On Friday, October 1, 2010, Tullian Tchividjian (pastor, author, and grandson of Billy & Ruth Graham) gave a talk entitled “Giving Thought to Gospel Math: Why Jesus + Nothing = Everything” at the 2010 Desiring God National Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The conference theme was “Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God.”
Tchividijian’s talk was based in the book of Colossians. This post is an attempt to highlight the main points and details of his talk.
He stressed that the gospel is for people inside the church as well as out – it’s fuel as well as ignition, that once God saves us, He doesn’t move us beyond the gospel but rather, further into it. While he’s very encouraged by this gospel centric resurgence in the church, he exhorted us to “amp it up a notch.”
The outline is as such, that “gospel math” addresses:
- Motivation
- Identity
- Idolatry
Motivation
There’s still some trepidation re: the gospel and grace because of a common misunderstanding about the nature of grace – e.g. “dangers to avoid” – legalism and lawlessness. As the argument goes, in order to maintain the equilibrium, we need to balance law and grace. However, framing it in this way keeps us from understanding the radical depth of God’s grace.
Tchividijian suggested that it’s more accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel – legalism – and that legalism can take two forms, both of which are “self-salvation projects.” First, there are the people who save themselves by doing right, performing well – front door legalism, as it were. Second are those who attempt to save themselves by breaking the rules, by ascribing to autonomous standards – that if we do what we want, then we find freedom.
The biggest lie about grace is the idea that grace is dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check. Believing this violates gospel advancement in the church and our lives.
The law scares us less than grace. Grace takes the focus off of us and puts it on Christ and HIS power, not on our own (rules). Relying on our own rules is much more comfortable.
Now, obedience matters. Tchividjian reminded us that as a pastor, he certainly understands the fear of “too much” grace – but he reminded us that fear comes from the pit of hell.
As a parent, he often thinks that the way to get his teenagers to behave is to crack down. But he has oftentimes concluded that the only way to “keep licentious people in line” is when they get a taste of God’s radical acceptance of sinners.
The irony of gospel growth is that those who obey more are those who realize that their standing with God is not based on their obedience but Christ’s… not on our radical fetes for Jesus but rather on His fetes for us.
Only when our hearts are captured do we begin to obey more.
People need to hear less on what we can do for God and more on what God does for us!
And people become moralists – unintentional legalists – when the focus is on imperatives and not indicatives. He reminded pastors of their accountability in this.
He noted that the apostle Paul always spent time on indicatives before getting down to imperatives, first exhorting people on the gospel and the awesome power of God, on what God has done, on God’s love, before offering imperatives. Colossians is an example of this – the first two are spent on indicatives of God’s love, and chapters 3 and four get down to the imperatives to the church. As Tchividjian put it, “Paul spends the first two chapters on marinating the people in what God has done!”
Some more gospel math? Imperatives – Indicatives = Impossibilities
Long-term sustained obedience must be grounded in the gospel rather than short-term fear/guilt. And God is interested in a certain kind of obedience – not just anything (look at Cain & Abel). Attitude matters to Him. He wants a cheerful giver – so what motivates our obedience?
Identity
The world wants us to locate our worth in something smaller than Jesus. The gospel liberates us from other identities.
Tchividjian described this last year as being the most difficult in his life. His church merged with another congregation and styles clashed, so for what he said was really the first time in his life, he lost acceptance and was subject to ridicule. It took away the identity that he had placed in what others thought, robbed him of the comfort of acceptance. And following this, his father died unexpectedly.
Colossians 1 – he loves us too much to give us over to old idols.
“Because Jesus was strong, I’m free to be weak. Because He won, I am free to lose. I can lose anything because my identity is in Him, and that is an identity I will never lose.”
Everything – Jesus = Nothing, but Jesus + Nothing = Everything.
“In Christ, my identity is secure, which frees me to give everything I have because in Christ I have everything I need.”
One of the most powerful quotes of his talk was this: “Real slavery is living your life trying to gain favor. Real freedom is living your life knowing you have favor.”
Idolatry
The threat to the gospel is idols – idols within the church. Most idols are good things that become ultimate things.
He quoted C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters at length, specifically focusing on the passages where the older demon, Screwtape, is writing to his prodigy, Wormwood, as to ways to keep his “patient” (a young Christian man) distracted. Screwtape suggests the practice of “Christianity and.” Screwtape says to never let believers come to the place where they really believe that mere Christianity is enough.
So Tchividijian asked: what is the one thing that would devastate you to lose?
That is your idol. Those are your idols.
In closing, he read a quote from Malcolm Muggeridge, a 20th century British journalist turned Christian apologist:
“We look back on history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of ‘the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.’
In one lifetime I have seen my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, ‘God who’s made the mighty would make them mightier yet.’ I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian proclaim to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own assumption of power. I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Ashoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius. I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that Americans, had they so wished, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.
All in one little lifetime. All gone with the wind. England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.
All in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.
Behind the debris of these self-styled, sullen supermen and imperial diplomats, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope. The person of Jesus Christ.”
EDIT: It has come to my attention that Pastor Tchividjian tweeted a link to this post. Thank you, Pastor, for your message last Friday. It convicted and encouraged me. Praise God for the things He did that weekend!
From the Basement 