Category: Tim Keller

Dr. Tim Keller on The Bible and Homosexuality – What’s The Big Deal?

How Should Christians Handle Objections from the Media?

[The article below is a masterful presentation by Tim Keller in helping Christians understand how the Old Testament laws need to be understood today – I am reposting this article under a different title from my June 12 posting –  because it’s so helpful Christians in answering the argument that is continually posed by the left concerning contemporary issues like homosexuality – Last night I was watching Fox News with a discussion of Chick-Fil-A and the boycott from many on the left – the liberal commentator made this statement “Dan Truett is a hypocrite for his statements” and then she proceeded to say that “Christians pick and choose what they adhere to from the Bible, and that we are against homosexuality but that we eat what we want and wear materials outlawed in the Old Testament – Christians are full of inconsistencies.” Is this true? Tim Keller wisely demonstrates how to handle the Scriptures in dealing with issues like homosexuality and why the Bible teaches what it does in both the OT and NT consistently – DPC]

Are Christians Consistent With the Biblical Message in the OT and NT?

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” What I hear most often is “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?”

It is not that I expect everyone to have the capability of understanding that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God’s plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological advisor) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.

First of all, let’s be clear that it’s not only the Old Testament that has prescriptions about homosexuality. The New Testament has plenty to say about it, as well. Even Jesus says, in his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19:3-12 that the original design of God was for one man and one woman to be united as one flesh, and failing that, (v. 12) persons should abstain from marriage and from sex:

(3) And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” (4) He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, (5) and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? (6) So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (7) They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” (8) He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. (9) And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

(10) The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” (11) But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. (12) For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

However, let’s get back to considering the larger issue of inconsistency regarding things mentioned in the OT that are no longer practiced by the New Testament people of God. Most Christians don’t know what to say when confronted about this. Here’s a short course on the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament:

The Old Testament devotes a good amount of space to describing the various sacrifices that were to be offered in the tabernacle (and later temple) to atone for sin so that worshippers could approach a holy God. As part of that sacrificial system there was also a complex set of rules for ceremonial purity and cleanness. You could only approach God in worship if you ate certain foods and not others, wore certain forms of dress, refrained from touching a variety of objects, and so on. This vividly conveyed, over and over, that human beings are spiritually unclean and can’t go into God’s presence without purification.

But even in the Old Testament, many writers hinted that the sacrifices and the temple worship regulations pointed forward to something beyond them:

1 Samuel 15:21-22 – But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.” And Samuel said,

“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,

as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,

and to listen than the fat of rams.”

Psalm 50:12-15 – “If I were hungry, I would not tell you,

for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls

or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,

and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

Psalm 51:17 – “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

Hosea 6:6 – “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,

the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

When Christ appeared he declared all foods ‘clean’ (Mark 7:19) and he ignored the Old Testament clean laws in other ways, touching lepers and dead bodies.

But the reason is made clear. When he died on the cross the veil in the temple was ripped through, showing that the need for the entire sacrificial system with all its clean laws had been done away with. Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice for sin, and now Jesus makes us “clean.”

The entire book of Hebrews explains that the Old Testament ceremonial laws were not so much abolished as fulfilled by Christ. Whenever we pray ‘in Jesus name’, we ‘have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus’ (Hebrews 10:19). It would, therefore, be deeply inconsistent with the teaching of the Bible as a whole if we were to continue to follow the ceremonial laws.

The New Testament gives us further guidance about how to read the Old Testament. Paul makes it clear in places like Romans 13:8ff that the apostles understood the Old Testament moral law to still be binding on us. In short, the coming of Christ changed how we worship but not how we live. The moral law is an outline of God’s own character—his integrity, love, and faithfulness. And so all the Old Testament says about loving our neighbor, caring for the poor, generosity with our possessions, social relationships, and commitment to our family is still in force. The New Testament continues to forbid killing or committing adultery, and all the sex ethic of the Old Testament is re-stated throughout the New Testament:

Matthew 5:27-30 – “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

1 Corinthians 6:9-20 – Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!

Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

1 Timothy 1:8-11 – Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

If the New Testament has reaffirmed a commandment, then it is still in force for us today.

Further, the New Testament explains another change between the Testaments. Sins continue to be sins—but the penalties change. In the Old Testament things like adultery or incest were punishable with civil sanctions like execution. This is because at that time God’s people existed in the form of a nation-state and so all sins had civil penalties.

But in the New Testament the people of God are an assembly of churches all over the world, living under many different governments. The church is not a civil government, and so sins are dealt with by exhortation and, at worst, exclusion from membership. This is how a case of incest in the Corinthian church is dealt with by Paul:

1 Corinthians 5:1ff. and 2 Corinthians 2:7-11: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife…so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.”

Why this change? Under Christ, the gospel is not confined to a single nation—it has been released to go into all cultures and peoples.

Once you grant the main premise of the Bible—about the surpassing significance of Christ and his salvation—then all the various parts of the Bible make sense. Because of Christ, the ceremonial law is repealed. Because of Christ the church is no longer a nation-state imposing civil penalties. It all falls into place. However, if you reject the idea of Christ as Son of God and Savior, then, of course, the Bible is at best a mish-mash containing some inspiration and wisdom, but most of it would have to be rejected as foolish or erroneous.

So where does this leave us? There are only two possibilities.

(1)  If Christ is God, then this way of reading the Bible makes sense and is perfectly consistent with its premise.

(2)  The other possibility is that you reject Christianity’s basic thesis—you don’t believe Jesus was the resurrected Son of God—and then the Bible is no sure guide for you about much of anything. But the one thing you can’t really say in fairness is that Christians are being inconsistent with their beliefs to accept the moral statements in the Old Testament while not practicing other ones.

One way to respond to the charge of inconsistency may be to ask a counter-question—“Are you asking me to deny the very heart of my Christian beliefs?” If you are asked, “Why do you say that?” you could respond, “If I believe Jesus is the resurrected Son of God, I can’t follow all the ‘clean laws’ of diet and practice, and I can’t offer animal sacrifices. All that would be to deny the power of Christ’s death on the cross. And so those who really believe in Christ must follow some Old Testament texts and not others.”

About the Author: In 1989 Dr. Timothy J. Keller, his wife and three young sons moved to New York City to begin Redeemer Presbyterian Church. In 20 years it has grown to meeting for five services at three sites with a weekly attendance of over 5,000. Redeemer is notable not only for winning skeptical New Yorkers to faith, but also for partnering with other churches to do both mercy ministry and church planting.  Redeemer City to City is working to help establish hundreds of new multi-ethnic congregations throughout the city and other global cities in the next decades.

Dr. Tim Keller is the author of several phenomenal books including:

Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Plan for the World. New York, Penguin Publishing, November, 2012.

Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, September, 2012.

The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness. New York: 10 Publishing, April 2012.

Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just. New York: Riverhead Trade, August, 2012.

The Gospel As Center: Renewing Our Faith and Reforming Our Ministry Practices (editor and contributor). Wheaton: Crossway, 2012.

The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God. New York, Dutton, 2011.

King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus. New York, Dutton, 2011.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Priorities of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters. New York, Riverhead Trade, 2011.

The Reason For God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York, Dutton, 2009.

The Prodigal God. New York, Dutton, 2008.

Worship By The Book (contributor). Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.

Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1997.

 

Dwelling In The Gospel by Dr. Tim Keller

There Is Only One Gospel – But Several Ways of Expressing It

There is one gospel that we can outline; but it exists in several forms.

Colossians 1:11-17, “11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. 12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

There is a gospel outline that you see in John, Synoptics, & in Paul.

1 Corinthians 15:1ff – Paul is emphatic that the gospel he presents is the same as the one preached by the Jerusalem apostles. “Whether it was I or they,” Paul says, referring to Peter and the others, “so we preached and so you believed” (1 Cor. 15:10-11). This statement assumes a single body of gospel content.

1)   There is one gospel – Galatians 1:8; compare Mark 10:17, 23-34 with Matthew 25 and John 3:5, 6, 17 identical language is used for entering the kingdom of God – you have to be born again to see the kingdom; also Matthew 18:3 with Mark 10:13-16 and compare it with John 3 it’s the same language.

2)   There are several forms of the gospel – There are different perspectives on the one gospel. After insisting there is only one gospel (Gal. 1:8), he then speaks of being entrusted with “the gospel of the uncircumcised” as opposed to the “gospel of the circumcised” (Gal. 2:7). 
When Paul spoke to Greeks, he confronted their culture’s idol of speculation and philosophy with the “foolishness” of the cross, and then presented Christ’s salvation as true wisdom. When he spoke to Jews, he confronted their culture’s idol of power and accomplishment with the “weakness” of the cross, and then presented the gospel as true power (1 Cor. 1:22-25).

 Paul’s good news was:

First, that Jesus was the promised Messianic King and Son of God come to earth as a servant, in human form. (Rom. 1:3-4; Phil. 2:4ff.)

Second, by his death and resurrection, Jesus atoned for our sin and secured our justification by grace, not by our works (1 Cor. 15:3ff.)

Third, on the cross Jesus broke the dominion of sin and evil over us (Col. 2:13-15) and at his return he will complete what he began by the renewal of the entire material creation and the resurrection of our bodies (Rom 8:18ff.)

 In the Synoptic Gospels:

First, Jesus, the Messiah, is the divine Son of God (Mark 1:1)

Second, who died as a substitutionary ransom for the many (Mark 10:45),

Third, who has conquered the demonic present age with its sin and evil (Mark 1:14-2:10) and will return to regenerate the material world (Matt. 19:28.)

If I had to put this outline in a single statement, I might do it like this:

Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.

What is the Gospel?

3 Key Points: Manger/Cross/Crown

1) God emptied Himself (incarnation)

2) God substituted Himself  (cross, atonement, propitiation, justification)

3) God is returning to restore this world (restoration)

 Kingdom – the administration or order of how things work:

The upside down kingdom – God emptied Himself of His glory and came down (a reversal of the way of thinking – a church that works this part will put a great emphasis on justice and servanthood and avoiding class superiority and generosity and giving). He saves us not be taking power but by giving away power.

The inside out kingdom – salvation is a regenerated heart – the inner nature/ (legalism is outside in not inside out); the gospel is inside out.

Forward back kingdom – the idea of the already and not yet of the kingdom (John Stott talks about this in his book on the Contemporary Christian – and the dangers of an over realized or underealized eschatology).

How does this influence preaching?

People with religious backgrounds (Catholic, Jewish, Islamic) need the form of the gospel for the circumcised (they have a concept of sin, righteousness, and moral absolutes)

People with non-religious backgrounds who are the uncircumcised (draw on the texts that deal with idolatry; they are moral relativists – you have to treat them as idolater’s and address this idolatry – what they want is typically good, but they put it before God and make an idol out of it)

Kingdom and Eternal Life Gospel – Younger listeners are struggling with identity – speak in terms of the overarching biblical gospel in terms of creation, fall, redemption, resurrection and restoration.

About the Author: Dr. Tim Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York, and the author of numerous books including The Reason for God: Belief in an age of Skepticism (In my opinion the best book to date on apologetics for a postmodern culture—I think this book will do for post moderns what Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis did for moderns); and The Prodigal God (in my opinion the most clear presentation of the gospel for a post modern culture based on Luke 15).

Dr. Tim Keller on How the Gospel Changes our Apologetics, Part 2

[Tim Keller’s Article Below Originally appeared on 7/24/2012 in the Redeemer City to City Blog: http://redeemercitytocity.com/blog/view.jsp?Blog_param=444%5D

In my last post [How the Gospel Changes our Apologetics, Part 1 – under the Category “Tim Keller”), I made an argument for why we still need apologetics. Believing has both a head and a heart aspect, so while some non-Christians will need more help with one than the other, we can’t ignore either one.

So what can we say when we are called upon to present the reasons why we believe?

First, I try to show that it takes faith to doubt Christianity, because any worldview (including secularism or skepticism) is based on assumptions. For example, the person who says, “I can only believe in something if it can be rationally or empirically proven” must realize that that in itself is a statement of faith. This “verification principle” cannot actually be proven rationally or empirically, making it an assertion or a claim, not an argument. Furthermore, there are all sorts of things you can’t prove rationally or empirically. You can’t prove to me that you’re not really a butterfly dreaming you’re a person. (Haven’t you seen The Matrix?) You can’t prove most of the things you believe, so at least recognize that you have faith.

I normally make this point by considering an objection to Christianity, to show that at the heart of it is some sort of faith assumption. Let’s take the example of suffering; someone will say, “I can’t believe in God, because how could a good God allow such suffering?”

Put another way, they are saying, “I know for a fact that there can’t be any good reason that a good God would allow this specific thing to happen.” Really? There could be all sorts of good reasons why God allowed something to happen that caused suffering, despite our inability to think of them. If you’ve got an infinite God big enough to be mad at for the suffering in the world, then you also have an infinite God big enough to have reasons for it that you can’t think of.

You have to show people that it takes faith to doubt Christianity. C. S. Lewis’ pre-conversion argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But then he asked himself, “But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?  …Atheism turns out to be too simple” (Mere Christianity, Book 2, Part 1). In the natural world the strong eat the weak, and there’s nothing wrong with violence. Where do you get the standard that says the human world shouldn’t work like that, that says the natural world is wrong? You can only judge suffering as wrong if you’re using a standard higher than this world, a supernatural standard. If there’s no God, you have no reason to be upset at the suffering in this world. That’s just the way it is. It takes faith to get mad at this world.

You see, a gospel-shaped apologetic starts not with telling people what to believe, but by showing them their real problem. In this case we are showing secular people that they have less warrant for their faith assumptions than we do for ours. We need to show that it takes faith even to doubt.

British critic and former atheist A.N. Wilson wrote about losing his faith as a young man, influenced by British intellectual society, which had all but accepted that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity. “As a matter of fact however,” he argues, “it is materialist atheism that is not merely an arid creed but totally irrational. Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals, and it has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love, or heroism, or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat.”

A campus evangelist I once heard during the Vietnam protests pushed atheist students to recognize the clash between their moral relativism in regards to sex, and their moral absolutism with regards to international genocide. They had no answers.  If there’s no God, everything is permitted. Without God we’re left with no basis for all that is most important to our lives: human dignity, compassion, justice. We have a problem.

Which brings us to the final point, the solution to our problem. At some point you need tell the Christian story in a way that addresses the things that people most want for their own lives, the things that they are trying to find outside of Christianity, and show how Christianity can give it to them. Alasdair MacIntyre said this about narratival apologetics: “That narrative prevails over its rivals which is able to include its rivals within it, not only to retell their stories as episodes within its story, but to tell the story of the telling of their stories as such episodes.” Read that sentence again.

There is a way of telling the gospel that makes people say, “I don’t believe it’s true, but I wish it were.” You have to get to the beauty of it, and then go back to the reasons for it. Only then, when you show that it takes more faith to doubt it than to believe it; when the things you see out there in the world are better explained by the Christian account of things than the secular account of things; and when they experience a community in which they actually do see Christianity embodied, in healthy Christian lives and solid Christian community, that many will believe.

About the Author: In 1989 Dr. Timothy J. Keller, his wife and three young sons moved to New York City to begin Redeemer Presbyterian Church. In 20 years it has grown to meeting for five services at three sites with a weekly attendance of over 5,000. Redeemer is notable not only for winning skeptical New Yorkers to faith, but also for partnering with other churches to do both mercy ministry and church planting.  Redeemer City to City is working to help establish hundreds of new multi-ethnic congregations throughout the city and other global cities in the next decades.

Dr. Tim Keller is the author of several phenomenal books including:

  • Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Plan for the World. New York, Penguin Publishing, November, 2012.
  • Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, September, 2012.
  • The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness. New York: 10 Publishing, April 2012.
  • Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just. New York: Riverhead Trade, August, 2012.
  • The Gospel As Center: Renewing Our Faith and Reforming Our Ministry Practices (editor and contributor). Wheaton: Crossway, 2012.
  • The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God. New York, Dutton, 2011.
  • The Prodigal God. New York, Dutton, 2011.
  • King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus. New York, Dutton, 2011.
  • Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Priorities of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters. New York, Riverhead Trade, 2011.
  • The Reason For God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York, Dutton, 2009.
  • Worship By The Book (contributor). Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.
  • Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1997.

Dr. Tim Keller on How To Fight Sin

(The following post has been transcribed and edited from Tim Keller’s sermon “Sin as Slavery,” which can be downloaded for free here.)

Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emotions, that sin shrivels the emotions. When you sin with the will, that sin destroys and dissolves your willpower and your self-control. Sin is the suicidal action of the self against itself. Sin destroys freedom because sin is an enslaving power.

In other words, sin has a powerful effect in which your own freedom, your freedom to want the good, to will the good, and to think or understand the good, is all being undermined. By sin, you are more and more losing your freedom. Sin undermines your mind, it undermines your emotions, and it undermines your will.

Sin Is Addiction

All sin is addiction. Whether it’s bitterness, whether it’s envy, whether it’s materialism, whether it’s laziness, whether it’s impurity — every sinful action becomes an addiction. And every sinful action brings into your life a power that operates exactly like addiction cycles and addiction dynamics begin to operate.

In other words, in the specific addictions of alcohol or drug addiction, or voyeurism, or exhibitionism, or sexual addictions, you actually have a microcosm of how sin works in general.

You know how addiction works. It starts like this: There’s some kind of disappointment or distress in your life. As a result you choose to deal with that distress with an agent; it might be sex, it might be drugs, it might be alcohol. The agent promises transcendence. The agent promises freedom, a sense of being in control, a sense of being above all this, a sense of being liberated, a sense of escape. And so you do it. But when you do it, when you take the addicting agent as a way of dealing with life, the trap is set.

The trap is set because three things begin to happen:

1. Tolerance. You get trapped into what the experts call the “tolerance effect.” In other words, the tolerance effect is that today this or that amount of alcohol or drugs, or this kind of sexual experience, will pale in comparison to your desires tomorrow. The same activity will not give you that same experience any more, and you will find you need more and more and more. What brought you joy yesterday will not be enough to give you joy tomorrow, because your emotions are shriveling and numbing. There’s a tolerance effect.

2. Denial. Addiction destroys because of denial. We all know part of addiction patterns is that your craving makes you rationalize and justify. It twists your thinking. You become selective in your reasoning, selective about your memory. You’ll do all sorts of tortured rationalizations, but you refuse to think clearly and objectively. You can’t.

3. Defeat. Addictions destroy willpower. You know you are an addict when you are trying to escape your distress with the very thing that brought you your distress. And when you are in that spiral, you are stuck forever — down and down and down and down.

Sin in general operates like that. When you think disobedience to God is going to bring freedom, the very act that promises freedom is taking the freedom. The very act that you think is putting you in the driver’s seat of your life is taking you out of the driver’s seat of your life.

Playing With Fire

The Bible defines sin as craving something more than God. Sin is making something more important than God. If you’re just religious occasionally, if God is on the outskirts of your life, that is the essence of sin, and that sin grows.

Jonathan Edwards says sin turns the heart into a fire. Just as there has never been a fire that said, “Enough fuel, I’m fine now,” so there has never been a sinful heart that said, “I have had enough success. I’ve had enough love. I’ve had enough approval. I’ve had enough comfort.” Oh, no. The more fuel you put into the fire, the hotter it burns, and the hotter it burns, the more it needs, the more oxygen it is sucking and the more fuel it requires.

And this is the heart of the fire. Next time you are crabby, or grumpy, or irritable, or scared to death, or in the pits, ask yourself: What am I telling myself would make me happy if only I had it? There is an if only at the bottom of this. Whatever is your if only, that becomes your slave master. It destroys your will.

This explains how lies necessitate other lies. Envy necessitates more envy. Racism necessitates more racist thoughts. Jealously necessitates more jealous thoughts. Bitterness necessitates more bitter thoughts. In the beginning when you first tell a lie you still have an appetite for the truth, but it won’t take long. Sin is a power. And the things you crave become your slave masters because in your heart those things burn with this idea: if only. Everything would be fine if only I had that. This creates a suction in your life. The more you throw in, the more it wants.

Winning the Firefight

If you are a Christian and you are dealing with enslaving habits, it’s not enough to say, “Bad Christian, stop it.” And it is not enough to beat yourself up or merely try harder and harder and harder.

The real reason that you’re having a problem with an enslaving habit is because you are not tasting God. I’m not talking about believing God or even obeying God, I’m saying tasting — tasting God.

The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need worship. You need great worship. You need weeping worship. You need glorious worship. You need to sense God’s greatness and to be moved by it — moved to tears and moved to laughter — moved by who God is and what he has done for you. And this needs to be happening all the time.

This type of worship is the only thing that can replace the little if only fire burning in your heart. We need a new fire that says, “If only I saw the Lord. If only he was close to my heart. If only I could feel him to be as great as I know him to be. If only I could taste his grace as sweet as I know it to be.”

And when that if only fire is burning in your heart, then you are free.

About the Author: Dr. Tim Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York, and the author of numerous books including The Reason for God: Belief in an age of Skepticism (In my opinion the best book to date on apologetics for a postmodern culture—I think this book will do for post moderns what Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis did for moderns); and The Prodigal God (in my opinion the most clear presentation of the gospel for a post modern culture based on Luke 15). He is also one of the founders of The Gospel Coalition.

Tim Keller on Apologetics and the Gospel Part 1

How The Gospel Changes Our Apologetics

Apologetics is an answer to the “why” question after you’ve already given people an answer to the “what” question. The what question, of course, is “What is the gospel?” But when you call people to believe in the gospel and they ask, “Why should I believe that?” —then you need apologetics.

I’ve heard plenty of Christians try to answer the why question by going back to the what. “You have to believe because Jesus is the Son of God.” But that’s answering the why with more what. Increasingly we live in a time in which you can’t avoid the why question. Just giving the what (for example, a vivid gospel presentation) worked in the days when the cultural institutions created an environment in which Christianity just felt true or at least honorable. But in a post-Christendom society, in the marketplace of ideas, you have to explain why this is true, or people will just dismiss it.

There are plenty of Christians today who nevertheless say: “Don’t do apologetics, just expound the Word of God—preach and the power of the Word will strike people.” Others argue that “belonging comes before believing.” They say apologetics is a rational, Enlightenment approach, not a biblical one. People need to be brought into a community where they can see our love and our deeds, experience worship, have their imaginations captured, and faith will become credible to them.

There is a certain merit to these arguments. It would indeed be overly rationalistic to say that we can prove Christianity so that any rational person would have to believe it. In fact, it dishonors the sovereignty of God by bowing to our autonomous human reason. Community and worship areimportant, because people come to conviction through a combination of heart and mind, a sense of need, thinking things out intellectually, and seeing it in community.  But I have also seen many skeptics brought into a warm Christian community and yet still ask, “But why should I believe you and not an atheist or a Muslim?”

We need to be careful of saying “Just believe,” because what we’re really saying is, “Believe because I say so.” That sounds like a Nietzschean power play. That’s very different from Paul, who reasoned, argued, and proved in the book of Acts, and from Peter, who called us to give the reason for our hope in 2 Peter 3:15. If our response is, “Our beliefs may seem utterly irrational to you, but if you see how much we love one another then you’ll want to believe too,” then we’ll sound like a cult. So we do need to do apologetics and answer the why question.

However, the trouble with an exclusively rationalistic apologetic (“I’m going to prove to you that God exists, that Jesus is the Son of God, the Bible is true,” etc.) is that it does, in a sense, put God on trial before supposedly neutral, perfectly rational people sitting objectively on the throne of Reason. That doesn’t fit with what the Bible says about the reality of sin and the always prejudiced, distorted thinking produced by unbelief. On the other hand, an exclusively subjectivist apologetic (“Invite Jesus into your life and he’ll solve all your problems, but I can’t give you any good reasons, just trust with your heart”) also fails to bring conviction of real sin or of need.

There will be no joy in the Grace of Jesus unless the person sees they’re lost. Thus a gospel-shaped apologetic must not simply present Christianity, but it must also challenge the non-believer’s worldview and show where it, and they, have a real problem. This is what I usually try to do, and in my next post I’ll lay out what I would say if I had an hour to give the whole case for Christianity.

Article adapted from Redeemer City To City Blog. July 10, 2012.

About the Author: Dr. Tim Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He is the author of numerous helpful books including: The Prodigal God; Counterfeit Gods; The Meaning of Marriage; The Reason for God & Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City.

Tim Keller and David Powlison’s Questions For Pastoral Self-Evaluation

Pastor’s Self-Evaluation Questionnaire 

“Pay close attention both to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.” – 1 Timothy 4:16

The questions that follow help you to pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching. The purpose is to bless you and those you seek to love and serve. For the vast majority of readers, it will help you set a positive, personal agenda for growth as God’s instrument. The Great Shepherd of the sheep will by His grace continue to develop you in His image. Conduct your self-evaluation in the light of His love.

Perhaps for a few readers it will prove to be a pass-fail test for your current ministry. Perhaps God has not given you certain gifts. Perhaps you are walking in some disqualifying pattern of sin. Even in these cases the questionnaire serves a positive purpose. The Lord has another place for those gifts that He has given you. The Lord has a way of repentance and renewal for sins that sabotage pastoral integrity and effectiveness. Remember the grace of the gospel.

So set your heart on Christ, on His gospel of mercy, on His high call, on His abounding riches of grace, on His honor in your life and His church. Here are some suggestions on how to profit from this study.

Read the questions carefully. The questions are posed first, followed by work-sheets. The questions range widely over the pastor’s role. If you are not a pastor, you can still profit. Ignore the questions that do not apply to your situation.

Think hard. Answer each question honestly after taking time to ponder. Set aside a day or several evenings to reflect on your life and ministry. Wherever possible give concrete examples of fruitfulness or failure, of growth or struggle.

Pray. Pray for wisdom to know God and yourself better. Pray for wisdom to serve God more effectively. Pray to know yourself before the eyes of the God who is both light and love.

Seek counsel from others. Many of the questions are difficult to answer about yourself. This self-evaluation questionnaire will be most useful when you combine it with feedback from others. Ask other leaders, friends, spouse, coworkers on a ministry team, and so forth.

Plan. The work-sheets will guide you in practical planning.

Acknowledge that others have gifts that complement yours. The second half of the questionnaire deals with pastoral skills. You may have limitations which God covers by providing others on the pastoral team with complementary gifts. In acknowledging personal weaknesses, ask yourself whether or not your pastoral team as a whole is covering all the bases.

Remember, the goal of this self-evaluation is to guide you in the path of growing holiness and growing pastoral skill. The questions are divided into these two major sections: personal holiness and pastoral skills. Effective ministers demonstrate holiness by humility, love, integrity and spirituality. Effective ministers are skilled in nurture, communication, leadership and mission.

Under each category you will find several questions. Notice that each question is two-sided. This captures that you fail either by omission or by commission. For example, biblical love is neither careless detachment from others nor obsession with others. You will likely find that you tend towards one side of each question. Let the questions stimulate you to ask further questions. They are not exhaustive. Some will apply to you; some won’t.

Part I. Personal Qualifications of Effective Ministers: Holiness

A. Humility

1. Do you acknowledge your limitations and needs out of confidence in Christ’s gracious power?

Are you honest enough? Do you demonstrate a willingness to admit your limits, mistakes, sins and weaknesses? Are you defensive, guarded, hypersensitive? Do you model that the Christian life is the open life? Do you demonstrate that the Christian life is a work in process rather than a completed product? Do you deal forthrightly with the common temptations you face: anger, anxiety, escapism, love of pleasure, self-love, materialism, perfectionism, and the like?

Are you too open? Do you wear your heart on your sleeve, indulging and wallowing in your limits, mistakes, sins and weaknesses? Are you morbidly or ‘exhibitionistically’ confessional? Or have you learned to speak of your weaknesses in ways that (1) point to your confidence in Christ, (2) genuinely seek help from people who can help, and (3) edify others?

2. Do you demonstrate a flexible spirit out of confidence in God’s control over all things, God’s authority over you, and God’s presence with you?

Are you flexible enough? Do you adapt faithfully, flexibly and creatively to the unexpected? Do you value and encourage the ideas and gifts of others? Do you insist on your own way, whether forcefully or through subtle manipulation? Do you exemplify confidence in the sovereign control of God down to the details of life? Are you caught up in the various aggressions and fears produced by a drive to ensure your own control?

Are you willing to try things experimentally and then reevaluate and make changes? Are you evidently a learner?

Are you too flexible? Do you bend too much? Do you blow in the wind of others’ opinions and get overwhelmed by people’s demands and agendas? Do you compromise, under-assert, seek to please, fail to push things that need to be pushed? Do you let people or circumstances control you rather than the Lord?

B. Love

1. Do you have a positive approach to people because of confidence in the power and hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Do you give grace to others? Do you love and encourage persons, even when under stress or in the face of an attack? Do you exhibit core biblical virtues: love for enemies, gentleness with opponents, patience with people and circumstances when undergoing trial or suffering? Are you able to confront the failings of others—to discipline your children, to admonish wanderers, to conduct church discipline—in a way that is not punitive, irritable, or censorious but breathes the invitations of God’s grace? Can you say hard things lovingly? Is your “speaking the truth” harsh, opinionated, idiosyncratic? Do you create problems by making mountains out of molehills? Do you contribute to destructive conflict or to peacemaking?

Are you too tolerant? Are you naively optimistic about people? Do you massage people’s egos with praise and “unconditional positive regard”? Is your “love” limp and truthless? Do you whitewash or minimize problems rather than tackle them? Because of biblical love are you willing to enter into constructive conflict? Are you a peace-lover and conflict-avoider rather than a peacemaker?

2. Do you show a servant’s heart to people because you are first and foremost a servant of the Lord?

Do you serve willingly? Do you serve yourself or others primarily? Do you truly serve the well-being of others and shepherd them under the Lord? Do you strive for personal glory either aggressively (compulsively driven “on an ego trip”) or passively (preoccupied with your “low self-esteem”)? Do you manifest the combination of forcefulness and sensitivity, commitment and flexibility, which characterizes servants of the Lord’s glory? Do you lord it over other people? Do you resist or avoid serving and loving others?

Do you serve compulsively? Do you serve other people slavishly, kowtowing to their demands, expectations, and whims? Do you let others lord it over you? Are you confused about what it means to serve and love others? Do you know how to say “No” realistically, firmly and graciously? Do you regularly rest and lay aside your work?

C. Integrity

1. Are you responsible to God first and foremost?

Are you irresponsible? Do you follow through on convictions and commitments? Do you speak the truth firmly, confidently, faithfully? Do you “trim” the truth or waffle on your commitments because of convenience or social pressures? Do you fail to demand of yourself and others things that God demands? Do you follow your impulses, moods, and feelings? Are you walking in the grip of a sin: e.g., greed, lust, outbursts of anger, fear of man, drunkenness, pride?

Are you overly demanding? Do you behave in a rigid manner? Do you sledgehammer people because of your commitment to principle? Are you legalistic in your commitments and nit-picking in your convictions? Do you major in minors? Do you make demands of yourself and others which God does not make?

2. Do you demonstrate a disciplined lifestyle under the Lordship of Jesus?

Are you undisciplined? Is your visible life and behavior disciplined, consistent and attractive? Do you manifest the joy, humility, and winsomeness of wisdom and holiness? Would people want to imitate what they see of your faith, your faithfulness, your character? What would people see if they could tag along with you for a week? Do you work diligently or are you lazy?

Are you too rigid? Are you too disciplined, organized, “perfect” on the outside? Does your visible example actually discourage or intimidate people? Are you in effect playing the role of “pastor” or “mature Christian”? Is your visible discipline a mask for hypocrisy, a cover for ignorance of yourself or a denial of a deviant inner life? Are you humbled by conscious awareness that you fight the common besetting temptations of every human heart: pride, fear of man, attachment to money, sexual lust, preoccupation with your own performance, control, judgmentalism, love of various pleasures, and the like? Do you have an active sense of humor? Do you take time to rest or are you consumed with anxious toil?

3. Are your family commitments a proper priority under the Lord?

Do you give yourself to your family? Are you over-committed to your ministry and under-committed to your family? Do you love your family in such a way that they willingly become committed to your ministry and really stand with and behind you? Are they being sacrificed to “ministry”? Are they being dragged along behind you? Do you give to them significantly, substantially, willingly?

Are you over-involved in your family? Are you over-committed to your family so that they provide an improper refuge, distraction and excuse to avoid ministry? Is family life an excuse for selfishness?

D. Spirituality

1. Do you demonstrate personal piety and vigor in your relationship with God?

Is your piety genuine? Is your communion with God rich and growing? Is your personal prayer life both spontaneous and disciplined or are you mostly a public pray-er? Do you apply the Bible searchingly and encouragingly to yourself or only to your hearers? Do you praise, enjoy and thank God with heartfelt integrity? Do you know God, rely on God, seek God, praise God genuinely? What does Christ mean in your life on a day-in, day-out basis? Are you significantly prayer-less, Bible-less, praise-less, God-less, Christ-less?

Are you ‘pietistic’? Do you escape into pious clichés and misuse the spiritual disciplines? Do you use “I’ll pray about it” or “I need to study the Bible” in order to avoid problems for which you feel inadequate? Do you pray too much (Matthew 6:7) or self-centeredly (James 4:3) because you do not know God very well? Is your Bible, praise and prayer life a hypocritical diversion in a life far from God?

2. Do you demonstrate faithfulness to the Bible and sound doctrines?

Are you biblically and theologically careful? Are you orthodox, faithful to the whole counsel of God? Do you have clear, definite, and thought-out biblical positions on the central issues of life? Do you have theological quirks or hobby-horses which upset the balance of truth? Do you articulate core biblical truth clearly and consistently, with a working feel for its personal and pastoral application? Are you ignorant? Fuzzy? In error? Unbalanced?

Are you a theological nit-picker? Are your theological convictions abstract, theoretical, and scholastic? Are you narrowly dogmatic, combative, critical, reductionistic, overly precise in your interpretations and applications of Scripture? Are you simplistic or superficial in your understanding of contemporary life and of human nature? Do you recognize the broad range of questions on which Scripture bears? Do you recognize the many variables which influence the application of Scripture to particular situations?

Part II. Functional Qualifications of Effective Ministers: Pastoral Skill

A. Nurture

1. Do you show involved caring that comes from genuine love in Christ for your brothers and sisters?

Do you involve yourself with the needs of others? Do you keep people at a distance? Are you able to develop relationships of honesty and trust through which you can comfort and challenge persons? Are you approachable? Do you create frequent conflict? Do you approach people warmly? Do you communicate care for people in ways they can sense?

Do you become overly absorbed in people? Do you become overly involved with people, caring too much because of a desire to be liked or a savior-complex or a fear of failure? Do you seek relationships as an end in themselves rather than as a component of pastoring people unto godliness?

2. Do you counsel people the Lord’s way?

Do you counsel biblically? Are you skilled in helping people respond to and solve personal problems using biblical principles? Do you counsel biblically both informally and formally? Do you use unbiblical conceptual categories and methods? Is what you say in your office congruent both with what you say in the pulpit and with how you yourself live? Do you get involved constructively with troubled people, or do you disdain them, refer them, avoid them? Are individuals encouraged in godliness, amid their sufferings and sins, through your personal ministry?

Do you go overboard on counseling? Do you become overly centered on problem people and focus on one-on-one remedial counseling to the detriment of more positive, preventive, building-up and corporate aspects of the ministry? Do you tend to turn the church into a counseling center or therapy group?

3. Do you discipline others into maturity in Christ and use of their gifts?

Do you help others productively serve the Lord? Do you demonstrate skills in nurturing growth in grace in individuals and in developing their gifts? Does your ministry have a positive, equipping thrust to it? Do you develop leaders and team ministries?

Do you focus too much on activism and productivity? Does your focus on gifts and discipleship have an elitist flavor? Are Christians with minimal gifts and energies neglected? Are there certain kinds of gifts which you recognize and encourage to the neglect of other kinds of gifts? Do you tend to move only with the movers?

4. Do you give yourself to discipline and to patrolling the boundaries of the church which God bought with His own blood?

Do you protect Christ’s honor in the church? Are you committed to church discipline? Are you able to confront winsomely and persistently? Do you recognize the limits of the edification ministries of counseling, care and discipling? Do you stand courageously against real errors and falsehoods which encroach into the body of Christ that you shepherd? Are you realistic that the ministry is a savor both of life and death? Do you try to be so positive that you cannot be properly and biblically negative?

Are you over-absorbed in border patrol? Do you demonstrate a nit-picking, sectarian, vigilante spirit? Are you uncompassionate of people’s failings, negativistic rather than upbuilding? Do you create in others a fear of failure and a fear of being found wrong, rather than creating love for ongoing growth in the Lord and love for ever-deepening truth?

B. Communication

1. Do you preach the whole counsel of God?

Are you preaching and teaching the Word of God? Are you skillful in expounding the Word of God publicly so that people are convicted, encouraged, and edified? Do you use the pulpit effectively? Do you downplay the importance of the pulpit and teaching in your attitudes, practice, and theory of ministry? Is what you say in the pulpit congruent both with what you say in your office and with how you yourself live? Do you take adequate time and work hard at preparation, or are you casual and presumptuous?

Are you overly absorbed in your pulpit? Are you overly concerned with pulpit ministry to the detriment of other aspects of pastoral care? Does pride puff you up or does the fear of men tie you in knots? Do you envision yourself as a “pulpiteer,” to the harm of reaching people where they live? Do you take too much time to prepare for public ministry because of perfectionism, self-trust, or fear?

2. Do you provide education for God’s many kinds of people?

Do you educate all? Are you skilled in identifying Christian Education needs and in helping people learn? Does your philosophy of Christian Education reach all age groups and all different kinds of needs? Is biblical and doctrinal knowledge undervalued? Do you tend to ignore, despise, or belittle the educational needs of certain kinds of people? Does your approach to Christian Education effectively combine truth and practice?

Do you overeducate? Do you tend to turn your church into a school? Is education and factual or doctrinal knowledge overvalued in comparison with other aspects of the Christian life? Is the teacher-pupil role the dominant one in the church or only one role among many?

3. Do you lead others to worship the Lord?

Do you lead others to worship God in truth? Do you lead people into the presence of God? Is your worship perfunctory and rote? Do you yourself worship God as you lead, or does worship become a performance and task? Do you undervalue worship, viewing it only as a glorified warm-up for the message?

Are you overly absorbed in worship? Do you over-emphasize the “worship experience” to the detriment of truth and the other aspects of church life? Are you overly subjective, gauging the Christian life by emotions and sentiment? Do you use words, music, and staging to manipulate experience? Is God at the center of your worship or do you worship the worship?

C. Leadership

1. Do you lead God’s people into effective work together?

Do you lead groups of people well? Do you help groups develop a biblical vision, and do you motivate them towards biblical goals? Are you confused about what the goals of groups should be? Are you overly absorbed either in personal one-on-one work with people or in impersonal programs and public ministry? Do you function constructively in groups, or do you hamper and divert groups from achieving God’s ends? Do you value groups and encourage them to take on significant responsibilities?

Are you overly absorbed in groups? Do you tend to see groups, committees, and task forces as a panacea or a substitute for other aspects of ministry? Does a task orientation sabotage other biblical goals such as prayer, worship, caring, and counseling?

2. Do you administer well, creating a church that is wise in its stewardship?

Are you a good administrator? Are you skilled in using time, money, and people efficiently to achieve biblical goals in the church? Do you neglect or despise administration?

Are you overly absorbed in administration? Do you tend to over-administer or retreat to administrative tasks because they are easier or are the squeaky wheel?

3. Do you mediate fellowship among God’s people?

Do you help people come together? Are you skilled in stimulating the congregation to mutual ministry in love? Does your ministry create one-anothering opportunities and activities among God’s people? Do you enhance a family atmosphere in the church? Are you able to teach people how to make significant friendships through your teaching, manner, and example?

Are you overly absorbed with the church’s social life? Are you so oriented towards “fellowship and family feeling” that the church’s fellowship with God and orientation to mission are lost?

4. Do you create cooperative and team ministry within the church and between churches that honor Christ?

Are you a team player? Do you work well as part of a ministry or pastoral team, or do you always insist on leading (in overt or covert ways)? Do you tend to stake out turf? Is your leadership based on true biblical wisdom or on personal drive, clerical status, and political savvy? Do you build unity and mutual respect among different parts of the body of Christ? Can you cooperate with other evangelical churches and pastors, or do you have sectarian instincts? Are you committed in practical ways to see the work of the local congregation as part of the larger work of Christ? Are you too independent and not enough of a “churchman”?

Do you allow the team to shield you from the front lines of ministry? Do you shirk leadership responsibilities out of diffidence or laziness and seek to embed yourself safely within a niche? Do you put your attention too much into the work of presbyteries, synods, general assemblies, conferences, associations, conventions, ministeriums, school boards and the like? Are you a politician and too much a “churchman” rather than a pastor?

D. Mission

1. Do you evangelize those outside of Jesus Christ?

Are you active in evangelism? Are you skilled both in effectively sharing the gospel and in leading the church in outreach? Are you committed in theory and personal practice to evangelize the lost? Do you believe with all your heart that people without Christ remain under the wrath of God? Do you neglect evangelism out of ignorance, love of comfort, fear, prejudice, bad experiences? Do you lead your people to support worldwide missionary efforts?

Are you overly committed to evangelism? Do you overemphasize evangelism or one evangelistic technique to the detriment of the church’s overall ministry? Do you create ministry activists rather than godly people? Do you play a numbers game with evangelism? Do your evangelistic methods hold the message of salvation in Christ in proper balance with God’s sovereignty in grace and with the call for us to demonstrate genuine love for each other and the lost? Are missionaries idolized as a higher species of Christian?

2. Do you show social concern for the many needs of people that God desires to address?

Do you care for the whole person? Are you skilled in applying the resources of the church to the social and material needs of mankind? Do you value diaconal work and the mercy gifts? Do you believe that the gospel addresses the whole man, or do you drift towards a gospel that is a bare verbal message? Do you care in practical ways for justice, or do you tacitly accept the status quo? Can you identify the social needs of your community and mobilize effective modes of addressing these needs?

Are you overly involved in social needs? Do you overemphasize social concerns and drift towards a “social gospel”? Do you ride the hobby-horse or one particular point of view or one particular social policy issue? Do you tend to view people through the eyes of politics, economics or sociology rather than through the eyes of the God of the Bible?

 Application Work Sheet

Part I. Personal Qualifications of Effective Ministers: Holiness

A. Humility

1. Do you acknowledge your limitations and needs out of confidence in Christ’s gracious power?

2. Do you demonstrate a flexible spirit out of confidence in God’s control over all things, God’s authority over you, and God’s presence with you?

B. Love

1. Do you have a positive approach to people because of confidence in the power and hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

2. Do you show a servant’s heart to people because you are first and foremost a servant of the Lord?

C. Integrity

1. Are you responsible to God first and foremost?

2. Do you demonstrate a disciplined lifestyle under the Lordship of Jesus?

3. Are your family commitments a proper priority under the Lord?

D. Spirituality

1. Do you demonstrate personal piety and vigor in your relationship with God?

2. Do you demonstrate faithfulness to the Bible and sound doctrine?

Part II: Functional Qualifications of Effective Ministers: Pastoral Skill

A. Nurture

1. Do you show involved caring that comes from genuine love in Christ for your brothers and sisters?

2. Do you counsel people the Lord’s way?

3. Do you disciple others into maturity in Christ and use of their gifts?

4. Do you give yourself to discipline and to patrolling the boundaries of the church which God bought with His own blood?

B. Communication

1. Do you preach the whole counsel of God?

2. Do you provide education for God’s many kinds of people?

3. Do you lead others to worship the Lord?

C. Leadership

1. Do you lead people into effective work together?

2. Do you administer well, creating a church that is wise in its stewardship?

3. Do you mediate fellowship among God’s people?

4. Do you create cooperative and team ministry within the church and between churches that honor Christ?

D. Mission

1. Do you evangelize those outside of Jesus Christ?

2. Do you show social concern for the many needs of people whom God desires to address?

You have looked at yourself, hopefully through God’s eyes. Now work with what you have seen.

If you could change in one area in the next year, which would it be? Where do you most need to mature in wisdom? What changes in you would bring the greatest glory to God and greatest blessing to other people?

Confess your sins and failings to God. Jesus Christ is your faithful high priest and shepherd. He is the Pastor of pastors. “Come with confidence to the throne of His grace that you may receive mercy and grace to help you in your time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Believe it and do it. The Lord’s strength is made perfect in your weakness.

Now what must you do? Prayerfully set goals. How will you become a more godly person and pastor? Are there people you must ask to pray for you and hold you accountable? Are there Bible passages or books you must study? Are there plans you must make? Do you need advice from a wise Christian about how to go about changing?

About the Authors: Dr. Tim Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He is the author of numerous helpful books including: The Prodigal God; Counterfeit Gods; The Meaning of Marriage; The Reason for God & Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City. Dr. David Powlison is the editor of The Journal of Biblical Counseling and served for many years as a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary. David is currently faculty member at CCEF and a counselor with over thirty years of experience. He has written many counseling articles, booklets, and books including Seeing with New Eyes; Speaking Truth in Love; and Power Encounters.

Two sources in which these evaluation questions have appeared are The Journal of Biblical Counseling, Vol. XII, No. 1, Fall 1993 & The Appendix in Curtis C. Thomas. Practical Wisdom for Pastors: Words of Encouragement and Counsel for a Lifetime of Ministry. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2001.

10 Excellent Tips on Personal Evangelism from Dr. Tim Keller

Tim Keller Teaching Below at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York:

  1. Let people around you know you are a Christian (in a natural, unforced way)
  2. Ask friends about their faith – and just listen!
  3. Listen to your friends’ problems – maybe offer to pray for them
  4. Share your problems with others – testify to how your faith helps you
  5. Give them a book to read
  6. Share your story
  7. Answer objections and questions
  8. Invite them to a church event
  9. Offer to read the Bible with them
  10. Take them to an explore course

These are arranged from 1-10 as a progression. We too often start with numbers 8-10, but we need to start with 1-4 with most people. In fact, he says, we may need to loop through 1-4 multiple times before getting to the later steps. Not only is it more humble of us to begin with 1-4, but it is more loving.

By being real with our friends (#1), we show we trust them enough to be open with them. By listening to their thoughts about faith (#2) and to any problems they may be facing (#3), we show we value them and are genuinely interested in what they have to say. Showing love for our friends may even open opportunities to serve them by praying for them. #4 comes back full circle to being real and honest with our friends in an unforced way.

If we believe that our life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3), then we should feel the freedom to share our lives with our neighbors, and to love them enough to take the time to listen and get to know them. It isn’t our life anyway, but Jesus’s (Gal. 2:20). We’re just sharing with others that which doesn’t belong to us.

*This article has been posted on several excellent websites:http://gospeldots.com/2012/06/28/tim-kellers-top-10evangelismtips/;http://faithim.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/572/;http://timchester.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/kellers-top-ten-evangelism-tips/ – The Ten tips originating with Dr. Tim Keller.

About Dr. Tim Keller: He is an a Pastor, Writer, and sought after speaker. He is wonderfully Christocentric and gospel centered in all that he teaches. Some of his well known books are: The Prodigal God; The Reason for God; and Counterfeit Gods. He will soon be releasing a book entitled Center Church based on his missional and gospel centered philosophy of ministry and church planting – this book has been much anticipated by pastors and church planters for several years!

Dr. Tim Keller on Learning Contentment

Editor’s Note: This is a cross-post from Tim Keller’s blog at Redeemer City to City.

It’s remarkable to read David, the Warrior-King of Israel, writing these words from Psalm 131.

My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

The metaphor for spiritual maturity here is a “weaned child.” On the one hand, we are a child at the mother’s breast, an image of complete helplessness. We are completely dependent on God. Without him we can do nothing. On the other hand, we are aweaned child, an image of contentment. Unweaned children cry in mother’s arms until they get something from mother — her milk. Only then are they quiet. But a weaned child is satisfied just with mother herself, with her very presence.

Here we see depicted, vividly and compactly, what Job was taught through all his trials. We must love God for himself alone, not just for what he gives us. This is the essence of what, for Jonathan Edwards, distinguished “true grace” from “the experience of devils,” who hold sound doctrine and tremble before God (James 2:19.) Real grace on the heart leads us to see the “beauty and comeliness of divine things, as they are in themselves” (from the sermon by the same name in volume 25 of the Yale edition of Edwards’ works). We become satisfied with God himself. Even his transcendent holiness is enjoyed as a beautiful and magnificent thing, which fills the heart to contemplate, though we certainly get nothing out of it!

If grace has really changed our hearts, we don’t ultimately care if life goes the way we want it, as long as we have him. The joys of acclaim, wealth, and power are nothing compared to the eternal acclaim, wealth, and power we have in him. A “weaned child” is not just someone who knows this in principle, but who has worked gospel truths into his or her soul as spiritually sensed realities. Internally, this quiets the soul into profound contentment and poise. Externally, it means humility, a willingness to learn from others and also to trust God. The believer realizes that the reason God’s actions are often opaque is not because we are wise and he is foolish, but because he is too “great” and “wonderful” for us.

A Christian should never have the attitude toward God, “what have you done for me lately?” Spurgeon said about Psalm 131 that it was “one of the shortest psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn.”

About Dr. Tim Keller: Is the Founding Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, N.Y. He is has written several best-selling books including: The Reason for God; The Prodigal God; The Meaning of Marriage; and Counterfeit God’s.

Dr. Tim Keller on the Consistency of the Biblical Message in the Old and New Testaments

“Old Testament Law and The Charge of Inconsistency”

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” What I hear most often is “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?”

It is not that I expect everyone to have the capability of understanding that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God’s plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological advisor) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.

First of all, let’s be clear that it’s not only the Old Testament that has proscriptions about homosexuality. The New Testament has plenty to say about it, as well. Even Jesus says, in his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19:3-12 that the original design of God was for one man and one woman to be united as one flesh, and failing that, (v. 12) persons should abstain from marriage and from sex.

However, let’s get back to considering the larger issue of inconsistency regarding things mentioned in the OT that are no longer practiced by the New Testament people of God. Most Christians don’t know what to say when confronted about this. Here’s a short course on the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament:

The Old Testament devotes a good amount of space to describing the various sacrifices that were to be offered in the tabernacle (and later temple) to atone for sin so that worshippers could approach a holy God. As part of that sacrificial system there was also a complex set of rules for ceremonial purity and cleanness. You could only approach God in worship if you ate certain foods and not others, wore certain forms of dress, refrained from touching a variety of objects, and so on. This vividly conveyed, over and over, that human beings are spiritually unclean and can’t go into God’s presence without purification.

But even in the Old Testament, many writers hinted that the sacrifices and the temple worship regulations pointed forward to something beyond them. (cf. 1 Samuel 15:21-22; Psalm 50:12-15; 51:17; Hosea 6:6). When Christ appeared he declared all foods ‘clean’ (Mark 7:19) and he ignored the Old Testament clean laws in other ways, touching lepers and dead bodies.

But the reason is made clear. When he died on the cross the veil in the temple was ripped through, showing that the need for the entire sacrificial system with all its clean laws had been done away with. Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice for sin, and now Jesus makes us “clean.”

The entire book of Hebrews explains that the Old Testament ceremonial laws were not so much abolished as fulfilled by Christ. Whenever we pray ‘in Jesus name’, we ‘have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus’ (Hebrews 10:19). It would, therefore, be deeply inconsistent with the teaching of the Bible as a whole if we were to continue to follow the ceremonial laws.

The New Testament gives us further guidance about how to read the Old Testament. Paul makes it clear in places like Romans 13:8ff that the apostles understood the Old Testament moral law to still be binding on us. In short, the coming of Christ changed how we worship but not how we live. The moral law is an outline of God’s own character—his integrity, love, and faithfulness. And so all the Old Testament says about loving our neighbor, caring for the poor, generosity with our possessions, social relationships, and commitment to our family is still in force. The New Testament continues to forbid killing or committing adultery, and all the sex ethic of the Old Testament is re-stated throughout the New Testament (Matthew 5:27-30; 1 Corinthians 6:9-20; 1 Timothy 1:8-11.) If the New Testament has reaffirmed a commandment, then it is still in force for us today.

Further, the New Testament explains another change between the Testaments. Sins continue to be sins—but the penalties change. In the Old Testament things like adultery or incest were punishable with civil sanctions like execution. This is because at that time God’s people existed in the form of a nation-state and so all sins had civil penalties.

But in the New Testament the people of God are an assembly of churches all over the world, living under many different governments. The church is not a civil government, and so sins are dealt with by exhortation and, at worst, exclusion from membership. This is how a case of incest in the Corinthian church is dealt with by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:1ff. and 2 Corinthians 2:7-11.) Why this change? Under Christ, the gospel is not confined to a single nation—it has been released to go into all cultures and peoples.

Once you grant the main premise of the Bible—about the surpassing significance of Christ and his salvation—then all the various parts of the Bible make sense. Because of Christ, the ceremonial law is repealed. Because of Christ the church is no longer a nation-state imposing civil penalties. It all falls into place. However, if you reject the idea of Christ as Son of God and Savior, then, of course, the Bible is at best a mish-mash containing some inspiration and wisdom, but most of it would have to be rejected as foolish or erroneous.

So where does this leave us? There are only two possibilities. If Christ is God, then this way of reading the Bible makes sense and is perfectly consistent with its premise. The other possibility is that you reject Christianity’s basic thesis—you don’t believe Jesus was the resurrected Son of God—and then the Bible is no sure guide for you about much of anything. But the one thing you can’t really say in fairness is that Christians are being inconsistent with their beliefs to accept the moral statements in the Old Testament while not practicing other ones.

One way to respond to the charge of inconsistency may be to ask a counter-question—“Are you asking me to deny the very heart of my Christian beliefs?” If you are asked, “Why do you say that?” you could respond, “If I believe Jesus is the resurrected Son of God, I can’t follow all the ‘clean laws’ of diet and practice, and I can’t offer animal sacrifices. All that would be to deny the power of Christ’s death on the cross. And so those who really believe in Christ must follow some Old Testament texts and not others.”

About the Author: Dr. Tim Keller was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and educated at Bucknell University, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary. He was first a pastor in Hopewell, Virginia. In 1989 he started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan with his wife, Kathy, and their three sons. Today, Redeemer has more than five thousand regular attendees at five services, a host of daughter churches, and is planting churches in large cities throughout the world. He is the author of The Prodigal God, Counterfeit Gods, and the New York Times bestseller The Reason for God. The article above was adapted from the June, 2012 Newsletter of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhatten, N.Y.: http://redeemer.com/new

Tim Keller on “The Call To Discipleship”

There is a growing recognition in churches today about the need for discipleship. In what follows I would like to describe, from the Gospel of Luke, what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Luke has some helpful insights about discipleship. The first eight chapters are focused on “who is Jesus?” But there’s a shift in chapter 9, where Peter with the help of the Holy Spirit realizes that Jesus is not one more in a succession of prophets and teachers. Peter says, “You are the Christ of God” – you are the Messiah, the one who is bringing the ruling power of God back into the world to heal and repair all the brokenness—whether it’s spiritual, psychological, social, or physical.

From the time Jesus’ identity is revealed, he begins to say, “Follow me.” If he is who he says he is, what does it mean to follow him? Being a disciple of Jesus Christ means setting a new priority, finding a new identity, and living a new mercy. All three are critical; they all fit together. Let’s look at them.

Setting a New Priority

(1) Being a disciple means setting a new priority. In Luke 9:57–62 Jesus meets three eager men, all willing to follow him. Jesus’ responses to them are surprisingly blunt. The first man says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus says, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” It’s as if Jesus is saying, “There’s nothing wrong with what you just said, but I discern a wrong attitude underneath your statement. Do you know what kind of Savior I am? I’m not the kind that rallies constituents, pulls together armies, and then triumphs. I am a Savior who saves through being condemned, through dying, through giving my heart to be broken. Let’s apply this to one area of your life: I see that you have a home, a nice standard of living. Are you willing to put me before that? Are you willing to lose those things for me?”

Then Jesus addresses two other men, similarly concerned with their families. One says, “I’d love to come with you, but first I have to bury my father.” The other says, “First let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” There is nothing wrong with having a funeral for your father or going back to see your family, but behind these requests Jesus sees a wrong attitude of heart. He’s saying, “I know you. For you specifically to go to your father’s funeral—or back home—would be a bad idea. I must come first.” Notice their language. In both cases they say, “Lord, first, let me do this.” Jesus says there can’t be any but first. “I must be your first priority.” That’s what he means when he says: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Anyone who plows a field must be completely focused on plowing. And following Jesus is no different, “My disciple has to be utterly focused on me.” By the way, “fit for the kingdom” is an unfortunate translation; the word there means “useful.” You might think he’s saying, “Unless you’re totally committed, you don’t qualify for my kingdom.” Of course no one qualifies for Jesus’ kingdom. It’s all by grace. He’s saying: Unless delighting Jesus, resembling him, serving him, and knowing him is your highest priority, the healing power of the kingdom of God will not be flowing through you. You will not be a useful vehicle for it.

The second and more cryptic line is, “Let the dead bury their own dead.” Obviously physically dead people can’t dig graves, so the first noun must refer to the spiritually dead. To be spiritually dead means to be as blind and insensitive to spiritual reality as a physical body is to physical reality. You may be saying, “Well, I believe in Jesus, but I can’t put him first right now. I’ve got my career; I’ve got to wait till my parents die, because they would be unhappy if I became a Christian . . . I see who he is and what he’s done, but I’m not going to put him first just yet. Someday I will.” When someone says, “I understand Christianity. I’m just not ready to put it at the central place in my life,” then that person really doesn’t understand it yet! Jesus says: Putting anything before me reveals spiritual deadness. Let the dead bury their dead. If you put your father before me, there’s a spiritual deadness in your life.

Talking this harshly is not my style, but I’m afraid to mute the smelling–salts-ness of Jesus’ message: Let the dead bury the dead! No one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God! Foxes have holes, birds have nests . . . But “I have to be the first priority in your life, or you’re not a disciple; if you don’t put me first in your life, it’s not that you’re just uncommitted or lazy, disorganized or undisciplined. No, you just don’t get it! You don’t really see who I am and what I’ve done; you don’t understand the meaning of my life and work. You need to wake up!”

Let me illustrate. In 1971 I heard a talk—two illustrations—that changed my life. The woman who gave the talk, named Barbara Boyd, said, “If somebody says to me, ‘Come on in, Barbara, but stay out, Boyd,’ it’s a bit of a problem, because I can’t separate them. It’s not like the top half of me is Barbara, and the bottom half of me is Boyd. So if you won’t have Boyd, you can’t get Barbara. If you’re going to keep the Boyd out, I can’t come in at all!” She continued: “To say, ‘Jesus, come into my life, forgive my sins, answer my prayers; do this for me, do that for me—but don’t be the absolute master of my life; Jesus, Savior, come in; but Lord, stay out,’ how can he come in at all? Because he’s all Savior, and he’s all Lord. He’s Lord because he’s Savior. He’s Savior because he’s Lord.”

I remember her second illustration: “If the distance between the Earth and the sun, which is 92 million miles, was the thickness of a piece of paper, the diameter of our galaxy would be a stack of papers 310 miles high. And our galaxy is less than a speck of dust in the part of the universe that we can see. And that part of the universe might just be a speck of dust compared to all the universe. And if Jesus is the Son of God who holds all this together with the power of his word, is this the kind of person you ask into your life to be your personal assistant?” Then she asked us all to go outside and for one hour say nothing. “Just think about what this means to you.”

She was expanding on Jesus’ message:  If you intellectually assent, “Yes, I think Jesus is probably the Son of God; I think he probably died for our sins,” but he is not the center of your life, then you may think you understand, but you really don’t. It’s not just a matter of commitment or lack of discipline, there’s spiritual deadness; you don’t really see it, understand it, get it. Wake yourself up!

Finding a New Identity

(2) Discipleship is not just a matter of bending your will to Jesus’ will; it’s melting your heart into a whole new shape. A disciple is not someone who simply sets a new priority; a disciple finds a new identity. We see this in Luke 9:23–25. At first sight verse 23 looks like it’s just another way of saying set a new priority: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” But there’s more to it than that. In Semitic literature, the second and third sentences often restate the first. And here the second and third sentences say, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will save it.” The word life is not the word for physical life. There’s a good Greek word for that: bios, from which we get our word biology. The Greek word that’s translated “life” here is psyche, meaning “self.” He’s talking—pretty radically—about the psychological, inner life. “Your old way of having an identity, of gaining a sense of self, has got to end. In a sense you have to die to it. And I can give you a whole new identity. You’ll get a whole new true self.”

Let’s look at this more closely. Verses 24 and 25 show what he’s not saying. He’s not taking the typical Eastern or Western approach to identity. In Buddhism the deepest consciousness of enlightenment is losing all sense that you are an individual self. The boundaries between you and the rest of reality disappear. The Eastern way to humility, to peace, is to actually lose the sense of an individual self.

But Jesus doesn’t stop at, “I want you to lose yourself.” He says, “Lose yourself to find yourself,” which means, “I want you to die to your old approach to identity, and get a new sense of individual self.” He’s not going the Eastern way. But he’s sure not going the Western way either.

W. H. Auden wrote a work called The Age of Anxiety in which he satirizes the modern Western obsession with “finding yourself.” In it there’s a great line that reads: “Miserable wicked me, / How interesting I am.” Others have also noted our obsession with finding and fulfilling your deepest desires as the main thing you’re supposed to do in life. It almost seems that Jesus has us in mind when he says, “You’re never going to find out who you really are by trying to find out who you really are. You’re going to have to lose yourself in serving me.” Some things happen only as a byproduct, and identity is one of them.

“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world?” (9:25). Gaining things from the world is the normal way we try to get a self. In fact, the three men at the end of Luke 9 are examples of this. Some people say you’re nobody unless you have a lucrative career. People in more traditional cultures say you’re nobody unless you have a family. But Jesus is saying, “If you get the whole world, it cannot give you a stable self.” He says, “If you lose yourself for me . . .” In other words, “Instead of trying to gain a self by gaining things, build everything in your life on me, on who I am, on what I have done, then finally you’ll have a true self that is stable, because you were built to know me.”

A disciple is not only someone who has set a new priority, but someone whose entire identity has been reshaped and forged. But how is that possible?

Living a New Mercy

(3) The key to setting a new priority and finding a new identity is in living a new mercy. And this is also evident in Luke 9. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and, it says in verse 52, “He sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him.” They rejected him. “When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?’”

Let’s try to understand them. Remember that there was a prophet, named Elijah, who called down fire upon some soldiers who were seeking to arrest him. And on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus had appeared—to James and John—with Elijah and Moses. The message of the Transfiguration (Luke 9:28–36) was that Jesus was even greater than Moses and Elijah.

So think of the logic of the disciples: You’re greater than Elijah. These people have rejected you, and that’s even worse than rejecting Elijah. That adds even more effrontery to the godhead. Shall we not bring down fire and destroy them?

This would be the kind of prophet the world can relate to. But Jesus Christ doesn’t rebuke the unbelieving Samaritans; he rebukes the disciples! He is the absolute un-Elijah. Can you imagine their continued perplexity if they still believe he’s greater than Elijah? The soldiers come after Jesus to kill him—in the Garden—and what does he do? He heals an ear that was cut during a skirmish. Later on, the soldiers are pounding nails into his hands, and what does he say? Father, forgive them; they really don’t understand what they’re doing.

Why doesn’t fire come down on the Samaritans? On the soldiers? The answer comes in Luke 12, where Jesus says, “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.” That’s very interesting for two reasons. One is that fire, in biblical imagery, always means the judgment of God. Second, he says he comes to bring fire on the earth! This is perplexing because, after all, he has just rejected Elijah’s fiery approach. Ah! Semitic literature: the second sentence is a restatement of the first; this is what he actually says, in Luke 12:49–50: “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!” He’s already been baptized with water, so he’s clearly talking about something else. “I’ve come to bring fire. How constrained I am until it’s completed. I have come to undergo a baptism, how crushed I am until it’s over.” Why didn’t the fire come down on the Samaritans or later on the soldiers? Because the fire came down on him. He was baptized. He was the one immersed in the judgment of God. He got what we deserved. This is the answer to all the riddles.

Look back over the years, and you will see that when people want to atone for their sins and be forgiven, they put a sacrifice on the altar and burn it with fire. There’s something inside us that intuitively says, “That can’t be enough to put away sins.” That’s right. All those fires were pointing to this fire. It didn’t come down on the Samaritans or the soldiers, because it came down on Jesus Christ. He came to take it. He came to bear it. Luke 9:22 says, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected . . . and on the third day be raised to life.” They rejected him; shouldn’t they be rejected? He’s rejected for them. The Son of Man came to be rejected and to be killed. This is the secret to the change of identity. You have to be melted and amazed and astounded that he took the fire, the punishment, for you. And that’s the key to everything else.

Here’s the reason: You cannot change your identity without a radical experience of mercy; without a radical experience of grace; without a radical experience of love.

I’ve heard people say, “You’re right. I probably should change my identity, build my identity on God.” But you can’t change your identity by just deciding. It’s not an act of the will. A person can’t just say, “You know, I’m having a problem in my life because I built my identity on my parents’ expectations. I think I’ll build my identity on my career and accomplishments.” You can’t do that! That’s not transformation; that’s acting. Your heart is not a computer in which you can just install a program. There’s only one way that the root of your personality can be changed, and that is by an experience of love. Only when your heart experiences love from a new source beyond anything it’s ever known before will your heart start to move toward that source, and begin to be deeply changed.

Thomas Chalmers, the well-known Scottish preacher, in his famous sermon, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” says it all: Seldom do any of our habits or flaws disappear by a process of extinction through reasoning or “by the mere force of mental determination.” Reason and willpower are not enough. “But what cannot be destroyed may be dispossessed… The only way to dispossess [the heart] of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one.” A young man, for example, may “cease to idolize pleasure, but it is only because the idol of wealth has become the stronger and gotten the ascendancy,” and is enabling him to discipline himself for prosperous business. “Even the love of money ceases to have the mastery over the heart” if it’s drawn into another world of ideology and politics, “and he is now lorded over by the love of power.” But “there is not one of these [identity] transformations in which the heart is left without an object. Its desire for one particular object may be conquered, but . . . its desire for having some one object” of absolute love “is unconquerable.” It is only when admitted “into the number of God’s children through the faith that is in Jesus Christ [that] the spirit of adoption is poured out upon us. It is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominate affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires, in the only way that deliverance is possible.” So it isn’t enough to hold out a “mirror of its imperfections” to your soul. It’s not enough to lecture your conscience. Rather, you must “try every legitimate method of finding access to your hearts for the love of him who is greater than the world.”

Until you’re melted by the amazing sight, knowledge, and sense of Jesus taking the fire for you, you can’t have that transformation of identity. You can’t just decide, “I think I’m going to change my identity.” It can’t be done. It has to be an experience of love.

Jesus is saying that your career can’t buy it for you. Even the best parents can’t give it to you. “Don’t give the title deed of your heart to anyone but me. Don’t have any other master but me, because I’m the only one that will never leave you, and if you fail me, will forgive you.”

So you have to have all three. There must be an experience of this new, radical mercy, which leads you to find a new identity, which in turn helps you set a new priority.

Being a Disciple

Notice three practical things about being a disciple.

First, discipleship is not an option.

Jesus says that if anyone would come after me, he must follow me. If you want to come after me—it’s a general term—if you want to have any experience of me, any relationship with me, you have to be a disciple. There are not two kinds of Christians: regular Christians and people who are really disciples. There’s only one: to be a Christian is to be a disciple. To have anything to do with me is to follow me in the way I define it: setting a new priority, finding a new identity, experiencing living out of a new mercy.

Second, having said that it’s not an option—on the other hand, it is a journey.

It’s rhetorically brilliant of Luke to note this. In verse 51 Jesus sets out on a journey toward Jerusalem. It’s Jesus’ journey of discipleship, “He sets his face to go to Jerusalem.” And it’s from the moment he begins his journey toward the cross that he begins all his teaching about discipleship. All the next nine chapters, all the teaching on discipleship, comes as he’s going on a journey. This is Luke’s way of saying that discipleship is a journey. In other words, on the one hand, there is a decisive point. You have to leave. Have you left? To go on the journey means saying, “I take my hands off my life.” To go on the journey means saying, “I give up my right to self-determination.” To go on the journey means saying, “I will obey you, Lord, and I’ll get rid of all the if’s. Not “I’ll obey you if,” but obey. Period. “I drop my conditions. I drop the if’s; they’re gone!” Not until you say that have you begun the journey. However, after your decisive beginning, the fact remains that it’s a journey. It’s a process that takes time. You’re not going to have it all together. It’s very important to keep that in mind, because if you think that discipleship is the way you’re saved—that by being committed and focused and giving Jesus the priority you’re going to please God and that will get you saved—you’re missing the point. Look at the order. He doesn’t say, “If you follow me, I’ll go to the cross for you.” He says, “I’m going to the cross for you, so follow me.” You’re not saved because you’re a disciple; you’re a disciple if and only if you understand what he has done to save you.

There is one last thing. The sign of true, growing, gospel disciples is their gentleness.

What really amazes me about the heart of this passage is that the disciples say, “We’re going to show you how intensely committed we are to you. Look at those people rejecting you. Don’t you want us to bring fire down on them?!” And what does Jesus say? “You don’t get it.” And here’s why.

My experience is that committed disciples of any religion, philosophy, or political cause are hard on themselves and on other people too. They’re committed to the cause, so why aren’t you committed to the cause? You should all be committed to the cause; what’s the matter with you? But the gospel is utterly different. The harder you are on yourself and the gospel, the easier you are on other people. Jesus Christ is saying: My disciples are not terrorists. My disciples know they’re saved by grace, so when they look at people who aren’t doing it right, they don’t say, “Why aren’t you as good as we are? Why aren’t you as committed as we are?” They don’t call fire down from heaven. Jesus says to his disciples: You don’t understand yet. You haven’t had the transformation of identity, because you don’t yet understand my mercy. You don’t know what I’ve done for you, because as yet you can’t, but someday you will. These disciples are probably racist; notice this: they’re calling down fire on the half-breed Samaritans. A lot of Israelites have done a lot of things to reject Jesus, but this is the first time any of his followers wanted fire to come down. Perhaps there’s racism; there’s definitely self-righteousness. Superiority, bigotry, stridency, harshness—they go away, the more you become a disciple. They go away as you become aware that Jesus took the fire for you, as it becomes more central in your heart. And that’s a sign that you’re not just trying to save yourself, not just being religious.

Are you becoming more gentle? More tolerant? More gracious with people around you? More kind? Follow Jesus. He’ll give you what you need. He’s a wonderful counselor. One guy comes and says, “I’m ready to follow you wherever you go.” Jesus says, “Go home and think about it.” Another guy says, “I want to go home and think about it.” Jesus says, “Follow me.” Why? Because he’s the perfect counselor. All other counseling theories look flat next to his, because he never gives you a template. He gives you exactly what you need. Follow him, and he will love you singularly. He will love the real you, and love you into a whole new identity. He will give you exactly what you need.

Sermon by Dr. Tim Keller given February 9, 2003, at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York. Edited and transcribed by the C.S. Lewis Institute.

About the Preacher: DR. TIMOTHY KELLER was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and educated at Bucknell University, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary. He was first a pastor in Hopewell, Virginia. In 1989 he started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan with his wife, Kathy, and their three sons. Today, Redeemer has more than five thousand regular attendees at five services, a host of daughter churches, and is planting churches in large cities throughout the world. He is the author of King’s Cross (on the Gospel of Mark), Counterfeit God’s, The Prodigal God (on Luke 15), the New York Times bestseller The Reason for God & the forthcoming Center Church (August 2012).