Excerpted from my forthcoming book What Every Man Wishes His Father Would Have Told Him. From the chapter “Never Move Past the Gospel.”
There will come a time, as comes in everyone’s life, when your progress is halted by the unwelcomed barnacles that attach themselves to our fallenness: marital strife, adultery, life-dominating sin, personal failure, an emotional breakdown, a rebellious child, a sick spouse, the tragic loss of a loved one, unconfessed sin, depression, anger, financial ruin, the ubiquitous test result for cancer which takes a brutal seven days to come back, etc. Everyone eventually gets to helplessness. In that moment, if you are like the rest of us, the last place you will turn will be to Jesus Christ. The Gospel, streaming invisibly as a ticker across the bottom of your life, will seem powerless to affect the more “complex” issues of your existence. You will immediately assume your modern predicaments require more sophisticated solutions than the Gospel. The Gospel is comforting, but ineffective deep into the thick of life.
In the shadow of the unexpected you will be half insulted at the suggestion of the Gospel’s sufficiency. You will most likely turn away from the Gospel, not turn toward it. I know this makes little sense, but it’s usually true. Standing under your worst moments, turning to the Gospel will sound like the naïve counsel of a caring grandmother. A veritable milk and cookies answer. The stuff of flannel boards and nursery rhymes. A vast oversimplification of your refined pain. “Christ and Him crucified” will appear as nothing more than a tattered cliché. But, such is what men (even regenerate ones at times) have always said about the cross – it is foolishness.
Much of the wisdom we seek (or give ourselves) in our darkest moments is the same bad advice we’ve been giving ourselves since the dawn of time – “try harder.” Maybe this is true because we’re reluctant to admit the real root of our most exquisite aches – sin. It makes us feel better about ourselves to rely upon more advanced solutions. But all our specialized “Christian” wisdom, which courteously tips a hat to the Gospel, ultimately ignores it and moves past it. It throws us back on our own strength and resources. Think deeper. Know more. Be better. Strive harder. This is the last thing fallen men need to hear, not the first. The cross says the exact opposite – repent, rest, believe. We give ourselves bad advice. If the cross proves anything, it is that man cannot lift the burden of sin and its consequences off of himself. If we were able, then Christ need not have died. He would have only needed to cheer us on. If we merely work harder, he died needlessly.
We drag our feet on the Gospel because we have been taught to esteem it as the entry point of Christianity and not the totality of it. It gets us in and then “we take it from there.” We are ever grateful for the help it offered in getting us on our feet and through the pearly gates. Like the soldiers who gave their lives to secure our freedom, we stop to acknowledge their sacrifice on Memorial Day and then take the same freedom for granted every day in between. But to many the Gospel is a mere beginning.
In our minds, our lives progress beyond the simple message of the Gospel. Like getting past the need for training wheels, as we get better at life the assistance it provided is no longer necessary. It becomes a reference point for progress. Like rings within a tree. “See how far we’ve come.” In some strange way, getting beyond the “basics” of the Gospel is a sign of personal improvement. But you never move beyond the Gospel to a more sophisticated or timely wisdom. There is no more intricate or relevant wisdom than the cross. God has nothing more to offer. Its simplicity, which we take for granted, is also its complexity. It is not moved beyond. You don’t get over it. You wade into it its vastness. What should astound us is its ever-deepening and infinitely unfolding depth of wisdom. It is the marvel of the infinite mind of God. It is the greatest thought the God of the universe is capable of thinking
Paul described himself as a steward of its immeasurable mysteries. He never got over it or moved past a dependence on it. He grew more basic in the sense that he was constantly coming to an awareness of the depth of those “basic” realities. His ever-growing need for it corresponded to his ever-increasing awareness of its enormity. He saw it. It consumed him. It was like digging through silos of unending grain. The deeper he dug the deeper he dug. As he turned it over, it grew more glorious, not less. With each examination it grew more substantial, not less. It becomes more relevant, not less. If you see it, you bow before it. You do not scoot around it. Its circumference is infinite.
In the light of the Gospel, we can see the truth in what had previously made no sense at all. As someone once said, grace slips in and changes all the price tags in the display window. Everything is new. And it is all free. We see life through the lens of eternity and the Savior’s love.
This perspective is especially powerful as a pastor. When the insanity of adultery sits in front of me, I see more than an unthinking idiot and a broken family. I see a corrupt heart, which has been so deceived by the idolatry of self it will sacrifice the most sacred realities of life in order to serve its demands. Only the gospel will usher us past the hatred and confusion to this truth. Only the cross will appear as the real solution to such deep confusion and sin. It tells the adulterer what’s truly wrong and the broken spouse how forgiveness is even possible. Every other wisdom stops short of it and fumbles around with symptoms lying around on the surface. Grace makes a family out of a disaster.
The Gospel gets to the root. It takes this man’s selfishness and transforms it into sacrifice. He now understands the power in servant-leadership and sacrificial love toward his bride. No longer is the aim finding a woman who can make him happy, but finding a woman to serve and love in the spirit of Christ’s own sacrifice. As Spurgeon said, “His repentance becomes more notorious than his sin.”
When the agony of a promiscuous young lady weeps in front of me, I don’t see a statistic, or damaged goods. I see a sinful heart, which has tried to fill itself with and find its worth in the affection of other human beings. Another empty idolatry made worse by the constant deception of the culture. The gospel reminds us that we have been freed from the tyranny of self. It is a love that loves unconditionally. It turns this heart back to that which it was designed to love – God. It makes a faithful wife out of a harlot.
One glance at the cross and we immediately know the problem is much deeper than our superficial answers. The gospel turns all our wisdom on its ear. The cross becomes wisdom and makes us look foolish. We suggest self-esteem as the solution to man’s poor condition. The cross prescribes self-sacrifice. We offer moralism as the remedy for behavioral problems. The Gospel offers grace. What we call an addiction the cross calls slavery. Our standard of measurement is relative. The cross’s is absolute righteousness. We will always get it backwards. We would never think to suggest what the gospel has been saying all along. The Gospel knows. It has always known.
