I’m looking forward to reading Michael Horton’s book Ordinary. There is no missing the allusion in the title to a book like David Platt’s Radical, though — which is another book I’ve found to be very helpful. 

I like Horton a lot, and I assume that rather than disagreeing with what Jonathan Edwards called “the necessity of engaging in the difficult duties of religion,” which is what Platt calls for, he will in part be correcting a misunderstanding of what it means to be “radical.” For, compared to the ways of the world, the Christian life truly is strikingly different in many ways (hence, radical — per Platt) while also being strikingly similar in other ways (which I assume Horton’s book helps affirm; for example, the call of Christ is typically not a call to disengage from our vocations, which often seem very common and ordinary). So there is a radical component to the Christian life as well as an ordinary component.

In the spirit of affirming the truly radical nature of the Christian life in the right way, here is a very clear passage. Hebrews 13:12-14 says “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.”

The ESV study Bible notes have this to say on that passage, and it is right on: “Go to him outside the camp speaks metaphorically of leaving behind the love of this world and desire for its approval, and embracing the reproach of Christ, emulating Jesus’ response to his shameful sufferings (see 12:2-3). Moreover, such Christian endurance is founded on a realization that this world is a mere temporary dwelling (no lasting city) en route to an eternal abode (cf. 11:14-16; 12:22-24).”

See also John piper’s excellent sermon on this passage, Let Us Go With Jesus Bearing Reproach, as well as his sermon from T4G 2008, How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice.

In relation to Horton’s book, the paradox of “ordinary” and “radical” in the Christian life is too interesting (and important) to overlook, and I expect his book to be a helpful contribution to the discussion. So I’m thinking about doing something unconventional (non-ordinary!) and perhaps interesting with his book. I’m thinking about blogging about my thoughts on what Horton may be saying in the book before I even read it, and then blogging on it after reading it to compare what I expected to what actually was the case, and discuss whether his book updated my thinking in any areas.

If I have the time, that’s what I’ll seek to do.

An incredibly insightful observation by Jefferson Bethke in Jesus > Religion:

I think the more focused Christians are on external behavior, the greater the possibility they are trying to make up for what they lack in their hearts. When we have no real transforming power of Jesus in our hearts, we hold up a list of external behaviors so someone can look at us and identify us as Christians.

Tim Keller, in Ministries of Mercy (his least well known — but perhaps most important — book):

Both James and John use the ministry of mercy as a test.

The apostle John writes his first epistle to set forth the test by which a genuine Christian can be known. One of the tests of Christian love is the ministry of mercy. Christian fellowship must be characterized by the meeting of physical needs. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:17-18). Real love is expressed in deed as well as word.

James concludes that a profession of faint unaccompanied by deeds of mercy shows that faith to be “dead,” not genuine faith at all.

“Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment! What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (James 2:13-17).

In Proverbs 14:31 and 19:17 we are told that to ignore the needs of a poor man is to sin against the Lord. So the poor and needy are a test. Our response to them tests the genuineness of our faith toward God.

No passage is clearer on this point than Matthew 25:31-46. This describes Jesus’ examination of mankind on Judgment Day. He distinguishes those who have true faith from those who do not by examining their fruit, namely, their concern for the poor, homeless, sick, and prisoners.

How can this be? Jesus, when he says, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,” is merely expanding on Proverbs 19:17 (“He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord”).

He is also agreeing with James, John, and Isaiah (cf. Isa. 1:10-17) in saying that a sensitive social conscience and life poured out in deeds of mercy to the needy is the inevitable outcome and sign of true faith. By such deeds God can judge true love from lip service.

Michael Kruger nails it at The Gospel Coalition:

When it comes to our justification — our legal standing before God — our own good works are in no way the grounds of God’s declaration that we are “righteous.” Indeed, the gospel is good news because we are saved not by what we have done, but by what Christ has done. We are accepted by God not because of our works, but in spite of them.

So what does God think of our good works after we are saved? Here, unfortunately, Christians often receive mixed messages. Somewhere along the way we have begun to believe that our pride is best held in check, and God’s grace is most magnified, when we denigrate all our efforts and all our labors as merely “filthy rags” in the sight of God (Is. 64:6).

But does God really view the Spirit-wrought works of his own children in such a fashion? Is God pleased only with Christ’s work, and always displeased with our own?

Read the whole thing.

These are hard texts, but the are good news because they show that Jesus is God, and therefore worthy of all allegiance. For if Jesus is not God, he could not have called for absolute allegiance. But if he is God, then anything less than a call to absolute, unqualified allegience would have been a massive disservice to us. Why? Because Jesus would have failed to call us to place the highest possible value on that which truly is of greatest value — namely, himself. And that would have been equivalent to cutting us off from the highest possible joy.

I’ve grouped the parallel texts together and then put in italics some of the notable differences that bring out additional meaning. Then I include some texts showing how these texts worked out in the life of Paul, which I think helps us understand them better.

We are to put following Christ over any other relationship

Matthew 10:37-39: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

(Parallel) Luke 14:25-28; 33: “Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost….So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

(Parallel) John 12:25-26: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in the world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.”

We are to put following Christ over our own comfort, security, and even lives

Matthew 16:24-27: “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”

(Parallel) Mark 9:34-37: “And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

(Parallel) Luke 9:23-26: “And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”

There is great reward for following Christ (and great loss for not)

Matthew 19:27-30: “Then Peter said in reply, ‘See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.

(Parallel) Mark 10:28-31: “Peter began to say to him, ‘See, we have left everything and followed you.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

(Parallel) Luke 18:28-30: “And Peter said, ‘See, we have left our homes and followed you.’ And he said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”

How These Things Are Expressed in Paul’s Life

What it Means to Hate Your Life

Acts 20:24: “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

What it Means to Renounce Everything

Philippians 3:7-11: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith — that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

1 Corinthians 9:19-23: “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them….I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”

1 Corinthians 10:31-33: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to the Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of the many, that they may be saved.”

What it Means to Take Up Your Cross (and the Result)

Philippians 2:3-9: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (cf. Colossians 3:4 on how Jesus’ glorification relates to us as Christians: “When Christ who is your life appears, you also will appear with him in glory“; this ties in with the promises of reward in the above passages, such as John 12:26 “where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him” and Matthew 10:32 “so everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven).

Romans 15:1-3: “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.'” [That is, “let each of us please his neighbor for his good, even to the point of suffering — as Christ did.”]

Matthew 20:26-28: “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The answer is no. Absolutely not.

The issue is not how much you love yourself. The issue is how much you love yourself in comparison to God. 

Jonathan Edwards discusses this in great detail in his excellent work Charity and Its Fruits. He writes:

I do not suppose it can be said of any, that their love of their own happiness, if we consider that love absolutely and not comparatively, can be in too high a degree….

The inordinateness of self-love, wherein a corrupt selfishness does exist, lies in two things: in its being too great comparatively, and in placing our happiness in that which is confined to self….

[Only] if we compare a man’s love of himself with his love for others, it may be said that he loves himself too much — that is, in proportion to much.

The issue, then, is not how much you love yourself. There is no limit to how  much you can and should love yourself. The issue is how much you love yourself in relation to God and others. As long as you love God more, then you cannot love yourself too much.

To give an example (with somewhat crude measurements): let’s say person A loves himself at a level we’ll call 10 “points.” Person B loves himself at a level we’ll call 15 points. Which one is the idolater?

By this information alone, you can’t tell. You need to know each person’s degree of love for God. If person A, then, loves God at 8 “points,” and person B loves God at 20 “points,” then the idolater is person A — even though he is the person with less self love.

This is why Edwards can then go on to say “In some respects unbelievers do not love themselves enough — not so much as the godly do.”

This is Freeing

This truth is incredibly freeing. It also brings a much-needed corrective to some parts of the gospel-centered movement.

Some gospel-centered Christians talk about idolatry as loving something “too much.” Take work, for example. There is this notion that you can fall off one of too sides. On the one hand, you can not value your job enough, and fall into idleness. On the other side, there is this notion that you can love your job too much, and thus fall into idolatry.*

This perspective, stated in that way, becomes demotivating. It makes you have to be constantly introspective and cautious, continually on the lookout to check your enthusiasm. That is no way to live, and is in fact the definition of demotivating.

Or, can you imagine a man getting married, and saying to him on his wedding day “now, don’t love your wife too much!” We all recognize how inappropriate that would be. What a downer! The gospel does not lead us to be downers (quite the opposite — Romans 12:15). But if we always have to be on the lookout not to love anything “too much,” we will be constant downers.

Edwards’ point on self-love frees us from these hindrances to true love. It shows us that we cannot love ourselves too much, or our jobs, or even food or drink or having fun. You cannot love anything too much in an absolute sense, and therefore are free to pursue your enthusiasm for things undiminished. That is incredibly freeing and motivating.

The issue is always “do I love this more than God?” That’s the problem, and that’s what you need to be on the lookout for. But notice that when we understand the problem in this sense, the solution is not that we need to be worried about how much we love our jobs (or anything else). The solution is not to decrease our enthusiasm for work or food or anything else. Rather, the solution is to increase our love for God. The issue is always one of proportion; how much do I love this in relation to God? That’s the question to be asking.

This leads to a very different kind of life, and this is at the essence of the freedom of a Christian.

*Note: If it seems like I’m referring to a recently released book on the gospel and work here, I’m not. I’m not referring to it because I haven’t been able to read it all yet, and my assumption is that the authors make this same correction that I’m seeking to make here. I’m referring more to a mindset that tends to pop up more informally in blogs, articles, sermons, and so forth.