paradoxum

In light of the discussions I've been having regarding justification and sanctification, I thought these comments by Tim Keller were apropos (HT: Dash House):

"The new gospel is not that Jesus took away the wrath of God and that if you believe in him you can be forgiven. The new gospel is that the Kingdom of God is here. Jesus Christ has overcome the powers that are oppressing the world. By dying on the cross he has opened the way to a new way of life, allowing you to become an agent of peace and justice in the world. You become a Christian by entering into community and by a mixture of faith and work in making Jesus Christ Lord.

This gospel says to the non-Christian that we're not about the wrath of God, we're about a new way of life. It says to the unchanged evangelical that being a Christian is not just believing; it is following him.

We as classic evangelicals believe there are huge problems with that. When you change the gospel to deal with the powers, it ignores the problems within. As G.K. Chesterton supposedly said, the problem with the world is me. The problem with the world starts with our sin. The other problem is that we can't be agents of reconciliation without a heart change. We can't abandon being saved by grace alone through faith alone in favor of a program of works. It won't lead us to sing, "My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee."

Dr. Richard Lovelace used to say that in history you see the pendulum swing like this: In times of low spiritual vitality, orthodox churches tend to detach justification from sanctification. That is, people say that they are saved without working that out in repentance. As a result, people are shaped by culture and not changed. Then the pendulum swings the other way, and people begin to load sanctification into justification. Some of the puritans did that; so does the higher life movement. That is happening again. The emerging church is, to some degree, loading sanctification into justification, when what we really have to do is repent."