A Brief Meditation on the Wilderness Temptation

    How one interprets a given biblical passage depends largely upon what questions one brings to the text. One of the basic concepts that must be kept in mind when interpreting Scripture is the proper distinction between law and gospel. This distinction is a big topic, but to put it simply, the bible’s teachings can be divided broadly into those two categories. The law tells us what to do. The gospel tells us what has been done for us in the person and work of Christ. The law condemns. The gospel saves. There is a little more to it, but those are the nuts and bolts. 

    This distinction is indispensable. As Paul states in Galatians 5:4, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” In short, the law cannot save you. Nor does it function as the basis for the Christian's standing with God. Faith is God’s chosen instrument of salvation, and faith comes by the hearing of the gospel. To have faith is to trust in the person and work of Christ for eternal life.

    As important as it is to properly distinguish between law and gospel, the need to do so is often overlooked, with the result that scripture passages like this one get misinterpreted. The account of Jesus’ wilderness temptation is a thoroughgoing gospel passage, but the questions one brings to a given text do matter. When one goes looking for laws, commandments, or practical tips for living a more effective Christian life in a passage meant to show us what God has accomplished on our behalf, the passage will necessarily be misconstrued, and the Christian will be robbed of precious, gospel comfort. To put it succinctly, if you ask law questions of a gospel passage, you will get a distorted answer. There is a particular, common misreading of this text which springs from just this sort of mistake. Evangelical Christians, and others, failing to distinguish law from gospel, have turned the wilderness temptation into a how-to manual on overcoming temptation. The logic goes something like this: “When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he quoted scripture back to the Devil. Therefore, we should do the same thing when we are tempted. Jesus is modeling for us how we are to fight the temptation”.

    This misreading of the text is both understandable and very enticing to the flesh. Indeed, do it yourself spirituality is one of the primary deceptions to which we are drawn, both before and after the new birth, and our constant tendency to self-righteousness often makes us unable to see a gift for what it is. We are inclined to want to add our effort to whatever God has already accomplished.

    To clarify I certainly do not want to discourage anyone from seeing thorough knowledge of scripture as an antidote to sinful temptations. Psalm 119:11 says, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” So, yes, knowing God’s word will strengthen you against the world, the flesh, and the Devil. That is true. It is also clearly a principle that Jesus takes seriously. It’s just not what this text is about. This passage, far from being about you fighting the Devil, as though you would stand a chance against him, is about Jesus fighting and defeating Satan for you. To see this more clearly, we must touch on the subject of Christ’s active obedience.

    As Protestants we mean a particular thing when we speak of Jesus as our substitute. We say things like, “Jesus died for our sins”, and understand that on his cross, he underwent the wrath of his father in our place, as a vicarious sacrifice, a penal substitution. We get that and it is an indispensable reality. But we often forget that Jesus’ substitutionary work is two sided. He was not only our substitute in his death, but in his life as well. While his suffering and death, often called his "passive obedience", gets most of the attention, a full-orbed understanding of the gospel requires that we understand his active obedience also. 

    The doctrine of Christ’s active obedience says that before Jesus died for us, he lived for us. During his perfect life, Jesus did all of the law keeping that his unrighteous people don’t do, starting with Adam. Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 show us Christ as the new and obedient Adam, the head of redeemed humanity. The Cliff Notes version is this: Adam fell and blamed God and his bride for his own sin. Christ stood up and covered his bride’s sin with his righteousness. Christ is also the new and obedient Israel. Israel failed the test in the wilderness. Christ did not fail. Israel went after idols. Israel tested God. Israel complained about God’s provision, showing their lack of trust in him. The New Israel perfectly trusted and obeyed. That is key because Paul writes in Ephesians 2 and in Romans 11, that we have been brought into the people of God by the blood of Christ, grafted into the one olive tree. Being grafted into an unredeemed, unrighteous Israel would do us no good. As the obedient Israel, he is our corporate righteousness, and your personal righteousness. Christ is our sin bearer, but the gospel is even bigger than that. His death absolves you of sin, but you still need positive righteousness. You must be more than not guilty to stand before God. You must be righteous. His innocent death removed our guilt. His perfect life earned righteousness for us. And that is very good news.

    In case you are skeptical, let me show you the idea of Jesus fulfilling the positive requirements of righteousness for us in the immediate context. In chapter 3, Jesus comes to be baptized by John, but John refuses initially, insisting that Jesus should be baptizing him, which seems obvious at first blush. Jesus' response is instructive. “Permit it to be so now, for It is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness”. Fulfill righteousness for whom?  Jesus doesn’t need righteousness or repentance. We do. John’s baptism, was a baptism of repentance. Jesus underwent a baptism of repentance to “fulfill all righteousness”. This righteousness is for us, which is why Jeremiah 23:6 says of the Messiah, "In His days Judah will be saved, And Israel will dwell safely; Now this is His name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." 2 Corinthians 5:21 is also directly relevant. "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

    It is also important to realize that Matthew wrote his gospel to first century Jews, people steeped in the narrative of the Old Testament. This is seen for instance when Matthew portrays Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Covenant promise of the coming Davidic king. It is also seen in that Matthew doesn’t stop to explain references to Jewish customs and culture, like the other gospel writers. This means that Matthew assumed that his target audience was already familiar with those things. It is a hard and fast rule of biblical interpretation that you cannot rightly apply a text to yourself until you understand what the author wanted to communicate in his particular context. Understanding what Matthew was writing to his intended audience makes it possible to see what this gospel means for you. A First Century Jew would have seen what Matthew was saying about who Jesus is and what he was doing. Now to the text.

    The first thing to notice is that Jesus had a purpose for going into the wilderness. Verse 1 says that Jesus was “led up by the Spirit...to be tempted by the Devil”. This temptation was not an accident, nor was it a sneak attack. Not only did Satan not catch the Lord by surprise, he was playing into Jesus’ hands. It was the purpose of the triune God that Jesus Christ be tempted in that place at that time. Jesus did not walk into a trap. Satan did.

    That is crucial to get because it helps us see what Jesus is doing in the wilderness in the first place. In chapters 2-4, Matthew has Jesus typologically recapitulating the Exodus. Look at Matthew 2:15. It says that Jesus came out of Egypt that a prophecy might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I have called my son”. This is a direct quote of Hosea 11:1, but Hosea is actually referring back to the literal, historical Exodus. Matthew wants his readers to see him drawing a line from Israel’s exodus out of Egypt to Jesus’ exodus from Egypt. He does so by connecting the two things by use of Hosea 11:1 and his Jewish audience would not have missed it.

    According to the Exodus account, the first thing Israel encountered upon leaving Egypt was the Red Sea. After crossing the sea, they went into the wilderness. Notice the direct parallels between the Exodus and chapters 2-4 of Matthew’s gospel. Israel was called out of Egypt. Christ was called out of Egypt. Israel goes through the Red Sea. Christ goes through the water of John’s baptism in Matthew 3. After going through the sea, Israel went into the wilderness for forty years. After going through John’s baptism, Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days. It is impossible to unsee it once you have seen it. Matthew has re-written the exodus with Jesus as the central character. It is at this point that what is not parallel must be noted.

    Israel failed in the wilderness, while Jesus did not. This is good news for you and me. Satan tempted Jesus in chapter 4:3. “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread”. Remember, Jesus went out “to be tempted”. Here Satan unwittingly hands Jesus the means of fulfilling his purpose in the desert. Throughout the Old Testament this theme repeats itself over and over again. The very means by which Satan attempts to destroy the people of God are turned back upon him, defeating his schemes. 

    Israel grumbled against Yahweh in the wilderness because they had no bread. He had already promised that he would bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey. What should they have done? They should have believed God’s promises. When Jesus responded to Satan, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”, he was not denying that people need food or that he was hungry. He was confessing two things. First, he confessed that God’s word was more important than his physical appetite. Second, he was confessing that he trusted his father to provide. When God said, “This is my beloved Son”, Jesus trusted him. He knew that his Father would not deny him what he had promised. The first Israel disbelieved. Christ, the second Israel, trusted. 

    In chapter 4:6 Satan tempted Jesus a second time. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down: for it is written, “he will give his angels charge concerning you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone”. Notice the subtle, ingenious nature of this temptation. In the first instance Satan tempted Jesus to doubt his Father’s care. In this instance he challenges Jesus to put his money where his mouth is. In fact he actually feigns to grant Jesus’ point. It’s as if he is saying, “Okay, fine, you say you trust God. Prove it. Throw yourself off the temple as an act of faith.” Notice that Satan is not lying here. He is being deceitful with the truth. He is that clever and subversive. That is one reason, incidentally, why we need Jesus to do this for us. Satan is far too intelligent for you and me. But Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Why? It seems at first blush like Satan has a point. He even quoted scripture.

    Question: When you trust someone implicitly, do you find ways to test what he says, just in case? Of course not. Satan, in challenging Christ to prove that he trusts the Father, is still tempting Christ to make the Father prove himself. The Lord sees through this ploy and responds, “It is written again, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test”. Jesus knows that trying to force God’s hand is evidence that one does NOT trust him, and he knows that all attempts to force God’s hand in the past have ended in disaster.

    Abraham and Sarah hatched a plan to force God’s promise of a son. The result was pain and suffering for everyone involved. After the children of Israel refused to trust God and go take the Promised Land, they tried to force the promise. They tried to take the land without God’s blessing. As a result they were routed by the Canaanites. Israel showed their lack of faith by grumbling and then tried to force God to fulfill a promise on their terms, which led to their being judged severely. Jesus knew that trusting God’s promises meant trusting them on God’s terms, and he acted accordingly.

    Then in Matthew 4:8-9 Satan came with one final temptation. He showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and offered to give them to Jesus if he would simply bow down and worship him. What is going on here? Look at Exodus 32:1:

“Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

    The Israelites had become impatient. “Moses delayed…” So the Israelites decided to take a shortcut to what they were waiting for and worship God, or “gods”, on their own terms. This is called idolatry. In essence Satan is presenting the same temptation to Jesus Christ. He is offering him a shortcut to what he wants and where he is going. In Luke 4, which is parallel to Matthew 4, we read that Satan told Christ that the authority of the kingdoms of the world was his to give to whomever he wished. He knew who Jesus was and why he had come. He had come to save his people and establish his kingdom rule over the earth. In Matthew 28 Jesus tells his disciples, “all authority in Heaven and Earth has been given to me”. But there were still three years, a lot of work, and a whole lot of suffering in between Jesus and his goal. Satan attempted to get Jesus to worship him as a way of getting to his destination without delay and without suffering. Who were the Israelites really worshipping when they made that golden calf? 

    Israel was tempted and went into idolatry. Jesus was tempted with idolatry, tempted to take a shortcut around his suffering and his Father’s perfect timing. Jesus responded like Israel should have. “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve”. Jesus passed his test perfectly. In verse 11 it says then that the devil left him and angels came and ministered to him.

    What about us? How often do we betray our lack of trust in God by losing our peace and questioning God’s provision and goodness when life gets difficult? We don’t need to be forty days hungry to start doubting our Father’s gracious provision and promises. Sometimes things get really hard. We all experience things like job loss, death, sickness,  loss of home, or the breakup of a family. We are called to trust his promises even in those times. And his promises are good, even, perhaps especially, in those times.

    However, if we’re honest, it often takes considerably less than that and we begin, like the Israelites, to accuse God of abandoning us. Car trouble, a  frustrating job, minor health problems or family discord, the wrong party wins the election, and various other issues, often relatively inconsequential in nature. In any case, we are all guilty of not trusting God's Promises when things are not going the way we think they should. The fact of the matter is, none of us trusts God as we ought to.

    You know it if you take a moment’s time to reflect honestly. On your best day your faith is mixed with unbelief. But our duty to trust God is NOT a call to trust him partially. We are to trust him totally, every moment of every day, in everything, without wavering. And we don’t. That makes us unbelievers, and unbelievers go to Hell. How many idols do you still cling to, Christian? I don’t care if you’ve been a Christian for five minutes or fifty years. You have them. Martin Luther wrote a succinct definition of the first commandment in his small catechism. “‘You shall have no other gods’. What does this mean? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things”. That is brilliant in its simplicity. How do you know what your idols are? What do you fear, love, and trust?

    When you’re weary and in need of rest, where do you turn? Leisure is a good thing in its place, but if you turn to leisure for rest before you turn to God, then you love and trust leisure more than you do God. Where do you turn when you need comfort? Do you turn to food, drugs, alcohol, entertainment, sex, or some other source of pleasure? The list could go on almost indefinitely. Where do you find rest, joy, peace, comfort, assurance, relief from anxiety, or any other number of things one might seek in this life? If there is anything in this life to which you turn, in which you hope, before or instead of your God, then you have identified an idol. If any circumstance in this life causes you to lose your peace and become discontented, angry, afraid, hopeless, etc., when you still have Christ, then you are an idolater. Idolaters go to Hell. That is terrible news for all of us.

    So upon what basis do we go through life with anything but absolute dread filling our hearts? We have only one hope, but it is a sure and unfailing one. Our hope, halting and imperfect though it is, is in the finished, perfect work of Jesus Christ. We trust in him, not only because he died for us, but because he has lived for us.

    So take heart, idolater! Take heart, adulterer, fornicator! Take heart, drug addict, alcoholic! Did I miss your sin? Take heart, sinner! Jesus Christ, the righteous one, has lived for you! He lived perfectly for you, earning the righteousness that you can’t! He died under the wrath of the father so that your weak, failing faith and obedience is forgiven and completed. He has lived the life you can’t, paid the price you owe, and risen in the resurrection that you are now promised. All those who trust in him have all of his righteousness imputed to them and have had all of their sin left in the grave that he walked out of on the third day. In him you are perfect. In him, by faith, you have been saved. 

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Of Rebellion, False Speech, and Christ's Victory Over Both

  At this point it is obvious that our entire cultural project is aimed at overthrowing God and enthroning ourselves. This is nothing new, of course, notwithstanding the fact that Psalm 2 makes it very clear that such a project is nothing short of a fool’s errand. “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision.” “Yet I have set My King On My holy hill of Zion.” There is no overthrowing of God the Father, nor of his Anointed One, Jesus. Yet I think we Christians are too accustomed to think of such things only in terms of the final judgment. The Eschaton is a worthy object of meditation, to be sure. But it often escapes our notice, to the detriment of our witness to the world, that the failure of all such rebellion is baked into the rebellion itself. There is one particular feature of all such cosmic insurgency, which ensures the failure of all such endeavors, and the victory of the Gospel. That is the confusion of speech.    

Back in Genesis 11, there is the famous account of the Tower of Babel. If you spent any time in Sunday school as a kid, you have heard it. If you are a regular reader of the Scripture, you know it well. By way of summary, the people of the ancient world, sometime after the flood, said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth”, and the Lord defeated the counsel of the people by confusing their language. It should not escape the notice of the perceptive Bible reader that this tower was what the Old Testament often refers to as a “high place”. It was a place of worship, a temple, a “Stairway to Heaven”, as it were. These high places, as places of Pagan worship, were often the subject of God’s complaints against the Old Covenant people (see 2 Kings 17:11, among many other passages). 

Among the reasons the high places were so offensive to God is the fact that they were, in a real sense, an attempt on the part of fallen Man to get back to Eden on his own terms. All false religion is exactly that, Man’s effort to fix the fall by his own religious machinations. This is a direct violation of the first commandment, of course, but I wonder if the contemporary relevance of God’s judgment on Babel occurs to us. As already mentioned, God put a stop to the project at Babel by making it impossible for them to communicate: “And the Lord said… ‘Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’” The inability to communicate will be the overthrow of any undertaking, including our modern attempts at getting back to innocence through our own rejection of righteousness, a truly idiotic strategy if there ever was one. This is because confused speech is an inescapable feature of all such shakings of Man's less than almighty fist.  

It is true that God’s intervention at the Tower of Babel was a direct one. I am not suggesting that God is going to descend upon America and split our languages up as he did at Babel. But our language is nevertheless confused and confusing, increasingly so, and this confusion is unavoidable. What is behind this? 

Simply put, any attempt at concerted, society wide rebellion against the one who is Truth itself must, in the nature of the case, be predicated on lies. This world is God’s world and any denial of that is a lie by definition, right off the block. The Scripture tells us what is behind these lies when it describes seditious humanity as those who “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”. Later on in the same passage we learn of the culpable nature of our pretended ignorance, “although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools”. 

Our language is becoming confused because we have painted ourselves into a corner. We have decided to go a particular way and our chosen course requires that we tell lies in order to justify it. We must lie to ourselves, but more importantly, we must lie to each other. The only alternative is repentance, which we have so far eschewed. The first few verses of Psalm 12 are instructive.

“Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases! For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men. They speak idly everyone with his neighbor; With flattering lips and a double heart they speak. May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, And the tongue that speaks proud things, Who have said, ‘With our tongue we will prevail; Our lips are our own; Who is lord over us?’”

Here is a description of a society in which the faithful are few and far between. Notice that the situation is characterized by the way in which people speak to each other. Useless, flattering, double-hearted, proud speech is the way in which rebellious people assert emancipation from God. Is it not the case that our society is so deluded that it thinks we can prevail over reality itself simply by changing our speech?  

Is the demand that everyone call a he a she because neither word actually predicates anything objective about anyone not double hearted speech? Is it not flattery of the most destructive kind to lie to the sexually confused and pretend it is for their good? Is there anyone who does not actually see at this point that the emperor is a streaker? As this madness accelerates, lies are increasingly being demanded of us. The inevitable result of all of this will be a society in which no one can really communicate with anyone else. 

A people that hates truth must demand lies. People that demand that lies be told will eventually, and inescapably find that they cannot communicate. People who cannot communicate, cannot cooperate. People who cannot cooperate, cannot maintain forward motion on any project, let alone one of rebellion against God himself. Confusion of language, although an acute judgement in the days of Babel, is built into all human rebellion against God because all such behavior requires false speech. Therefore, the judgment, the seed of the eventual collapse of a culture like ours is present in the thing itself, ipso facto. As Christians, this ought to encourage us, even though it almost certainly means there are dark days ahead. 

We know that a culture like ours cannot maintain itself. We also know that we have the only real answer for the casualties of our absurd cultural project. We have the Gospel. We have Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, God with us, the one who dwelt among us and died to take away the sin, the lies, of the world. 

We must not let the dire straits in which we find ourselves be a source of anxiety, but of hope. The God who loves to save sinners like us from our self-imposed, self-defeating delusions has promised to use the means of Gospel preaching and the Church’s worship to call self-deceived rebels to himself. The failure of cosmic insurrection is a guarantee. The success of the Gospel of "Jesus Christ and him crucified" is also guaranteed. In other words, we know the outcome. We know that Christ will not fail. So we can confidently speak that Gospel to the world, in the throes of its rebellion, and know that our Savior, the one who is Truth, has already overcome all of it. "But take heart; I have overcome the world."        

 

Why Theology Matters

Did you know that you are a theologian? You may not be a pastor, professor, or scholar, but you are a theologian. The word “theology” refers to the study of God, his word, and what it teaches. If you have any opinions at all about God’s word or what it means, then you have a theology. You are a theologian. In fact, even atheism is a theological position. Therefore, even atheists are theologians.

There are many people who believe that theology doesn’t matter that much, or that it is strictly the business of pastors and professors. God’s word takes those options away from us when it says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” The first commandment tells us that we are to worship the one true God alone. It is obvious then that we must know who God is and what he has revealed to us, otherwise we would not know how, or which God, to worship. If we don’t know those things, we cannot obey the first commandment. The first commandment demands that we be good theologians. 

So the question is not whether we are theologians. The question is whether our theology is God honoring. God honoring theology is that which tells the truth about God as revealed in the Bible and points people to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Errant theology always undercuts the gospel in some way. That is why theology matters. 

Consider the example of Christ’s physical resurrection from the dead. There are many who claim that belief in Jesus’ real, bodily resurrection is not necessary, that we just need to “believe in Jesus”. But is that true? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17 “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”  In verse 20 of the same chapter, Paul goes on to call Christ “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep (died).”

In other words if Jesus was not physically resurrected, then we might as well sleep in on Sunday mornings. The bodily resurrection is a theological issue. If you read 1 Corinthians 15 you will see that Jesus’ literal, physical resurrection is central to the gospel, which is a theological announcement. A gospel without a physical resurrection, is a different gospel.  Paul writes in Galatians 1:8-9, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” 

Correct theology is not simply a matter for stuffy, bookish types who like to live inside their own heads. It is not simply a concern for ivory tower scholars. It is vital to the life of the Christian Church. That is why Jesus said in the great commission, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

According to Jesus, making disciples requires teaching content. That content is called theology.  What that means is that being a disciple of Jesus, or making disciples of Jesus, must include knowing what he taught. All Christians are disciples and all disciples are called to be good theologians. 

Of course none of this means that everyone has to be an expert. Different people have different gifts and interests, and that’s okay. What it does mean is that each of us is called to understand the word of God as well as we can in our unique situations. When we make the effort, we are rewarded with deeper knowledge of our Lord, greater assurance of his love and care for us, and firmer confidence as we seek to be effective ambassadors to a world that desperately needs the most important bit of theology we have: The Gospel.      

Letter to a Burdened Christian

*This post is based on a letter I wrote to a friend of mine. I have changed the names and some of the details. I am publishing this with my friend's kind permission.   

Dear Johnathan, 

Greetings, brother, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I trust this letter finds you well. I understand you’ve recently purchased a home for your family. Praise God from whom all blessings flow! I am writing to you in regards to a recent Facebook post of yours which piqued my interest. The post read as follows: 

“For as long as I have remembered I have fought with the tension of “I don’t feel like I’m doing enough.” And especially in this season in our nation there are so many voices trying to vie for my attention and I subconsciously hear “You’re not doing enough when it comes to [fill in the blank].” I’m not sure if anyone else feels the same. Now the answer is not to ignore all that is going on. That’s just unloving and lacks compassion because there are a lot of people hurting.

I’m a Jesus follower and my goal is to be like Him. And I want to hear well done from Him after I breathe my last breath. So the question that has brought the most resolution to my heart has been to ask Jesus, “What and who have You entrusted to me in this season? What does faithfulness look like with what You’ve entrusted me with?” This doesn’t solve my inner tension but it just gives me the focus I need to run this section of the race well! Passion without focus leads to frustration and burnout. Passion with focus leads to the finish line with a whole lot of people loved along the way.”

The reason that post caught my attention is because the question “Am I doing enough”, is one with which I have a long and unpleasant history. It is not more than mildly hyperbolic to say that “Am I doing enough” almost killed me. In your post you stated, “I’m not sure if anyone else feels the same”. John, I can assure you that you are far from alone. The Evangelical world is filled with people who worry about that question. I have no doubt that there are many such people in your church. My aim is to encourage you. I want to give you the consolation of Christ, by responding with an answer from God’s word that, sadly, has been forgotten by far too many Christians. I ask that you read what follows with care and an open Bible. If something I write could be seen as an occasion to take offense, please give me the benefit of the doubt.

I suppose I will start by sharing some of my own story with you. Ultimately, it is not my experience, nor anyone else’s, which determines what is true, but some background may help to put all of this in context. You will perhaps see where I am coming from and why I felt your post warranted a personal response, but I will try to keep the autobiographical stuff to a minimum.

I grew up in a nominally Christian home. We normally went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays. It was generally acknowledged that the Bible is true, Jesus is the savior, God’s rules ought to be obeyed, and so forth. But there was a disconnect between what we were in the church setting and what we were at home. That is an all too common scenario and is dangerous for a number of reasons. I am not saying that you grew up in such a home. Your family seems sincere and I have no reason to not take what I see from you all at face value. But this phenomenon of nominal Christianity connects to your post in a relevant way.  

In the Evangelical world, there is a nearly ubiquitous legalism that both encourages and conceals the sort of nominal hypocrisy which I grew up with and which creates the uneasy sense of burden and guilt you described. Please don’t be put off by my use of the term “legalism”. When Christians think of legalists, we often think only in terms of harsh, angry, overtly judgmental, religious types who are hung up on how everyone else is behaving. I’m sure you have encountered this. It is wrong and it is deadly, but not what I am talking about. I am speaking of a much less visible, and perhaps therefore more dangerous, kind of legalism. This is a sort of legalism that is obsessed with what I will call, “fruit inspection”, in the name of discipleship. 

This isn’t the legalism that disowns a teenage girl because she got pregnant. This is the kind of legalism that causes such a girl to silently wonder whether she is really a believer at all. It torments her parents with doubts as to whether they really parented “God’s way”. After all, the pastor gave quite a few sermons or Sunday school lessons on how to raise kids who make wise decisions, avoid drugs and alcohol, and wait until they are married. They may find themselves wondering: “Where did we fail?” “Did we not do enough?”     

One of the lessons I heard loud and clear growing up was that Christianity is all about one’s moral performance. What do I mean by that? To be certain, any statement of salvation by works would have been strenuously denied in most or all of the churches we attended. However, our spiritual diet consisted exclusively of ethical instruction. The sermons, Sunday school lessons, youth group lectures, the books we were urged to read, the radio programs we listened to, all of it, was geared toward getting people to behave in a particular way.  

The teaching in Evangelical Christianity generally tends to be along the lines of “Five Steps to a Great Marriage”, “Six Rules for Raising Drug Free Kids”, “The Secret to Experiencing God’s Blessing in Hard Times”, and so on. At this point you may be thinking, “yeah, what’s the problem”? Bear with me and I will try to make it clear. Briefly, such teaching made it possible, actually necessary, for families like ours to keep up the charade. Why? 

When Christianity is about behavior, it quickly becomes about appearance. This is because we all know that we fall short of God’s law. We fall short daily. We don’t like to admit it, but even as Christians we often don’t just fall short, but we intentionally stop short, because we just plain don’t want to obey. I want to be angry at him. I want to look at her for another couple seconds. I want to be lazy. Our flesh screams to have its demands met and we are frequently more than happy to oblige. However, we are told, over and over again, that our living of the Christian life is the evidence that we are really Christians, or the evidence that we are really Spirit filled, or what have you. So we fake it. We pretend to be doing a lot better than we really are. Who wants to be the failure when everyone else is pulling it off? (I will say more about good works as evidence later.)

That faking often conceals a burdened conscience, not unlike what you expressed. What normally goes unnoticed is that there are many others in the same spot, who think they’re the only ones, too. Be honest. Have you ever sat/stood in a church service and wondered what all of these other people have that you don’t? Have you ever wondered “Why is their joy always so real and mine is sometimes just a put-on”? Or have you questioned why so many others seem to be living the victorious Christian life and yet you cannot get out of your own way? Have you ever had the soul crushing experience of starting to think that you are getting there, starting to gain victory over your flesh, only to run face first into whatever sin you thought you were leaving behind? I bet you have. 

Johnathan, you are young enough that you may not be tired yet, but if you do want off the treadmill, pay attention. I have really good news for you. But first I have to lay some foundation and talk about some bad news.  

What you get from the Bible depends on how you read it. How you read it depends on what questions you bring to the text. What questions you bring will depend largely on what you think Scripture’s purpose is. Many well meaning, sincere Christians approach the Bible as though it is primarily a guidebook for right living. I’m sure you’ve heard it referred to as the “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”. Here is the main point I want to make: The Bible is so much more than a book of instructions. Learning to read the Word of God as something unimaginably better than an instruction manual, will not only clear up the “inner tension” of which you wrote, but it will ultimately make you more fruitful according to God’s definition of fruitfulness. If you are skeptical at this point, good. That means you’re thinking. So I’ll get on with it. 

The fact of the matter is, you absolutely are not doing enough. That uneasy feeling you struggle with is there for a reason. But for a moment I want you to step back from the big time news story issues and think on things nearer yourself. Consider the several vocations in which God has placed you according to his moral law. I’ll name a few. You are a husband, citizen, son, pastor, and a Christian man. I’m just going to warn you upfront; I will make this a lot worse before I try to make it better. 

There is a method to my madness though. There are hard pills to swallow just ahead, but the medicine of God’s word is healing to the soul (Psalm 19:7 and following). Please, brother, I beg you to not look away from the hard-edged truth that I am about to confront you with. If you are willing to look at it honestly, I will show you how to escape forever from “Am I doing enough”, without neglecting your duties. Remember Proverbs 27:6, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” If I do wound you, I desire that it be as a faithful friend and brother in Christ. 

Consider your calling as a husband according to God’s law. Have you ever been angry with your wife when it is not appropriate? You’re still a fairly young couple, so maybe not, but it will happen. Jesus said in Matthew 5:22 that unjustified anger is murder in the heart. A moment of unjustified anger toward your wife reveals murder in your heart toward the person you are called to lay down your life for. “You shall not commit adultery”. Jesus said in Matthew 5:28 that a lustful look reveals an adulterous heart. If your eye has been where it shouldn’t, it’s because your heart loves what it shouldn’t. “You shall not steal.” John, have you neglected to give to your wife the things God says you are responsible to give her? Even once? If something is rightfully hers and you withhold it, you have stolen from her. My friend, those are just a few aspects of one of your several callings. Examine your performance thoroughly in all of your vocations and then answer the question. Are you doing enough?    

You might be thinking that I have erred because we are not under the law, but under grace. Or perhaps you are thinking that none of us is perfect and God knows that. So he doesn’t expect perfection, just our best. The problem here is at least twofold. First, being under grace frees us from bondage to the law, not from the responsibility of obeying it. Otherwise the New Testament would not give us any commandments. Second, the law actually does require perfection. James 2:10 says, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.” God says multiple times in his word, “Be holy for I am holy.” 2 Corinthians 3:7 refers to the law as “the ministry of death”. Psalm 24:3-4 says, “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, Nor sworn deceitfully.” None of that is a call for us to try our best. So what am I driving at? 

“You are not under law, but under grace.” What is happening is you are using the law as a measuring stick. You are using it as a means to gauge how well you are doing, how spiritual you are. Whether you realize it or not, you are using the law to assess your relationship to God. The problem with doing that is simply that the law doesn’t have any mercy in it. It demands perfection. When you ask the question, “Am I doing enough”, you are asking a law question. Because of that, the answer will always be a resounding “NO”! To be sure, the law is good when used properly. 1 Timothy 1:8-9 says, “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.” 

The law always accuses you, John. It doesn’t only accuse. It does instruct, but because it demands perfection, it always accuses. So if you continue to utilize the law as a means of taking your spiritual temperature, you will not only continue to struggle with that “inner tension”, but it will get worse. The law will grind you down over time. Remember the mean, nasty legalist I mentioned above? That sort of thing is normally the result of someone gauging his standing with God by his law keeping. Such an endeavor will always fail. The response to such failure will either be delusional pride, as though you are pulling it off, or despair. Often there is a vacillation between the two. I speak from experience. This is where learning to read the Bible differently comes in. 

The Bible is about Jesus Christ. I think most Evangelical Christians would agree with that statement. Unfortunately, the practice typically falls short of the Evangelical profession at this point. When I say that the Bible is about Jesus, I mean that it is not about you. At all. At any point. That doesn’t mean that it is not relevant to you. It is the most relevant thing. But it is not about you. Jesus told the Pharisees John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” Jesus is saying that searching the Scripture without searching for him as the main idea is to misread it entirely. Read Luke 24 as well. In fact, Jesus either states or implies that all of the Bible is about him many times. Let me illustrate.

I assume you have heard at least one or two lessons in your life on David and Goliath. If by some chance you have not, ask yourself how you would teach it. Almost everyone in our day gets this wrong. The account of David and Goliath is not about Christians learning to “face their giants”, “be a David and not a Saul”, or “use the five smooth stones of faith”, or other such nonsense. David and Goliath is about Jesus. David and Goliath is an Old Testament picture of what the promised Messiah would do for his people. Consider the following. 

In Genesis 3:15, The LORD tells Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The entire rest of the Old Testament is the story of Israel waiting for the promised seed and God continuing to be faithful to work history out to that end, in spite of Israel’s constant unfaithfulness. None of the “heroes” of the OT is even the main character in his own story. Jesus told us that in John 5. Nor are most of them particularly heroic. Should I really “be a David”? Which of my neighbors’ should I murder after impregnating his wife? 

Anyway, all of the stories point to Jesus, most of them pretty clearly once you’ve learned to see it. So here comes Goliath, the personification of the seed of the Serpent. What does the serpent want to do to God’s people? “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy”. The Israelites are helpless and terrified. They cannot defeat this enemy. He is going to kill them. Enter David, from the Tribe of Judah. Look back to the end of Genesis. 

At the end of Jacob’s life, he spoke to all his sons, and prophesied that “Shiloh” (the Messiah) would come from Judah’s tribe. So here comes the man from Judah. He looks like a weakling compared to this giant serpent (the Hebrew word used for Goliath’s armor is actually “scales”, by the way). Goliath sees David and mocks him. “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” How does David kill him? Read Genesis 3:15 again: "he shall bruise your head". Incidentally, thinking of Goliath’s remark about coming to him with sticks, do you suppose it was an accident that just over one-thousand years later, Jesus crushed the head of The Serpent with two pieces of wood? David and Goliath is a story about Jesus. So is the rest of it. So what? 

Here’s what. When you treat the Word of God as though it is there primarily to tell you how to live, you end up making the Bible about yourself. The Old Testament becomes a mix of unintelligible, arcane legalisms and allegorical morality tales. If that is what the Bible is, we may as well read Aesop’s fables and sleep in on Sundays. My friend, the Bible is a beautiful, mosaic tapestry of true stories that all make up the one story of God’s redemption of his people. When you read it, look for Jesus, not for you. Look for the multivariate ways in which God has shown you who and what He is for you in Jesus Christ. How will that help your “am I doing enough” problem? 

John, through faith in Christ, you are, right now, the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Because of Jesus, you never have to look over your shoulder, worrying about whether you’ve done enough to please God because he is pleased with Christ and you are in him (Ephesians 1). In paying your sin debt, Jesus has bridged the impassable canyon of guilt between you and God. Because of Jesus, there is no law between you and The Father. As Paul says, “...where there is no law there is no transgression.”  That is true on your best day and it is just as true five seconds after you’ve sinned so horribly that you want to crawl in a hole and die.

Read Romans 5-6. Your efforts at living the Christian life are not the point of the Christian life. Jesus IS your life. He is an example, but he is not primarily that. He is your death to sin. He is your resurrection. There is no example to follow there, because you cannot be anyone’s death and resurrection. If you start to meditate on that and look in Scripture for who and what Jesus is for you, you will be free from the condemnation of the law. I want to say two more things and then I will end this. You wrote, “I want to hear well done from Him after I breathe my last breath!” Well and good. I want that, too.

Consider Jesus’ teaching on judgement in Matthew 7:21-23. The ones who are told to depart are the ones who are keeping track of how much good stuff they did. Compare that with the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46. It is striking that the sheep are not aware of their good works. Jesus commends their works and they basically respond by saying, “what are you talking about”? The sheep do not think they’ve done enough. The goats are sure that they have. That is because faith in Christ necessarily focuses one’s attention outward. Focus on works brings your attention inward. It’s the opposite of faith. The sheep were doing good works, but were so busy looking at Christ that they didn’t think they had done anything. 

But aren’t good works evidence of our faith? Yes they absolutely are. However, they are not the individual Christian’s evidence of his own faith. They are the evidence that your neighbor sees and that Jesus points out at the judgement. But your works are not evidence for you. Your evidence is Jesus. He died. He rose. He ascended. He did enough.

Your Brother in Christ,

Andrew