Tag Archive - gospel-centered

J.I. Packer on a “Fully Dressed” Gospel

April 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Gospel, Gospel Implications with 4 Comments

Grounded in the GospelIf you haven’t picked up Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way by J.I. Packer and Gary Parrett, you need to pick it up. It’s available right now on kindle for just $1.99. In the chapter on “The Gospel as of First Importance,” Packer and Parrett address the need for a “fully dressed” Gospel. They write:

Sadly, even tragically, evangelicals have sometimes been guilty of preaching and teaching a Gospel that is not, shall we say, “fully dressed.” They may have focused properly on the central features of God’s atoning work on the cross, faithfully preached Christ crucified for sinners, celebrated the resurrection as proof that Christ’s self-offering for our sins has been accepted, and urged hearers to be reconciled to God. In other words, they have been right about the essence of the gospel; the key facts have been there in what they have said. But at the same time they have missed some of the critical implications and applications of the Gospel for daily living.

[...] When we fail to conduct ourselves “in step with the truth of the Gospel” (Gal. 2:14), we are in serious error. We are to live in such a way as to make the teaching about God our Savior attractive to our neighbors (Titus 2:10) and to win their respect by responsible and godly living (1 Thess. 4:11-12). Thus our preaching and teaching of the Gospel–that is, our ministries and catechesis–must include teaching the godly manner of living that accords with sound doctrines of the Gospel (Titus 2:1).

[...] The Gospel is to be adorned by both sound doctrine and godly living. To set the Gospel before parishioners and public without these is to preach an unclothed Gospel.

Our salvation does not end at new birth. We are taught by Scripture to say not only that we have been saved (Eph. 2:8) but also that we shall be saved (Rom. 5:9-10; 13:11; 1 Pet. 1:5) and even now are being saved (Phil. 2:12-13; 1 Pet. 1:9). What is the power that saves us? It is the power of the Spirit at work in and through the Gospel (Rom. 1:16) to change lives. We need both a fully orbed doctrine of salvation and a “fully clothed” presentation of the Gospel. But we have often fallen short on both counts.

Packer and Parrett go on to show how older evangelicals have gotten the essence of the Gospel correct by neglecting the implications and applications of the Gospel (undressed Gospel). Consequently, newer evangelicals have stressed the implications and applications of the Gospel but neglected the essence of the Gospel, or even worse, sometimes substituted them for the essence of the Gospel. What we need is a robust understanding of the essence of the Gospel that is fully dressed with all the implications and applications of the Gospel for every aspect of life.

To Be Gospel-Centered, You Need the Holy Spirit

February 27, 2013 in Gospel, Holy Spirit, Jesus with 9 Comments

If you believe in the centrality of the gospel, you know that the good news of Jesus Christ is not just the door to the Christian faith, but it is the entire house. It is not only the entrance point but the pathway on which we walk our entire Christian life. Therefore, the journey of the Christian experience is growing more and more in the gospel.

There has been some discussion and even debate as to whether all the talk about the power and centrality of the gospel is neglecting the power and necessity of being filled with the Spirit. Are we talking about the gospel to the neglect of the Spirit’s working in our lives? Are we substituting the gospel for the Spirit when explaining how we operate as Christians in the world? I think those are valid questions, and I want to briefly attempt to answer the question in this post.

I am convinced that the overarching purpose of the Holy Spirit in the world is to magnify Jesus Christ. One of the most fundamental ways to know if you are filled with the Spirit is whether Jesus is being magnified and glorified in your life. That’s what the Spirit does. Jesus is magnified in the Gospel–because it is all about who He is and what He has done for sinners. Therefore, it stands to reason that the Spirit’s magnification of Jesus will be through sinners reveling more and more in the glorious gospel of our Lord.

That’s the logic I see in Scripture, but how does it work out practically?

God’s gospel is robustly Trinitarian. God the Father administrates salvation; God the Son accomplishes salvation; God the Spirit applies salvation. In His application of the gospel, the Holy Spirit brings us a true understanding of and genuine experience in the grace of Jesus Christ. Without the Spirit’s application, the gospel would not only be theoretical but our treatment would be at best superficial.

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Gospel Centeredness Requires a High View of the Law

February 11, 2013 in Gospel, Gospel Implications, Life With Grace with 12 Comments

MosesOver the past several weeks my fellow pastor, Tom Ascol, has been preaching on the law and gospel while working expositionally through the book of Exodus. Yesterday’s message was on the lawful use of the law, and it was excellent. Anyone who wants to understand the relationship of the law and gospel should download that sermon. Very clearly and simply stated (I will try to post a link when it is available online).

One of the things that struck me in Tom’s message was the necessity to have a high view of the law for there to be a true gospel-centered culture in the church. The law represents the character and desires of God, and the higher we appraise the law of God, the higher our awareness is of His holiness, righteousness, justice, and all other excellencies inherent to His divine nature. We have a glorious God who graciously have us self-revelation so we would know what He is like, what He wants from us, and how we can live in a way that pleases Him. A high view of the law will bring draw this out.

Additionally, a high view of the law will expose the sinfulness and seriousness of sin. The law was never meant to make us righteous in the sight of God (legalism) but to cause us to look for an alien righteousness found in Christ’s life. That is why repentance is necessary to salvation – it is essentially looking away from ourselves, our attempts of being right in the eyes, our performances according to man-made laws to offer self-atonement. Not only that, but the right preaching of the law causes every mouth to be stopped (Rom. 3:19) as sinners realize there is no defense for our lives of lawless rebellion to the God who has rights over us as Creator. That’s the seriousness of sin, in that we have sinned against God, the one with whom we stand in judgment. According to Romans 7:7-12, we would not know sin apart from the law. The sinfulness of sin is exposed and even aggravated when there is a high view of the law (“through the commandment [sin] became sinful beyond measure”).

Together then, a high view of the law gives us a truer and deeper understanding of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. God is always more holy than we can perceive him to be, and we are always more sinful that we perceive ourselves to be. On the contrary, a low view of the law obscures beauty and brilliance of God’s holiness and gives damning comfort and false security to the sinner.

A low view of the law produces legalism, because the bar is so low that sinner’s feel justified in attempting to be made righteous by keeping it. A low view of the law also encourages sinners to substitute their own laws for the law of God, making self-righteous standards to live by, and judging others when they fail to live up to their own laws. Therefore, a low view of the law is the breeding ground for moralism where God is an utility to our self-righteous ends of moral justification (i.e., God helped me, not God rescued me).

A high view of the law leads Christ-centered, grace abounding salvation. With a clear view of God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness, there is a deep recognition and awareness of our need of reconciliation and redemption that can only come through the law-fulfilling life and sin-substituting death of Jesus Christ. You diminish the holy character of God and sinful nature of man, then the cross of Christ is depreciated and the gospel is cheapened. When there is a high view of the law, there is a corresponding high need for God to do for you what you are incapable of doing yourself–being made right in the eyes of God through grace.

If your desire is to be a part of a church that is saturated with gospel-loving, Jesus-treasuring, cross-exulting Christians, then it is incumbent that there be a high view of the law. A low view of the law leads to gospel substitutes. A high view of the law leads to gospel enjoyment and celebration. Don’t miss the relationship of law and gospel!

Church Covenant or Church Contract?

January 21, 2013 in Church Membership, Ecclesiology, I Love the Local Church with 1 Comment

CovenantHealthy churches have explicit pre-commitments in what they believe (confession), how they live together (covenant), and how they are governed (constitution). Of course there is more that constitutes a healthy church, but I would argue it is critical from the outset that a church make clear these commitments based on the Word of God.

I’m grateful to belong to a covenant community seeking to honor the commitments we have made to one another. As a community formed by the gospel, we seek to live together as repenters and believers. This important to remember when it comes to living out our covenant commitments because no one of us grounds our identity based on our sanctification or our ability to keep those commitments perfectly. Even the commitments themselves speak to this. For instances, God commands that we forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven us. That assumes that we live in such proximate intimacy that we are going to sin against one another and be offended/hurt by one another (the Bible expects this). The proper response (which the Bible expects also) is to lovingly engage the one who has hurt/offended us and seek gospel reconciliation by making peace through repentance and forgiveness. Others include bearing one another’s burdens (context is addressing a sinning brother) and loving in ways that records of wrongdoings are not upheld and hoping all things at all times is applied.

This is important to remember because we are in danger of misunderstanding grace-based church covenant and making it into a condition-binding contract. In a church contract, when the conditions are not met by other members in our church community, you feel that you are justified in leaving that congregation in pursuit of a more perfect community. The irony to such a response is that such a response is a sinful reaction that dishonors the gospel. The person may feel justified in leaving because their feelings were hurt or was sinned against, but such justification has nothing to do with living in light of our justification by faith in Christ.

How many people have left their church family because they got upset with someone and could not do Scripture tells us to do? How many people have left because their feelings were hurt, the preacher stepped on their toes, another member failed to show sympathy and concern in a moment of crisis, and so on? How many churches were started not as a new work but as a sin-laden schism because blessed peacemaking seemed beyond the reach of those harboring resentment, fear of man, and self-pity?

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Gospel-Centered Application of the Word

January 10, 2013 in Bible, Discipleship, Gospel with 12 Comments

Eat this bookA couple weeks ago, I argued that a gospel-driven church will have gospel-centered expectations when it comes to the Word. It is not enough that the preacher’s sermon is Christ-centered. The congregation should be trained to be, too. That entails not only expectations but also application, which is what I want to address in this post.

Before I explain the difference between morality-based application and gospel-centered application, let me briefly mention substitutes for application in general. If we are not careful, we can allow substitutes that fall short of actual application of the Word. One of them is meeting a knowledge quotient. You can come for the purpose of intellectual satisfaction (new insights, profound interpretation, etc) and still not have the Word applied to your life. In this case, we are creating smarter sinners and not transformed saints. Another substitute is emotional experiences. You can have your heart-strings pulled and not have your heart transformed by truth. Mountain top experiences only mean you have to come back down to level ground at some time. Another substitute is sentimentalism. This is close to emotional experiences, but it is different in that the message “works” only if it fits in your sensibilities or self-imposed template.

Having mentioned substitutes, perhaps the greatest enemy of gospel-centered application of the Word is moralism. It is answering the “What?” question while completely ignoring the “Why?” question. It is going to the “How?” question with too many assumptions about the “Who?” question. Moralism leads to man-centered “rededication” as opposed to gospel-centered repentance and faith. One is driven on the performance of man; the other is driven upon the performance of Jesus. Just so that we can see the difference and highlight gospel-centered application, consider the following:

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Gospel-Centered Expectations

December 29, 2012 in Bible, Gospel, Preaching with 6 Comments

Danger-ExpectationThe nature of your expectations will have direct impact on your receptivity of future grace.

The preaching of the gospel is a powerful means of grace for the Christian, but is that your expectation? What is the nature of your expectations every time you hear the Word of God preached? A gospel-centered church will have a congregation full of gospel-centered expectations every time the Word of God is proclaimed. The commentary (and lifestyle) post-preaching will evidence the nature of expectations, whether they are God-honoring or not.

When it comes to the preaching of God’s Word (or gospel) . . .

» If you expect to come away with intellectual insights, you will find something to satisfy knowledge cravings.

» If you expect the preacher will say something debatable, you will find something to blog about.

» If you expect to judge the quality of the preacher’s message, you will find something he said wrong or could have said differently.

» If you expect to have a to do list for moral improvement, you will find opportunity for behavioral modification to try harder and do better.

ON THE OTHER HAND . . .

» If you expect life transformation, you will discover the Spirit exposing sin and fostering greater desire for repentance.

» If you expect to become like Jesus, you will be granted fresh eyes of faith to behold Jesus.

» If you expect to be used in the service of the kingdom, you will find the Word empowering and enabling you to bear fruit disproportionate to your abilities.

» If you expect to meet with God, you will find God will not pass you by without glimpses of His glory and grace.

The question is . . . what are you expecting whenever you come under the authority and power of God’s living and active, faith-engendering, sin-exposing, Christ-exalting, gospel-centered Word?

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. – Jesus

Protecting a Gospel-Centered Culture in Your Church

December 10, 2012 in Ecclesiology, Gospel, I Love the Local Church, Leadership with 7 Comments

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about leadership in the local church has to do with creating, cultivating, and contending for a gospel-centered culture in the church. This past weekend, I led a discussion in our “Introduction to Grace” membership class on this very thing. I began with Albert Mohler’s well-known case for theological triage. Membership interviews and membership classes are important to the life and health of a church for several reasons, not the least of which is the need to protect/content for a gospel-centered culture in your church.

Here’s what I mean by that. If Christians are looking to join your church (via transfer growth), it could very well be that there are 3rd Tier issues that they want to make 2nd Tier or even 1st Tier issues. Some people call them “single issue Christians.” There are others that are not so obvious and can sometimes be discerned by their approach to church being a “What do you have to offer me?” kind of attitude. Either way, they want to push upward their 3rd Tier preferences and make them 2nd Tier principles. Some of these preferential non-essentials are listed in the chart below.

So here’s the deal. If at any point you as a leader allow for 3rd Tier issues to advance upward in the culture of the church, then members will become centered on something other than the gospel and factions will ensue. If passions drive preferences, and preferences are not 2nd Tier issues, then church leaders must be clear that the passion to lead the church with a gospel-centered focus is greater than their passion to drive their preferences into the culture of the church. This is protecting the unity of the flock with a gracious spirit of saying, “That’s not going to happen among us. I’m sorry.”

This is why I believe it is important to be clear with the 2nd Tier. If your church is not clear on what defines you in what you believe (confession), how you live (covenant), and what you value most (core values), then you are living in the land of assumptions with an open invitation for any member to more explicit about their preferences than you are your principles. Without those gospel-guiding principles in place as filters to protect the unity of the church, the health and welfare of the church is in a vulnerable state.

Gospel-centered leaders do not have the luxury of being accepting of personal preferences as anything more than personal preferences. They have to front with the gospel explicitly and consistently and back that up with a godly intolerance for members to be united by any greater than the good news of Jesus Christ. They themselves must exhibit by their life and actions that the greatest common denomination in the fellowship of the saints is that our names are written in the heaven as blood-bought children of God.

For some churches, gospel-centered churches must guard against liberalism, which is the neglect or dismissal of 1st Tier doctrines. On the other hand, I believe in most cases leaders must guard against fundamentalism, which is the treatment as if all matters are 1st Tier issues. A real test of the diversity we are to enjoy is whether we can experience genuine fellowship with other Christians who see 3rd Tier issues differently than us.

Here’s how I like to think about it. The 3rd Tier issues ought always be in subjection to the 2nd Tier. The 2nd Tier issues ought always be in subjection to the 1st Tier. Gospel-centered churches major on the gospel (1st Tier), and members who care deeply about the unity of the church care about the 2nd Tier (and by virtue of that, the 1st as well). If that kind of order is not functional in the church, then what you are left with sadly will look similar to this…

Register for GCA National Conference!

November 28, 2012 in Church Planting, Conferences with 1 Comment

In the vast array of conferences available today, church leaders can get attend an event for just about anything they are passionate about. Some people attend conferences because of the tribe they belong to; others go to conferences on the issues or practices they care most about. Over the past several years, I have forced myself to be more disciplined in my time away from family and local church responsibilities with attending and participating in conferences.  Having said that, one training event that I highly recommend and remain committed to participating in is the GCA National Conference. 

I’m not opposed to going to conferences or bootcamps where you can hear your favorite preacher deliver an encouraging or challenging message. We need those for sure. But more than that, we need more practitioner-driven, nuts-and-bolts training that can have tangible, ongoing benefit for the ministry leader. When it comes to church planting, I don’t know of any other organization that does this better than Steve Childers and Global Church Advancement.

On January 22-25, 2013, current and aspiring church planters will have the opportunity to learn from leading practitioners from across numerous networks, including Ed Stetzer, Randy Nabors, Randy Pope, Bob Cargo, Tom Wood, Larry Kirk, and others. I have personally attended this training twice and led as a practitioner twice. I have sent all of our church planters and their teams to the week of training as well. Needless to say, I’m a believer in the benefit this week brings in all aspects of church planting–theological, missiological, spiritual, and practical.

The training event takes place in Orlando, Florida (which will be stellar in January). The training is intensive and interactive. The community is engaging and encouraging. The instruction is practical and contextual. AND with the extension of the early bird discount to this Friday, the cost is rather affordable.

For those who register by this Friday, you will be able to take advantage of the early bird discount. This week of training is the equivalent of an entire seminary course on church planting at a fraction of the cost. I plan on being there (along with PLNTD) and hopefully will see some of you there as well.

Book Review: Gospel-Centered Leadership by Steve Timmis

October 17, 2012 in Book Reviews, Gospel, Leadership with 3 Comments

Two areas I’m particularly invested in are the centrality of the gospel and leadership development. My home library has shelves full of books in each of these categories, and yet those shelves (and the books therein) seem to have little in common. The leadership books are shaped with great principles and best practices with no gospel lens or hermeneutic. The gospel books gives us a great lens but have yet to show us how the gospel colors our understanding of leadership in the local church. Insert Steve Timmis’ newest book, Gospel-Centered Leadership: Becoming the Servant God Wants You to Be (Good Book Co., published October 2012).

In the Introduction, Timmis stakes out the thesis of the book:

“I have a deep and enduring conviction that it is the gospel that should shape my attitude to and practice of leadership. That what God has done in Christ should define who I am as a leader and for what kind of leader I am. That there should be something distinctive about leadership among the people of God, that springs from the message that brings it into being” (Loc 43, Kindle).

In contrast to the style of leadership that presupposes self-actualization and omnicompetence, Timmis explains that gospel-centered leadership leads from a position of repentance and faith, from the leader “recognizing his deep and enduring need for Jesus and the patient work of His indwelling Spirit”. This leadership style works from a profoundly different premise than typical leadership books operating under the delusions of self-adequacy, and the substance of this book provides the “shape, color, and texture” that the gospel brings to leadership, particularly in a local church.

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Steve Timmis on Creating Gospel Culture in Your Church

October 16, 2012 in Ecclesiology, Gospel, Leadership with 1 Comment

In his newly published book, Gospel-Centred Leadership, Steve Timmis discusses what he calls “by far the most important responsibility of leaders.” What is it?

Culture creation.

Timmis writes,

“Every group, whatever its size or demographic, will naturally create its own culture within a short space of time. Those within the group will have a certain way of doing things and a certain way of relating to one another. They will have a certain outlook and set of expectations. Someone within the group, or one group within a larger group, will be particularly influential in that process of culture-creation. . . . An existing group will change its culture depending on the characters who come in. Leaders should therefore take the lead in creating a particular culture. If the leader isn’t setting the culture, he is not the ‘leader’–regardless of the title. Leaders need to know:

  • what kind of culture they want to create
  • what kind of relationship they want to see develop
  • what kind of priorities they want to see people take on board
  • what kind of expectations people are going to have of one another”

What Timmis argues is that every person in a leadership position should be proactive in creative, cultivating, and maintaining a gospel culture. He adds,

“What leaders need to do is create a gospel culture which will, always at some point, be at odds with the surrounding culture. . . . The ambitions and expectations of those outside the church will differ from those within the church: the gospel will shape those in the church instead of the tyranny of self. leaders need to take the lead in forming that gospel culture; it is not something that will happen naturally or inevitably.

This gospel culture not only needs to be created, but also sustained. A culture needs to be created where it is normal to know what the gospel has accomplished (the indicatives), and consequently how we are to live (the imperatives); a culture where people are constantly reminded of who they are in Christ. We need to remind on another of the essential truths of the gospel: that we are more sinful than we dare admit and more loved than we would ever dare believe. All the imperatives of the gospel (what we are to do) will flow out of these indicatives (what the gospel has accomplished). We will therefore forgive one another because we are forgiven much. We will want to be holy because we have been made in the image of God to be holy. These truths about who we are in Christ are going to be the main means by which leaders can shape a culture. 

This is an important issue because our surrounding culture fights to shape and define us. If the gospel is the defining feature of a group, then people are pastored more easily and pointed to Jesus more effectively. Problems become more acute when anything other than the gospel is the defining feature.” (bold-face added, italicized original)

What Timmis highlights in this section of his book is an aspect of leadership I think many pastors overlook. The culture of a community is more than an event or service, though it certainly encompasses those. It is the air we breathe, the environment we inhabit, the governing spirit of the community ethic. In the work of bringing renewal and revitalization of a church, creating a gospel culture has to be one of the most challenging and yet most rewarding things gospel-centered leaders can do.

For what it’s worth, I shared a process of crafting culture through a triperspectival framework (Steve, if you read this, don’t hate!). It might be helpful in giving some practical tracks to moving toward a gospel-centered culture in your church.

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