Ranges Community Church

Steve Addison has quoted Tim Keller out of leadership Magazine in regards to the definition of the Gospel a generation ago as understood almost universally by evangelicals:

A generation ago, it would have been hard to imagine evangelicals unable to agree on what the simple gospel is: 1) God made you and you must have a relationship with him, 2) but your sin separates you from God. 3) Jesus, God’s Son took the punishment your sins deserved. 4)If you repent for your sins and trust in his work for your salvation, you will be forgiven, justified and accepted freely by grace, and indwelled with his Spirit until you die and go to heaven.

Then uses Some Brian Mclaren to contrast a post-modern understanding of what the Gospel may mean.

Its an interesting comparison.

Keller does a comparision as well in the leadership magazine. I was really interested the way communicated sin in a postmodern way.

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.”

I think this is an excellent way of understanding of sin. I’m going to try to get my hands on ‘Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death’. There maybe a few more gems in there for me.