Greg, Okay, all our sensible friends have tuned out at this point. Emo kid Mike didn't even want to jump in the pool. So for you, me, and our three remaining readers… (everyone else can just scroll down to see Hugh Latimer's, er, Mike's latest entry):

POINT TAKEN!

Point taken. I’m grateful for (and agree with) everything you affirm. That is, the “gospel” in the New Testament is that Christ has defeated sin and all of its consequences (I’m thinking of 1 Cor. 15 (the whole chapter), 1 Peter 1:3-9, Ephesians 2:11-20, and certainly the gospel of the kingdom passages in the Gospels). It is good news indeed that creation will be restored, that a covenantal unity now abides between formerly divided humans, that we have been given the seal and the first fruits of the Holy Spirit, that we are now free to live for God’s glory in our work, our service, and entire lives, and so on.

Thank you, brother, for helping me to be clear about this. Our explanations of the gospel to the church and non-Christian alike should ultimately point to all these things. I’m thinking about Jesus’ statement to John’s disciples about telling John that they see the blind seeing and so forth. Though we should take care not to over realize our eschatology, Christians have the amazing privilege of saying to non-Christians and their fellow Christians, “New life is happening here—just watch! And there’s more newness to come!”  All this is cause for rejoicing.

YET...

Yet let me try to frame the discussion in a slightly different way, so as to illustrate what I believe is the bull’s-eye accuracy of what Dever’s getting at: our presentations of the gospel and understanding of the church’s mission needs to be extremely clear about the difference between sin and the consequences of sin. We have to start with sin. What is sin? Sin is that fact we disregard God and his glory because we want to be God, and so we break his law. In Genesis 3, Adam overlooks the fact that he was created to image God’s glory (1:26-28) and decides to be God himself (3:5). So he breaks God’s Genesis 2 law (2:16-17).

From this sin comes, perhaps most immediately, guilt (him looking down) and wrath (us looking up), because guilt and wrath are the most immediate measurement of the fact that Adam has broken a law. It’s not enough to say that a “broken relationship” is the most immediate consequence (as many authors want to say), because it’s the way in which the relationship has been broken that counts—Adam hasn’t just strayed off and got lost; he has defied his Lord. He has counted his own glory as worth more than God’s. He has blasphemed before the heavenly host about the lightness of God’s glory (vindicating Satan). He has, in Paul’s language, fallen short of that glory. God’s holy glory requires a punishment (not just a reconciliation). To say otherwise is to say his glory isn’t worth that much. To say otherwise is to overestimate our own glory and worth. (But isn’t the Bible clear that we’re like blades of grass, here today and gone tomorrow?)

(Among other things, this means we shouldn’t pit “law” and “relationship” or “person” against one another as so many are doing. God's law is an expression of his person and the very thing that he means to use to protect and safeguard our relationship with him and one another (consider Gen. 9:6). Loneliness is not the problem, lawlessness is. Not isolation, but insubordination.)

From sin, this fundamental disposition of hatred for God’s glory and defiance of his law, many consequences follow: Shame follows, so they’ll hide themselves behind fig leaves and trees. The curses follow, breaking fellowship between man and God, man and man, and man and earth. Among those curses, death follows, so Adam will return to the dust. And the dust itself will only yield fruit through hard work, because creation is breaking down. Also, sins against fellow humans follow, so the woman will desire to rule over the man, and the man will probably abuse her in return. Also, Cain kills Abel. You get the point.

Now, consider what’s probably going to happen to explanations of the gospel in a culture which is gradually losing its very capacity to understand sin and guilt (as David Wells argues in Losing Our Virtue). I would predict that Christians would be tempted to define the gospel in a way that emphasizes how the gospel overcomes the consequences of sin. So they’ll talk about the gospel as “reconciling relationships” or “inaugurating God’s kingdom” or “restoring creation.” And, yes, amen, all of this is part of the good news Jesus brings. Preach it! But they will also, perhaps, be slower to emphasize sin itself and sin’s most immediate consequences, like guilt and God’s wrath. “People just don’t understand that,” they’ll say. And maybe, just maybe, they will be less able than their historical forbearers to recognize the weightiness of these things either, because they too are creatures of culture (and let me put myself first here, brother: I completely fail to recognize the weight of my sin and God’s glory!!! That’s the story of my life.)

But when we’re not explicit on these first things—sin as broken law; sin as hatred of God’s glory; guilt and God’s wrath as the most immediate consequences—then what it means to “reconcile relationships,” “inaugurate a kingdom,” or “restore creation” becomes vague and, often, man-centered. And have you noticed how so many definitions of the gospel these days fail to use those old words like propitiation, imputation, or justification, words which give meaning to “inaugurating a kingdom” or “restoring creation” because they get at the heart of the root of the problem, not just a consequence of the problem?

All this is where Tim Keller has been so helpful for my thinking. In all his talk about “functional justification” and idolatry, in his connecting of the first commandment and justification by faith (a la Luther), he has helped me to understand my sin more deeply. My breaking the law (esp. the first commandment) is the same thing as idolatry, which is the same thing as my justifying myself, which is the same thing as my despising of God’s glory. Solution: justification by faith (!), which is the same thing as reaching for an alien righteousness, which is the same thing as having no other gods before him. (I’m using the phrase “same thing” loosely here. But you get the point.)