We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
The Good News That’s Really “Good”
Often we view our relationship with God in terms of a legal contract. For instance, people often ask questions about salvation in this way. They see God as the judge, we are defendants, and salvation is about staying out of prison. With this perspective, questions about salvation and the Gospel—which means “good news”—are about the specific terms of a contract between God and us that allow us to remain acquitted and thereby stay out of prison.
When our relationship with God gets framed in terms of a legal contract, people are inclined to treat the Bible like a confusing litigation manual, the purpose of which is to resolve technical theological disputes and clarify ambiguities surrounding the terms of our contractual acquittal before God. All of this presupposes a picture of God as a judge who leverages people’s eternal destinies on how well they can litigate theological disputes or at least how lucky they were to align themselves with a competent expert (a pastor/teach) who correctly interprets this legal manual.
Is this the “good news” Jesus and his earliest followers were so excited about proclaiming?
Not by a million light years! God isn’t interested in entering into a legal contract with us; he wants a profoundly interpersonal, covenantal relationship with us that is characterized by honesty, trust, and faithfulness. Along the same lines, salvation isn’t primarily about receiving an acquittal so we can avoid prison when we die. It’s about participating in the abundant life and ecstatic love of the Triune God, and doing so now, in this life.
If we understand it in biblical terms, faith isn’t primarily about our beliefs—as if God were an academic who was obsessive about whether you arrive at the right intellectual conclusions. Even less is faith about engaging in psychological gimmickry as you try to suppress doubt to convince yourself your beliefs are the right ones so that you can feel accepted, worthwhile, and secure before God.
Rather, faith is about trusting in the beautiful character of Christ, about being transformed from the inside out by the power of his unending love, and about learning how to live in the power of the Spirit, as a trustworthy partner who increasingly reflects his love and his will “on earth as it is in heaven.”
This is the real “good news.”
—Adapted from Benefit of the Doubt, pages 118-121
Image by Jordan McQueen
Related Reading
Are You a Church Misfit?
Romain Guy via Compfight Here’s a lovely reflection from Rachel Held Evans on the experience of finding that your questions are unwelcome in church. Evans is bumping up against this material as she reads Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior. I suspect this kind of experience is much more common that we’d like to admit. Can you…
The Cross and Cosmic Warfare
Since the time of Anselm in the 11th century, Western theology has focused almost all of its attention on the anthropological dimension of the atonement. In the most popular understanding, the chief thing that God was accomplishing on the cross was satisfying God’s perfect justice and thereby atoning for our sins. The work of the…
The Evangelical Mind
Peter via Compfight As a follow-up to Rachel Held Evans’ thoughts yesterday on the Scandal of the Evangelical Heart, we thought we would post this reflection by Peter Enns about the Deeper Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. He claims that in the current environment when professors and pastors are constrained by the consequences of asking…
What Causes You Doubt?
In this first episode of the Apologies and Explanations Podcast, Greg shares some of his own experiences with doubt and talks about how doubt has ultimately made his faith stronger. Links: Greg’s book: “Benefit of the Doubt” Website: ReKnew.org http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0001.mp3
Podcast: Dear Greg: My Husband is Anti-Theist, What Should I Do?
A godly house with an unbelieving spouse. Greg discusses unbelieving partners. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0418.mp3
What Will You Do With Your Doubt?
Richard Beck shared some of his thoughts on Christianity as something that for many of us is our “native religion”…something we were born into and that is, to quote Wendell Berry, “an intimate belonging of our being; it informs our consciousness, our language, and our dreams.” With Christianity so foundational to our identities, doubt is a…