Lately I’ve been trying to catch up on podcasts, so I was listening to The Village Church podcast and instead of Matt Chandler, I got Tullian Tchividjian. I already subscribe to Tchividjian’s Coral Ridge Presbyterian podcast, but he always has great messages, and seeing as how this one was titled after his new book, I figured I’d give it a listen.
All I can say is WOW! He packed more into that hour than many preachers do in a year! There were so many quotes I wanted to share, but I don’t want to be that guy who posts something to Twitter or Facebook every 30 seconds. So, here’s a few snippets from the sermon:
The gospel is not simply the ABC’s of Christianity, but it’s the A-to-Z of Christianity. – Tim Keller, as quoted by Tullian Tchividjian
The gospel isn’t simply the power of God to save us, it’s the power of God to change us once we’re saved.
The gospel is not a command to do anything at all; it is announcement that Christ has already done it.
Christ not only died a substitutionary death, but He lived a substitutionary life. He fulfilled the law. That’s what He said He was coming to do. “I came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.” He came to fulfill the law. We were the law breakers; He was the law keeper. If we don’t understand that Christ came, not simply to die in our place, but to live in our place, if we don’t understand that He came to fulfill the law in His life, then at His death there is no righteousness to impute. The righteousness that is imputed, that glorious exchange that takes place on the cross, the early church father Athanasius referred to it as a glorious exchange where Christ exchanged our sin for His righteousness. That was a righteousness that He fulfilled, that He deposited into our bankrupt bank account. The gospel is the story where Jesus is the hero. It’s all about Him, what He has done. It has nothing to do with us at all, nothing. There is nothing whatsoever about the gospel that encourages us to focus on ourselves, nothing. In fact, there is a tremendous amount of Christian narcissism, Christians who are absolutely fixated and obsessed with how they’re doing. It’s called spiritualized naval gazing. We become remarkable obsessed with how we’re doing. Are we doing okay? Are we doing everything right? It’s unbelievable. And we do it under the guise of pursuing holiness and practicing godliness and sanctification. But the fact of the matter is we are remarkably obsessed with ourselves and our performance. And the gospel is the good news that our relationship to God has nothing to do with our performance. It has everything to do with Christ’s performance for us.
I think most Protestants believe that our righteousness is as filthy rags, that our good works don’t earn God’s favor and there’s nothing we can do to get ourselves into heaven. My struggle isn’t believing that my good behavior can earn God’s favor. My daily struggle is believing that my good behavior can keep God’s favor.
Because it’s not about getting better. If you could do it, Jesus becomes unnecessary and irrelevant.
My mother once said something that has stuck with me to this day. We were talking about proverbs that are often attributed to the Bible, but are nowhere to be found in the Bible, and I brought up the old saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” To which she responded, “God doesn’t help those who help themselves. If we could help ourselves, we wouldn’t need God’s help. God helps those who can’t help themselves.”
This all makes me ask, if it really were about getting “better”, why then, when nearing death, did the apostle Paul claim to be the foremost (most prominent) of sinners in 1 Timothy 1:15?
To listen to the whole sermon (just under one hour in length) or to read the transcript, click here.
To purchase Tullian Tchividjian’s new book, Jesus + Nothing = Everything, click here.
