Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing: An Important Theme in Lord of the Rings

Tim Keller:

This is a very important theme in Tolkien. The elves are often described as both old and young, both joyful and sad.
A more explicit expression of it is the description of Gandalf in Book 3-

. . . in the wizard’s face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.

And I agree—it is very helpful in describing the demeanor of Christians, who will feel the fallenness of the world most keenly because they know what God created the world to be, and who know that nothing within history will ever bring about any fundamental repair of things, and yet Christians also have an unquenchable, infallible assurance that in the end, everything will be joy and glory. So how else can we act, but “sad, but not unhappy,” “afflicted, but not crushed”—weeping, but rejoicing.

We Are Always Looking To Something Else Other Than God and His Grace For What We Need

“We habitually and instinctively look to other things besides God and his grace as our justification, hope, significance, and security. We believe the gospel at one level, but at deeper levels we do not. Human approval, professional success, power and influence, family and clan identity- all of these things serve as our heart’s ‘functional trust’ rather than what Christ has done, and as a result we continue to be driven to a great degree by fear, anger, and a lack of self-control. You cannot change such things through mere willpower, through learning Biblical principles and trying to carry them out. We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.”
Tim Keller, The Prodigal God, p. 115

Four Kinds of People

LAW	Relying	Not relying
Obeying	1) Law-obeying, law-relying	4) Law-obeying, not law-relying
Disobeying	2) Law disobeying, law-relying	3) Law disobeying, not law-relying

Tim Keller, Galatians Study, p. 118:
Law-obeying, Law-relying
These people are under the law, and are usually very smug, self-righteous and pharisaical.
Externally, they are very sure they are right with God, but deep down, they have a lot of insecurity, since no one can truly be assured they are living up to standards.  This makes them touchy, sensitive to criticism, and devastated when their prayers aren’t answered.
Law-disobeying, Law-relying
These people have a religious conscience of strong works-righteousness, but they are not living consistently with it.
As a result, they are more humble and more tolerant of others than the Pharisees above, but they are also much more guilt-ridden, subject to mood swings and sometimes very afraid of religious topics.
(Some of these people may go to church but stay on the periphery because of their low spiritual self-esteem).
Law-disobeying, Not law-relying
These are the people who have thrown off the concept of the law of God.
They are intellectually secular or rather relativistic, or have a very vague spirituality.  They largely choose their own moral standards and insist they are meeting them.  But Paul in Romans 1 says that at a sub-conscious level, they know there is a God who they should be obeying.
(Such people are usually happier and more tolerant than either of the above groups.  But usually there is a strong liberal self-righteousness.  They are definitely earning their own salvation by feeling superior to others.  It is usually a less overt kind of self-righteousness.)
Law-obeying, Not law-relying
These are Christians who understand the gospel and are living out of the freedom of it.
They obey the law of God out of grateful joy that comes from the knowledge of their sonship and out of the freedom from the fear of selfishness that false idols had generated.  They are more tolerant than #3, more sympathetic than #2, and more confident than #1.
(Most real Christians tend toward the errors of #1, #2, and even #3, but to the degree that they do, they are impoverished spiritually.)
HT: Brad Andrews

In Christ, All Things Sad Will Become Untrue!

I've been enjoying Dr. Tim Keller's new book, King's Cross, and there is a phrase repeated in the book that I love: "All things sad will become untrue." Speaking about the hope of the resurrection in Christ, Keller writes:

If you can't dance and you long to dance, in the resurrection you'll dance perfectly. If you're lonely, in the resurrection you will have perfect love. If you're empty, in the resurrection you will be fully satisfied. Ordinary life is what's going to be redeemed. There is nothing better than ordinary life, except that it's always going away and falling apart. Ordinary life is food and work and chairs by the fire and hugs and dancing and mountains - this world. God loves it so much that he gave his only Son so we - and the rest of this ordinary world - could be redeemed and made perfect. And that's what is in store for us.

And if you know that this is not the only world, the only body, the only life you are ever going to have - that you will someday have a perfect life - who cares what people do to you? You're free from ultimate anxieties in this life, so you can be brave and take risks. You can face the worst thing, even life in a wheelchair, with joy, with hope. The resurrection means we can look forward with hope to the day our suffering will be gone. But it even means that we can look forward with hope to the day our suffering will be glorious. When Jesus shows the disciples his hands and feet, he is showing them his scars. The last time the disciples saw Jesus, they thought those scars were ruining their lives. The disciples had thought they were on a presidential campaign. They thought their candidate was going to win and that they were going to be in the cabinet, and when they saw the nails going into the hands and feet and the spear going into the side, they believed those wounds had destroyed their lives. And now Jesus is showing them that in his resurrected body his scars are still there.

Why is this important? Because now that they understand the scars, the sight and memory of them will increase the glory and joy for the rest of their lives. Seeing Jesus Christ with his scars reminds them of what they did for them - that the scars they thought had ruined their lives actually saved their lives. Remembering those scars will help many of them endure their own crucifixions.

On the Day of the Lord - the day when God makes everything right, the day that everything sad comes untrue - on that day the same thing will happen to your own hurts and sadness. You will find that the worst things that have ever happened to you will in the end only enhance your eternal delight. On that day, all of it will be turned inside out and you will know joy beyond the walls of the world. The joy of your glory will be that much greater for every scar you bear.

So live in the light of the resurrection and renewal of this world, and of yourself, in a glorious, never-ending, joyful dance of grace. (Pages 223-225)

Christ Is All

Beginning with God

Why does The Gospel Coalition’s Confessional Statement begin with God instead of Scripture or epistemology?
D. A. Carson (who drafted the statement) and Tim Keller explain in Gospel-Centered Ministry (The Gospel Coalition Booklets; Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), p. 6:

We also thought it was important to begin our confession with God rather than with Scripture. This is significant. The Enlightenment was overconfident about human rationality. Some strands of it assumed it was possible to build systems of thought on unassailable foundations that could be absolutely certain to unaided human reason. Despite their frequent vilification of the Enlightenment, many conservative evangelicals have nevertheless been shaped by it. This can be seen in how many evangelical statements of faith start with the Scripture, not with God. They proceed from Scripture to doctrine through rigorous exegesis in order to build (what they consider) an absolutely sure, guaranteed-true-to-Scripture theology.

The problem is that this is essentially a foundationalist approach to knowledge. It ignores the degree to which our cultural location affects our interpretation of the Bible, and it assumes a very rigid subject-object distinction. It ignores historical theology, philosophy, and cultural reflection. Starting with the Scripture leads readers to the overconfidence
that their exegesis of biblical texts has produced a system of perfect doctrinal truth. This can create pride and rigidity because it may not sufficiently acknowledge the fallenness of human reason.

We believe it is best to start with God, to declare (with John Calvin, Institutes 1.1) that without knowledge of God we cannot know ourselves, our world, or anything else. If there is no God, we would have no reason to trust our reason.

Andy Naselli

The Biblical Gospel is Not "In The Middle"

Tim Keller:

The church loses its life-changing dynamism to the degree that its theology goes off to this side or that side—into either uptight legalistic moralism, or into latitudinarianism, broadness, not believing the Bible, licentiousness, relativism.

By saying the biblical gospel is in the middle, that’s not saying “moderation in all things.” Jesus wasn’t moderate in anything. He was radically gentle and radically truth loving at the same time. The gospel isn’t a kind of middle-of-the-road, lukewarm thing. But the gospel is neither legalism nor licentiousness. And to the degree we lose the biblical gospel, we’re never going to be a movement that reaches the city.

Read the rest.

(HT: Matt Perman)

Good Things To Ultimate

"Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity apart from him. . . . Most people think of sin primarily as “breaking divine rules,” but Kierkegaard knows that the very first of the Ten Commandments is to “have no other gods before me.” So, according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God." -Tim Keller, The Reason For God

Idol assessment: What are your emotions driven by? What is/are the primary controller/s of your mood or overall disposition?

Glimpses of Grace

Tim Keller on Why Jesus Said the Little Girl Was Sleeping Instead of Dead

Tim Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, pp. 67-69, commenting on Mark 5:38-42:

Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement.

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Do you think it is odd that when Jesus arrives at Jairus’s house he says that the girl is just sleeping? The parallel account of this story in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels make it clear that Jesus understands she’s dead. She’s not mostly dead; she’s all dead. Then why does he make that reference to sleep? The answer is in what Jesus does next.
Remember, Jesus sits down beside the girl, takes her by the hand, and says two things to her.
The first is talitha. Literally, it means “little girl,” but that does not get across the sense of what he’s saying. This is a pet name, a diminutive term of endearment. Since this is a diminutive that a mother would use with a little girl, probably the best translation is “honey.”
The second thing Jesus says to her is koum, which means “arise.” Not “be resurrected”: it just means “get up.” Jesus is doing exactly what this child’s parents might do on a sunny morning. He sits down, takes her hand, and says, “Honey, it’s time to get up.” And she does.
Jesus is facing facing the most implacable, inexorable enemy of the human race and such is his power that he holds this child by the hand and gently lifts her right up through it. “Honey, get up.”
Jesus is saying by his actions, “If I have you by the hand, death itself is nothing but sleep.” . . .
. . . There’s nothing more frightening for a little child than to lose the hand of the parent in a crowd or in the dark, but that is nothing compared with Jesus’s own loss.
He lost his Father’s hand on the cross.
He went into the tomb so we can be raised out of it.
He lost hold of his Father’s hand so we could know that once he has us by the hand, he will never, ever forsake us.
Justin Taylor

Keller on Jonah and Jesus

Tim Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, pp. 57-58:

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We have a resource that can enable us to stay calm inside no matter how the storms rage outside.
Here’s a clue: Mark has deliberately laid out this account using language that is parallel, almost identical, to the language of the famous Old Testament account of Jonah.

Both Jesus and Jonah were in a boat, and both boats were overtaken by a storm—the descriptions of the storm are almost identical.

Both Jesus and Jonah were asleep.
In both stories the sailors woke up the sleeper and said, “We’re going to die.”
And in both cases there was a miraculous divine intervention and the sea was calmed.
Further, in both stories the sailors then become even more terrified than they were before the storm was calmed.

Two almost identical stories—with just one difference.
In the midst of the storm, Jonah said to the sailors, in effect: “There’s only only thing to do. If I perish, you survive. If I die, you will live” (Jonah 1:12). And they threw him into the sea.
Which doesn’t happen in Mark’s story.
Or does it?
I think Mark is showing that the stories aren’t actually different when you stand back a bit and look at it with the rest of the story of Jesus in view.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “One greater than Jonah is here,” and he’s referring to himself: I’m the true Jonah. He meant this:

Someday I’m going to calm all storms, still all waves.
I’m going to destroy destruction, break brokenness, kill death.

How can he do that?
He can only do it because when he was on the cross he was thrown—willingly, like Jonah—into the ultimate storm, under the ultimate waves, the waves of sin and death.
Jesus was thrown into the only storm that can actually sink us—the storm of eternal justice, of what we owe for our wrongdoing. That storm wasn’t calmed—not until it swept him away.
If the sight of Jesus bowing his head into that ultimate storm is burned into the core of your being, you will never say, “God, don’t you care?”
And if you know that he did not abandon you in that ultimate storm, what make you think he would abandon you in much smaller storms you’re experiencing right now?
And, someday, of course, he will return and still all storms for eternity.
If you let that penetrate to the very center of your being, you will know he loves you. You will know he cares. And then you will have the power to handle anything in life with poise:

When through the deep waters I call you to go,
The rivers of woe shall not overflow;
For I will be with you, your troubles to bless,
And sanctify to you your deepest distress.
The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

Justin Taylor

Religion (salvation by works) vs. Gospel (salvation by grace)

One of the most helpful ways of distinguishing between religion and the gospel is through this series of statements by Tim Keller.  You can find these words in his message “On Being the Church in the Culture” from the 2006 Reform & Resurgence Conference.

Religion (salvation by works) vs. Gospel (salvation by grace)

[Acceptance]

“I obey-therefore I’m accepted”
“I’m accepted–therefore I obey”

[Motivation]

Motivation is based on fear and insecurity.
Motivation based on grateful joy.

[Obedience]

I obey God in order to get things from God.
I obey God to get God–to delight and resemble him.

[Difficult Circumstances]

When circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or myself, since I believe, like Job’s friends, that anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life.
When circumstances in my life go wrong I struggle, but I know all my punishment fell on Jesus and that while he may allow this for my training, he will exercise his Fatherly love within my trial.

[Criticism]

When I am criticized I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person.’  Threats to my self-image must be destroyed at all costs.
When I am criticized I struggle, but it is not critical for me to because it is critical that I think of myself as a think of myself as a ‘good person.’ My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on God’s love for me in Christ.  I can take criticism. That’s how I became a Christian.

[Prayer]

My prayer consists largely of petition and it only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of environment.
My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration.  My main purpose is fellowship with him.

[Self Perception]

My self-view swings between two poles. If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people.  If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel humble but not confident—I feel like a failure.
My self-view is not based on an view of my self as a moral achiever. In Christ I am simul iustus et peccator–simultaneously sinful and lost yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad he had to die for me and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time. Neither swaggering nor sniveling.

[Identity]

My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work, or how moral I am—and so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral.  I disdain and feel superior to ‘the Other.’
My identity and self-worth is centered on the one who died for his enemies, who was excluded from the city for me. I am saved by sheer grace. So I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me. Only by grace I am what I am. I’ve no inner need to win arguments.

[Worship/Idolatry]

Since I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols.  It may be my talents, my moral record, my personal discipline, my social status, etc.  I absolutely have to have them so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, whatever I may say I believe about God.
I have many good things in my life–family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc. But none of these good things are ultimate things to me. None of them are things I absolutely have to have them, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness and despondency they can inflict on me when they are threatened and lost.

Tender Love and a Chastened Approach

I’m reading an advance copy of Tim Keller’s new book Generous Justice. It is quite good. I’ll write more about it later. Keller makes a compelling case that Christians who know God’s grace will share God’s concern for justice.
This sentence gets to the heart of the book:

If God’s character includes a zeal for justice that leads him to have the tenderest love and closest involvement with the socially weak, then what should God’s people be like? (8)

In a slightly different vein, I thought this was a good line too, which Keller includes (approvingly it seems) in a footnote:

In the end, [Dan] Strange, [D.A.] Carson, and [James] Hunter all recommend a chastened approach that engages culture but without the triumphalism of transformationism. All of them also insist that the priority of the institutional church must be to preach the Word, rather than to “change culture.” (223)

Kevin DeYoung

In The Morning Its Always Leah Never Rachel

We learn that through all of life there runs a ground note of cosmic disappointment. You are never going to lead a wise life until you understand that. Jacob said, "If I can just get Rachel, everything will be okay." And he goes to bed with the one who he thinks is Rachel, and literally, the Hebrew says, "in the morning, behold it was Leah" (Genesis 29:25). One commentator noted about this verse, "This is a miniature of our own disillusionment, experienced from Eden onwards." What does that mean? With all due respect to this woman (from whom we have much to learn), it means that no matter what we put our hopes in, in the morning, it is always Leah, never Rachel.
Counterfeit Gods, by Tim Keller, pg 37. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters

If you haven't read this book I encourage you to do so. All of us have experienced waking up with Leah when we thought we went to bed with Rachel. There is nothing, no person, no job, no amount of wealth, fame, or success you can put your hope in that will be Rachel, you will always wake up with Leah. You will always be disappointed unless you do what C.S. Lewis said, reorient the entire focus of your life toward God.

What Is The Mission Of The Church?

In Tim Keller’s forthcoming book Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, Keller addresses this issue:

. . . [I]s the mission of the church only to preach the Word—evangelizing and making disciples—or is it (also) or mainly to do justice? Increasing evangelicals are talking about the church’s “justice mission.” See Amy L. Sherman, “The Church on a Justice Mission” in Books and Culture, July/August 2010. In this articles examples are giving of local evangelical congregations that have added the combating of sex/human trafficking to their churches’ mission work. Indeed, sex trafficking is an important justice issue and an easy one for most evangelical churches to get a handle on. Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that Kuyper is right: It is best to speak of the “mission of the church,” strictly conceived, as being the proclamation of the Word. More broadly conceived, it is the work of Christians in the world to minister in word and deed and to gather together to do justice. (p. 216 n. 128)

Justin Taylor

Wealth & Poverty

“Jesus, the God-Man, had infinite wealth, but if he had held on to it, we would have died in our spiritual poverty. That was the choice — if he stayed rich, we would die poor. If he died poor, we could become rich. Our sins would be forgiven, and we would be admitted into the family of God.”
-  Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (New York, NY: Dutton, 2009), 67.
First Importance

Wealth & Poverty

“Jesus, the God-Man, had infinite wealth, but if he had held on to it, we would have died in our spiritual poverty. That was the choice — if he stayed rich, we would die poor. If he died poor, we could become rich. Our sins would be forgiven, and we would be admitted into the family of God.”
-  Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (New York, NY: Dutton, 2009), 67.
Of First Importance

Talking to the World - Keller on a Christian Sexual Ethic

In my reading this past month, I discovered that Immanuel Kant made a case for a Christian sexual ethic but without using any appeal to the Bible or theology. In “Duties Toward the Body in Respect of Sexual Impulse” (Kant, Lectures in Ethics) he argued that sex outside of marriage dishonors human dignity. He reasoned that when you ask for sex without giving your whole self to the other person in marriage (“person, body and soul, for good and ill and in every respect”), you turn the sex partner into an object, a mere means to a selfish end, instead of an end in him (or her) self. Kant’s famous “categorical imperative” was that human beings should never be treated as means, but only as ends. Using only this belief, which is intuitive for many modern people, he argued that you should never have sex outside of marriage.
I compared this with Wendell Berry (in Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community and other volumes) who also makes a case for the Christian sex ethic without appealing to overtly religious arguments or sources. Berry says that sex outside of marriage is sex for its own individual fulfillment rather than for building community. That, he argues, is a market-shaped, individualistic, consumerist approach to the human body. Instead, he insists, sex should be only used inside of marriage because there it becomes a nurturing discipline that establishes community, creating the deep stability between parents necessary for children to flourish.
What the two men have in common is that they both start with premises that most modern, secular readers share, but then they use those commonly held beliefs to drive them toward a Christian sex ethic, which has been largely abandoned by most secular people. They do this without appealing to the Bible or to other sources of religious authority.
Does this mean that it is possible to prove Christian morality is true without appealing to the Bible itself? No, I don’t think so. Though Kant believed that reason was all you needed to discover ethical truth, his high view of human dignity still was ultimately a belief. It was not the inescapable conclusion of logic or empirical investigation. And Berry’s appeal to the importance of community over individual freedom is also, in the end, a vision of human flourishing that can’t be proved rationally. Berry’s and Kant’s arguments can’t prove the Christian sex ethic to someone who doesn’t accept their basic premise-beliefs. But if you share those beliefs, then their case is quite powerful.
Here’s what I learn from Kant and Berry. First, there are ways to argue in public discourse for various features of the Christian account of human flourishing without directly appealing to Biblical texts or to God. For example, if I am a Christian in politics, and I am speaking to a body of people who I know will resonate to Kantian views of human dignity or Berryan views of community, then it is possible to make a compelling argument for practices that are rooted in Christian truth. Why? Because people without an overt religious profession still hold many true beliefs about human dignity or community that are spiritually “there” in their souls because they are created in the image of God. We should not be under the illusion that we can “prove” Christianity to secular people however. The compelling nature of our argument relies on discovering the underlying beliefs that a non-believer has that match up with Biblical truth. Only if they grant these beliefs can we make our case.
Second, I find it is often helpful even when preaching to briefly recapitulate arguments such as these from Kant, Berry, and others. Why? The ultimate foundation for what we believe as Christians is the authority of God’s Word, but often the people we preach to are not convinced of the Bible’s complete trustworthiness. Here is an example. I may first present what the Bible says about sexuality. Then I may briefly make a Kantian argument (which C.S. Lewis also makes in Mere Christianity) about how sex outside of marriage de-humanizes or a Berryan one about how it harms community. Then I can add, “These are only some of the terrible results that come from violating God’s design for sexuality. There are certainly many others.” This approach both honors the Bible as the final authority for our lives and draws in listeners who, while not yet sure about the Bible’s inspiration, share the premises of Kant, Berry, or whomever else you use.
I think that in our contemporary society, Christians’ beliefs about sex and gender will be one of the biggest points of conflict with our culture. We will need to co-opt some of our culture’s own baseline narratives (the importance of human dignity and community) in order to gain any hearing at all for our beliefs.
Editor’s Note: This is a cross-post from Tim Keller’s blog at Redeemer City to City.