Evangelical Repentance

Excerpt from Tullian Tchividjian post:  Interview With Mike Horton: Part Three

This is Part Three of my four-part interview with Mike Horton on the nature of the gospel and sanctification. You can (and should) read Part One and Two.

In a blog post of mine the other day I quoted Tim Keller who said that some people claim that to constantly be striking a ‘note of grace, grace, grace’ in our sermons is not helpful in our culture today because legalism is not the problem, license is. But Keller points out that unless you critique moralism, many irreligious people won’t know the difference between moralism and what you’re offering. He contends that non-Christians will always automatically hear gospel presentations as appeals to do more and try harder unless in your preaching you use the good news of grace to deconstruct legalism. Only if you show them there’s a difference–that what they really rejected wasn’t real Christianity at all–will they even begin to consider Christianity.” Do you agree with this? And how does this square with the idea that non-Christians will never be able to hear the good news of the gospel unless they first hear the crushing blow of God’s law?

Again, I’m not sure that the problem is either legalism or license: those are categories of a largely Christian culture, that thinks in theological categories. Our default setting is always legalism: the assertion of our own goodness. However, the reference point in our world today is no longer God, much less heaven or hell.  It’s the “heaven” of personal peace and affluence and the “hell” of meaningless nihilism.  “Legalism” in our culture today often takes the secular form of climbing the corporate ladder while trying to raise a family and own three homes, with anxiety about which call to return and which song to download.  It’s nihilism: the life of vanity described in Ecclesiastes.

Go back and read (or listen to/watch) R. C. Sproul’s “The Holiness of God.” Now there you can’t help but be faced with a person rather than a principle. Your questions, not just answers, change. The vertical dimension is recovered. Sure, you’d like to have a better marriage and family, but a deeper set of questions emerges—questions you never had before. Then you find that God is not a prop or resource for your life movie, but your problem.  Only then does the question, “How then can I be saved?” arise.  Only then is the gospel really good news—namely, that in Christ the Judge has become your father.

So I agree wholeheartedly that a renewed proclamation of the law in its full force and threat is needed today, but that means a renewed proclamation of the Triune God.  People need to be stopped in their tracks, no longer measuring “god” by their own sense of morality, goodness, truth, and beauty.  They need to encounter the God who is actually there, judging and justifying sinners.  If we start with the Bible’s answers, we’re too late.  We need to allow God’s Word to give us new questions first.  There is a massive place for God’s holiness, justice, goodness, and righteousness in the law to do that.  Apart from the holiness of God, neither the law nor the gospel makes any sense.

At the same time—and I take it that this is Tim Keller’s point—the gospel is just as necessary.  Otherwise, what we have is what the Puritans called “legal” rather than “evangelical” repentance: that is, fear of the law without gospel-driven hatred of sin.  It’s one thing to run from a judge; it’s another thing to hear the surprising announcement from the Good Father that he welcomes the sinner, wraps him in his best robe, puts a ring on his finger, and kills the fatted calf for the celebration. Many of our contemporaries have never met anyone like that.

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