Hope More Audacious Than Heaven

We are living in a time in which there is no doubt that the world is broken. We’re feeling in real time the effects of all that is not right with the world. We’re facing sickness and death. We’re seeing conflict and greed and pride. We’re seeing broken systems that leave people vulnerable. We’re witnessing violence and dehumanization. We bear the ache of uncertainty and upheaval, of separation from each other, of anxiety and depression. I know I’m not alone in the desperate prayer Come, Lord Jesus.

In the face of such a time as this, the resurrection offers me audacious hope.

This hope is not ultimately, as many have explained it, about going to heaven when I die. I cannot count the times I’ve heard the comfort and hope of the Christian life described only this way. But the hope of the resurrection is not about escapism. It’s not about jumping ship and flying away to a disembodied, better place. It’s not one that lets me wash my hands of the world, believing it’s all going to burn.

No, the hope we have is much deeper—and, yes, more audacious. It is a hope that clings to a coming new creation. Jesus’ resurrection declares that our hope is not just about the renewal and rebirth of our souls (though this is a critical part of it), but it is also about a renewal and remaking of all of creation. At the end of the biblical story, we are given a picture of a new heavens and new earth, a place of tangible beauty and wholeness, made and remade for us. It is Eden restored, where we live and breath in resurrection bodies. Jesus’ resurrection was the guarantee of this, the first picture and first fruit of a new creation. The hope we have is not of going to heaven—it is of heaven coming down to earth, just as Jesus taught us to pray.

When you look at the world around you, it is one thing to believe that God will take you from it. It is another thing entirely to believe that God will return and transform it, will break it open like a seed and allow his life to burst forth. It is one thing to believe that we will be taken away from pain and sickness and death. It is another thing entirely to believe that pain and sickness and death themselves will be taken away, forever eradicated, fully and completely destroyed. I believe this sort of hope takes even more audacity to believe—to stand in the face of what our human experience has taught us to be unbreakable, unrelenting tyrants (sin and pain, sickness and death) and insist that they will not have the last say, that they will finally meet their end.

So as you stare out at a world that is broken and aching for redemption, stand with defiant hope. This is not the end. There will come a day when we will be restored—and creation will be as well.

Billy Graham and the Legacy of the Gospel

People around the world are mourning the death of Billy Graham, who passed away yesterday at the age of 99. He was, without a doubt, one of the most influential church figures of the 20th century. 

I swim in the stream of his legacy. I attended a seminary which he helped to found, and I'm thankful to have his signature on my seminary diploma. This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg of his influence.

But I don't want to talk today about his accomplishments or the way he's shaped the Christian church as we know it. If you would care to read more about his life, ministry, and legacy, Christianity Today (of which he was a founder) has a lovely special issue in Billy Graham's honor. 

Today, I'm thinking about what was even more dear to Billy Graham's heart - the Gospel. As I've been thinking of his legacy, I'm reminded how simple that Gospel message is. It is simple enough that we can summarize its basic truths in one sentence: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) 

The message of the Gospel is profound. There is a reason why we devote time to understanding the theology behind it, why we want to study it and dissect it and diagram it. There is a reason why we treat it with awe, not wanting to oversimplify it, not wanting to twist it into something it is not. There is a reason why we look at the historical sweep, the context of Jesus Christ's coming, the prophecies He fulfilled and will fulfill. It is right and good to dedicate this thought and study.  

But in the midst of this complexity, the Gospel message is still simple. It is hard. It is beyond our full comprehension. We could spend a lifetime diving the depths of its riches. But it is simple: God loves you. He entered time and space to make a way for relationship with you. In Him you find complete forgiveness, redemption, and restoration. 

This simple-yet-profound Gospel message changes lives. It changes families and cultures. It touches our minds, our hands, our feet. It transforms. 

Billy Graham never forgot this simple Gospel message, and he never forgot its power. This is, perhaps, his most precious legacy.

“Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”

- Billy Graham (1918-2018)

Protestant Amnesia: What's So Important About the Reformation?

My friend recently posted on Facebook about this year’s 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. It was short, sweet, simple. 

Someone commented calling the post gibberish and my friend a history nerd. 

It was all in good humor—a friend teasing another friend—but I was shocked. I was shocked because the words were coming from a fellow Christian, and a fellow Protestant Christian, and she had no sense of the Reformation’s significance. 

I know she isn’t alone. 

It’s been said that Christians have very bad memories. (I would say this is generally true of humans.) We easily forget where we’ve come from. We forget our history. We forget that our present was birthed from the past. We are heirs of the ideas and decisions of the people and cultures that came before us. We did not emerge from nothing, ex nihilo. We are irreparably tied to our history.

History matters—not because of nerdiness and not for obsession with fact-collecting. History matters because it reminds us who we are. 

How does this relate to the Protestant Reformation? 

At the time of the Reformation, there was one Church in Western Europe—the Roman Catholic Church, and one Church in Eastern Europe—the Eastern Orthodox Church. It’s hard to imagine today, when we’re accustomed to a variety of church traditions. In my hometown and its surrounding township, for example, there are dozens of churches, and I can’t begin to list the various denominations these churches represent.

If you attend a church of any tradition aside from the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches, you are a child of the Protestant Reformation. (In many ways, Western history as we know it, including my native United States culture, is also a child of the Reformation, but that goes beyond the scope of what we can talk about here.)

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. In honor of the occasion, I’ll be taking the next few weeks leading up to "Reformation Day" on October 31 to reflect on how the Reformation speaks to us today. But first, we need to cover some basic history.

Martin Luther and Reformation Beginnings

The Reformation started with a monk named Martin Luther. He was obsessive and anxious, hyper-aware of his sin and fearful of God’s judgment. As a professor at Wittenberg University, Luther threw himself into the study of Scripture.

As he studied and lectured, he gradually began to see the Bible's teaching differently. God's righteousness, like it's talked about in the book of Romans, isn't about God waiting to smite us. It's about God's gracious gift in making us righteous because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. He gives us His righteousness, bringing us to a place of right relationship, adopting us as His children. And He does this not because of our own merit or worthiness or action but merely by His grace, through our faith in Christ. 

For any of us who grew up in a Protestant church, this probably sounds like old news. But for Luther, it was revolutionary. He “rediscovered” this presentation of the Gospel, which now sounds so common to us. It was his reformation breakthrough.

The trouble started when Luther wrote and posted the Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. At the time, traveling preachers were selling indulgences. They told townspeople, often poor peasants without money to spare, that if they paid money for an "indulgence," one of their loved ones would be released from Purgatory. They even had an advertising jingle: “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs.” 

Luther was a concerned pastor. He saw a practice that was taking advantage of poor churchgoers, a practice that was theologically suspect in suggesting people could buy salvation, a practice that was conveniently funding a grandiose building project in Rome. So, he wrote ninety-five objections to the practice and publicly shared them for scholarly debate. 

The Ninety-Five Theses circulated widely and quickly, and controversy erupted. The next few years were a whirlwind for Luther. He wrote furiously, explaining the theological views that had slowly been forming during his studies. He publicly debated church leaders and stood before religious and secular councils. He was eventually declared a heretic, excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and made an outlaw. But the “damage” had already been done. The Protestant Reformation was taking Europe by storm. 

Reformation Basics: The Solas

I will not take the time to explain all that Luther did and taught for the rest of his life. And I will not detail his followers and the various early fragmentations of the Reformation. If you’re interested, this information is readily available elsewhere. Instead, I want to simply explain the Reformation distinctives, these significant shifts that revolutionized the expression and theology of the Christian Church. We call them the “solas.”

Sola Scriptura: Scripture alone is the highest authority.

This was the starting point of the revolutionary shift of the Reformation. No longer did the judgments of popes or church councils or the traditions of the church bear the authority of what was true. Scripture alone was the judge and standard of truth. It is the authority for our faith and doctrine, and everything must be interpreted in its light.

Solus Christus: Christ alone is our only mediator to God.

We could not come to God on our own, and we needed Him to reveal Himself and come to us. Christ alone is the way for us to be in right relationship with God and know what He is really like. Our salvation was accomplished once and for all by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the only way of salvation. 

Sola Fide & Sola Gratia: We are saved through faith alone, by the grace of God alone. 

It is impossible for us to save ourselves or work our way into God’s favor. Our salvation is entirely by His grace, not by any works or good things we have done. We do not add to the saving work of Christ—He has already fully won our salvation. We receive this salvation and are made right with God by responding in faith to what Christ has already done. In a “great exchange,” the penalty of our sin was paid by Christ on the Cross, and we are given His righteousness, declared to be right with God. The simple statement of the Gospel, which we have inherited from the Reformation is: Justification (we are made right with God), by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone.

Soli Deo Gloria: Glory to God Alone

God alone receives glory from our salvation and our lives. Because salvation is entirely His work, and not our own, He receives all the glory and praise from it. The whole of our lives should be lived for His glory.

Luther never wanted to break from the Catholic Church. His intention was always reform—to call the Church back to its roots, back to the basic teachings of the biblical Gospel. But the reformation turned into a break, and produced a new branch of Christianity. This year, we mark its 500th birthday.

A Tale of Two Sermons

I once heard two sermons. They spoke of the same little passage—a mere eighteen verses, hardly a column of text. But how different they were. 

It was not merely a matter of skill or style. It was not a matter of truth or falsehood, right or wrong.

One told me what I had to do. 
The other, what had been done for me. 

One sent me off with the suggestion to reflect on what I was doing wrong. 
The other sent me with thanksgiving of the One who came for me in my lostness. 

One piled on guilt. The other mercy.
One gave a word of law. The other the message of grace. 

I am no master homilitician, but I know which I prefer. 
I know which one drives me to awe and praise, and which to morbid introspection.
I know which one inspires me to change, and which makes me despair of ever being good enough. 
I know which one turns my eyes to Jesus, and which turns my eyes to myself. 

The secret to true transformation is never law. It is never the litany of my wrongdoings, my misplaced loves, my sins. It is never the rehearsal of how I don’t measure up. Yes, I fall short, this I know—the Bible tells me so. But I thought the song was about Jesus.

How easily we forget our own message—the one that tells a story of grace coming to us in our unworthiness, the story of what has been done for us—not of our performance or our rehabilitation. All we truly have to give the world is Gospel—all else is just a Christianized rebranding of the “earn your way” slave drivers. 

Grace transforms us. It transforms my behavior and my attitudes. It possesses me with its glorious, excruciating, intoxicating light.

The Spirit transforms us. He peels away the thick dragon skin of my selfishness and pride and makes me a new creation. He gives me a soft heart, an obedient heart. My life bears His fruit.

To assume that this can be manufactured through guilt tripping or pump-you-up inspiration is to miss the point. It’s to forget our history. It’s to forget the gateway through which we walked into glory.

Our story will always be about grace. Our life will always be shaped and molded through a response to what has already been done for us. It is finished. We respond in thanksgiving. This thanks changes our hearts, and our newly transplanted, resurrected hearts change our lives.

This is the message I can never get enough of. It’s the one my parched soul laps up in rejoicing desperation.