Got word today that my book has already hit the shelves of some stores earlier than I expected. If you've got a LifeWay close to you, may wanna check there. Not sure about other retailers yet.

This also means that my copies to give away should be arriving soon. If you'd like a shot at winning a free book, you can still join the fan page on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

Blog tour folks, I will be emailing you in the next day or so. Thanks for your patience!

A passionate, heart-jostling illustration of why moralism is the antithesis of the gospel.

Matt Chandler is seriously the best thing going in the "mega pastor" world right now.

"Your danger and mine is not that we become criminals, but rather that we become respectable, decent, commonplace, mediocre Christians. The twentieth-century temptations that really sap our spiritual power are the television, banana cream pie, the easy chair and the credit card. The Christian wins or loses in those seemingly innocent little moments of decision."

-- Raymond C. Ortlund, Sr.

Via my friend Ray Ortlund, Jr.

But you can help save a life with just $4.

Mosaic is raising funds for their new mosquito net campaign. They are trying to purchase 3,000 nets for women and children in Uganda.

You can support them by going here. Mailing address is on the site, or you can give online.

One great distinctive about Mosaic is that they have 0% overhead. 100% of your donation goes directly to help those in need. (Their administrative costs are paid for by an independent donor.)

Element has designated 20% of our budget to Mosaic for the past year, and we have found them to be a great organization doing wonderful, tangible ministry to the "least of these" in Africa.

I'll lay my cards on the table: I'm not a big fan of the culture war.

Here are some reasons why:

1. Its expectation is foolish.
Whether you believe America was ever a "Christian nation" or not, it is theologically naive and demonstrably false to think laws or policies make anyone a Christian. You cannot create or recapture a people for Christ by illegalizing sin. (Which, by the way, is not to say that certain sins shouldn't be illegal. It is only to say that, for instance, outlawing gay marriage or repealing Roe v. Wade won't make anybody a Christian, much less make America "a Christian nation.")

2. Its medium is moralism, not gospel.
This is similar to my point above. It makes kingdom militancy about religion, not gospel. It seeks a Christian coercion of others toward better behavior, not an incarnational sharing with others of the better Way.

3. It is theologically naive.
It is the height of weirdness to expect people who don't know Jesus to act like they do.

4. It is often hypocritical.
It is the height of weirdness to expect people who don't know Jesus to act like they do especially when we can't get our own house in order. So long as large numbers of Christians continue contributing to the divorce statistics, the porn industry, and more acceptable sins like gluttony and gossip and greed, we have zero business telling the world how to act. Judgment begins at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). Repent, Church!

5. It battles against flesh and blood.
We're not supposed to do that. (Eph. 6:12)

6. Its treasure is temporary.
I am not overly concerned with the culture war because it is a battle for something that doesn't last. Culture is temporary. I am far more interested in the transformation of peoples through the transformation of people than I am in the subduing of culture through the modification of behavior. Nobody ever got into heaven by acting better.

7. It makes idols of comfort and safety and propriety.
The culture war is largely driven by fear. We're afraid our public schools will ruin our children, we're afraid gay people will ruin our families. We're afraid a Democrat will ruin our country, we're afraid liberals will ruin our neighborhoods. Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to protect our family, and safety of course is not a bad thing. But neither is it a biblical virtue. Ditto comfort. Or have you not read the New Testament? I'm just gonna put this out there, but maybe it's God's design for us as people and for Christians throughout all time to endure hardship, danger, persecution, and even death. Wanting not to suffer is human. Thinking we deserve not to is unChristian.

8. It has no root in Jesus' ministry.
Jesus knew heart change didn't come through political power, cultural pressure, or zealotry, so he was keenly disinterested in those things.

9. It mangles mission.
The culture war sets the Church above and against the world, rather than in but not of the world. It turns us into picketers and politicos. It makes us suspicious and speculative and sensationalist. It takes relationship completely out of the missional equation. It turns us from peaceful ambassadors for Christ into pontificating warriors for Christianity. It does not ask us to serve and sacrifice, which are non-negotiables for Christian mission, but to maneuver and argue.

In Romans 1:5, Paul writes:

Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.

A few things:
Paul says we "call" people. This is the work of gospel proclamation, carried out in both word and deed.
Paul does mention "obedience," but this obedience is the kind that "comes from faith." Faith comes first, then obedience. It never ever ever ever works the other way.
Lastly, and most importantly:

10. The culture war is carried out for our name's sake, not Jesus'.
I am not a fan of gay marriage or Roe v. Wade, and even though I would vote to outlaw the former and repeal the latter, neither of those actions in themselves will make a single unbeliever say "How wonderful Christ is!"
The bitter truth is that the Christian culture war is not carried out for Jesus' glory and renown, but for ours. It makes "Judeo-Christian values" the end-game, the treasure of our mission. And that is idolatry. Nobody was ever legally or argumentatively or even culturally convinced to believe in Jesus. But millions have been loved and served and submitted to into believing.

Dying for somebody says a whole lot more than debating them.

I choose the gospel. Come hell or highwater, come a liberal administration in Washington for the rest of my life or actual suffering. My treasure is not Christianity, but Christ. My hope is not a Christian nation but a Christ-saturated universe. I trust not in princes but in the King of Kings. I choose war on hell and death through the liberating power of Jesus in the glorious gospel of the grace of God.
For the glory of God.

(Cross-posted at GDC)

Colossians 1:15:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Paul articulately asserts the truth of the Incarnation in Colossians 1, but his use of "firstborn" does not mean that there was a time when the Son of God wasn't (any more than John 3:16's use of "begotten" does -- as the Nicene Creed insists, Jesus is "eternally begotten"). But Paul's use of "firstborn" here holds such a wealth of meaning: namely, as it applies to Christ's sovereign authority and to his redemptive activity.

Biblically and culturally speaking, the firstborn son carried the weight of the family inheritance on his shoulders. The family name rested first with him. In the absence of the father, he is the head of the family. The firstborn son receives more honor, more expectation, and more authority.

This is Jesus, of course. The author of Hebrews tells us he is the radiance of God's glory. Romans 8 tells us that he is the heir of God. Inheritance talk is big in Galatians and Ephesians and Titus and Hebrews.
As our older brother, Jesus is due the authority and the wealth he is owed.
But unlike all other older brothers -- and I am one, so I know -- he walks in a way worthy of his honor. For our sake!

All through the Scriptures, from the murderous Cain to the sniveling idiot brother of Jesus' parable of the Lost Son, the older brother is consistently an utter and absolute failure. (So are most of the younger brothers, actually, but God consistently chooses them to make a point, I think.)

But not Jesus. Where disobedience and disregard ruled the roost of the firstborn, Jesus obeys the Father perfectly, submits to the eternal cause of the glory of the Father completely, and cares for and rescues and sacrifices his own well-being for his younger siblings to the utmost.

Jesus is the older brother who will not trade his birthright for a bowl of soup. Jesus is the older brother who will not trade his siblings into slavery.
Jesus is the older brother who leaves the comfort of his Father's estate to seek out his lost brother among the brothels and pigsties and actually rescues him from the degradation of the mud and dresses him in the Father's robe of his own accord.

To borrow from Sinclair Ferguson, Jesus is the "true and better" older brother.

To borrow from a favorite line in a favorite movie, Jesus is the older brother who does his job. Everybody else is the other guy.

(Cross-posted at GDC)

Audio from my message "Spiritual Worship in Suburbia," Part 3 in the Element series God vs. Suburbia is now available for download.

The message covers Colossians 1:15-20 and might be the most Jesus-saturated message I've ever done.

Grace (5): Sissy is speaking to me in her mean voice.

Me: I'm sorry. That's not very nice, is it?

Grace: No. So I don't want to be her sister any more.

Me: Well, that's not nice either. That's pretty mean.

Grace: Well, why should I be nice to her if she's not gonna be nice to me?

Me: Because that's called grace. That's why we named you that, remember? Remember that grace means being nice to someone and loving them even if they don't deserve it.

Grace: She doesn't deserve it.

Me: I know. But it would be easy to be sweet to her if she was being sweet to you, wouldn't it? If she was being nice to you, wouldn't you want to be nice to her?

Grace: Uh huh.

Me: But that's not grace. Grace means being sweet to your sister even if she's not being sweet to you.

Grace: Why would I want to do that?

Me: Because that's what God did for us. He loved us even though we're really bad. Didn't he?

Grace: Ohhh. Yeah. I'm gonna go watch TV now.

At our Pastors Gospel Group meeting yesterday, Ray Ortlund, as he consistently does, lit a gospel fire in the midst of us by reading this passage to us from Martin Luther's "Letters of Spiritual Counsel." It is so powerful and encouraging.

When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares that we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: "I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there shall I be also."

If that don't light your fire, your wick's wet.

(Cross-posted at GDC)

Sorry to bombard you with book stuff (not really), but I thought I'd share this excerpt with you:

We are saved from many things: sin, Satan, punishment, death. But primarily we are saved from the wrath of God. And we aren’t just passed over for wrath; we are brought in, held close, covered up. We have received reconciliation. This is such a powerful way to talk about salvation, because it moves us beyond self-centered talk of being saved into a personal faith, as if Christianity is about self-improvement, and takes us right into being unified again with God, which posits salvation such as it is -- Jesus the Savior taking dead strangers to God and transforming them into living friends.

This is from the chapter titled "Jesus the Savior."

A commenter friend at my solo blog relates the leaders at his church saying this to him about his concerns:

We respect where you're coming from with your focus on the gospel and the cross and all that, but our church is just in a different season right now.

The harvest season, no doubt. Where they'll be scythed up as tares and thrown in the furnace.

(Only slightly exaggerating.)

Once upon a time, my family made the very difficult and emotional decision of breaking fellowship with a church for several reasons, but the most important one, and the one that would have done it by itself, was the persistent neglect of gospel-centered teaching. Since I've begun publicly urging the evangelical church to reclaim the centrality of the gospel and re-form its discipleship culture around the gospel, I have heard from many others in the same boat.

Gospel deficiency is the biggest crisis of the American church. It has been replaced by many things, most commonly a therapeutic, self-help approach to biblical application. Bible verses are extracted to enhance calls to self-improvement and Jesus is preached as moral exemplar (which of course, he is, but then again, so is Mother Theresa). The result is a Church that, ironically enough, preaches works, not grace, and a growing number of Christians who neither understand the gospel nor revel in its scandal.

There are lots of good reasons to reclaim the centrality of the good news of Jesus in our preaching and teaching and writing and blogging, and I've come up with four basic arguments for (what I'm calling) The Gospel Imperative, but perhaps defining our terms is in order. It's no good going on about making the gospel the center of our worship and discipleship if we are not on the same page for what the gospel actually is.

Like many others, I affirm that the gospel is big. I favor a robust gospel, a good news proclamation with many facets and ramifications. It is everywhere in the shadows and in the light of the Old Testament Israelites' desert wandering, and it encompasses the brilliant kingdom landscape of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. It is in God's gracious covering of the freshly fallen Adam and Eve (and in the cursing of the serpent) in Genesis, and it is in the awesome return of the tattooed, sword-wielding Jesus 65 books later in Revelation. I agree with Tim Keller, who argues that the gospel is "both one and more than that." It is certainly "more than that." But it is also "one," which is why I, along with many others, hold that Jesus' substitutionary atonement is the sharp edge of the gospel. I nutshell this sharp edge with the simple compound "sin/grace." This is my way of signaling that the central point and sharp edge of all that the gospel holds is the basic transformative truth that "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 6:23).
So while acknowledging that the gospel is about the kingdom setting a fallen world back to rights, the gospel I am speaking about here, then, is the essential gospel, which is that Jesus has died and risen bodily and has thereby murdered sin and conquered death.

Pretty powerful stuff, ain't it? And yet many of our churches will barely touch on it even in an Easter service!
Here are four basic reasons for evangelicalism's reclamation of the gospel:

1. Because We Are Forgetful

Forgetting God's goodness is part of our fallen DNA. The Bible demonstrates this vividly. Studying the Gospel of John with some friends recently, we puzzled initially over the way the disciples believed in Jesus after his turning water to wine. Now, of course that would be cause for belief, but John's Gospel tells us just one chapter earlier that Jesus' self-attestation and his ability to know them (he reads Nathanel like a book) cause them to believe in him. Which was it?
Well, it's both. Certainly Jesus gives us endless reasons to worship him as Lord, but I am convinced that he does this graciously as we endlessly "forget" his Lordship. In the Old Testament, God sets the enslaved Israelites free in a mighty act of deliverance (that whole Red Sea parting thing) and one day later they're complaining about not having anything to eat. And that's just the beginning. God keeps providing; the Israelites keep grumbling.

Friends, we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us. We are fickle, self-righteous, forgetful people. Yet we serve a steadfast, gracious, faithful God. Many preachers are fearful of highlighting the gospel every time they speak for fear of it appearing stale. But gospel redundancy is a good thing! We need it. We need the gospel every day (His mercies are new every morning) because we forget it and we sin every day.
Do not aid your community in its forgetfulness by relegating the gospel to the periphery of your proclamation. We need to be reminded of it constantly.

2. Because It is the Power to Save

We all want to grow the kingdom, right? We all want to seek and save the lost, right? We all want to lead as many people as possible to salvation, right?
Then, why, for the love of God, do we preach all manner of behavior modification, none of which could save a single one of us, when only the gospel saves?
Paul writes in Romans 1:16, " I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes."
Yet if we could label our churches with the Nutrition Facts found on your can of soup, I reckon many would say in the fine print, "Not a significant source of gospel." Are we ashamed?
If the gospel is the power to save, shouldn't it be the meat of the message, not saved for the add-on invitation or for a special service every few weeks?

3. Because It is of First Importance

If holding the gospel as the power to save doesn't push us toward greater gospel-centeredness, certainly Paul's claim that is of "first importance" (1 Cor. 15:3) should do the trick. But, again, we hold off on the gospel. We make it occasional or half-hearted, thereby ascribing it lesser worth than our very important and self-devised Six Steps for Successful Living.
In a recent White Horse Inn podcast, the fellows warned listeners to beware the preacher who says, "Well, of course the gospel." The point here is that they are highlighting so much of what they do that is not the gospel and then when asked about the gospel's absence, they say, "Well, of course the gospel." In such churches the gospel is implied. Which means it is an afterthought.

The gospel should not be implied. It is of first importance. It should be the clearest, most prevalent message and theme of all a community's worship and focus.

4. Because It Glorifies God

The gospel is not advice. It is news.
It is not "Do more, be more, try more." It is the message that the work is done.
The gospel does not say "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." It says "It is finished!"

Our flesh hates this contrast. We hate it because the gospel says to us "You can't do it; you are unable; you are deficient." And we don't like to hear that. Nobody wants to hear that we are incapable of saving ourselves, that in our insidest insides we are broken and cannot repair ourselves.
But this is what the gospel forces us to admit. And because it forces us to admit we are sinners deserving punishment with no inherent means of rescue, it forces us to admit that only God can save us, which forces us to reckon with the gospel truth that salvation is God's work, not ours. God gets the credit. Grace means getting what we didn't deserve, and the gospel of grace announces that "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).

When we insist on preaching about our efforts and making the gospel an afterthought, we have begun glorifying our works, glorifying ourselves. But when we center on the gospel and revel in its proclamation, we are glorifying God, because we are holding Christ's finished good work more important than our insufficient good works.

The gospel is the hope of the world. It is my hope and it is yours. It should be our prayer and our humble insistence, then, that the people named for the gospel -- "evangelical" is built on the word "evangelion," Greek for "gospel" -- live and preach true to their name once again.

(Cross-posted at The Gospel-Driven Church as "Dude, Where's My Gospel?")

Just discovered you can now apparently pre-order my book on Amazon.

Go here and feel free to pre-order one or five.

I truly believe that the first step toward surrender to God is repentance. John the Baptist preached it. JESUS proclaimed it. Peter said to do it before you're baptized. Paul hammered on it. And, finally, the Lord again reiterated it multiple times in the book of Revelation.

I recently listened to a debate between a Trinitarian and a proponent of Oneness theology. The Oneness guy (a Pentecostal preacher), I believe, lost the debate, but he made a valid point at the end of the exchange. He said he thought there should be a heavier emphasis on repentance among evangelicals in general. He explained that repentance isn't merely saying you're sorry for your sin, but a deep, gut-wrenching understanding that you are despicable, an offense to God's holiness, and deserving of eternal separation from His presence. It's a rock bottom realization that you and your sin are filthy rags, and that you are in need -- dire need -- of a Savior.

I don't think a need for repentance can be overemphasized. We must repent of our selfishness, our materialism, our sensuality, our vanity, our idolatry, our avarice, our apathy, our gluttony ... everything. Repentance isn't just for the unconverted; it's for believers too.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent . . .
-- Acts 17:30 (ESV)

The apostle Paul said,

“To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel…” (I Corinthians 9:22-23).

What does that mean? Here’s a recent news story that I think illustrates it. Fireman dresses like Spiderman to save boy.

A Thai fireman turned superhero when he dressed up as comic-book character Spider-Man to coax a frightened eight-year-old from a balcony, police said Tuesday. "I told him Spider-Man is here to rescue you, no monsters are going to attack you and I told him to walk slowly towards me as running could be dangerous," Somchai told local television. The young boy immediately stood up and walked into his rescuer's arms, police said.

Pardon the analogy, but isn’t that a lot like what God did? He took on human form, something we were familiar with, so that he could rescue us and take us to God. Jesus was the ultimate missionary. He came to live with us and be like us so that we might be saved. And now we carry on his mission. Paul became like the gentiles to win the gentiles. Our missionaries today become like Africans, or South Americans or even tattooed bikers, so that they might save people. You and I are charged with that same task. How do we do that? How do we become like them in order to save them? We go where they are, like Paul did. He went to the Synagogues, he went to Mars Hill, he went to the marketplace. Wherever people were, Paul went. And wherever he went, he communicated in a language people could understand. To tentmakers, he talked like a fellow tentmaker. To ordinary people, he spoke like an ordinary person. To Jews, he spoke as a Pharisee. To Greeks, he spoke as an educated Roman citizen. It was always the same message, but made understandable for the hearers.

That’s our challenge today. How can we take the same, life-saving, unchanging, hope-filled message of the Gospel, and communicate it in a way that the lost people in your neighborhood will understand it? You can do that. Obviously, you don’t need to dress like Spider-Man. But you are housewives, business leaders, medical professionals, teachers, bankers, grandparents, soccer parents, students and neighbors. You are a person other people trust and will listen to, and you speak their language. And I don’t mean English. You understand and can communicate in a way that a fellow mom, or banker or student or neighbor would understand. God has given you the opportunity to be a missionary. Look around. Where has God placed you? How can you communicate the Gospel to those people that God has placed you in the midst of, in a way that won’t scare them or confuse them, but rather will lead them right into the arms of Jesus?

If you have any stories about how God has used you to make the Gospel understandable to someone else, will you share them under comments?

"Jesus is not a pop song, snuggly sweater, affectionate boyfriend, a poster on your wall, self-help book, motivational speech, warm cup of coffee, ultimate fighting champion, knight in shining armor, or Robin to your Batman. He is blood.

And without blood, you die."

(Excerpt from my book Your Jesus is Too Safe: Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel-Good Savior, coming in July from Kregel)

Last night on the way home from small group I listened to the guy on the local Christian radio station give a ten-minute presentation of what he learned in church the previous day. It boiled down to an appeal to make Jesus our "role model." (Yes, using those words.)

There is no better role model than Jesus. You won't find me arguing against that to anyone. And wanting Jesus for his benefits but not for his cross is a serious problem in Christianity.
But there was zero gospel content in this presentation. It could've been delivered by the Dalai Lama. Richard Gere thinks Jesus is an awesome role model. The world thinks Jesus is a good role model, and in fact, most of them wish Christians acted more like Jesus (or at least, more like their perception of Jesus).

"Jesus as role model" is not the gospel. At one point in his spiel, the radio dude hat-tipped self-help books and advice columns, saying "We read all those things, but we never think to go to the Bible for God's advice!"
As if the alternative to advice from the world is more advice, albeit from the Bible.

The gospel is not advice.

This is yet another example of something I've been harping on in my last two years of writing: just because you dress casual, play rock music, and talk a lot about grace, doesn't mean you aren't a legalist. And in fact, the self-professed "culturally relevant" churches today are the chief proponents of legalism in Christianity. They don't think they are, because they equate legalism with fundamentalism, with rigidity and dourness, with suits and ties and organ-led hymns. They equate legalism with "don't"s.

"Do" isn't any less legalistic than "don't."
"Do"s and "don't"s are just flip-sides of the same coin. The gospel isn't "do" any more than it is "don't"; both are merely religion.

And a Church that is mobilized with a gospel of "do good" might make for good p.r. for our churches, but the gospel of "do good" cannot really scandalize a lost and broken world, because most people know how to do good without the help of Christianity. They don't need the Church to be "good people."

And so the hip church believes it is railing against legalism and oferring grace because it creates culturally relevant, casual, innovative environments, because it makes the message of the Bible one of practical stuff to do, because it is cheerful, because it takes WWJD? seriously, and all the while they still don't know the power of the gospel of Christ's finished work, sufficient for salvation and fit for proclamation.
Instead we get the gospel of busywork.

Should we do good? Absolutely! Hearers of the word who don't "do" are only fooling themselves and have not the Spirit within them.
But if the gist and bulk of our proclamation is "do," we aren't preaching the gospel, which Scripture also calls us to do.

Remember that the Pharisees were the religious leaders who missed the gospel because of their focus on do's and don'ts. Pharisaical legalism was just self-help without good p.r.
This is why today's Pharisees aren't the concerned folks in the pews worried about their discipleship (as they are so often accused), but rather the preacher on the stage whose message is always helpful tips on how to get better at being a Christian.

We are eager to hand over our sin to God; we are ever reluctant to put our righteousness on the altar.

Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works.
-– Robert Farrar Capon

Oh, for a recovery of the glory of the gospel!

(Cross-posted at The Gospel-Driven Church)

Once there were two brothers. You know their story, more than likely. One was wasteful, exploitative, wanton, licentious. One was rigid, moralistic, uptight, legalistic. Two brothers with two personalities and two sets of attendant sins. But their father loved them both and all that he had belonged to both of them equally.

This is how staggeringly awesome the gospel of Jesus is.

Two sisters. One is a busybody, the other kinda poky. One rarely Sabbaths; the other makes every day a Sabbath. The prescription for both is focus on Jesus.

Two Americans. One is a practicing homosexual and proud of it. The other is a practicing Baptist and proud of it. One trusts his feelings, the other trusts his actions. Both are in desperate need of Jesus for pretty much the same reason.

This is how wonderful the gospel of Jesus. It's the skeleton key for all of humanity.

Medicine doesn't work this way. You don't treat spina bifida with drugs for leukemia. (At least, I don't think you do.) You don't give a decongestant to a kid with athlete's foot. For every condition, there is a specific treatment. Different symptoms, different fixes.

But the gospel isn't like that. It fixes everything.

We all exhibit a multitude of symptoms for our conditions, running the gamut from self-indulgent immorality to self-satisfying morality. Opposite ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between. Whatever your symptoms, the gospel is the answer.

There is no problem, pain, or perniciousness outside the universe-spanning scope of the gospel.
The gospel carries with it resurrection power.

So Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, rich or poor, smart or dumb, well or sick, bad or good . . . the gospel is the power to save for all who believe.

The gospel is the antidote to everything.

(Cross-posted at The Gospel-Driven Church)

Joe Thorn: My Dad, The Christian