some of them out here on the front page because they might help the rest of us in thinking more deeply about our own idolatries.

Nicole wrote:
This may sound silly, but I'd love a list of "typical" heart idols so I can think through them. I tend to think through the same few ones over and over like "pride," "control," "selfishness," etc. What am I missing?

I suggested the following (partial) list, taken from a discipleship curriculum called Gospel Transformation:

Reputation Idols (wanting to be known as a "good something-or-other")
Control Idols
Lordship Idols (wanting people to serve me)
Money Idols
Sex Idols
Health Idols
Victim Idols (clinging to my problems so people will focus on me)
Pleasure Idols
Fear Idols
Giftedness Idols (taking pleasure in the things I'm good at)

Remember: an idol is "anything we believe we need apart from Jesus to make us happy, satisfied, or fulfilled."

Tommy wrote:
It has been important for me to realize in my transformation that things I think of as "good" such as being a good uncle or student or husband are really taking the place of Christ and preventing me from experiencing my sonship.

One other thought, as previously mentioned I think it is at times hard to figure out what my heart idols are. One way [Tim] Keller often spoke of to recognize these things was to note the situations when we really feel as though our sense of value or worth is damaged. Often in these situations it can be found that whatever heart idol I have placed my significance in has let me down and thus my self worth suffers. I feel terrible when I feel I have let someone down or do not live up to their expectations. When this happens I quickly awaken to the fact that I have again committed idolatry.

Let's keep thinking on these things. What are your heart idols? How are you doing at identifying them?

I Am the Rice of Life

The beauty of the Internet is that it expands theological dialogue beyond a local body of believers. A global perspective is helpful in correcting our own myopia. Today I got an email from a guy named Scott who is a Bible translator in Asia. He had some very insightful things to say about our experience having glazed donuts for the Lord's Supper. Leave it to a Bible translator to have both deep theology and a passion for contextualization!

I help an indigenous church in Asia translate the Bible into their language. Their staple food is rice. They are familiar with bread, but only as an uncommon snack food, and a foreign one at that. So there is a potential problem with the connotation of bread as a spiritual symbol. Likewise in other cultures where corn, tortillas, yams, etc. are the staple, and bread may even be unknown.

Nevertheless, the translation principle is to maintain "bread" as a key term. Jesus didn't say "I am the rice of life" and he didn't break tortillas at the Last Supper. To substitute another term would be anachronistic, violating the standard of historical accuracy according to the original culture and text.

So the deeper meaning needs to be taught, adapted to the needs of each culture. In some cultures such as Asia the empty "foreign-ness" of bread needs to be linked with the heart level significance of rice. In others such as the West, the bleached "habitualness" of bread needs to be brought back to conscious significance. We have failed our duty if we leave it as foreign in the one culture or as habitual in the other.

Well said.

Piper on Heart Idols

Tonight I began reading John Piper's book Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die. We have made free copies of this work available at our Coram Deo gatherings to help spur reflection on the suffering and death of Jesus during Lent. In the first chapter, Piper makes this statement:

This is what sin is: dishonoring God by preferring other things over him, and acting on those preferences.

In other words: the root of all sin is idolatry.

I trust many of you will join me in using this book for Lenten reflection. It is not an "easy" book to read; Piper is a first-class intellect. But its depth and beauty and seriousness will keep your mind and heart engaged with the suffering Christ in this season. May the idols of our hearts be slayed as we fall more deeply in love with our Savior!

Heart Idolatry

You gotta get this. Unless you understand heart idols and how they drive all the surface sins in your life, your spiritual formation will be stunted and you will be frustrated and joyless.

This morning, I quoted from Tim Keller (Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC) on the issue of heart idolatry. Keller is a brilliant man, but as you'll see below, he's simply paraphrasing Martin Luther. This idea that every sin starts with idolatry is old, not new. It goes all the way back to the dawn of the Reformation. For more, here's a lengthy quote from Keller:

Underneath our behavioral sins lies a fundamental refusal to rest in Christ's salvation and the drive instead to find our own. Martin Luther says the same. Here is an excerpt from Martin Luther's Treatise Concerning Good Works (1520):

"All those who do not in all their works or sufferings, life and death, trust in God's favor, grace and good-will, but rather seek His favor in other things or in themselves, do not keep the [First] Commandment, and practice real idolatry, even if they were to do the works of all the other Commandments, and in addition had all the prayers, fasting, obedience, patience, chastity, and innocence of all the saints combined."

Comment: Luther says if you look to your moral performance as the basis of your relationship with God, then you are breaking the first of the Ten Commandments: "Have no other gods before me." If you fail to grasp and believe the gospel of free justification through Christ's work you violate the first command. How could this be? Again from Luther:

"If we doubt or do not believe that God is gracious and pleased with us, or if we presumptuously expect to please Him through our works, then all [our compliance with the law] is pure deception, outwardly honoring God, but inwardly setting up self as a false savior. Note for yourself, then, how far apart these two are: keeping the First Commandment with outward works only, and keeping it with inward [justifying faith]. For this last makes true, living children of God, the other only makes worse idolatry and the most mischievous hypocrites on earth..."

Comment: Luther says that if we obey God's law without a belief that we are already accepted and loved in Christ, then in all our 'doing-good', we are really looking to something more than Jesus as the real source of our meaning, and happiness. We are trusting in our being a good parent, or being a good spouse, or our moral uprightness, or our spiritual performance, or our service to other people as our real "Saviors". If we aren't sure God already loves us in Christ, we will be looking to something else as our foundational significance and worth. This is why Luther says that we are committing idolatry (breaking the First commandment) if we don't thoroughly trust in Christ for our acceptability, even if we are otherwise totally moral and obedient to God.

...All people sin in general because we are sinners, but why do we sin in any particular instance? Luther indicates the first commandment is foundational to all the others. Why? Because we will not break commandment 2-10 unless we are in some way breaking commandment One and serving some idol. Every sin is rooted in the inordinate lust for something which comes because we are trusting in that thing rather than in Christ for our righteousness or salvation. At the moment we sin it is because we are looking to something to give us what only Jesus can give us. Beneath any particular sin is the general sin of rejecting Christ-salvation and indulging in self-salvation.

See also the articles How To Disciple a Transsexual and The Transforming Power of the Gospel over on the Resources page for more on how the gospel frees us from heart idolatry.

How is the concept of heart idolatry causing you to think differently about your own spiritual formation? Let the Comments roll...

Lessons from the Homeless

Tonight my son Parker and I ventured down to Mosaic Community Development (MCD) to serve dinner to about 30 homeless men and women. Paul and Michelle Gardner have been involved with MCD for a long time, and JD and Michele Senkbile have been serving there recently as well. We've looking for missional pathways into the city, where Coram Deo can partner with already existing ministries to make a difference in the name of Christ. MCD is on the short list.

It was a really interesting experience. If you're a Coram Deo person reading this, I hope you'll take the time to serve at Life on the Brick (the Monday night dinner) in the coming months. You'll be thankful for the worldview-shaping and the jolt out of your "normal American" bubble.

On the one hand, I'm frustrated by the complexity of homelessness. The people I met tonight weren't earnestly trying to get off the streets and back into society. They were, for the most part, people who had made peace with being homeless. Some of them are even proud of their ability to "make it" on the streets. That doesn't make them less needy or less deserving of ministry. But it does make for a much greater challenge in figuring out how to serve them effectively.

I'm also challenged by my own utter ineptness when it comes to having conversations with people who aren't like me. I wish you could have been inside my head as I was desperately trying to figure out how to have even the simplest conversation with my new friends. I mean, think about your standard conversation-starters. "So, what do you do for a living?" Nope, can't use that one. "Do you come here often?" Shoot, I don't even come here often. I'm the new guy. "Who are you rooting for in the Big 12 Championship?" Oh, yeah, you don't have a TV. "What do you do in your free time?" Hmm... most of your life is free time. Nothing like a basic conversation with a homeless man to show you your need for the gospel in a whole new way. I think I see why Jesus liked hanging out with the down-and-outers. There's something refreshing about their simplicity and honesty. They have less to hide and less to care about than most of us.

I come away with more questions than answers. But there's something desperately redemptive about that. This fallen world is a complex place. And if we're going to pray and work so that God's will gets done here just like it is in heaven, it's going to take a lot of good question-asking. Redemption is free, but it isn't easy... especially on the Brick.