E-note 2/11: The Church of the Older Brother

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

In last Sunday's class on The Prodigal God, author/pastor Tim Keller made the observation that Jesus gave us the parable of the two lost brothers so we would see the two different ways people rebel against God (Luke 15).

The younger brother, who ended up feeding swine, rebelled by being very bad. The older brother, who never left home, rebelled by being very good. The two brothers represent the two most common ways people try to make their lives and their world right. Using Keller's categories, some people follow the path of self-discovery like the younger brother who threw off his father's authority. Others follow the path of moral conformity like the older brother who learned to skillfully submit to authority. But Jesus teaches that both can be ways of resenting and rejecting God. The older brother believed his father should regard him more favorably because of his years of moral conformity. But the older brother can not see that his moral conformity has done nothing to make him like his father. He does not have the compassion of his father because he does not love his father. He does not even like the way his father is. His moral conformity was for himself all along so he could establish some leverage to get his father's inheritance. As a heartless moral conformist he is different than his younger brother, but no better. He too refuses to be in the father's arms.

The rebellion of moral conformity is the hardest for us to see because we are in the Church. Because we take holiness seriously we are a people who also take ethics seriously. Because we take ethics seriously we are then easily tempted to think our ethical fitness (moral conformity) is why God loves us. But this is a satanic lie of the highest order. God loves us on one condition (yes, that means God's love is not unconditional) and that condition is Christ crucified.

One of the biggest myths in the Church today, believed inside and outside her boundaries, is the myth that Christianity is just another way of becoming and staying good. Some people become good through Islam, some people become good through Buddhism, some people become good through Mormonism, some people become good through Christianity. Where did such a myth come from? The "Church of the Older Brother" has promoted this myth by failing to teach the Gospel rightly. What happens to children who grow up thinking in their heart of hearts that Christianity is a way of becoming and staying good? They find they can be relatively good without Christ and drift into an insipid Christian nominalism. If they succeed in being good, pride rules them. If they fail, despair rules them. And worst of all, in both instances they remain opposed to God and his Gospel.

The rebellion of moral conformity is hard for those in the church to see. But guess what? Those outside the Church have a hard time seeing moral conformity as rebellion too. Those outside the Church think moral conformity is the Christian message. The younger brother in Jesus' parable, the one who rebelled by the path of self-discovery, he came home ready to practice moral conformity as the basis of his repaired relationship with his father. Remember, he had prepared a script that included him being hired as a servant to work off his debt. His father surprised him and showed him that their relationship would have compassion and love as its only cornerstone. "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." More this Sunday at 9:30am in the Fellowship Hall. Yours in Christ, John