Last week, Jared Wilson excerpted a post from a Christian counseling website, Counseling Solutions, called “Christ is not sophisticated enough for what I am going through.” It’s a remarkable post; the author, Rick Thomas, clearly advocates and seeks to practice gospel-centered counseling, which in my experience is not exactly the norm even among Christians in the counseling industry (and in fact seems to be actively discouraged by many who train counselors). Here’s how he opens:
Jeremy & Carol do not like each other. Jeremy is passive and Carol is hurt. Carol has been in therapy for many years and their problems have not gone away and their marriage is no better off today than it was when Carol began her therapy sessions. The fundamental problem with Jeremy and Carol is that they do not understand the Gospel.
When I shared this with them, they dismissed this notion with a wry smile. The Gospel is too simple and they had already “accepted Christ” twenty something years ago. From their perspective, they understand the Gospel, accepted the Gospel, and are now looking for something a bit more sophisticated to help them through their marriage difficulty.
Their attitude, unfortunately, is all too common among churchgoers in this country. We’re supposed to be gospel people—this is what we’re supposed to be on about, it’s what’s supposed to define us and give us our purpose—but somehow or other we’ve gotten the idea that this is kid stuff that we’ve outgrown. It’s not big enough or deep enough to apply to our grownup problems and struggles; we need something more.
I could be wrong about why that is, but I think it’s because we have far too small and shallow a view of our sin. That might sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. Our understanding of the gospel begins with the idea that it has something to do with saving us from sin; that’s where people generally begin, and even the most gospel-full people I know begin there, because it’s the truth. The gospel very much has to do with Christ saving us from the penalty of sin. The problem is, a lot of people don’t go any further than that—they get that the gospel means they aren’t going to Hell, and figure that’s the end of it.
Which wouldn’t be so big of a problem, except that in their heart of hearts, most folks don’t really believe they’d be going to Hell anyway, much less that they deserve to, because they don’t really think their sin is all that big a deal. Most people I’ve ever met basically figure that they’re either good enough or pretty close. Their view of their own sin is small and shallow, and they can’t imagine that God could really be that upset at them for it (though, interestingly, their view of the sins of others is frequently far less lenient). As a result, they don’t think saving them was (or would be) all that big a stretch.
The consequence of this shrunken view of sin, combined with a view of salvation that amounts to little more than a “Get Out of Hell Free” card, is a shriveled understanding of the gospel: the gospel as they imagine it is sized to fit what they conceive to be their relatively minor sins. In such a self-understanding, sin is not the major problem in their lives, but one of the smaller ones, if it’s even still recognized as a problem at all; the gospel, then, may have some value, but it isn’t enough to deal with the real issues in their lives. For that, they think something bigger is necessary. Because they do not understand the truly terrifying size and power of their sin, they cannot see the grace, mercy and love of God as the awe-inspiring thing that it is, great and powerful enough to save even them; their comprehension of this mystery goes no deeper than your average Hallmark card.
Of course, this is perfectly understandable—none of us particularly want to look all that closely at our own sin; none of us wants to think of ourselves as capable of great evil, much less of doing real evil on a regular basis. Most of us tend to think of ourselves as being basically pretty good, because that’s what we want to think about ourselves. Unfortunately, that’s a misdiagnosis, and when problems arise, it leads us to turn to every solution except the right one; it leads us to believe that Jesus is not enough, and thus to look elsewhere for redemption when he is the only redeemer there is to be found.
The solution to this is, I believe, the one which Thomas prescribes:
Suppose Jeremy & Carol truly understood that they were on the precipice of hell. Let’s further suppose that they knew they were the worst, wickedest, and most undeserving people who ever lived. And there was not one ounce of an entitlement attitude in their souls. They were the worst of the worst.
Now let’s suppose someone came and totally transformed their lives. If anyone had ever gone from worst to first, Jeremy and Carol were those people. They received an “other worldly” gift that they not only did not deserve, but they were absolutely helpless in ever earning. Jeremy and Carol were truly regenerated: they were born again. They are now seated in heavenly places with the One who fully secured their regeneration. They have been affected by the Gospel.
That’s what all of us need to understand, because that’s where all of us are. God doesn’t owe us anything except judgment—even the best of us. But instead of giving us judgment, he gave us himself; he gave us his Son, Jesus Christ. We were and are utterly undeserving, and he saved us anyway, at unimaginable, immeasurable cost to himself; he did it because even though we turned our backs on him, he loved us too much to let us go. This is the reason for everything Jesus did, and it’s the reason he is the answer to all the deepest problems of our lives; it’s the reason that the truth of the gospel is sufficient, that it doesn’t need any of our human fake “wisdom” piled on top of it like poison ivy on a hot-fudge sundae. The gospel is enough; his grace is sufficient.
Photo: Long Shadow, © 2014 Nick Page. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.