Profiles of the religious, irreligious, and gospel-person

Posted by Josh Howerton on Mar 23, 2011 | 2 comments

To start the “24K Gospel” series through Galatians this week, one of the major emphases was “getting the gospel”… and how you can miss it.  When I was in Student Ministry I used to preach all the time that there were “two ways to live – God’s way and man’s way!”.  It’s been a MAJOR moment of understanding for me in the last two years to see that Jesus consistently communicates that there are three fundamental ways to live – the “gospel way”, what I’ll call “religion” to the right, and “irreligion” to the left of the gospel.

One of these “errors” is usually the tendency of every heart.  Here’s a quick profile sketch of each…

Irreligion – “I accept myself.”

Religion – “I obey, therefore I am accepted.”

Gospel – “I am accepted because of Jesus, therefore I obey.”

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, denying the fact that sin destroys and that you need a Savior.  The motto of irreligion is “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 emotionally function in a denial of the fact that we are accepted by God because of faith in Jesus and not because of our moral or religious performance.  As a result, they’re always either “beat up” or “blown up”.  They’re either insecure, discouraged, walking around feeling condemned (beat up) because they’re not “performing well enough” or they’re arrogant and proud because they are “performing well enough”.  Forgiveness and acceptance-talk often anger religious people because they feel the guilty party “has not paid his due.”  Religious people are judgmental.  The motto of religion is “I obey, therefore I am accepted.”

The Gospel that Jesus calls us to, on the other hand, asks us to embrace both parts of a latin phrase that Reformers like Martin Luther used: “simul iustus et peccator”.  It means “at the same time righteous and sinful.”  They display a humble confidence – humble because they see their sin; confident because they see their Savior.  Gospel people don’t look down on “sinful people” and judge them because they understand they are not morally superior to anyone – everyone is in the same category of “sinful”.  But they are also not enablers of sin because they see the price God paid to purchase our acceptance in Jesus’ broken, bloodied, naked body at The Cross. Gospel-people cannot not forgive because they see themselves as the biggest sinner they know and feel that they have been forgiven more than they will ever be asked to forgive anyone else.  Gospel-people are compelled toward godliness by love, not by obligation.  The motto of the gospel is “I am accepted, therefore I obey.”

 

*Acknowledgement to Tim Keller for this terminology. For more on this, pick up his INCREDIBLE book “Prodigal God”