Stay Awake!

Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York recently wrote an article for Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal that has been getting a fair amount of attention.

Titled ‘The Gospel in All Its Forms’, it contains a lot of helpful material, based around Keller’s main point: although there is one gospel preached by all the NT authors, it has various forms.

He says that authors of Scripture only rarely try to include all the different aspects of the gospel in one presentation, and that we should imitate this, chosing the most relevant aspect of the gospel for our hearers.

I think this is an excellent point, and agree that there are many Biblical ways of explaining what we were, what we are now and what we will become by God’s grace and in his power.

For example, for people from a Jewish, Muslim or other conservative religious background, an explanation of how we have all transgressed God’s law and how through Christ’s sacrifice we can escape the just punishment we deserve may be the most helpful way to introduce the gospel. Keller calls this a ‘gospel for the circumsised’, refering to Galatians 2:7.

He then outlines the way he might present the gospel to the ‘uncircumcised’ - i.e. people with a postmodern worldview:

I take a page from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death and define sin as building your identity—your self-worth and happiness—on anything other than God. That is, I use the biblical definition of sin as idolatry. That puts the emphasis not as much on “doing bad things” but on “making good things into ultimate things.”

Instead of telling them they are sinning because they are sleeping with their girlfriends or boyfriends, I tell them that they are sinning because they are looking to their romances to give their lives meaning, to justify and save them, to give them what they should be looking for from God. This idolatry leads to anxiety, obsessiveness, envy, and resentment. I have found that when you describe their lives in terms of idolatry, postmodern people do not give much resistance. Then Christ and his salvation can be presented not (at this point) so much as their only hope for forgiveness, but as their only hope for freedom. This is my “gospel for the uncircumcised.”

These paragraphs gave me pause as I read through the article. It seems like a clear and appealing way to introduce the gospel. But I have several questions:

• What does Scripture say about different presentations of the gospel for the circumcised and uncircumcised?
• Does Keller’s ‘gospel for the uncircumcised’ tally with a Biblical gospel presentation? Specifically,
• 1) is the Biblical definition of idolatory really ‘building your identity on anything other than God’?
• 2) is Christ and his salvation ever presented as freedom from idols?

I have some thoughts on the answers to these, but it’s a meaty set of topics, and it’s the end of my lunch hour, so I’m going to post this now and try to follow up on these questions later.

In the meantime, please share your thoughts in the comments.

I’ll just tee things up a little by giving the ESV translation of what I think is the relevant section of Galatians 2:

Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me.

On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. (Galatians 2:1-10)