Because the human persons incapability to contribute anything to salvation (even our faith is a gift, generated by Gods grace), JNE follows the Reformational teaching that it opens up social participation and cultural engagement in unexpected ways. This is the Everything that JNE celebrates. Released from the burden to justify ourselves in the face of God, we are free to love our neighbor, free to use our talents, gifts, and resources in the social, cultural, and political realms....
....Most evangelical Christian worldview thinking is dominated by law, not gospel, by Gods first not his last word. It sets up philosophical, aesthetic, social, and political parameters to guard the Christian or offers a way for a Christian to engage (re: defend himself against) culture. But JNE reminds evangelicals that grace cannot be controlled and it cannot be cooperated with. It can only be responded to, and it produces freedom. It is grace, not law, that is remaking the world. It is, as Aslan calls it, a deeper magic, even if that magic is not immediately obvious to us.
JNE affirms, following Luther, that because our justification is in Christ, not in our work, we are free, free to see Christ everywhere and in everything, for he is in, as Paul writes in Colossians, all things. And that opens up the world to the Christian as pure gift, especially the world of art, literature, and musicthose endeavors with no practical use and pragmatic outcomes that have long troubled evangelicals. It also releases the Christian of the burden of protecting, guarding, and defending the Kingdom of God through law and the devices of the old Adam, through political action, presuming it to be the only legitimate form of Christian cultural participation. JNE creates space for Christian cultural life to be something other and more than defensive. It becomes grace-filled and grace-sensitive.
It’s not clear if JNE follows the neo-orthodoxy of Barth, but if it does then I would perhaps encourage Tullian to take a more substantial approach to the Scriptures. It does not “become the Word of God”, but rather IS the Word of God.
However, it does certainly lead to the discovery of the tutorial role of the Law and the overwhelming, blinding, rescue of grace...if one is among the elect.
Thanks for the post.
The "simplicity that is in Christ" is fully realized ONLY by grace. There are those who want to, or think they NEED to, complicate the gospel of grace because they find trusting God to work within the individual believer in His own time and His own way too unsettling. Religious edicts and mandatory behaviors are invented, not from Scriptural traditions, but motivated from within the insecure and fearful musings and thoughts of those who presume they alone CAN direct individuals sanctification.
The old adage, "Let go and let God", was discarded as ineffectual and, in its place, a rationale of the necessity of "cooperating" with grace to be saved was substituted. But, instead of believing in the power of the Holy Spirit to effect change internally and maturing the believer, the outside was "cleaned up" and "corporal works of mercy" were mandated to make the new convert deserving of heaven. Of course, the list of mandated behaviors grew to a sizable list and which included total submission to all that the "church" deemed was necessary for salvation. Instead of a Christian being assured of eternal life through his faith, the very idea of assurance of salvation was called the "sin of presumption", because nobody, according to this hierarchy, could possibly know what his state of grace at the moment of death would be. He could only hope he had confessed all his mortal sins - recently - and had partaken of the Eucharist and been obedient and, and, and... The absolute BEST one could hope for was a short stint in a place of suffering where all the "temporal" punishments for non-mortal sins were purged from his soul making him ready for heaven.
What this man-made false gospel essentially did was negate grace. It pushed grace to the side and placed the onus for suitability for heaven on the person and his merit, depending on his own worthiness to be saved. But grace is all about getting what we DON'T deserve. Mercy is not getting what we DO deserve - which is eternity separated from God because of sin. Grace is wholly undeserved, unmerited and unearned and we ARE redeemed from the punishment of all our sins by the precious blood of Christ - which is the price of sin. Only by blood is there atonement.
We can never fully fathom the depths of God's grace. What a wonderful, marvelous, amazing God we serve!
By "our" in the law written on our hearts does Luther mean Christians, non-Christian, or both?