About a year and a half ago, I came across an interview about a book called Surprised by Grace that stopped me in my tracks. In my limited and admittedly cynical experience, “grace” in the title of a book/church tends to signal its opposite, so I was primed to roll my eyes – to be ungracious, in other words. Shame on me! I read it once, and then I read it again. Sure enough, here was a new voice articulating much of the same liberating message that had inspired the founding of Mockingbird: the understanding that the “basic” Gospel message is for Christians as well as non-Christians, that we never move beyond our need to hear it. It was exciting! The writer being interviewed spoke about the distinction between the Law and the Gospel; indeed, he seemed totally fixated on the radicality of a grace that eschews balance, that doesn’t hedge its bets or blink when it comes to the “It is finished” portion of Christ’s dying words. Christian freedom, plain and simple, the sort that you almost never hear from the Right (or Left), expressed with the unmistakable passion of a man freshly possessed – indeed, a man for whom this message, far from being mere theological window dressing, had clearly made the difference between life and death. The author in question was Tullian Tchividjian.
Here we are 18 months later, he’s become a virtual friend and co-conspirator (not to mention Mbird cheerleader numero uno – we are grateful), and his passion for grace has only intensified, praise God. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that his conviction isn’t superficial, that he has already suffered the slings and arrows that inevitably accompany the fearless proclamation of fearlessness, especially in the circles in which he is operating: accusations of lawlessness, antinomnianism, cheap grace, etc. Earlier this month, he delivered the follow-up to the book that initially caught our attention, the arithmetically titled Jesus + Nothing = Everything. It is the story of Tullian’s conversion, a story of life and death. Or, I should say, of death and life, his second conversion – his continual conversion. And it’s delivered with the breathless joy of a man who has rediscovered what was there all along, and can hardly believe his good fortune. It’s inspiring, to say the least.
I was flattered to be asked to contribute a blurb, and upon reading the manuscript, was relieved (moved!) that I could be 100% sincere. Here’s what I came up with:
Brace yourself for a Gospel tornado! Tullian speaks from the heart to the heart, reclaiming the ‘good’ part of the good news in bold and liberating fashion. To those suffering under the gravitational pull of (internal as well as external) legalism, AKA everyone, Jesus Plus Nothing Equals Everything represents the only lifeline there is, the mind-blowing, present-tense freedom of God’s justifying grace. No ‘if’s, ‘and’s or ‘but’s here, thank God, just the enlivening and relieving Word in all its profundity, with powerful illustrations to spare – a matter of survival for all of us neurotic, heavy-laden men and women. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll read it over and over and over again. Of course, you don’t have to…!”
In other words, what we have here is precisely what we need more of: a highly accessible, exciting, compassionate, full-tilt introduction to the Gospel of Grace that avoids the head-trip abstractions and dry impersonality of most such attempts, without blunting its polemical edge. And most remarkably, he doesn’t pull back, not even in the final chapter! This is because Tullian, like the pastor that he is, is concerned with reality. He refuses to whitewash the human condition (or himself!), or entertain wishful notions of spiritual progress, which makes the grace in question that much more profound. Instead, he comes clean about the betrayals and loneliness and self-importance that led him to where he is; in fact, you might even say that he understands the persisting urgency of the Gospel in the life of Christians because he has suffered the persisting cruelty of his fellow believers, the stuff that brought him to his knees, essentially killing him – as he deftly demonstrates in the (obligatory) expository sections, it’s the same stuff that the Colossians were dealing with, a fear- and sin-induced failure to believe the goodness of the Gospel.
While Tullian’s crisis rings true, this is not a downbeat read – not remotely. It’s a breath of fresh air and honesty, especially for Christians who have been burned by conservative legalism/Pharisaism and are trying to make sense of a religious landscape that devours its own, wondering if there’s any genuine comfort to be had. That Tullian draws on a number of our favorites – Martin Luther, Gerhard Forde, Michael Horton, and yes, PFMZ himself – is just an added bonus. And rest assured, we’ll be adding it, double pun intended, to the next Mockingbird book table, right next to The Ragamuffin Gospel. I’ve reproduced a bunch of choice excerpts, some of which may have you doing a double-take, as the familiarity and sympathy is more than uncanny, it’s a testament to the sustaining potency of the message and the sovereignty of the Messenger. In fact, as Tullian so powerfully reminds us, familiarity is the whole point. Wash, rinse, repeat, chirp chirp chirp:
It’s almost as if, for me, the gospel changed from something hazy and monochromatic to some- thing richly multicolored, vivid, and vibrant. I was realizing in a fresh way the now-power of the gospel—that the gospel doesn’t simply rescue us from the past and rescue us for the future; it also rescues us in the present from being enslaved to things like fear, insecurity, anger, self-reliance, bitterness, entitlement, and insignificance (more on all this later). Through my pain, I was being convinced all over again that the power of the gospel is just as necessary and relevant after you become a Christian as it is before.
The Bible makes it clear that the gospel’s premier enemy is the one we often call “legalism.” I like to call it performancism. Still another way of viewing it, especially in its most common manifestation in Christians, is moralism. Strictly speaking, those three terms—legalism, performancism, and moralism—aren’t precisely identical in what they refer to. But there’s so much overlap and interconnection between them that we’ll basically look at them here as one thing… It shows up when behavioral obligations are divorced from gospel declarations, when imperatives are disconnected from gospel indicatives. Legalism happens when what we need to do, not what Jesus has already done, becomes the end game.
Our performancism leads to pride when we succeed and to despair when we fail. But ultimately it leads to slavery either way, because it becomes all about us and what we must do to establish our own identity instead of resting in Jesus and what he accomplished to establish it for us. In all its forms, this wrong focus is anti-gospel and therefore enslaving.
Moralistic preaching is stimulated by a fear of the scandalous freedom that gospel grace promotes and promises. The perceived fear is this: if we think too much and talk too much about grace and the radical freedom it brings, we’ll go off the deep end with it. We’ll abuse it. So to balance things out, we need to throw some law in there, to help make sure Christian people walk the straight and narrow.
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It’s part of a common misunderstanding in today’s church, which says there are two equal dangers Christians must avoid. On one side of the road is a ditch called “legalism”; on the other is a ditch called “license” or “lawlessness.” Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law, on rules. Lawlessness, they say, happens when you focus too much on grace… This dichotomy exposes our failure to understand gospel grace as it really is; it betrays our blindness to all the radical depth and beauty of grace.
I believe it’s more theologically accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel—legalism—but it comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (I call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (“back-door legalism”)… Either way, you’re trying to “save” yourself, which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects.
When we believe, deep down, that God’s blessing depends on how well we’re behaving, we wither and groan under the heavy burden of self-reliance. In this performancism, we eventually figure out that being the star of our own show actually makes life a tragedy. When life is all about us—what we can do, how we perform—our world becomes small and smothering; we shrink. To have everything riding on ourselves leads to despair not deliverance.
Ironically, when we focus mostly on our need to get better, we actually get worse. We become neurotic and self- absorbed. Preoccupation with our effort instead of with God’s effort for us makes us increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective. Again, think of it this way: sanctification is the daily hard work of going back to the reality of our justification. It’s going back to the certainty of our objectively secured pardon in Christ and hitting the refresh button a thousand times a day. Or, as Martin Luther so aptly put it in his Lectures on Romans, “To progress is always to begin again.”
When it comes to our sanctification, suddenly we become legalists… Sanctification is the hard work of giving up our efforts at self- justification… Sanctification involves God’s daily attack on our unbelief—our self-centered refusal to believe that God’s approval of us in Christ is full and final. It happens as we daily receive and rest in our unconditional justification.
I’m realizing that the sin I need removed daily is precisely my narcissistic understanding of spiritual progress. I think too much about how I’m doing, if I’m growing, whether I’m doing it right or not. I spend too much time pondering my failure, hovering over my spiritual successes, and wondering why, when it’s all said and done, I don’t seem to be getting that much better... The real question, then, is: What are you going to do now that you don’t have to do anything? What will your life look like lived under the banner which reads, “It is finished?”
While the law guides, it does not give. It has the power to reveal sin but not the power to remove sin. It simply cannot engender what it commands. The law shows us what godliness is, but it cannot make us godly like the gospel can. The law shows us what a sanctified life looks like, but it does not have sanctifying power as the gospel does. So, apart from the gospel, the law crushes. The law shows us what to do. The Gospel announces what God has done. The law directs us, but only the gospel can drive us. It’s very important to keep these distinctions in mind.
The operative power that makes you a Christian is the same operative power that keeps you a Christian: the unconditional, unqualified, undeserved, unrestrained grace of God in the completed work of Christ. As I said, the banner under which Christian’s live reads, “It is finished.” So relax, and rejoice… You’re free!
p.s. You have to pick up the book, if only to read his wonderful extended riff on accountability groups, not to mention the incredible closing illustration.
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14 responses to “Jesus Plus Nothing Equals a Gospel Tornado”
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Thanks for the heads up on what promises to be a good read. It is indeed encouraging to begin to hear the Christian community remember that the gospel is indeed for the church.
It is also validating for those of us who have experienced God’s redemption as a process as much as an event, a persistent and haunting call to come, see, die, and live.
How strong the law of love is.
Looks like a good read. It is good to hear the church begin to remember again that “his law is love, and his gospel is peace.”
It’s also powerful for those of us whose redemption has been more a process than an event, a persistent, haunting call to come, see, die, and live.
Whoops. Looks like the comments were working after all. 🙂
TT’s book has occasioned much complaining among many Calvinists. One such attack on TT was in a blog entitled “Aggressive Sanctification”. Here is part of my response:
Many “Calvinists” pay lip-service to “imputation”, but they brag about being “real relational” with Christ the “person” and think that’s more important than any dull “algorithm” about imputation. They are glad that they themselves are “relevant” when it comes to their “sanctification”. To them, the “Lordship of Christ” means “sanctification” by works, so they think they have an “opportunity” to succeed or fail (and thus to be rewarded or punished).
So that you will not think I doing a caricature of “Lordship preaching”, let me quote:
SBW: “When the preponderance of my thoughts about my daily life with God are only seen from the perspective of Christ’s substitution and my unworthiness to merit his favor, not only do I miss the joy and motivation of knowing my deeds today can actually please God, but I can be left with a distant, abstract, academic view of my relationship with him.”
Mark responds: Like the Galatian false teachers, the sanctification by works teacher does not deny justification by imputation. But he does minimize justification as only one “perspective”. We live in a day when there are no more antitheses. You can say one thing, say another thing that contradicts the first thing, and then put them together as different “perspectives”.
Notice the emphasis on “my thoughts”. No longer is the question about what “sanctification” means. Nor is the writer making biblical distinctions between sanctification by Christ’s blood and sanctification by Christ’s Spirit. Instead, he wants us to think about what we are thinking. In his pietistic disregard for that which is “academic” (“distant” he writes), he wants to get to what is “actual”. Of course he doesn’t say that justification isn’t actual but he wants us to be thinking less about that and more about what’s not virtual but “real”.
Again, I am not caricaturing. I quote SBW: “I can begin to assume that it is only the perfect Christ that “God sees” (as though it were all some visual reality and not a relational reality). It is as if I am now, at least theoretically, absent from the relationship and if not absent, in some way made so irrelevant that my thoughts and actions can neither please him or grieve him in any real way.”
Mark responds: At the end of the day of course, it doesn’t matter what we want. The salvation by works teacher wants to be relevant, at least in his own “sanctification”. And of course, the thrill of victory is never so sweet unless there was a possibility of the agony of defeat. So the teacher wants to be present in his relationship with God in such a way that his “sanctification” depends on him, even though he will of course give his god the credit for his not being like those who thought they were justified but were not because they were not “sanctified”.
As I say, it doesn’t matter if I myself don’t want to be relevant in that way. It doesn’t matter if I want “free grace” all the way down, even into my “sanctification”. Isn’t the “grace” that helps us to do what we need to do to be sanctified also grace? Why insist on “free grace”? Just because I happen to want “without a cause in me” grace, that doesn’t prove that such grace is biblical when it comes to “sanctification”.
Let me continue to quote from SBW: “Scripture tells us that his redeemed children not only have a very real opportunity to actually please him, but we also have an abiding opportunity to truly displease him. We are told that when Christians, who have been declared holy in justification, choose to engage in unholy behavior as they sin in their walk of sanctification, that they “grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Ephesians 4:30).
Mark: If I respond by asking which Christian is not sinning in their walk, doesn’t that prove that I am antinomian? Unless this preacher is making some kind of distinction between sins that we choose to sin, and sins that we sin but don’t choose, it seems to me that we all grieve the Holy Spirit by our sin. So the “opportunity to fail” is not the difference in question here. (Even though we could dispute about the potential to fail being a good thing or not!)
The question in play here is what happens when we fail. What theory of “sanctification” is more likely to make us fail less? If I fail in my “sanctification” and that makes me scared of the second coming of Christ (rewards and punishments you know), will that make me work more so that I won’t fail so much? Thus the idea of the “beauty of gospel threats”.
But notice that our salvation by works teacher is not perfectionist. He’s not promising that he will work, but only telling us that the Bible says that you will get more “sanctification” IF you do work. And also he’s suggesting that people like me, who keep looking at the perfect obedience of Christ (the “visual reality”) will not be so keen to look at (and do something about) our own lack of obedience. We will be content (and even “relaxed”) to confess that our sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, and then go on sinning.
So he’s not saying (out loud, at least) that he won’t go on sinning. He’s merely warning that an “unbalanced” focus only on imputation and justification will get in the way of sanctification by works. People who look at everything through the perfect record of Jesus most likely will go on sinning. And he is warning us about that, and not making a claim that his own working keeps him from sinning
I quote SBW: “When Paul is exhorting the Corinthians to pursue holiness in 1 Corinthians 10, he compares them to the Israelites following their exodus from Egypt. He goes to great lengths to say that they,like the Corinthians,were graciously chosen by God as his people through the merits of another, specifically the Christ “who followed them”. BUT the instructive warning of the passage is, that in spite of the fact that by grace they were considered God’s chosen people, “with most of them God was not pleased” (v.5). Their complaining and intemperance stirred God’s displeasure toward them to the point that he responded by ending their lives”.
Mark responds: Notice again what the teacher is not saying. Like the Galatian false teachers, he’s not saying that sin causes people to lose their justification. He’s not at all denying the imputation “equation”. He’s simply saying that there’s MORE to the Christian life than justification. You can be sanctified also, and unlike justification, that IS by works.
The Galatians parallel is real. Both parties in the dispute are open to the idea that some in the other party are lost, never justified, not even Christians. The “you can be sanctified also (by works)” party is saying sanctification is the evidence of justification. You are not justified by circumcision, but sanctification is by circumcision, and if you won’t get sanctified, then that means you were never justified, because both are the results of “real” union with Jesus “the person”.
Paul is the other person in the Galatians controversy. He also thinks some in the other party may not be Christians. If you get yourself circumcised to get a blessing, it doesn’t matter if it’s for justification or sanctification, “Christ will be of no profit to you.”. Don’t do it. I warn you. Don’t attempt to be sanctified by works.
Galatians 2:21 If justification is by grace but sanctification is by works, then Christ died in vain for sanctification? No, that’s not what Paul writes. If any part of salvation is by works, then Christ died to NO purpose.
Paul doesn’t seem to be a “perspectives” kind of guy. He doesn’t say: we agree to disagree about how sanctification works. He doesn’t say: well, some of us are just more “gospel awake” than others who tend to be a bit “legalistic”. Paul insists: if the extra stuff (sanctification, rewards, punishments) depends on law, then Christ died in vain.
I quote SBW: “When I recognize and affirm that in my walk of sanctification, I can in one act please God and in another displease him, my daily relationship is moved away from any category of abstraction or theory, and I come to sense the biblical reality of truly relating to God on a daily basis.”
Mark responds: Again, we have the pietistic covert antithesis. Justification: abstract theory. Working to get sanctified: reality of truly relating.
Notice the big buts used by SBW: “Our actions cannot earn or keep a place in God’s family, BUT as the graciously adopted members of God’s family, we are not dealing with an equation, or a software algorithm, we are dealing with and relating to a Person. We want our children to know they are accepted by their parents and have a secure place in our family. BUT that does not mean that their behavior doesn’t bring very real pleasure or displeasure to their mom and dad. An accepted and settled place in the family is not the same thing as whether they will bring joy or pain to our hearts today.”
Mark responds: I don’t mind saying the obvious thing. Indeed, I rejoice to repeat this. IMPUTATION BRINGS ME JOY. I GET EXCITED ABOUT IMPUTATION. IMPUTATION PUTS JOY IN MY HEART.
If we claim that sanctification by works is not in competition with justification by Christ, we are idolaters who love the works of our hands more than Christ. We are idolaters who say that what Christ has done is not enough to get us everything, but we can get “more” if we work for it.
Mark,
I’m not sure what is making you want to drive such a huge wedge between yourself and other Christians on this particular issue. You have repeated a few times that they do not disagree with you on imputation. I guess you are saying they accept Paul’s teaching in Galatians, but then turn around and deny it with their own teaching on sanctification. Fair enough. But then, so does Paul himself and Jesus and every other biblical author if we are judging by your standards. 1 Thess 4:
“As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.”
Apparently Paul does not find it so easy to draw the antithesis you draw. Nor do thousands of other Christians who have read Galatians in the context of the rest of Scripture (or even in the context of the rest of the Pauline corpus). So before you imagine that anyone who does not subscribe to your ideology is “an idolater who loves the works of [his] hands more than Christ,” it may be worth perusing through your New Testament to find out how often you’d be tempted to call the biblical writers themselves (including Paul) idolaters. There are whole letters in Paul in which his main concern is that those who have believed in justification are not living as though they do.
I am grateful that you have not even pretended to struggle with the NT yourself in the above post, so in that sense, you have not been too misleading. But for the sake of other sincere believers who want to allow the Bible or Jesus or Paul or the Spirit to speak to their conscience–who even while believing in imputation still struggle with the fact that they have a body and mind which are meant to honor God on this earth though they daily fail to do so–try to acknowledge the irony that takes place when you call them self-righteous.
This is not a new topic in the church. The Bible could have been much more clear and propositional than it is. Perhaps there is a reason for that. Perhaps there is a “Person” behind the proposition. And of course, we are people too. Relationships between people are complex, and it seems, so also is the gospel that reconciles us. You may be more right “doctrinally” on this issue. I tend to agree with you, I think, on a lot of what you’re saying. But too often people like you and me have misled struggling Christians with false antitheses that just make the pendulum swing the other direction–we give them new struggles and new ways to be self-righteous, rather than the person of Jesus who is the only one who can save us from all of the above.
But perhaps I’m being a little harsh myself…
Amen, amen and amen, dear Ross. What you have said is what I unsuccessfully tried to say in this forum for years, but which you have so perfectly and so honestly and so graciously managed to say in 5 golden paragraphs.
I was pleased to see this book on Amazon Vine yesterday, so I’m getting it for free. Actually asked Tullian to write a review for my next Bo Giertz volume coming out. Hey, perhaps you guys are interested in a sneak peak too? Email me.
Nice one Ross.
I, for one, will err to the side of giving God “too much credit” for my justification, sanctification and glorification. The Apostle Paul’s exhortations are relationally toward one another. When it comes to our relation to God he has Christ’s entire work “for us” in the crosshairs. He uses terms like “human limitations” in his writings because he himself saw his utter lack of “progress” at the end of Romans 7. His “progress” seems to be only in clinging to Christ (from his perspective… Christ actually has us, therefore, nothing can separate us…).
We all pay “lip-service” to grace at some point… unfortunately.