What is Your Drift?

"People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward holiness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated." 
-D.A. Carson-


In this quote, I think Carson touches on a very important trend I've noticed within myself, and also among Christians in general. The trend is this: Grace and disciplined effort are opposed to each other. I'm afraid we have created a dichotomy between resting in God's grace and grace-driven effort as if the two are mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, a lot of times I find myself drifting into this mentality that mistakes laziness with true gospel rest. 


Yes, the gospel does save us from having to justify ourselves with our own works and from having to prove our selves day in and day out. However, it also saves us to something.  It frees us from the slavery of sin and of self-justification and, in turn, frees us to pursue righteousness. The gospel frees us to life as it was meant to be lived. 


In Christ, we are no longer slaves to drift into compromise, disobedience, and lifelessness. In Christ, we are free to drift towards God. We are free to experience his grace in such a way that we are driven to action. God's grace is the empowering force behind our discipline and it is our motivation. With that being said, diving deeper into in the gospel and the union we have with Christ necessarily results in actively sharing in this life. 


Further, as Carson points out, our default gravitation is not towards holiness. Our default mode is to sink deeper and deeper into self-worship. Therefore, we must run to the gospel everyday and look to God's grace as the source of our effort in order to live this life. It is a mistake to call this legalism or unnecessary effort. God longs for his children to live in him. He longs for his children to experience the power of his resurrection.  He longs for his children to freely obey him. We only find this in the gospel of God's grace. When we taste of this, only then will we be in hot pursuit of righteousness. 

How Do You Understand Salvation?

Is God ultimately a passive bookkeeper who, after shaping the world lets it alone, concerned only to tally the relative merits of his creatures? Is this how you understand salvation? Is salvation something that you deserve based on your own work?

D.A. Carson and Doug Moo answer this question in their chapter on Galatians from their book, An Introduction to the New Testament.


"There is always a tendency for people to think that their salvation is something that is to be brought about by their own achievement. How they understand salvation may vary, and the kind of achievement they see as necessary may correspondingly vary. But that their eternal destiny rests in their own hands seems a truism so obvious that is scarcely needs stating. Christianity has often been understood as nothing more than a system of morality, as the careful observance of a sacramental system, as conformity to standards, as a linking up with others in the church and so on. There is always a need for Paul's forthright setting out of truth that justification comes only through faith in Christ. this must be said over against those who stress the importance of works done in accordance with the Torah or of any other achievements.

The Christian way stresses what God has done in Christ rather than what sinners do. There can be no improvement on the divine action by any human achievement, either by way of ritual observance or moral improvement. The cross is the one way of salvation, and no part of Scripture makes this clearer than does Galatians."

Carson, D.A., Moo, Douglas. An Introduction to the New Testament. pg. 473-474.

Caution About Preaching Christ In All the Scriptures

A post from Justin Taylor's blog.

A helpful TGC Asks with answers from Tim Keller, Don Carson, and David Murray to the question, “How would you caution teachers intent on preaching Christ in the Old Testament?”

Here is Keller’s answer:

1. Don’t “get to Christ” so soon in the sermon that you don’t unfold the meaning and application of the text to the original hearers. If you “jump to Christ” too soon that often means you inspire people but you don’t give them concrete application for how they are supposed to live.

2. Don’t “get to Christ” so late in the sermon that he seems like an add-on, a mere devotional appendix. If you wait too long to get to Christ listeners won’t see how Jesus’ work is crucial if the listeners are going to obey or heed the text.

3. Don’t get to Christ artificially. This is a big subject of course, but I believe two of the best ways are (a) by identifying in your text one of the many inner-canonical themes that all climax in Christ (Don Carson’s language), and (b) identifying in your text some “Fallen Condition Focus,” some lack in humanity that only Christ can fill (Bryan Chapell’s language).

The Heart of the Issue: We Need Jesus

"In our deepest loss, we need more than friendship and a listening ear - though they are wonderful. We need more than mere arguments - though in some cases good arguments stabilize us. We need the reality of God himself - God as he has spectacularly and definitively disclosed himself to us in the person of his Son."

- D.A Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

The Despair of an Ordinary Pastor

In his recent book, 'Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor', D.A. Carson captures the moving and encouraging life story of his father, Pastor Tom Carson. Tom Carson spent his life ministering to the people of Canada in the Quebec and Montreal regions. He never was famous. He was not big. He did not author a book. He often felt despair for his apparent failures in his ministry.

In one section, Dr. Carson talks about his dad's perfectionist mentality. This always left Tom Carson feeling like he could have done more. This led to periods of Tom Carson's life where he felt deep despair and a sense of failure. Of this, D.A. Carson writes,

"So many aspects of ministry demand excellence, and there are not enough hours in the day to be excellent in all of them. It is rare for me to finish a sermon without feeling somewhere between slightly discouraged and moderately depressed that I have not preached with more unction, that I have not articulated these glorious truths more powerfully and with greater insight and so forth. But, I cannot allow that to drive me to despair; rather, it must drive me to a greater grasp of the simple and profound truth that we preach and visit and serve under the Gospel of Grace, and God accepts us because of His son. I must learn to accept myself, not because of my putative successes but because of the merits of God's Son. The ministry is so open-ended that one never feels that all possible work has been done, or done as well as one might like. There are always more people to visit, more studying to be done, more preparation to do. What Christian's must do, what Christian leaders must do, is constantly remember that we serve our God and Maker and Redeemer under the Gospel of Grace."

What a great reminder. Like Tom Carson, I usually feel like a complete failure when it comes to ministry. I need to constantly remind myself that my assurance and joy are not tied to my 'performance' in ministry, but in Christ himself. I can't be any more or less justified based on apparent successes in the ministry. More so, when our acceptance is grounded in Christ, failures will drive us to a deeper dependancy in God. We will realize more and more that we can do nothing apart from Christ, and that everything is by His sovereign grace, according to His purpose.