I’ve been posting on the seven ways that we falsely live out the gospel, as Lane & Tripp have written in their excellent book How People Change. If you haven’t gotten the hint yet…READ THIS BOOK! In the first post I wrote about Formalism (Volunteerism) and Legalism. In the second post I covered Mysticism, Activism, and Biblicism. In this post we’ll cover the last two gospel substitutes.

6. “Psychology-ism”

Jen always has a group of people ministering to her. She talks a lot about how many ‘hurting’ people are in her congregation, and how the church isn’t doing enough to help them. An avid reader of Christian self-help books, she is always recommending the latest one to someone. She often says that Christianity is the only place to find real help and healing, yet she doesn’t seem to find that healing herself. Jen spends much of her time discouraged and often leaves church meetings in tears.

Jen is right that our deepest needs are met in Christ, but she sees Christ more as a therapist than as the Savior. Jen is convinced that her deepest needs come out of her experience of neglect and rejection, and so she sees herself more in need of healing than redemption. She is blind to how demanding, critical, and self-absorbed she actually is.

Without realizing it, Jen has redefined the problem that the gospel addresses. Rather than seeing our problem as moral and relational—the result of our willingness to worship and serve ourselves and the things of this world instead of worshipping and serving our Creator (Romans 1)—she sees our problem as a whole catalog of unmet needs. But whenever you view the sin of another against you as a greater problem than your own sin, you will tend to seek Christ as your therapist more than you seek him as your Savior. Christianity becomes more a pursuit of healing than a pursuit of godliness. The gospel is reduced to the healing of emotional needs.

God wants to heal us. But the healing of our emotional wounds is not the end God has in mind for us. God wants to take us through healing and out the other side, toward godliness. Our fundamental problem is not our personal catalogue of unmet needs or emotional wounds–it is the sin of our hearts. All the sins committed against us are exacerbated by our sinful, unforgiving responses. The gospel of Jesus goes beyond psychology in that it both offers and demands forgiveness of sin.

7. “Social-ism”

George was so thankful for the relationships he had found in the body of Christ. They were unlike any friendships he had experienced before. He was so full of joy for his Christian family that he participated in any activity that put him in contact with other believers. George loved his twenty-something Bible study, but he particularly enjoyed going out with the gang afterward. He loved the retreats, the camping trips, and the short-term missionary projects. For the first time in his life, George felt alive and connected.

George’s trouble started when one of his closest friends was transferred out of state and another friend got married. Then his church called a new pastor who decided to de-emphasize ministry to singles. When the small groups at his church were reorganized, George felt that he was stuck with a group of older married people with whom he couldn’t relate. Church wasn’t the same anymore, so he quit going to his small group. Before long his attendance on Sunday began to wane. Going to church, he said, was like going to someone else’s family reunion.

George didn’t realize it, but fellowship, acceptance, respect, and position in the body of Christ had replaced his dependence on communion with Christ. The church had become his spiritual social club, and when the club began to break up, he lost his motivation to continue. For George, the grace of friendship replaced Christ as the thing that gave him identity, purpose, and hope. The gospel had been reduced to a network of fulfilling Christian relationships.

God has called us to live out our faith in the community of other believers. This is often where we see the gospel happen, but the fellowship of believers is not itself the gospel. Neither friendships nor community are an acceptable substitute for Christ himself. As a community of Christ-followers, it is our responsibility to point one another to Jesus, orienting our hearts toward him, rather than pointing each other back to the community. The Church exists for Jesus, not for herself.

These are the seven ways we get the gospel wrong. They are external, behavior-oriented systems of living out your faith. They do nothing to invite the power and presence of the Holy Spirit into our deep hearts, where the truth of the gospel of grace is worked out at the deep level of what we think, what we want, and how we remember. Only the gospel can change our hearts at the level of desire. To attempt to live out the good news of Jesus through any of these false, external-oriented systems is to completely fail to live out the power of the gospel.

Last Thursday I wrote a post called Gospel Substitutes in which I began to outline the seven ways we falsely live out the gospel, per Lane & Tripp’s excellent book How People Change. I included two of the seven: Formalism (Volunteerism) and Legalism. I had hoped to get to the remaining five sooner, but a garage sale at home sucked up all my time this past Friday and Saturday, so here are the next three of the seven. I’ll post the final two later today.

3. Mysticism

Christine careens from emotional experience to emotional experience. She is constantly hunting for a spiritual high, a dynamic encounter with God. Because of this, she never stays with one church very long. She is more a consumer of experience than a committed member of the body of Christ. Yet in between the dynamic experiences, Christine’s faith often falls flat. She struggles with discouragement and often finds herself wondering if she is even a believer. Despite the excitement of powerful moments, Christine isn’t growing in faith and character.

Biblical faith is not stoic; true Christianity is dyed with all the colors of human emotion. But you cannot reduce the gospel to dynamic emotional experiences with God. As the Holy Spirit indwells us and the Word of God impacts us, most of the changes in our hearts and lives take place in the little moments of life. The danger of mysticism is that it can become more a pursuit of experience than a pursuit of Christ. It reduces the gospel to dynamic emotional and spiritual experiences.

It can be difficult to differentiate between our spiritual and emotional states. We feel discouraged, and therefore we think we are struggling spiritually. But the reality is that our spiritual state is entirely determined by Christ, and he does not change. We are in Christ by grace through faith. Our emotions change depending on the weather, our circumstances, or even our blood-sugar levels; Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

4. Activism

Shirley stands on the right-to-life picket line wondering why more Christians aren’t there. Of course, Shirley feels the same about the protests at the adult bookstore and her work on the coming local election. These causes define what it means to be a Christian. Her constant refrain is, ‘Stand up for what is right, wherever and whenever it is needed.’ There is something admirable about Shirley’s willingness to devote time, energy, and money to stand up for what is right.

But on closer examination, Shirley’s Christianity is more a defense of what’s right than a joyful pursuit of Christ. The focus of this kind of Christian activism is always on external evil. As a result, it can take on the form of a modern monasticism. The monastics essentially said, ‘There is an evil world out there, and the way to fight evil is to separate from it.’ But monasteries failed because they forgot to focus on the evil inside every monk who entered their walls!

Whenever you believe that the evil outside you is greater than the evil inside you, a heartfelt pursuit of Christ will be replaced by a zealous fighting of the ‘evil’ around you. A celebration of the grace that rescues you from your own sin will be replaced by a crusade to rescue the church from the ills of the surrounding culture. Christian maturity becomes defined as a willingness to defend right from wrong. The gospel is reduced to participation in Christian causes.

The trouble with activism is that we lose sight of the evil in our own hearts. We get so focused on the social evils of abortion or human trafficking that we forget about the sinful patterns of thinking, desiring, and remembering that lie deep within the recesses of our hearts. There are many worthy causes that Christians should get involved in, but participation in Christian causes is not the same thing as participation in the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is first and always a gospel of the heart, setting about to transform you at the level of desire by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

5. Biblicism

John is a biblical and theological expert. His theological library includes rare, antique Christian volumes, and he is always seeking to buy first editions. John frequently uses phrases like ‘biblical worldview’, ‘theologically consistent’, and ‘thinking like a Christian.’ He loves the Bible (which is a very good thing), but there are things in John’s life that don’t seem to fit.

Despite his dedicated study of Christianity, John isn’t known for being like Christ. He has a reputation for being proud, critical, and intolerant of anyone who lacks his fine-grained understanding of the faith. John endlessly critiques his pastor’s sermons and unnerves Sunday school teachers when he enters the room.

In John’s Christianity, communion, dependency, and worship of Christ have been replaced by a drive to master the content of Scripture and systematic theology. John is a theological expert, but he is unable to live by the grace he can define with such technical precision. He has invested a great deal of time and energy mastering the Word, but he does not allow the Word to master him. In Biblicism, the gospel is reduced to a mastery of biblical content and theology.

I see nothing wrong with this one. Let’s just move on. …Okay, fine, this is wrong, too. Many Christians are tempted to master God’s Word and Theology in their minds. Heck, I have a Masters of Divinity degree! It’s one thing to master God’s Word in your mind, but it’s another thing altogether to be mastered by it in your heart. Ultimately, the Bible is a book that reads you. Treating the Scripture as mere information, however holy that information might be, is to sin against the revelation of God. The trajectory of Scripture is the gospel, and the gospel is not merely information or a story; it is a world recreating event that continues to act in and through God’s people today.

I’ll post the last two ways we falsely live out the gospel later today.

In their excellent book How People Change (which I’ve reviewed here), Timothy Lane & Paul Tripp make the point that Christians often fail to live out the gospel in their daily lives. This is because we suffer from three blindnesses: 1) Our identity as sinners; 2) The all-sufficient provision God has made for us in Jesus; 3) God’s processes of change. We are blind to these three crucial realities, and they create a gap in our understanding of the gospel. We inevitably seek to fill this gap with a gospel substitute.

If we do not live with a gospel-shaped, Christ-confident, and change-committed Christianity, that [gap] will get filled with other things. …The most dangerous pretensions are those that masquerade as true Christianity but are missing the identity-provision-process core of the gospel. They have their roots in the truth, but they are incomplete. The result is a Christianity that is mere externalism. Whenever we are missing the message of Christ’s indwelling work to progressively transform us, the [gap] will be filled by a Christian lifestyle that focuses more on externals than on the heart.

These gospel substitutes often look and feel like Christianity, but they are a perversion of it. “The lies that capture us as Christians usually seem to fit well within the borders of our Christianity.” We are often at a loss for how the gospel works in our lives because we are living one of these gospel substitutes, rather than the good news of Jesus Christ.

As sinners, we like to be at the center of the universe. We like being the ones who control the agenda. Yet the gospel makes it clear that the only way to really live is first to die, and that those who strive to live, end up dying as a result. When the gospel is reduced to a catalog of isms where I choose the one most attractive and comfortable for me, I can participate extensively in Christianity without much personal sacrifice, and with my self, unchallenged, at the center of it all.

Tripp & Lane list seven gospel substitutes that plague Christians. I’ll post two here and the other five in another post. Perhaps you’ll find that you have been living a gospel substitute rather than the true good news of Jesus.

1. Formalism (Volunteerism)

If you want to know the church calendar, just look at Jim’s schedule. Whatever the meeting or ministry, Jim is there, Bible in hand. He’s done his stint as a Sunday school teacher and regularly volunteers for short-term missions trips. He is faithful in giving and a willing volunteer when work needs to be done around the church. But Jim’s world and God’s world never meet. All of his church activities have little impact on his heart and how he lives his life.

God railed against the formalism of the Israelites (see Isa. 1), and Christ condemned the formalism of the Pharisees (see Matt. 23:23-28). Why? Because formalism allows me to retain control of my life, my time, and my agenda. Formalism is blind to the seriousness of my spiritual condition and my constant need for God’s grace to rescue me. Jim sees his church participation simply as one healthy aspect of a good life. He has no noticeable hunger for God’s help in any other area. For him, the gospel is reduced to participation in the meetings and ministries of the church.

Formalism is more than just staying busy for Jesus; it’s substituting church activity for Jesus himself. It seems innocent on the outside, but it’s a false way of making yourself look spiritual while keeping your heart safe from the power of Jesus. The gospel goes far beyond mere participation in various church ministries or committees.

2. Legalism

Sally is a walking list of dos and don’ts. She has a set of rules for everything. They are her way of evaluating herself and everyone around her. Her children live under the crushing weight of her legalism. To them, God is a harsh judge who places unreasonable standards on them and then condemns them when they can’t keep them. There is no joy in Sally’s home because there is no grace to be celebrated. Sally thinks that performing her list gives her standing with God. She has no appreciation for the grace given her in Christ Jesus.

Legalism completely misses the fact that no one can satisfy God’s requirements. While Sally rigidly keeps her rules, her pride, impatience, and judgmental spirit go untouched. Legalism ignores the depth of our inability to earn God’s favor. It forgets the need for our hearts to be transformed by God’s grace. Legalism is not just a reduction of the gospel, it is another gospel altogether (see Galatians), where salvation is earned by keeping the rules we have established.

Legalism is familiar to far too many of us. It is nothing more than the futile effort to live an externally moral life. It’s all about the things you don’t do. Legalists frown a lot. Like the authors said, it’s not simply a reduction of the gospel, it’s another gospel altogether.

By now you’ve no doubt heard that the Rapture is supposed to happen tomorrow. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Harold Camping has predicted the end of the world. In fact, we have a long history of enterprising individuals who have convinced themselves and others that God had given them a special revelation as to the end of all things. Do you remember the book, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 (and don’t forget the follow up book the next year)? We tend to get fascinated by these things.

Let me say, first of all, without hesitation, there is no Rapture. It will not happen. It is not in the Bible. I’ve written about this extensively in the past, and if you’re curious, you can read my thoughts here, here, here, and here. While a lot of folks are laughing at the Rapture crowd, I don’t find it amusing. This is a dangerous doctrine that has far more in common with Greek Philosophy and Gnostic Heresy than Christian Theology. Underneath the doctrine of the Rapture is the belief that this world is fundamentally evil and destined for annihilation, making escape from this world necessary for all true believers to experience eternal life with God in heaven.

The idea of escape from this world is a very old idea, going back at least to ancient Greek Philosophy. Many Greek teachers believed that this body was a prison for the soul, and that death was a welcome escape from the pains and rigors of this life.

The idea that this world is evil also goes back a long way. The early Christian heresy Gnosticism taught that everything material was evil and everything spiritual was good. These two streams, escapism and dualism, combine with a fundamentally flawed eschatology to create the doctrine of the Rapture.

But none of this has anything to do with Jesus, who, rather than escape the trial set before him, endured the suffering of the cross and died for our sins. In his death, Jesus has set the pattern of life for those who would come after him–suffering for the sake of his glory. Not escape, but endurance.

What is more, in his resurrection (a bodily resurrection, not a disembodied apparition) Jesus has begun the renewal and recreation of this world, which God has already called “good” and stills deem it good enough to redeem. God judges the world not because he has given up on it, but because he wants it to become what he intended it to be from the beginning.

The Bible teaches us not to seek escape from this world, but rather to engage with it in order to spread the rule and reign of Jesus Christ into every heart and home on earth. If you believe in the Rapture, I urge you to reexamine the passages I’ve linked to in this post, and also to take a close look at the worldview that is driving your profession of Rapture Theology. I sincerely believe that belief in the Rapture clouds our understanding of Jesus and Scripture, and I only offer my words here because I know that you deeply love Jesus and are fundamentally committed to the teachings of Scripture. Please, for the sake of the kingdom and your heart, take a second look at the Rapture.

I blogged yesterday about what we find at the end of the Bible–the wedding of Jesus and his bride, the Church. I tried to make the point that this heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, in Revelation 21 and 22 is actually us. It’s not a city at all; it’s just a picture of the new people of God.

The picture is meant to be contrasted with Rome, the “Eternal City” and source of persecution against God’s people. John measures the heavenly city to show that it is incomprehensibly large, and far greater in every respect than Rome. In other words, Rome loses. The enemies of God lose; and the Church, those who persevere through trial and persecution and hardship–the Church wins because our Husband fights on our behalf.

The good news of all of this is that we have a Husband, a Conquering King-Groom, who is, even now, fighting on our behalf. All of the powers of evil that rage against us are not, themselves, without an enemy. Jesus is waging war for you. He is destroying “all dominion, power and authority”, and he is putting all of his enemies “under his feet”. This is what he is doing, right now, for us, in us, and through us.

Wherever you may be right now, you are headed for a wedding. That’s how this story ends and the next story begins. The wedding of Jesus and his Church. And your Husband is not simply waiting around for you to arrive; he is actively creating a world that he deems suitable for your eternal presence. He is preparing a place for you by waging war against evil and darkness and sin and idolatry.

The Greeks loved drama. They had, basically, two kinds of dramas they would write: tragedies and comedies. The way to tell the difference was in the ending. Tragedies end with a funeral; comedies end with a wedding. You are in a comedy. Live, therefore, in the hope that this story–your story, my story, our story–ends with a wedding.