Become What You Are

Justin Taylor hits it out of the park with his recent post on GOSPEL CHANGE:

Please read it. For yourself, your spouse, children, friend, pastor, sheep. If only we could really GET THIS and live it out! Oh, the sweetness of grace that would overflow in our own lives, families, churches, workplaces, communities. Let me tempt you with just a snippet:

“The dominant mode of evangelical preaching on sanctification, the main way to motivate for godly living, sounds something like this:

You are not _____;

You should be _________;

Therefore, do or be ________!

Fill in the blank with anything good and biblical (holy; salt and light; feed the poor; walk humbly; give generously; etc.).

This is not how Paul and the other New Testament writers motivated the church in light of the resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit. They did give imperatives (=what you should do), but they do so only based on indicatives (=what God has done).

The problem with the typical evangelical motivation toward radical or sacrificial living is that ‘imperatives divorced from indicatives become impossibilities’ (to quote Tullian Tchividjian). Or another way that Tullian puts it: ‘gospel obligations must be based on gospel declarations.’

This ‘become what you are’ way of speaking is strange for many us us. It seems precisely backward. But we must adjust our mental compass in order to walk this biblical path and recalibrate in order to speak this biblical language.

We see this all throughout the NT. Here are a few examples of this gospel logic and language …”

(Don’t you want to read on? Please do.)

I also listened (twice!) to an excellent message about gospel change by Tim Keller on one of my walks this week and I encourage you to check out his entire sermon series on this topic:

(BTW—as usual, I’m blogging all of this for myself because MAN! Do I need to hear it. I woke up this morning, so tempted to despair over my failings yesterday. But instead, I am striving to beat back my unbelief with truth and, well, become what I already am. May God have mercy—He does. He does.)

Blessings on your Wednesday,
Tara B.

(HT: TakeYourVitaminZ for the Justin Taylor link.)