We need to….
We ought to….
We must…..
I once heard a brilliant Valedictory Address by Dr Derek Murray more than 30 years ago, in which he spoke about pastoral care as avoiding guilt-making. I’ve never forgotten the gentleness, compassion and pastoral wisdom of that address. Now I have no doubt at all that New Testament Christianity is profoundly, even outrageously challenging, demanding. And I know Paul especially, but John in his First Letter, and Peter and James, all assume a rigorous ethic of either imitating Jesus, being clothed with Christ, following Jesus in persevering obedience, getting the connection between discipleship and discipline, between trust and trying, between works and faith. But throughout the New Testament Gospel is Gospel, and the massive assumption that underwrites all Christian living is the invasive, radically renewing grace of God in Christ.
Guilt is NOT the primary motivator; guilt is countered by grace and transmuted into gratitude which is then reminted in worship and service. New creation means the old has gone – including those buttons that are easily pushed to make us feel guilty, and which then act as levers to make us act differently, and live the way we are told to. But preaching the challenge of the Gospel is not about making sure I’m confronted with my own failure to live up to the demand of Christ; it is being reminded again of the grace unspeakable; it is being shown again the tragic beauty of holiness in Christ crucified and the triumphant glory of Christ risen; it is being drawn again towards that ingrasping love that reaches out to me in all my weakness, and failure and need. In fact the most important use of the word ‘need’ is not what I need to do, but that I need, and that Christ is all I need! What I need is not a moral makeover, but a miracle.
Of course there is a place for conviction of sin, for recognising that even at our best we are unprofitable servants. But the wonder of the Gospel is that God doesn’t write us or others off as unthinkingly as we or others do. If it was up to some of us, and some of us preachers with our ‘we need to’ and ‘we must’, and ‘we ought to’ approach to ministry, the Gospel would be far less scandalous, grace would be far less free (by the way, how can something be less free anyway?), the love of God would begin to be brought under much more stringent theological control instead of being such an indiscriminate and endlessly patient mercy that pours down on our heads in huge cataracts of restoring, redemptive, renewing passion.
The Christian heart is brought again to obedience and held in continuing obedience, not by any preacher’s scolding, not by diminishing me but by exalting Christ, by a Gospel proclaimed, by grace, mercy, and peace finding their ultimate focus on Calvary where God in the holiness of love encounters our sin at its most persistent and worst, and in its most trivialising disloyalty – and overcomes it. Grace is not only free it is liberating; holy love is not only forgiving, it is enabling; and my sin, my oft recurring sin, becomes by a mystery beyond telling, the occasion for a divine intervention that restores my soul. And if someone wants they can press my guilt button, but before I can ever think about changing my ways, I need to find my way, yet again, to the one who changes me.
The hymn Amazing Grace is too easily eclipsed by cliche. But it tells a truth that should quality control all preaching that claims to be Gospel preaching.
’twas grace that brought me safe thus far,
and grace will lead me home.’
Newton was too clear-headed a Calvinist ever to make our relationship to God in Christ dependent on our own performance. ‘We need to….we ought to….we must….’ . Moral exhortation has its own importance, but when I go to worship what I need to hear preached is not my failure, but my Saviour; not my sins but the cross; not what I need to do, but what Christ has done with my deepest need.
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