Profiles of the religious, irreligious, and gospel-person

Posted by on Aug 23, 2010 | Comments Off

First, I need to say that I’m forever indebted to pastor/author/church planter Tim Keller for exegeting the following concept for me from the gospels.  This has given me Biblical insight into human nature that was missing for a long, long time. Thanks, Tim (who’ll never read this post!)

Studying the Sermon on the Mount has highlighted to me that Jesus spent his entire ministry not critiquing one way to live (“there’s the right way and the wrong way!”), but critiquing two ways to live that both miss the gospel by being to the right or to the left.  Religion is embodied by the “pharisees and scribes” in the gospels and irreligion is embodied by the “tax collectors and sinners” in the gospels.

While we need to be sensitive to the fact that no profile ever fits across the board, here are general sketches of religious and irreligious people:

Irreligious people…

…are often theologically and politically liberal, usually speak in terms of self-acceptance, tend to label sinful attitudes and actions only as mental or physical disorders that people are victim to, and either downplay or deny that people are guilty before God because of their sin.  ”Sin-talk” often angers irreligious people because “you don’t need to change who you are, you need to accept who you are.”  They are enablers.  Their motto: “I accept myself.”

Religious people…

…are often theologically and politically conservative, usually frame conversations in terms of morality and “doing the right thing”, and tend to either downplay or deny in practice the fact that we are accepted by God because of faith in Jesus and not on the basis of our moral or religious performance.  Forgiveness and acceptance-talk often anger religious people because they feel the guilty party “has not paid his due.”  Religious people are angry, judgmental, and love to divide the world into two categories with themselves on the “right side” of the division.  Their motto: “I obey, therefore I am accepted.”

Gospel people…

It’s notoriously hard to discern what The Beatitudes (see here) are. The best way to understand The Beatitudes is simply by saying that they are Jesus’ “profile of a gospel person”, much like I’ve provided for religious and irreligious people above.  To summarize Jesus’ teaching about gospel people, their motto is “I am accepted because of Jesus, therefore I obey.”


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