It is my hope that you are being refreshed in the gospel through The Prodigal God class.
The book and lessons have got my imagination working over time. This week I imagined someone coming into the Church, after being many years away, because they grew tired of a self-centered life with all its peculiar versions of self-destruction. Tired of living for self (which is tiring, trust me!) this dear friend comes into the Church with an eagerness to live a life that is aligned with that which is good, true, and beautiful. He makes gains in good deeds, serving others sacrificially. He makes gains in sound doctrine, defending the truth valiantly. He makes gains in Christian ethics, abandoning bad habits courageously. But somewhere along the way he missed Jesus. No, he can recite the Apostle's Creed and explain the necessity of the Incarnation - he didn't miss Jesus doctrinally. He missed Jesus savingly because he found a way to avoid needing Jesus personally and he found this way through the good works, the sound doctrine and the Christian ethics.
In retrospect, this friend discovers a shocking truth: he didn't enter Christ's Church because he wanted Jesus! He entered the Church because he wanted a better self, a self that would be admired by the kind of people he himself admired - good Christian folk. In the process he found an unnoticeable way of avoiding Jesus. Because he did not see himself as a naked and bloody newborn baby, hopelessly discarded in a field of dirt, he could not see Jesus as the great lover of his soul (read Ezekiel 16 for this stunning image). In retrospect, he discovered that Jesus was his Appraiser not his Savior. Jesus was only there to appraise his good works and sound doctrine and Christian ethics as suitable for wide admiration. Jesus was not there to carry this friend in loving arms out of his filth. Now this friend has discovered that he is naked and filthy in his righteousness (see Isaiah 64:6). Naked and filthy still because his righteousness was an excuse to avoid Jesus as the only God Jesus is to us: a saving God for sinners. Surprisingly, Jesus even has grace for the filthy righteous.
Now this friend is trembling at the prospect of what his life will look like without the level of earnestness that was once necessary for his campaign of self-improving self-admiration. What kind of husband will he be without the energizing motive of self-admiration? What kind of student of scripture will he be without the energizing motive of self-admiration? What kind of servant? What kind of neighbor? What kind of Christian? He needs to ask Jesus because he does not know how to be a man who lives by grace. But, by grace, he will learn.
To cap off this imagined scenario here is a penetrating passage from Keller's book, The Prodigal God:
What must we do, then, to be saved? To find God we must repent of the things we have done wrong, but if that is all you do, you may remain just an elder brother [see Luke 15:11-32 for the background]. To truly become a Christian we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right. Pharisees only repent of their sins, but Christians repent for the very roots of their righteousness, too. We must learn how to repent of the sin under all our other sins and under all our righteousness - the sin of seeking to be our own Savior and Lord. We must admit that we've put our ultimate hope and trust in things other than God, and that in both our wrongdoing and right doing we have been seeking to get around God or get control of God in order to get hold of those things. It is only when you see the desire to be your own Savior and Lord - lying beneath both your sins and your moral goodness - that you are on the verge of understanding the gospel and becoming a Christian indeed. When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not being good, you are on the brink. If you follow through, it will change everything: how you relate to God, self, others, the world, your work, your sins, your virtue. It's called the new birth because it's so radical (TPG, p. 77-78).
Praise God that he saves his elect even from within the Church! Yours in Christ, John
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