The Gospel Changes Everything!

I make no secret of the impact that Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, has had on my own life and experience of the Gospel of Grace.  "My 'Gospel Yoda' he is," as I listen to his sermons each week for my own growth and encouragement.  I'm passing along a link to this interview of him and Rabbi David Gelfand from the February 18th episode of MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

There are three powerful gospel truths touched in this clip:

• 2:00 - One of the ways the Bible speaks of sin is as idolatry: making a good thing, like a job, into an ultimate thing
• 5:35 - God's absolute truth undermines our tendency to make our pet peeves into our own absolute truth.
• 6:40 - When your absolute truth is a man dying on the cross for his enemies it turns you into a different sort of person, one who is kind with those who disagree with you.

Tim is certainly a great communicator of the Gospel, and not surprisingly, I find these thoughts moving and compelling.  But I don't offer this video with encouragement to incorporate Tim's arguments or imitate his style as some sort of "new strategy" for communicating in our current culture.  Such an approach really misses the point that the Gospel radically changes who we are and how we see the world around us.  As changed people, our thoughts and interactions with the surrounding world are altered.

To adopt Keller's arguments, without a heart transformed by grace, is hardly different than adopting the righteous behaviors of a godly person we respect, without ever being touched by the power that made them what they are in the first place.  Keller speaks the way he does because his heart has been changed by grace.  He sees the world differently.  He sees himself differently.  He can interact with those around him as a result of that change, not because he has found and mastered the right turn of a phrase.

May we all do the same. And thanks to Beverley Bouchard for first passing on the link to me.