Tucker Project

I’ve started reading a book about evangelism that coincides with a study that my church is about to go through. I can’t help but notice that talk of hell and the wrath of God is (almost if not completely) absent in much of this talk about the gospel. More emphasis seems to be on getting people to church than to Christ. Is that really the gospel? Is that even Christian? Is that even loving? Getting people to church and neglecting to telling them about the coming wrath of God? Even in my own church, many people squirm at the idea of telling people that without Christ they are damned to hell. We would much rather forget about that “inconvenient truth” and simply talk about God’s love for us. “Part of the biblical gospel is now preached as if it were the whole of that gospel; and a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth.“ (J.I. Packer)

Today while I was thinking about these matters after skimming through Bill Hybel’s “Just Walk Across The Room” I couldn’t help but think of a recent quote from John Piper during a 9marks interveiw in answer to the question: Is it loving to give a cup of cold water without any reference to hell or salvation to a
thirsty person?

It is not ulitmately loving if you have no design for their salvation. I don’t mean that you stop giving it to them if they don’t believe. I mean that when you give them the cup and you don’t care whether it leads them to eternal life or not you’re not a loving person, I don’t care how thirsty they are…I can’t argue that everytime you give your enemy a cup of water you must mention the Gospel verbally. But I can argue that if your whole approach towards culture transformation or suffer amelioration isn’t aimed and designed and tailored, which would include a lot of speaking, tailored towards delivering people from ultimate suffering you don’t love them. You simply don’t love them. You say you do but you don’t believe in hell or whatever. So the way I like to talk at Bethlehem is we are about alleviating all
suffering, especially eternal suffering. And the alleviating of the short-term suffering is a means to awaken them to the kind of God who died for them so that they might be saved from eternal suffering. -John Piper

The think I like about Piper is that he always takes me to Christ and not himself or even myself. So many Christians are preoccupied with telling themselves and others how special they are, or how God has such incredible faith in them. They portray God as some doting lover who just can’t live without them or some super-proud parent who believes their child is some super-genius who can do anything. I will go so far as to say that almost all of these comments come completely detached from who we are in Christ or in the best of moments the fact of Christ is merely assumed. In such a self-obsessed culture, this ideology detached from the person and work of Jesus Chris is insulting to God and cheapens the Gospel. We must push past the smallness of me-centered theology to something bigger (and much better and more biblical). Christ is the end and chief of all desires and joys and without Him, we are NOTHING.

I think this is why I stand in awe of men like Spurgeon, Luther,and Newton. At the end of everything, they found their glory and strength in Christ. Their answer to the question “Do I have what it takes?” was a resounding “NO!” followed by the Pauline answer of “‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)‘ and everything I do I do ‘with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. (Colossians 1:29)‘”

The love of God is not God’s making much of us, but God’s saving us from self-centeredness so that we can enjoy making much of him forever. And our love to others is not our making much of them, but helping them to find satisfaction in making much of God. True love aims at satisfying people in the glory of God. Any love that terminates on man is eventually destructive. It does not lead people to the only lasting joy, namely, God. Love must be God-centered, or it is not true love; it leaves people without their final hope of joy.

John Piper from an article entitled “The Goal of God’s Love May Not Be What You Think It Is.”

or to push the idea even further…

If you want to know why you can have security in God; it’s because God loves God so much…God loves God more than He loves you. And that’s why His love for you will stand. And if He didn’t love Himself more than He loved you, you would have no hope in Him because His love would be man-centered which is no foundation at all.

“If you love the cross like we sing; you must love what it was designed to do. Namely, gather a people from every people group on planet earth. If you don’t love that, you don’t love the cross. You’re creating it in your own imagination.”

John Piper, “How Few There Are Who Die So Hard! Suffering and Success In the Life of Adoniram Judson: The Cost of Bringing Christ to Burma”, 2003 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors.

you can find the manuscript for the message here.

This quote has been bothering me for over a month. I suppose the main reason is that as I look back on relationships that have gone sour, I’m trying to figure out just what love looks like. Both in a man-woman and Christ-to man sense.

“The particular love that Christ has for his bride is something more wonderful than the general love he has for his enemies. It is a covenant love. It pursues and overtakes and subdues and forgives and transforms and overcomes every resistance in the beloved.”

John Piper, discussing John Owen’s book The Death of Death in the Death of Christ in Piper’s book “Contending For Our All”