from the Willow Creek Leadership Summit: Tim Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan and author of several insightful books, including The Reason for God. Our sister publication Christianity Today recently published a cover story on Keller.
The thing that shocks us as ministers is the spiritual deadness in our congregations. Few people do most of the work. On top of that, there’s turf-consciousness, anger, pride. So we ministers are suckers for anything that says, “This is the key to spiritual vitality.” So, with fear and trembling, I want to give: (a) a diagnosis for what that spiritual deadness is, and (b) a prescription that is not too programmatic or too vague. To see what the old-timers call “revival” and the newcomers call “renewal.”
The Diagnosis
The Parable of the Prodigal Son was not really written to younger brother types; it’s written to the older brother types (the religious leaders and Pharisees who criticize Jesus for associating with, and eating with, sinners). The parable was told to religious people.
The younger brother is like the sinners around Jesus. The older brother is like the Pharisees. In the end, the Father is addressing the older brother. The purpose of the parable is to address the people in the church, the moral, the religious.
The main point of the parable is that both younger brothers and older brothers are BOTH alienated from the father, who represents God. In both cases, they’re lost; the father needs to go out and invite them in. The younger brother is very obvious; he doesn’t want the father, he just wants his money. But the older brother also doesn’t really love the father. He doesn’t enter the greatest day in the father’s life (when his brother returns). He’s upset with how the father is using the estate: the older brother loves the father’s things and not the father. Both want the money of the father and not the father.
The younger brother tries to get the father’s money by being very bad; the older brother, by being very good. The younger brother runs away, the older brother stays home. The older brother says, “Because I’m living such a good life, God has to take care of me, provide for me, answer my prayers.”
There are 2 ways to be your own savior and Lord: being irreligious and being religious, being immoral and being moral.
the key difference: the older brother thinks he’s with God.
The shocking ending: both are alienated from the father, both have to be urged to come into the feast. But the younger brother comes in to the feast, and the older brother refuses. The bad boy is saved, and the good boy is lost. The good boy is not lost in spite of his goodness but because of his goodness. The reason he rejects the father is because he’s never disobeyed the father. “I have been so good, and you’re not doing what I wanted you to do.”
The gospel is NEITHER religion nor irreligion.
How does all this play out in the church? Religion: I obey, and therefore, I am accepted. The gospel: God accepts me because of what Jesus Christ has done for me, and therefore, I obey.