Last week I summarised elements of Tim Keller’s helpful article on ‘The Gospel in All its Forms‘, finishing with some questions about what Keller calls his ‘gospel for the uncircumcised’ (aka ‘postmoderns’):
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.”
- 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?
This week I thought I’d try to answer some of those. I hope these questions don’t seem like nitpicking. Firstly, I think it’s great practice whenever you hear something to think ‘well great, but is it Biblical?’
Secondly in this case, Keller is specifically alluding to something Biblical with his ‘gospel for the uncircumcised’. I think it’s important to ask whether that actually exists in the Bible, and if so whether it’s the same gospel as Tim Keller outlined.
I hope in this post to imitate the behaviour of the Christians in Berea in Acts 17, who examined the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul told them was true.
First, let’s take a look at the passage Tim Keller alluded to when he mentioned his ‘gospel for the uncircumcised’.
Galatians: unity in the gospel, division in labour
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. [...] 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.
I know we have some Galatians experts in the readership so I’ll keep this short. My summary of the passage would be that Paul and Peter (=Cephas) agree that they are teaching the same gospel, but that they are called it to different groups of people - Peter to the Jews (circumcised) and Paul to the Gentiles (uncircumcised). Now it’s possible that teaching the gospel to these two groups requires different presentations of it, but that doesn’t seem to be the point of this passage, which emphasises unity in the gospel among the apostles, even as they preach to different groups.
To establish whether the gospel is presented differently to the Gentiles in the Bible, and if so how, it seems we need to go elsewhere.
To answer that question I’ve gone through the book of the Acts of the Apostles and looked at all the places where the gospel is presented to an unbelieving, predominantly Gentile audience to see what themes were emphasised.
I’m assuming that when the apostles spoke to Jewish hearers they emphasised the law and prophetic fulfilment.
Acts: turn from death to the God who judges and forgives
Firstly Peter in Acts 10 after he realises that the Gentiles are also to be evangelised:
Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. [..] And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.
So here we see judgement and sin mentioned (though there is also something about freedom that I’ve cut out).
The next episode that I think is relevant is in Acts 14. Paul and Barnabas get taken for gods when they heal someone:
“Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”
This is the best passage for a ‘freedom from idols’ gospel presentation that I’ve found. It’s a short section, and arguably the context makes the use of the ‘turn from idols’ theme essential! There is only a hint of a law/judgement theme here; if God has born witness to himself through nature in past generations, then he might fairly judge them.
Next we come to Paul’s Areopagus address in Acts 17. I think the key section is:
Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
In the longest recordered and most famous address by Paul to the Gentiles, judgement is more of a theme than freedom.
Finally, in Acts 26, we find Paul before King Aggripa, who appears to not be Jewish, though Paul says he is familar with the ‘customs of the Jews’. Paul doesn’t directly make a gospel presentation, but he does recount his own conversion, and includes within it this quote from Jesus on the Damascus Road:
Rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’
Arguably this could be said to be presenting a liberation theme obliquely to Aggripa.
In summary, I think this set of passages shows that the apostles did include liberation from futile idolatory in their gospel presentations to Gentiles, but even here it seems that this is not the main theme.
Is that a fair conclusion?
I now want to see look at what the Bible says about turning from idols more broadly, not just whether the theme is used evangelistically.
The Bible: Yahweh hates idols, we should hate idols
Is ‘freedom from idols’ as ‘freedom from futiltity’ a Biblical way to describe the gospel? I think we’ve seen some hints from the passages in Acts that it might be.
Tom U in the comments for the last post pointed out two relevant passages:
For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1:9)
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. (Galatians 4:8)
My reading would be that these certainly show that something that happens when God saves us is that we cease to be enslaved to idols, but whether that idolatory is presented biblicallly as futility is not clear here.
It is clear that idols are described as futile and worthless in the Old Testament. Particularly helpful is Isaiah 44:
All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all his companions shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen are only human. Let them all assemble, let them stand forth. They shall be terrified; they shall be put to shame together.
Also, hear Isaiah 57:
When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you!
The wind will carry them off,
a breath will take them away.
But he who takes refuge in me shall possess the land
and shall inherit my holy mountain.
This is perhaps quite a thin line, but from a skim through all the references to idols in the ESV, I would say that the Biblical emphasis is not ‘oh you poor things stop following silly idols, they won’t help, come and follow the sovereign Yahweh’, but more ‘you foolish people who follow worthless idols deserve judgement, fear Yahweh!’
I guess my questions are:
1) Is redemption as freedom from futile idol-worship a big biblical theme? If not, should we use it often evangelistically?
2) Is presenting the gospel to non-believer simply or mainly in terms of freedom from futility done in the Bible? If not, should we do it?
3) If you’re a non-Christian and you’re reading this, you’re probably the sort of person to whom Tim Keller would like to appeal. Read his quote again; is that a message that resonates with you?
And let’s listen to Isaiah, and be shocked at how we can worship such vain things, and resolve to take refuge only in Yahweh.
Yahweh says:
“What profit is an idol
when its maker has shaped it,
a metal image, a teacher of lies?
For its maker trusts in his own creation
when he makes speechless idols!
Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake;
to a silent stone, Arise!
Can this teach?
Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver,
and there is no breath at all in it.
But the Lord is in his holy temple;
let all the earth keep silence before him.” Habbakkuk 2
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