Chapter 2: Gospels of Sin Management
The Invitation Diminished. The bumper sticker that says "Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven” is a gross simplification what Christians should be all about.
Bar-Code Faith.
Would God really Do It That Way?
Some Puzzling Facts. Christians don’t live as if their lives have been changed much.
God Really Doesn’t Change our Behavior?
Shifting the Focus. Maybe the fact that Christians aren’t different is because of what they are being taught.
Gospels of Sin management. “History has brought us to the point where the Christian message is thought to be essentially concerned only with how to deal with sin: with wrongdoing or wrong-being and its effects. Life, our actual existence, is not included in what is now presented as the heart of the Christian message …”
The Gospel on the Right.
The Atonement as the Whole Story. Justification has taken the place of regeneration or new life. All you need to be “saved” is a magical moment of mental assent.
“Lordship Salvation.” The debate in right about the requirement to view Jesus as Lord, or if the simple act of believing is enough.
Salvation Cut Off from Life. If you believe that Jesus’s death paid for your sins, then there is no need to settle the issue of how to live as a Christian.
But is That the Issue? “But we get a totally different picture of salvation, faith, and forgiveness if we regard having life from the kingdom of the heavens now—the eternal kind of life—as the target. The words and acts of Jesus naturally suggest that this is indeed salvation, with discipleship, forgiveness, and heaven to come as natural parts. And in this he only continues the teachings of the Old Testament. The entire biblical tradition from beginning to end is one of the intimate involvement of God in human life—or else alienation from it. That is the biblical alternative for life now. “The crooked man is an abomination to the Lord,” as the proverb sums it up, “but He is intimate with the upright”
Recalling Abraham’s Faith and Righteousness. “… the difference between trusting Christ, the real person Jesus, with all that that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through him—trusting only his role as guilt remover. To trust the real person Jesus is to have confidence in him in every dimension of our real life, to believe that he is right about and adequate to everything.” “the gospel” for Ryrie, MacArthur, and others on the theological right is that Christ made “the arrangement” that can get us into heaven. In the Gospels, by contrast, “the gospel” is the good news of the presence and availability of life in the kingdom, now and forever, through reliance on Jesus the Anointed.”
The Gospel on the Left.
The Gospel as Entirely Social.
Religion Becomes Social Ethics. “The gospel, or “good news,” on this view, was that God himself stood behind liberation, equality, and community; that Jesus died to promote them, or at least for lack of them; and that he “lives on” in all efforts and tendencies favoring them. For the theological left, simply this became the message of Christ.”
God and Jesus Immanent in Human Love.
The Political and Social Meaning of Love.
The Gospel Gap. “To reiterate, that irrelevance to life stems from the very content of those “gospels”: from what they state, what they are about. They concern sin guilt or structural evils (social sins) and what to do about them. That is all. That real life goes on without them is a natural consequence of this.”
Toward Integration of Live and Faith
The Case of the Missing Teacher. Jesus as a teacher is not something integrated into Christians' lives. “Some current critics of the U.S. Supreme Court like to point out that it does not allow the Ten Commandments, though written upon the walls of its own chambers, to be displayed in public schools. But where do we find churches, right or left, that put them on their walls? The Ten Commandments really aren’t very popular anywhere. This is so in spite of the fact that even a fairly general practice of them would lead to a solution of almost every problem of meaning and order now facing Western societies. They are God’s best information on how to lead a basically decent human existence.”
The Centrality of the Pulpit. The message of Christian discipleship and human life is rarely the focus of the teaching.
The Kingdom Must Make Sense. In spite of the kingdom of God being the central theme of Jesus’ teaching, it is rarely preached.
Excerpt From: Dallas Willard. “The Divine Conspiracy.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-divine-conspiracy/id360632495
Quotes from: Dallas Willard. “The Divine Conspiracy.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-divine-conspiracy/id360632495