Crosstown Church Blog

Book Review: The Prodigal God

Ben Janssen — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:32:31 GMT

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Keller, Timothy. The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith. New York: Dutton, 2008. 139 pages.

The reason why this book is so effective is because its aim is so simple. Keller begins the book this way, “This short book is meant to lay out the essentials of the Christian message, the gospel” (p. xi). Christianity is certainly not lacking when it comes to the number of books written on a subject. So how can Keller be so successful while writing on something so, well, basic?

The answer is in that key word in the subtitle, recovering. Yes, the “heart of the Christian faith” has been lost like a prodigal son over the centuries. Not that Keller is the only one to attempt to recover it in recent days. But he works within the realm of an orthodox, conservative reading of the Bible and shows how many—both inside and outside the church—have failed to grasp the essence of Jesus’s message.

The first thing one will want to know about this book is why it is entitled The Prodigal God when it is based on Jesus’s parable traditionally known as “The Prodigal Son.” The answer is twofold. First, the traditional name of the parable does not do justice to the focus of the story. It is not a story about one son, a so-called prodigal, but rather a story about two sons (Luke 15:11). Second, the word prodigal does not simply mean “wayward” but rather “recklessly spendthrift.” And so, Keller argues, it is just as appropriate to use it to describe the father in the story (who obviously represents God) as the younger son (p. xv).

In the first chapter the author discusses the setting for Jesus’s parable. There were two kinds of people who gathered around to listen to Jesus on this occasion, and the two are represented by the two brothers in the story. The “tax collectors and sinners” were despised by the “Pharisees and the teachers of the law” who were the morally upright people in society. But it is to this second group of people that Jesus’s teaching in the parable is directed. Their attitude toward the “wayward sinners” is what Jesus is attacking. This is not because Jesus approves of the behavior of sinners but because Jesus disapproves of the moralism of religious people. This parable will not allow either side to claim God’s approval!

Everyone seems to understand in general that God does not approve of immoral behavior. But when the younger son returns home, the fact that the father does not allow the son to earn his way back into the family demonstrates that “nothing, not even abject contrition, merits the favor of God” (p. 24). God does not demand that sinners become morally acceptable before he will accept them. Instead, we find Jesus here “redefining everything we thought we knew about connecting to God. He is redefining sin, what it means to be lost, and what it means to be saved” (p. 28).

Keller argues that sin is not only rebellion against God’s moral commands; it is also pride in one’s moral record. At the end of the story, the elder brother loses the father’s love not in spite of his goodness, but because of it (p. 35). In other words, all people are in rebellion against God, either through self-discovery or through moral conformity. Both sons in the story wanted the same thing—the father’s possessions. They just took different paths to get there. In other words the elder son, who represents the religious elite, was just as “lost” as his younger brother. Keller contends, “Careful obedience to God’s law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God” (p. 37) because “sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life” (p. 43).

Thus we can see that the path of moral conformity may be even more dangerous than the path of self-discovery because the former is more blind to his soul’s condition than the latter. And we can see why many people who have turned their backs on religion generally have no interest in Christianity: the Christian message has been confused with religion. Keller explains, “Everybody knows that the Christian gospel calls us away from the licentiousness of younger brotherness, but few realize that it also condemns moralistic elder brotherness” (p. 67).

In Chapter Five, Keller makes what I found to be the most interesting observation in the story. By comparing and contrasting the parable of the lost son with the other two parables in Luke 15, we find amid the obvious similarities one striking difference. In this final parable, no one goes to seek out that which is lost. But someone should have and the answer is quite obvious. The younger son needed an elder brother who understood his responsibility to keep the family intact and so would have, at his own expense, done whatever was necessary to bring his wayward brother home. Instead, the younger son got a Pharisee for a brother who grumbled at the idea that God would receive such sinners. But in the Christian gospel we find that all humanity has a “True Elder Brother.”

Think of the kind of brother we need. We need one who does not just go to the next country to find us but who will come all the way from heaven to earth. We need one who is willing to pay not just a finite amount of money, but, at the infinite cost of his own life to bring us into God’s family, for our debt is so much greater. Either as elder brothers or younger brothers we have rebelled against the father. We deserve alienation, isolation, and rejection. The point of the parable is that forgiveness always involves a price—someone has to pay. There was no way for the younger brother to return to the family unless the older brother bore the cost himself. Our true elder brother paid our debt, on the cross, in our place. (pp. 84-85)

Keller concludes the book by showing how the parable of the lost son fits the larger context of the entire Bible. This is why it is his contention that in this one parable we have the rare opportunity of seeing clearly, all the way to the bottom, of what the Christian gospel is. All of us find ourselves longing for home—we instinctively know that the way the world is now is not the way it ought to be. Indeed the Bible teaches that we feel this way precisely because we have left “home.” We were meant for life in the Garden of God but because of our rebellion against the father we find ourselves in a distant land far from home. But we have a “True Elder Brother” who has come to bring us home, to a real, material world absent of evil and disease and suffering where we can enjoy the feast the Father has prepared in celebration of his children who were lost but have been found.

The Prodigal God will most assuredly challenge your fundamental beliefs about the Christian gospel, yet it would be hard to be anything but satisfied by what you begin to see more clearly.

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Changing Me

Clint Carter — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:41:10 GMT

The religious tradition I grew up in held a high view of personal evangelism with this definition – telling someone about Jesus and asking them if they would like to receive Him as their personal Lord and Savior. Evangelism was something to aspire to, an activity for the spiritually elite. This regularly caused a great deal of anxiety on my part. I felt that my ability to please or disappoint God lay primarily in this one thing. I constantly struggled with feeling like it was something I should do, but didn’t want to – which made me feel even worse about myself.

All of that has changed in the last 8 months. I have begun to see the gospel in a new light. I always knew that Jesus came to save me from my sins. What I missed was that He also came to save me from my righteousness – even my attempts at doing things to please God. I now realize (at least most of the time) that I can’t do anything to earn God’s favor. I have to believe that the work Jesus did through his life, death and resurrection is sufficient to provide me with right standing before God and complete acceptance.

The other major misunderstanding I had of the gospel was that it was the A,B,C’s. Sort of the first steps, the starting place and then as you mature, you move on to deeper spiritual things. The thing that has revolutionized my understanding is that the gospel is the A to Z. Even on this side of salvation, I still have no hope of pleasing God apart from Christ and his work on my behalf. This realization has been incredibly humbling and incredibly freeing.

Humbling because I can’t do anything for it, it’s all grace and I don’t deserve it. Freeing because I don’t have to do anything. I can rest in the gift and give up striving to prove myself.

This has changed my approach to evangelism. No longer am I trying to convince someone that they need something that I’ve found – which reeks of superiority. Instead it’s about sharing with someone else that for which I am in constant need of. The only message I have to offer is the same one I preach to myself everyday. It’s bread for anyone who is hungry.

I have had more conversations about the gospel and given more explanations of what it is in the past 2 months, than in the previous 5 years combined. And none of it has flowed out of obligation or guilt. It hasn’t come from a place of trying to convince the unconvinced. It has stemmed from faith in the grace God has and will continue to show me. It is lived out in a life of gratitude and a desire to love people regardless of if they ever accept the gift.

The Prodigal God, part 6

Ben Janssen — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:23:39 GMT

The strong feelings that surround [the concept of home] reveal some deep longing with us for a place that absolutely fits and suits us, where we can be, or perhaps find, our true selves. Yet it seems that no real place or actual family ever satisfies these yearnings, though many situations arouse them. (Tim Keller, The Prodigal God, pp. 91-92)

Why is it that we intuitively know that the world is not now the way it ought to be? A fish does not complain about being wet, so why do we complain about the way the world is? Or why do we try to change it? If we are the product of a material and totally natural universe, why do we not feel at home here?

The biblical answer to these questions is answered in the fact that we were created for life in the Garden of God. But we, like the younger son in the story of the prodigal, are now far from home. We have traveled a distant journey because of our desire to not live in God's presence. We, too, are lost because of our sin, and we will never be content in our current world because it is not the home we were created to enjoy.

The good news though is that Jesus, our True Elder Brother, has come to bring us home. We could never get back there on our own. Someone has to pay an enormous price to bring us back, to redeem us, so that we can enjoy "home" once more.

The implications of this are staggering. It means that the biblical concept of "salvation" is much more glorious than we have ever dreamed possible. One of the images the Bible uses to convey this truth to us is a feast (Isa 25:6-8; Matt 8:11). In the story of the prodigal son, when the younger brother comes home, the father throws a feast. "We had to celebrate," he explains, "for my son was dead and is alive again." Salvation is a feast.

That means salvation, like a feast, is experiential. Christians do not just believe that God is good they can actual taste his goodness.

Salvation is also, like a feast, material, for God's work of redemption is not finished until he restores this broken world and we once again inhabit a world free of the evils and injustices brought about by the corruption of sin. True Christianity is not opposed to this created world, so it is quite appropriate for Christians to "talk of saving the soul and of building social systems that deliver safe streets and warm homes in the same sentence. With integrity" (Keller, 112).

Finally, salvation is also, like a feast, communal. At any good feast there will be lots of food but also lots of people. You do not have a feast alone. Likewise those who think that they can enjoy fellowship with God alone and do not need the church are gravely mistaken. It may go against our individualistic culture to say so, but "you will never be able to [know Jesus] by yourself. You must be deeply involved in the church, in Christian community, with strong relationships of love and accountability" (Keller, 127).

This is the "home" that God, by his grace, offers to us freely. It is the place all of us are longing for. And though we have all rebelled against it and have sought our peace elsewhere, we, like the prodigal son, will never be content anywhere else. The biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration not only best explains our longing for home, it also offers us the only real hope of ever finding it.

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Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent

Ben Janssen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:22:20 GMT

Today is the first day of Lent. The word lent comes from an Old English word that denoted the coming of spring, since during this time the duration of the daylight hours are lengthening. The Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday, so called from the tradition of imposing ashes on the heads of worshippers as a symbol of penitence and mourning.

The purpose of Lent is to prepare the believer for the celebration of Easter, the most important day in the Christian faith as it commemorates the resurrection of Jesus. It is a 40-day period of preparation (the six Sundays during Lent are not counted), apparently modeled on the 40-day preparation of Jesus for his earthly ministry, during which time he fasted (Matt 4:1-2).

Traditionally Christians prepare themselves through certain spiritual disciplines, most commonly by observing a fast. These observances were much more severe in ancient days than they are in most traditions today. Many protestants do not specially observe Lent at all. I certainly did not though I was raised in a very conservative Christian tradition. For many evangelicals, Lent is considered a tradition for Catholics only, but there seems to be good reason for all Christians to maintain this tradition.

It should be made abundantly clear that the decision to observe Lent through the practice of certain spiritual disciplines is a matter of personal choice and should not be viewed as obligatory. There is no biblical command for the observance of Lent; indeed, 1 Timothy 4:1-5 warns against those who "require abstinence from foods that God created." No one should take any recommended practices as a necessary obligation for anyone who is "serious" about their faith or who wants to "go deeper" with God.

Furthermore one should not assume that whatever they decide to give up (or undertake) for Lent is some sort of spiritual pact with God, the breaking of which would bring condemnation upon themselves. "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom 14:17). Elsewhere the Scripture flatly declares that "food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do" (1 Cor 8:8). No one should feel judged (or feel righteous) for what they decide to do or not do for Lent.

Yet in our insistence that these kinds of observances will not make us holy let us not become flippant in our attitude toward God. If the purpose of the Lenten season is the preparation of the believer for the celebration of Easter then let us consider how we will prepare ourselves to celebrate the basis of our faith. Let us not let these days pass by us with a yawn as we go about our daily routines. If Jesus really did physically walk out of a Palestinian tomb some two millenia ago, then certainly this one historical event has the potential to transform us.

At Crosstown we only want to help each other focus on the glory of the resurrected Christ who alone is our righteousness and holiness. We know that if we are not intentional we will give in to the idols of our heart that so easily draw our affections away from Jesus. That is why we commend the observance of Lent to all who believe that the only Satisfaction of their soul is Jesus.

Click here for a guide detailing how we are encouraging the Crosstown family to celebrate Easter together this year.

Click here for another short article arguing for the merits of observing Lent.

The Prodigal God, part 5

Ben Janssen — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:38:02 GMT

In the parable of the Prodigal Son we have found that both the elder son and the younger son were lost, alienated from the father. One alienated himself by his rebellion against the father. The other became alienated (surprisingly) by his careful obedience. Both actions and attitudes are based on an unhealthy fear of the father that cannot trust in his goodness. Both attempt to control the father rather than delighting in him.

These are the ways we will respond to God if we do not truly believe in his goodness and grace. We will either run away from him, or we will attempt to earn his kindness by obeying him perfectly. How can we move from this unhealthy fear of God to confident trust in his love?

The answer lies in seeing the great cost that he paid in order to bring us “home.” You see, the younger brother did not bring himself home; it was the father’s grace that received him back into the family. It cost the younger son nothing to come home.

But that does not mean that forgiveness is free. Forgiveness is needed only when a wrong has been done. And when someone has wronged you, they have robbed you. Now they owe you. There is a debt. Either you can demand that the person who wronged you pay back the debt, or you can absorb the loss yourself. Similarly, God cannot just forgive our sins freely and unconditionally. We have wronged him. He must either demand we pay him back, or he must absorb the loss himself.

The only way the younger son could be brought back into the family was at the expense of his elder brother. Since the younger son had squandered his inheritance, everything the father had now belonged to the elder son (Luke 15:31). But the elder son was not willing to pay the price to bring his brother home. He is angry at the idea. After all, how could anyone be sure his brother would not disgrace the family again?

Jesus, however, is our “True Elder Brother.” He made himself vulnerable to sinners like us. He did not merely lose a little bit of dignity; he lost his life. He had everything the Father had—he had earned it all!—yet he laid it aside to bring us home. He lost it all for us.

So what can move us from fear of God based on distrust? When we see and are moved by the sight of what it cost him to bring us home, it will transform us. “Selfless love destroys the mistrust in our hearts toward God that makes us either younger brothers or elder brothers” (Keller, Prodigal God, 88).

If we can see that Jesus is our “True Elder Brother,” it will change our relationship with him from fear to love. It will change our worship from boredom to joy. It will change our service and obedience from duty to delight. And it will change our view of the future from worry to hope.

Everything depends on seeing what Jesus has done on our behalf to bring us home. If you see it, it will transform you.

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Final Tally for Haiti Relief

Ben Janssen — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:38:13 GMT

As I mentioned before, we made a goal of giving away $1,000 for disaster relief in Haiti, not a small amount for a new church just getting started, especially with a weekly budget of only $500. The final count is in and we received $1,481 for this cause.

Thank you to all who have joined us in supporting those who are recovering from a disaster that many of us cannot even begin to imagine. Continue to pray for all the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti.

Book Review: Total Church

Ben Janssen — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:56:17 GMT

For a list of all of our reviews, or to download/print this review, click here.

There seems to be no end these days to the production of books attempting to help the church get back to what it is supposed to be. The title Total Church suggests (correctly) that this is another such book. But this one deserves special attention not because of the hype surrounding it but because the authors have done an excellent job of showing what the “bottom line” of “church” is and how that bottom line affects everything we associate with church life.

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008).

The book’s layout is simple. The first two chapters spell out the two principles around which every other chapter in the book is based. These two principles are gospel and community. In the rest of the book, the authors consider various aspects of church ministry--things like evangelism, world mission, discipleship, and ministry to children--and show how gospel and community impact and inform these ministries. The result is, as the subtitle explains, a “radical reshaping” of how to do church. The authors contend that “whether we are thinking about evangelism, social involvement, pastoral care, apologetics, discipleship, or teaching, the content is consistently the Christian gospel, and the context is consistently the Christian community” (p. 16). But unless understands what the authors mean by gospel and community, this book will be just another “how to” manual for doing church.

GOSPEL. The reason the gospel is so important is because it is by the gospel, by the proclamation of Jesus, that God rules. It is God’s “great work” to “bring people to eternal life through our proclamation of the gospel.” This means that God’s people must be word-centered. And since this word is a missionary word, the church must also be mission-centered. The church has been spent out into Satan’s kingdom as God’s people live their everyday lives. This means that we need to view all of life as gospel-centered wherever we live, work, or play. Until the Church understands this, we will continue to be mere “Sunday morning” Christians, and the impact of the Church on our communities will be minimal.

COMMUNITY. The Christian community is central to Christian identity, and “this is perhaps the most significant ‘culture gap’ that the church has to bridge (p. 41). Being a Christian means not only that we belong to God but also that we belong to the others who are in Christ. “To fail to live out our corporate identity in Christ is analogous to the act of adultery: we can be Christian and do it, but it is not what Christians should do” (p. 41). Being in community means we must make decisions with regard to how it impacts the community. Chester and Timmis sound quite radical in their explanation of community, but they are also as thoroughly biblical on this topic as anyone else I’ve ever read on the subject of Christian community.

So how do gospel and community affect the total church? Evangelism, for example, involves the proclamation of Christ of course, but it also necessitates introducing non-Christians to the gospel community. It is not enough, the authors say, to build a relationship between one believer and one unbeliever. This does not mean getting the unbeliever to a church service but rather introducing them to a community of Christians in action. The authors are not talking about an event but about “ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality” (p. 63).

Consider also the authors’ views on spirituality. They react to proponents of “contemplation, silence and solitude” as the pathway to spiritual maturity arguing that such is “the exact opposite of biblical spirituality” (p. 141). Instead the authors’ demonstrate that biblical spirituality is word-centered rather than contemplative; mission-centered rather than silence; and community-centered rather than solitude. Why? Because “union with Christ is not the goal of spirituality; it is the foundation of spirituality” (p. 143). And what we need to practice our spirituality is a passionate engagement with the world not a quiet retreat from it. We also need “church culture sin which it is normal and expected for everyone lovingly to confront and persuade everyone” (p. 151).

The authors of Total Church have persuasively argued their point that for the Christian the whole of life must be shaped around gospel and community. They have not just argued the point, however; they have also offered practical suggestions for followers of Jesus to live out their faith in this way. The authors’ model is a “house church” structure, but they do not push that structure exclusively. Instead they have done the whole church a great service in demonstrating how doable it is for anyone who is serious about their Christian faith to live intentionally on mission for the gospel.

The Prodigal God, part 3

Ben Janssen — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:53:47 GMT

What is sin? What does it mean to be lost?

Those were some of the questions we discussed during our last study of The Prodigal God. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, we see an illustration of a view that is prevalent today regarding what it takes to be loved and accepted. The so-called prodigal (the younger brother in the story) decides to go back home, but he believes he is no longer worthy to be called his father's son. He wants to be "a hired servant" so he can pay back his father the money he squandered.

This is an illustration of religion, the idea that you must do something to merit God's acceptance of you. Only in the Christian gospel do we see a different picture. The prodigal does not have to merit the father's love; the father kept the door open to his son from the very beginning by giving him the inheritance he demanded rather than expelling him from the community (as any typical Middle-Easter patriarch would have done). Yes, the father's love for the younger son was there all along, but what was needed to detonate that love in the prodigal's heart was repentance. When he "came to his senses" (Luke 15:17) and realized how he had spurned the goodness of the father, only then could the love of the father explode in his life and bring him the happiness he had failed to find elsewhere.

So we can see in the younger son that sin is not merely "breaking the rules." Sin is, as Tim Keller says, a "disordered love." It is loving something more than that which you should love ultimately. It is seeking our significance and happiness in something or someone other than God. It is, in fact, idolatry. The younger son sought his significance and happiness in his immorality, but he came to know that it was only in his father's presence, in the delights of his father's love, that he could be satisfied.

The older son had the same problem, except he sought his significance and happiness in his morality, and that led him only to self-righteousness and anger. He, too, wanted the father's things rather than the father himself. He also had a disordered love. We'll talk more about him next week, but it is already obvious that both sons were alienated from the father. Both sons were "lost." And the only way back to God is when we recognize this to be the case, because the only prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know that you need it (Keller, Prodigal God, 45).

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Thanks for Joining Us in Helping Haiti

Ben Janssen — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:55:03 GMT

Crosstown Church dedicated the entirety of our offering last night to relief efforts going on in Haiti. With well over 100,000 confirmed deaths (and counting) from the January 12 earthquake, we can only imagine the devastation the citizens of Haiti have been enduring.

Our weekly budget calls for $500. We set a goal of collecting $1000 for Haiti. Currently, we stand at $1071 with online donations still to be counted.

This is a significant contribution from our little church, and we want to thank all of you who have partnered with us. If you would still like to give to this offering, you may do so through the rest of the week by donating online and selecting "Haiti Relief."

Help for Haiti

Ben Janssen — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:16:57 GMT

Crosstown Church will collect an offering to be given to relief support in Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake on January 12 that has killed possibly as many as 100,000 people. All offerings collected on Sunday, January 24, will be given to two relief efforts.

We are asking all core group members of Crosstown Church to make their financial contributions this coming Sunday so that we can give the maximum amount possible to the relief efforts taking place in Haiti. If you would like to join us in this effort, bring an offering to Sunday night's Bible study or feel free to give online. If you do give online, be sure to select "Haiti Relief" from the options box so your donation will be used for that purpose.

Our current budget calls for $500 a week. We would like to give away $1000 this week, so please be in prayer about how much extra you might give for this good cause.