It must be intimidating to write a book on marriage. Store shelves are groaning under the weight of titles that claim to have the key to a happy marriage, or a biblical marriage or a gospel-centered marriage. To rise above such a crowded field a book needs to offer something different, something unique, something that distinguishes it from the pack. Tim and Kathy Keller have jumped into the fray with their new book The Meaning of Marriage and the distinguishing feature of their book is a deep gospel-centeredness. This leads the Kellers to invite the reader deep into the gospel of Jesus Christ and also compels them to show how the gospel extends to every part of marriage.

Though The Meaning of Marriage is written primarily by Tim Keller, his wife Kathy contributes in several ways, and most notably by contributing one of the chapters and by being the wife to whom Tim has been married for almost four decades. Tim explains that the book has three deep roots. The first of these is his marriage to Kathy, the second is his long pastoral ministry, particularly in New York City in a church dominated by singles, and the third and most foundational is the biblical teaching on marriage as found in both the Old and New Testaments. "Nearly four decades ago, as theological students, Kathy and I studied the Biblical teachings on sex, gender, and marriage. Over the next fifteen years, we worked them out in our own marriage. Then, over the last twenty-two years, we have used what we learned from both Scripture and experience to guide, encourage, counsel, and instruct young urban adults with regard to sex and marriage." They speak from the powerful combination of Scriptural grounding and real-world experience.

The book is comprised of eight chapters that flow logically from the biblical basis for marriage all the way to the sexual relationship within marriage. In chapter 1 they offer the very basic biblical teachings on marriage, showing how marriage is God's idea and that it is meant to reflect the saving love of God for us in Jesus Christ. In chapter 2 they show how the work of the Holy Spirit is fundamental to battling the main enemy of marriage: sinful self-centeredness. Chapter 3 is about love, looking at how the feeling of love relates (or doesn't relate) to actions of love. Chapter 4, "The Mission of Marriage," turns to the purpose of marriage and offers a long discussion of spiritual friendship while chapter 5, "Loving the Stranger," teaches three skills that every husband and wife ought to pursue.

Chapter 6, written by Kathy, celebrates the differences between the sexes, looking to the tricky subject of gender roles and complementarity. Singleness and wise thinking about pursuing marriage are the subjects of chapter 7 and the final chapter looks to the sexual relationship, showing why the Bible roots sex in marriage and how this relationship can best be celebrated within marriage.

Read an outside view on Calvinists or Calvinism, and you are sure to read something about God’s wrath. Every time. The God of Calvinism is a wrathful, vengeful God, boiling over in anger against any part of creation that has turned against him. He is no God of love, this. Sure, he may have some love for his elect, but to the rest of the world he is this angry, brooding presence eagerly awaiting the day of judgment in which he will cast the rest of humanity into the flames of hell.

I suppose Calvinists have sometimes given others reason to think that this is what we believe to be true of God. Perhaps Calvinists have at times erred by over-emphasizing God’s wrath and have done so at the expense of his love. But this angry, vengeful God is not the true God of the Calvinist.

It is good and useful to consider the relationship of God’s love to his wrath. Are they equal characteristics or is one greater than the other? How can God both love and hate? Michael Wittmer’s book Don’t Stop Believing is a very good, popular-level look at some of the hard questions facing Christians today and it offers a powerful response. One of those questions concerns the cross and whether, as some have suggested, a traditional Christian understanding of the cross is tantamount to cosmic child abuse.

In this chapter Wittmer explains how we can (and must) reconcile God’s wrath with his love. “Scripture says that God is love and that he has wrath. This means that love lies deeper than wrath in the character of God. Love is his essential perfection, without which he would not be who he is. Wrath is love’s response to sin. It is God’s voluntary gag reflex at anything that destroys his good creation. God is against sin because he is for us, and he will vent his fury on everything that damages us.”

Another book about the gospel. We have seen the release of all kinds of books about the gospel lately—books defining the gospel, books preaching the gospel, books sharing how to live with the gospel at the center of life. Is there any room for another one? Absolutely there is, and Trevin Wax has delivered it in the form of Counterfeit Gospels: Discovering the Good News in a World of False Hope.

Wax is convinced there is crisis in the church today, a crisis created by counterfeit gospels—gospels that appear to have elements of the real thing, but which are, at heart, fraudulent. This crisis has 3 elements:

• A lack of gospel confidence - we have lost our faith in the power of the gospel to change life.
• A lack of gospel clarity - we are unsure of what the gospel message truly is.
• A lack of gospel community - devoid of confidence and clarity, our churches have begun to lose their distinctiveness. We’ve lost what makes the church the church.

Against this crisis Wax proposes that the gospel is like a three-legged stool with each leg absolutely critical to a proper understanding of the message; without each of the 3 legs, the stool cannot stand. First, there is the gospel story, which is the overarching grand narrative we find in the Scriptures. Second, there is the gospel announcement, which is that Christ died for our sins and was raised. And third, there is the gospel community, the people who herald the grace of God and spread the good news of what Christ has done.

Part of the joy of blogging is in interacting with other people through the comments. When I write an article, and especially an article on a difficult topic, I am always aware that I have not said it all. There are always ways in which what I have said can be improved.

This was the case yesterday with the article “I Am Unalarmed.” I’d like to draw your attention to a few of the (many) comments that I found very helpful as I continued to think through the topic.

The first came from Mark J. LaCore who wrote this:

I would ask you not to oversimplify your response to the oversimplification of the statistics.

I am 55 years old and have been an active believer for 38 years. My wife and I have been just about as passionate about our relationships with Christ as it is possible to be. We spent years in churches that did the best they could to preach the gospel, and we have served whole-heartedly in those churches as we raised 4 children to adulthood, all the while consciously and actively praying for them, living in integrity to the best of our ability, modeling the grace and love of Christ to them and others, and doing all we could to ensure that they would not be so turned off by the church that they would become one of the numbers in the statistics you have quoted.

Two of those four children actively follow the Lord and serve in the church. Two of them have utterly rejected Christ and the gospel.

It is a source of great joy that those two love the Lord and give themselves to service and (for the one with children of his own) are raising kids to do the same. But it is a source of tremendous heartache to us, who know the gospel, know the power of Christ in us, and who long to see our other two sons brought out of darkness and into light.

All four were raised in the same house, in the same atmosphere, by the same parents. The first and the third reject Christ; the second and fourth walk with him.

We could second-guess the way we raised them, wish things had been done differently, and beat ourselves up over some failure in the past, but we know there is no value in doing so. We simply pray, thanking God for two that love Him, and asking that He who is sovereign would yet choose the other two, and call them, and give them to Christ for His glory and their joy.

I do not in any way disagree with you that a gospel-saturated environment creates the sort of atmosphere that gives a child ample opportunity to hear the good news and respond. But it is also critical to remember that it is God who elects and calls and saves, and no amount of ensuring the right environment will guarantee that any child will believe as an adult.

I appreciated this comment because I felt it is complementary to all that I was saying. In an early draft of my article I had spoken at some length about the fact that God is sovereign and that “no amount of ensuring the right environment will guarantee that any child will believe as an adult.” Amen. Ultimately we do what the Lord commands and trust him with the results.

This weekend I spent a little bit of time reflecting on a couple of seemingly random books: Michael Horton’s Christless Christianity and Rick Warren’s The Purpose of Christmas. But they’re not random—they are in many ways books that approach an issue from opposite directions.

Throughout his book, Horton emphasizes the importance and transcendence of the gospel message--the pure, undefiled simplicity of the gospel. Warren, on the other hand, obscures that message with talk of purpose and rash generalizations about the nature of a person's relationship with God (though, thankfully, the heart of the gospel message is present despite that obscurity). Over the past couple of days I've found myself pondering the gospel message over and over again and asking myself why it is that this message is so unpopular even in Christian churches and among Christian authors. Why would an author or a pastor seek to soften the message?

I guess there is no great mystery here. Unbelievers hate the gospel message because it insists that things are true about them that they simply do not wish to believe. It insists things are true that they are unable to believe. The gospel message tells us that we are sinners. Many people are able to accept this information; only an incredibly dishonest and delusional person could pretend that he has done no wrong. The gospel message tells us that ultimately we have not sinned against others or against ourselves, but against God. This is more difficult to digest. Few of us care to think that we have sinned against the Creator of the world. The gospel goes on to tell us that our sin against God has offended him and filled him with wrath against us. Fewer people still are able to digest and accept this information. Few people are able to believe that God is justified in his wrath towards those who transgress his laws. But the gospel reaches its ultimate offense when it tells us that we are utterly unable to do anything about all of this. None of our deeds, however noble and good, are able to make the least dent in the debt we owe to God. Furthermore, none of us would pursue any kind of reconciliation with God were it not for his prior action in our hearts. We are, in our heart of hearts, God-haters. Without God's grace we are helpless and hopeless.

A couple of years ago I was asked to submit an article to Compassion International’s magazine. The article was to answer a single question: What is the greatest hindrance to the gospel today? I stumbled across that article today and thought I would share it with you.

You know the oft-told story, I am sure. G.K. Chesterton, along with other prominent authors of his day, was asked by The Times to answer this question: "What's Wrong with the World?" His answer was beautiful in its simplicity and brilliant in its profundity.

Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G. K. Chesterton

As I ponder the greatest hindrances to the gospel today, I can't help but feel that Chesteron's words are applicable to this question, too. And yet, at the same time, I feel as if they are wrong; dead wrong.

I Am

I, as a Christian, hinder the spread of the gospel and hinder its power in the world.

I hinder the gospel when I lose confidence in the gospel--in the powerful simplicity of the good news that Jesus Christ has died to save sinners. Our age has seen more gospel innovation than any other. We have unprecedented access to programs, teachings and technologies that claim to be able to further the gospel's spread. But how easy it is to find that my confidence is in the programs or in the teachers or in the technologies, rather than in the gospel message itself. How quick I am to prefer my own message and my own methods above those given to me by God.

I hinder the gospel when what I do fails to match what I say. When I claim to follow Christ but allow my actions to betray my words, a watching world scoffs at the gospel, and rightly so. When I claim to have been transformed by God's grace but live as if God has made no change at all, I cause others to heap contempt on the gospel. Robert Robinson said this so eloquently in his great hymn, "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing:" "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love." Living in the constant tension of being both saint and sinner, I am prone to wander away from the One I love; prone to live as if He is nothing to me. And in this I hinder the gospel.

I Am Not

From my human perspective, I am the greatest hindrance to the gospel. But the Bible tells me to look higher. It tells me with glorious clarity that nothing, no one, is able to hinder the gospel. It tells me to place my confidence in the God whose plans cannot be stopped. My lack of confidence in the gospel, my indifference to it, and my unfaithfulness in spreading it, cannot truly hinder the work of God. God reigns supreme over all.

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;
all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to his will among the host of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth;
and none can stay his hand
or say to him, "What have you done?" (Daniel 4:34b-35)

Not one person who truly seeks after God will be hindered from embracing Christ as Lord and Savior. Christ, the Good Shepherd, has sent His Spirit to gather a people to himself. Christ knows his own and his own know him. He will draw them to himself and not one will be lost; not one can be lost. Far be it from me to think that I can stand in the way of God, the Creator and Sustainer of all that was and is and ever will be.

What is the greatest hindrance to the gospel today? I am, but nothing is. God reigns supreme.

A short time ago a reader of this blog wrote me with rather an interesting question. Here’s what he asked: I was hoping for some guidance on something. I am looking for books about being ‘Gospel-Centered.’ I know that is a buzzword nowadays and it is really intriguing to me. I am a long-time Christian, but am new to this Gospel-Centered idea. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus and Scripture and the Gospel, but I’ve never really heard or really understand the Gospel-Centered.

In my church we talk a lot about living gospel-centered lives or cross-centered lives, about applying the gospel to situations in life. So let me share a bit of my experience about what this actually means. And at the end I’ll offer up some suggestions for further reading. I feel like I am far more of a student than a teacher in this area, so I will largely depend on what others have said.

I’d love to know the origins of the phrase gospel-centered. While I cannot produce any proof of where it came from, my sense is that it arises from a combination of various factors: the writings of C.J. Mahaney and Jerry Bridges along with the emphases of organizations such as CCEF and Desiring God. Somehow if you do a smash-up of those men and those organizations, I think you end up with this emphasis on gospel centrality. Maybe someone can offer a more thorough history of the phrase.

Gospel

The first thing we’ll need to do is define gospel. In our church we’ve got a handy little short-hand way of doing this, one that all the kids understand. I’m pretty sure you could go to just about any child in the church, ask “what is the gospel?” and hear this response: “Christ died for our sins and was raised.” When we talk about this during services, we accompany it with a little action. We begin with a closed fist held out in front of us and with each of the first five words we open one finger. “Christ…died…for…our…sins.” And then, with the open hand, we raise it up and say “and was raised.” And that’s the gospel. Of course the gospel can be as simple as those eight words or as complex as many volumes of theological text. But the essential gospel is right there—that Jesus Christ was put to death as an atoning sacrifice for our sins and was then raised back to life.

Here is a song we’ll be introducing at church just a little bit later today. Written by James Montgomery, it is titled “Go to Dark Gethsemane.”

What I love about this hymn is the progression from Gethsemane all the way to the resurrection, from watching Christ be tempted in the Garden all the way to watching him rise. In just four short verses, the hymnwriter has managed to capture the gospel. With Good Friday and Easter fast approaching, the words especially relevant.

Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour,
Turn not from His griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.

See Him at the judgment hall, beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
O the wormwood and the gall! O the pangs His soul sustained!
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross.

Calvary’s mournful mountain climb; there, adoring at His feet,
Mark that miracle of time, God’s own sacrifice complete.
“It is finished!” hear Him cry; learn of Jesus Christ to die.

Early hasten to the tomb where they laid His breathless clay;
All is solitude and gloom. Who has taken Him away?
Christ is risen! He meets our eyes; Savior, teach us so to rise.

We’ll be singing it to the tune written by Indelible Grace’s Kevin Twit.

If you’re interested in giving it a listen, take a look at Wake Thy Slumbering Children:Indelible Grace V.

What difference does the gospel make? What difference does it make in your life? These are good questions to ask, I think, and good answers to ponder. How does your belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ impact your life? In what way is your life, even your Christian life, distinctly different because of the gospel?

Here is a quote I found somewhere or another, that addresses these questions head-on. It comes from the pen of John Calvin.

Without the gospel everything is useless and vain; without the gospel we are not Christians; without the gospel all riches is poverty, all wisdom folly before God; strength is weakness, and all the justice of man is under the condemnation of God. But by the knowledge of the gospel we are made children of God, brothers of Jesus Christ, fellow townsmen with the saints, citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, heirs of God with Jesus Christ, by whom the poor are made rich, the weak strong, the fools wise, the sinner justified, the desolate comforted, the doubting sure, and slaves free. It is the power of God for the salvation of all those who believe.

Keep Reading →

Last week I reviewed Bill Farley’s new book Gospel-Powered Parenting. I recommended it highly, saying it had “just the right combination of affirmation (your struggles are universal struggles, your joys are universal joys) and exhortation to both encourage and challenge me in all the right ways.” After I reviewed it, I found there were a few things I wanted to ask the author. I went ahead and asked if he would be willing to do a brief interview about the book and he was kind enough to do so. I trust you’ll enjoy his answers as I did.

1. Why the gospel? Why is the gospel the key to empowering parenting? What is the connection between the words “gospel” and “powered?”
Paul tells us that “the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). We hear this verse and think the pulpit or witnessing, but parents should hear this and think family devotions. Parents convinced that God’s power is latent in the gospel center their families around the gospel. They are convinced that it provokes new birth, that it will knit their children’s hearts to God, and motivate godly behavior. Our children receive the “imperishable seed” of new birth through the message of the gospel (1 Pet. 1:23). Often parents don’t center their parenting in the gospel because either they don’t really understand the gospel, or they don’t believe that God’s power is latent in the gospel.

The gospel also protects parents from “moralism,” the idea that well-behaved children are the main thing. New Birth is the main thing. The morality of Christ imputed to your children is the main thing. It is not what our children do for Christ but what Christ has done for our children that is the main thing. Ironically, without aiming at it, gospel centered parents get godly behavior from their children.

In addition, the fear of God is the key to attracting God’s favor upon our parenting. Many think that the fear of God is an Old Testament concept. But the main place we get the fear of God is at the cross of Christ—the heart of the gospel.

2. Today we are hearing the word “gospel” everywhere (at least, those of us within a certain subset of the Christian world). Do you think there’s a danger that it could become cliche? Could gospel begin to lose its meaning when it’s applied to everything?
When the gospel becomes “clich” Christianity has become irrelevant. The center has been displaced. That is because the gospel is the main thing. It is the center of the Bible. The Old Testament predicts it. The gospels recount it, and the epistles look back to explain and apply it. I think the recent surge of Gospel-centeredness is really just a resurgence of biblical Christianity.

This may sound strange to many Christians. To many the gospel is “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” But the gospel is deep. It is a well with no bottom. The more we understand it the less apt we are to stray from it. It starts by assuming the bad news. We are in trouble. Our default condition is Hell. God owes us nothing but justice. We are all running pell mell toward damnation. We cannot solve this problem by being good. We are in profound trouble.

The gospel is the “good news” that solves this problem. It reconciles enemies—God and man—and makes them friends. It opens the gate of Heaven to all who believe. It infuses Christians with an indomitable hope. It motivates love, grace, and forgiveness.

In my view, this new Gospel-centeredness is a profound deepening of the faith. It is what really matters. I believe there will be tremendous long-term fruit from the recovery of this emphasis.

Those who understand the gospel never get tired of hearing it. I watched my son preach on penal substitution last Sunday, and even though I covered the same ground ten weeks ago, the congregation was transfixed. Despite the fact that this message is the ABC of the gospel, my congregation would listen to it every week and keep coming back for more. What I am trying to say is that the gospel is not something we start with so that we can pass on to the deeper truths. It is the deeper truth.

The thesis of my previous book, Outrageous Mercy, is that the gospel teaches us everything we need to know about God, man, eternity, Hell, Heaven, how to get into Heaven, what God loves, and what he hates. In addition, it teaches us everything we need to know about how to live. If all of this is true, it must also teach us about parenting. The point of Gospel Powered Parenting is that it does.

3. We want to affirm, of course, that it is well within the rights of any Christian parents to homeschool their children. We want to affirm that this is often a wise decision for parents. Yet in Gospel-Powered Parenting you explicitly mention that your five children, all of whom are believers, went to public schools and state colleges. You emphasize the importance of an offensive mind-set. Do you find that, at least for some Christian parents, homeschooling is really just one aspect of a larger defensive mind-set?
Many things motivate home-schooling—a desire for a better education, the longing to mingle the gospel with academic subjects, the desire to cast our children in a biblical mold, and a longing to protect them from evil influence. What I am saying is that if protection is the main thing, or the only thing, we might be in trouble.

Let me be clear. I am all for home-schooling and/or private Christian education. Although my children all graduated from public High School, my two oldest daughters went to a private Christian school for several years, and we home-schooled my youngest during his Junior High years. None of my fourteen grandchildren are in public education today. My oldest daughter taught in a classical Christian school for twelve years. I am not against home-schooling: I am against a fear-oriented, defensive mindset. Home schooling does not necessarily presume this mentality.

4. What are the potential dangers in this?
The potential dangers are primarily reactionary. You could take this idea to an extreme and fail to protect children when you should. That would not be helpful. I am not saying that you shouldn’t protect your children from some influences. I am just saying that “protection” should never be our primary strategy. Isolating them from worldly influence by itself is seldom productive.

5. What does an offensive mind-set look like in parenting?
An offensive mindset targets the child’s heart not the child’s external environment (friends, music, school, etc.). In order to reach their child’s heart effective parents focus on their relationship with the child. Rather than fearing the world’s negative influence, they focus on the gospel’s power to influence their child. This parent worries more about their example to their child rather than the world’s example. This parent waits patiently for New Birth rather than assuming it because a child was baptized, or made a confession of faith at a summer camp.

6. Why is it such a temptation to try to control, or over-control, our children’s’ environment? Why do parents need to guard against this?
I think it is a temptation because our default condition is independence from God. We think our influence is the deciding factor in our child’s character development. It isn’t. Ultimately, the influence of God trumps all of our efforts. God gives New Birth. We can’t give it to our children. Our children can’t take it. It is God’s gracious gift (Mt 13:11, Mt 16:17,Luke 19:42; 24:16, 24:31, 24:45;Jn 1:12,13;Jn 5:21;Jn 9:39; Jn 6:39,Rm 9:10-24; Eph 1:1-6; 1Pe 2:9). Therefore, and this is crucial, pleasing God is the most important thing a parent can do to move God to regenerate their child. This means that effective parents are God-centered not child-centered. Their focus is always on God, not their children. Fearing God is one crucial way that parents can please God. We learn this fear at the cross. That is why I call it gospel powered parenting.

7. Do you feel that some Christian parents allow fear to be a motivating factor in the education of their children?
Yes, this is sometimes true. I am a pastor. I have watched parents try to protect their children into God’s kingdom. Fear of worldly influence is often their motive. Sometimes they are home-schooling families, but not always. When a parent thinks “protecting” their child from the outside world is the main thing, they are saying something. They are saying that Christianity equals “moralism,” (pleasing God through outward behavior), that obedient children are the main thing, that the child’s problem is “out there” rather than within his own fallen nature. Sometimes they assume that their child is basically good. Negative influence will corrupt that goodness. Therefore, protecting their child will enable that goodness to flourish. This mentality also assumes that New Birth has little power to equip a child to conquer temptation.

8. How can a parent guard against moralism? Isn’t there huge temptation, perhaps especially when we are within view of other Christians, to judge parenting by the outward shows of immediate obedience and other potentially-moralistic standards?
Moralism is the assumption that we make ourselves acceptable to God with good behavior. It is the deadly enemy of Christianity. It is the one thing that all non-Christian religions share in common, and the rejection of moralism is one crucial doctrine that sets Christianity apart. The Bible says God accepts us because we believe, not because we perform.

Moral behavior is important, however it is not the ultimate goal of parenting. New Birth is the final goal. Morality matters because it glorifies God. Our children will never be moral in a pleasing way to God until their hearts are changed through the miracle of New Birth, and even then, their morality will never makes them ultimately acceptable to God.

So, to answer you question, the only way to guard against moralism is to understand the nature of New Birth, to understand justification by faith alone, and to aim all of your parenting efforts at these targets. Parents that center their families around the gospel tend to get these results.

9. Why did you and your wife make decisions about educating your children?
Our children were in public schools during the years 1980 to 2000. We put them in public school because of the convictions mentioned above. There was a Christian sub-culture at their High School. They made their friends there. Generally, they prospered spiritually.

However, I must make some caveats. First, public education has degenerated since our kids were in school. We might do differently today. Second, we made some mistakes. We were not flexible enough. Some of our children easily withstood peer pressure. Others struggled. Looking back, we probably should have put the children that struggled in private school or home-schooled them. In short, I am not making any rules about where your children should be educated. The Bible takes a different tack. It stresses the role of the father, the importance of parental example, and the fear of God taught by the gospel.

10. How will you know if this book has been a success? What do you hope for it?
I will not know if this book has been successful until I am with God in eternity. I will feel successful if I meet saints who came to New Birth because their parents read this book and changed their approach to parenting.