Gospel Change

Excerpts from Ed Stetzer:  Preaching Transformation:  The Change That We Need

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You get the idea. Words can mean one thing from a communicator and something altogether different to the hearer.

The church can, at times, communicate the need for change in peoples’ lives, and it ends up understood as some low-level therapeutic moralistic deism—where a faraway God makes life better and makes you a better person. But that is not the gospel. We don’t want to produce good religious people. We see what becomes of good religious people from the encounters Jesus had with the Pharisees. God wants—as should we—to see people transformed at a spiritual level rather than a behavioral level.

Though often thought of in the same sense as a New Year’s resolution, transformation does not come from decisions made on January 1. Instead, it comes from re-creation, the re-creation that comes from new life in Christ. The change people need most is not in their circumstances, but in themselves.  It is not the ability to try harder, but it is a life entrusted to Jesus.

So, when you preach “change,” translate it to mean “gospel change.”  It is not the same thing as trying harder; in fact, there is no trying involved. Transformation occurs not because we “do,” but because Christ has “done.” So let me share three principles about the change we all need, along with some thoughts on how to clearly preach on the topic for understanding and action.

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Christian transformation always involves something old passing away and something new taking its place. Spiritual change is needed by everyone—the poor and the rich, the success and the failure. We are constantly in need of this change, no matter who we are. But too many people misunderstand the words. They believe, “If I change, then God will like me more.” The bid to be better accompanies the hope for divine blessing. But this is the false change that comes from religious idealism. It is a misunderstanding of the teaching of the gospel.

Some seek change through obedience. I’ve heard Tim Keller say it this way: “Religion says, ’I obey; therefore I am accepted.’  Christianity says, ‘I’m accepted, therefore I obey.’” Our acceptance and subsequent change is affected by the work of Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection. His work causes my acceptance before God.

Everything else leads to exasperation. Trying to “turn over a new leaf” is a temporary fix to an eternal problem. And it leads to the frustrating, exasperating cycle of always looking for a new fix to our lives.

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