The Gospel vs. Everything

Recapturing the necessity of God's all-sufficient grace

Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash

(A six-minute read.)

I remember a conversation I had a few years ago with a leader from another religion outside of Christianity that was particularly enlightening. Somehow, we got to talking about Alcoholics Anonymous, and in particular the Twelve Steps, and this other leader, who was and is a friend, unabashedly told me that he didn’t care for the Twelve Steps.

When I curiously asked him why this was so, without hesitation he declared that he didn’t appreciate the emphasis on “powerlessness” that was present throughout the steps, but especially the first one. “It’s such a ‘Christian’ idea—this idea of ‘surrender.’” he said. “It downplays and demeans humans’ ability to do anything for themselves. What kind of message is that?”

If you’re not familiar with the Twelve Steps, the underlying current is that addiction is not overcome by trying harder but through surrender. “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol,” the first step declares, “that our lives had become unmanageable.” And thus, the second step affirms the critical belief that a “Power greater than ourselves” is the only thing that can restore a person to “sanity,” and the third step makes the critical “decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

This is not a post about AA—though that’s certainly a subject worthy of revisiting in the future.

It’s a post about what lies at the foundation of the gospel that Christianity affirms, separating it from all other religious persuasions and all other versions of Christianity that bury or diminish that gospel.

At the heart of the gospel is this simple formula: I can’t but God can.

That’s it. That’s really, when you peel back all the layers, what separates the gospel—at least as I understand it—from other competing religious messages.

And I have no interest in downplaying or burying that message.

This idea has been reaffirmed in my mind lately as I’ve started going through Paul’s letter to the Romans again, as well as very slowly reading John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. To be clear: I have many, many problems with John Calvin’s theology. Many problems. I think he presents some very troubling and repulsive pictures of God that need to be rightly and unapologetically rejected.

But Calvin’s not all bad, and he’s helped me once again appreciate the significance of this very important—and, I’d submit, biblical—idea that we human beings are, apart from the grace of God, completely devoid of any ability to save ourselves, change ourselves, or fix ourselves.

We are thus in desperate need of a power from outside of ourselves—a power that comes only from God.

In Chapter 3 of Book 2, he thus critically reminds his readers: “No good can ever be extracted from our heart until it is made altogether new. . . . Everything good in the will is entirely the result of grace.”

This is a theme Calvin returns to over and over again in this second Book, reminding readers of the complete necessity and all-sufficiency of God’s grace (which, I’d submit, is merely echoing what is pervasive throughout Scripture—both its Hebrew and New Testament parts).

Again, this is what, at the end of the day, separates the Christian message from all competing messages. The Christian message, by definition, teaches that human beings are incapable of saving themselves to such a degree that God actually had to take up residence in human flesh in order to do for us that which we could not and cannot do for ourselves.

It means we need an external source of rescuing. We did not and do not have the resources within ourselves to achieve our own salvation, our own victory, our own overcoming.

It’s not simply non-Christian religious messaging that challenges this framework, however. It’s present within certain versions of Christianity as well—in both progressive and fundamentalist factions.

It suddenly occurred to me this weekend, when I was reading an article that was trying to paint a positive vision of progressive Christianity, that this is the key ingredient that is often missing in progressive Christian messaging (at the risk of painting with too broad a brush).

In progressive Christianity, as I understand it, there is, generally speaking, a high estimation of humanity’s ability—and, as a result, little need for a power that originates outside of humanity. Most of the emphasis is on what human beings can, should, and must do in order to attain to higher heights of morality, utilizing Jesus as an example but not a savior.

This is, quite ironically, what fundamentalist Christians do as well. While the “check list” is usually different than the progressive check list, placing emphasis on matters of personal piety that have nothing to do with loving and helping others, the foundation and focus is still the same: human-initiated and human-powered behaviors that deny or downplay the need for an external source of grace and power.

Thus, the progressive-fundamentalist Venn diagram would overlap at this point: heavy emphasis on humanity’s abilities and duties, and little emphasis on the need for God’s grace to carry out the task.

In short, a high view of humanity, and a low emphasis on God’s grace. (In theological terminology: a high anthropology and a low Christology.)

As I understand it, though, the gospel is not good advice. It’s not an ethical program. It’s not me being a good person. The gospel is not about me being antiracist or woke or eating healthfully. These things may show up in my life as a response to the gospel, but they are not the gospel itself. And they are matters I cannot emphasize apart from the framework of the God-initiated and God-empowered gospel.

Indeed, as I understand it, the gospel is what God does for me, not what I do for God (or anyone else). The gospel is what God has done, is doing, and will do for me in Christ. And I can never speak or be reminded of that enough—because I know that anything I try to initiate, apart from God’s grace, leads to a dead end.

So I’m going all in on the gospel—over and against everything else. That’s why, at the end of the day, I don’t feel like I belong in either progressive or conservative camps (nor do I necessarily feel at home in a “moderate” camp either, for that matter). Neither camp has enough gospel for my liking.

I am thus in the gospel camp, which challenges all other camps.

In short, I’m with C. S. Lewis when, in his classic book Mere Christianity, he spells out this tension and dynamic:

Now we cannot . . . discover our failure to keep God’s law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, “You must do this. I can’t.”

It’s why I also love those powerful words, written by hymn-writer Isaac Watts 300 years ago, in the beautiful hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”:

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

With Lewis, with Watts, I look at the cross and say, “You must do this. I can’t.”

And if that demeans or diminishes or offends humanity’s pride, of humanity’s belief that we are in control and have our own power, that we can do it ourselves, then so be it. It’s why I’ve committed myself to the Jesus-message and story.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.