Tim Keller on Pleasing God, Self-Salvation, and Two Misplaced Sons
Two Misplaced Sons
The Bible’s most potent depiction of the reality that there’s a couple of method to be misplaced is crystallized in Luke 15:11–32. The broad define of the parable is acquainted: a father has two sons, the youthful of whom calls for his share of the inheritance after which strikes to a far nation, the place he squanders it on wild residing. Ultimately, after coming to his senses, the prodigal returns dwelling empty-handed and damaged; he merely hopes his father will take him again as a employed servant. However seeing his wayward son from a great distance off, the daddy runs to fulfill him and requests a celebration thrown in his honor.
Many individuals are likely to cease there, a minimum of when it comes to emphasis, which is why it’s identified to historical past because the parable of the prodigal son—singular. However the returning son isn’t the one prodigal. That’s truly the entire level. Jesus shouldn’t be addressing the wayward however is aiming the story, like a heatseeking missile, on the religiously religious. Notice the context of the chapter:
Now the tax collectors and sinners had been all drawing close to to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” So he instructed them this parable. . . . (Luke 15:1–3)
In gentle of the viewers, then, we dare not overlook the dramatic last scene:
Now [the father’s] older son was within the discipline, and as he got here and drew close to to the home, he heard music and dancing. And he known as one of many servants and requested what these items meant. And he mentioned to him, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, as a result of he has acquired him again secure and sound.” However he was indignant and refused to go in. His father got here out and urged him, however he answered his father, “Look, these a few years I’ve served you, and I by no means disobeyed your command, but you by no means gave me a younger goat, that I would have a good time with my pals. However when this son of yours got here, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” And he mentioned to him, “Son, you’re all the time with me, and all that’s mine is yours. It was becoming to have a good time and be glad, for this your brother was lifeless, and is alive; he was misplaced, and is discovered.” (Luke 15:25–32)
Matt Smethurst distills over 40 years of Tim Keller’s educating subject by subject—drawing from fashionable books to lesser-known convention talks, interviews, and sermons—to current sensible perception for generations of readers desperate to develop of their stroll with Christ.
On September 11, 2005, Keller preached a sermon titled “The Prodigal Sons”—plural—which grew to become the genesis of his 2008 bestseller The Prodigal God: Recovering the Coronary heart of the Christian Religion. This e-book captures essentially the most distilled essence of Keller’s educating relating to the guts. Close to the start he credit a sermon on Luke 15 by his mentor, Ed Clowney, that altered his understanding:
Listening to that sermon modified the way in which I understood Christianity. I nearly felt I had found the key coronary heart of Christianity. Over time I’ve usually returned to show and counsel from the parable. I’ve seen extra individuals inspired, enlightened, and helped by this passage, once I defined the true which means of it, than by another textual content.1
That final sentence is a outstanding assertion. What concerning the parable is so highly effective? In case you evaluate the educating of Jesus to a lake, Keller says, this parable is “one of many clearest spots the place we will see all the way in which to the underside.”2 And that’s as a result of what Jesus says concerning the elder brother is one among Scripture’s most significant teachings.3 We impoverish ourselves, due to this fact, after we fixate on the youthful brother:
The primary time I heard the parable, I imagined Jesus’s authentic listeners’ eyes welling with tears as they heard how God will all the time love and welcome them, it doesn’t matter what they’ve accomplished. We sentimentalize this parable if we try this. The targets of this story aren’t “wayward sinners” however spiritual individuals who [think they] do every thing the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not a lot with immoral outsiders as with ethical insiders. He needs to indicate them their blindness, narrowness, and self-righteousness, and the way these items are destroying each their very own souls and the lives of the individuals round them. It’s a mistake, then, to assume that Jesus tells this story primarily to guarantee youthful brothers of his unconditional love.4
Other than Jesus Christ, flagrant lawbreaking and fastidious rule holding are lifeless ends. In Keller’s phrases: “Jesus’s objective is to not heat our hearts however to shatter our classes.”5
Every brother within the parable represents “a unique method to be alienated from God”6—and each methods are strikingly resonant with the latemodern West. Keller dubs the approaches “the way in which of ethical conformity and the way in which of self-discovery.”7 In reality, he observes, Western tradition is “so deeply divided between these two approaches”8 that it’s troublesome to think about an alternate possibility:
In case you criticize or distance your self from one, everybody assumes you may have chosen to observe the opposite, as a result of every of those approaches tends to divide the entire world into two primary teams. The ethical conformists say: “The immoral individuals—the individuals who ‘do their very own factor’—are the issue with the world, and ethical individuals are the answer.” The advocates of self-discovery say: “The bigoted individuals—the individuals who say, ‘We’ve the Fact’—are the issue with the world, and progressive individuals are the answer.” All sides says: “Our method is the way in which the world
shall be put to rights, and if you’re not with us, you’re towards us.”9
However King Jesus shouldn’t be sort to false dichotomies. Neither is he beholden to pure expectations:
So we have now two sons, one “dangerous” by typical requirements and one “good,” but each are alienated from the daddy. The daddy has to exit and invite every of them to return into the feast of his love. . . .
However Act 2 involves an unthinkable conclusion. Jesus the storyteller intentionally leaves the elder brother in his alienated state. The dangerous son enters the daddy’s feast however the good son won’t. The lover of prostitutes is saved, however the man of ethical rectitude continues to be misplaced. We will nearly hear the Pharisees gasp because the story ends. It was the whole reversal of every thing they’d ever been taught.10
Each sons are misplaced, however just one is aware of it. You’re misplaced, Jesus is saying, however you refuse to comprehend it.
Self-Salvation Tasks
It’s sobering to note that when the older son protests, “Look, these a few years I’ve served you, and I by no means disobeyed your command” (Luke 15:29), the daddy doesn’t disagree! His firstborn has been obedient; he has accomplished every thing “proper.” And sarcastically, it’s holding him fromthe feast. His outward goodness—and resultant pleasure—has erected a barrier between him and the daddy’s love.
An elder-brother mindset can hang-out us all. Keller provides an instance:
I knew a lady who had labored for a few years in Christian ministry. When persistent sickness overtook her in center age, it threw her into despair. Ultimately she realized that deep in her coronary heart she felt that God owed her a greater life, in spite of everything she had accomplished for him. That assumption made it extraordinarily troublesome for her to climb out of her pit, although climb she did. The important thing to her enchancment, nevertheless,was to acknowledge the elder-brother mindset inside.
Elder brothers obey God to get issues. They don’t obey God to get God himself—with a purpose to resemble him, love him, know him, and delight him. So spiritual and ethical individuals may be avoiding Jesus as Savior and Lord as a lot because the youthful brothers who say they don’t imagine in God and outline proper and fallacious for themselves.11
The stakes are that top. In case you assume God ought to settle for you since you’re good, “then Jesus could also be your helper, your instance, even your inspiration, however he’s not your Savior.” How might he be? You are occupying that position.11 Keller concludes,
So there are two methods, not one, to be your personal Savior and Lord: you possibly can break all of the ethical guidelines and chart your personal course, or you possibly can strive holding all of the exterior ethical guidelines and search to earn heaven’s favor. Each are methods for avoiding God. Other than Jesus Christ, each particular person is “devoted to a challenge of self-salvation, to utilizing God and others with a purpose to get energy and management for themselves. We’re simply going about it in numerous methods.”12
King Jesus shouldn’t be sort to false dichotomies. Neither is he beholden to pure expectations.
Equally Mistaken, Not Equally Harmful
By the tip of Jesus’s parable, just one son has been reconciled to his father. Why conclude like this? Why not present us a redemptive arc for Tim each brothers? The explanation definitely isn’t that elder brothers are hopeless; in the event that they had been, the daddy wouldn’t have gone into the sector and pleaded in any respect. We will’t know for certain, after all, however maybe Jesus is conveying that whereas “each types of the self-salvation challenge are equally fallacious,” they aren’t “equally harmful.”13 The youthful brother’s revolt is clear; the elder brother’s shouldn’t be. And therein lies the hazard:
He would have been horribly offended by the suggestion that he was rebelling towards the daddy’s authority and love, however he was, deeply. As a result of the elder brother is extra blind to what’s going on, being an elder-brother Pharisee is a extra spiritually determined situation. “How dare you say that?” is how spiritual individuals reply if you happen to recommend their relationship with God isn’t proper. “I’m there each time the church doorways are open.” Jesus says, in impact, “That doesn’t matter.”14
The takeaway, Keller says, is stunning: “Cautious obedience to God’s regulation could function a technique for rebelling towards God.”15 He usually returned to a picture of two individuals sitting facet by facet in the identical pew—listening to the identical sermons, singing the identical songs, participating in the identical religious actions—however for totally totally different causes. One does all of it to please God; the opposite does it to justify self.
And but on the surface, they appear precisely the identical.16
The True Elder Brother
In relation to pleasing God, each the rebellious path and the spiritual path are lifeless ends. However Jesus reveals us a extra wonderful method. It isn’t a cushty center possibility between earthly extremes, for his gospel occupies a transcendent aircraft.17
Within the parable, the older son ought to have gone into the far nation in pursuit of his wayward brother. He ought to have rejoiced at his return. He ought to have gladly relinquished a part of his inheritance with a purpose to reinstate his brother’s. He ought to have joined the get together. However, as Keller observes, “By placing a flawed elder brother within the story, Jesus is inviting us to think about and yearn for a real one.”18
Jesus Christ is the final word elder brother who didn’t simply journey to a far nation; he descended from heaven to earth to hunt and save the misplaced. “Who’s the true elder brother?” Keller requested in a funeral sermon for his personal youthful brother Billy. “Who’s the one who really obeyed the Father fully? Who really has misplaced his gown so he [could] put it on us? Jesus!”19 He’s the “God of Nice Expenditure,”20 who, at infinite price to himself, paid our debt and now binds our wounds and brings us dwelling to the Father.
This message is true, but it surely’s not tame. The method of reckoning with it’s disruptive to idol-ridden hearts. Keller recounts a time when a lady coming to Redeemer was listening to, for the primary time, that she may very well be accepted not on the idea of her habits however by God’s sheer grace. Keller was intrigued by her response: “That is a scary concept! Oh, it’s good scary, however nonetheless scary.” When he requested what was so scary about unmerited free grace, she replied,
If I used to be saved by my good works—then there can be a restrict to what God might ask of me or put me by means of. I might be like a taxpayer with rights. I might have accomplished my responsibility and now I might deserve a sure high quality of life. However whether it is actually true that I’m a sinner saved by sheer grace—at God’s infinite price—then there’s nothing he can’t ask of me.
Keller feedback,
She might see . . . the wonderful-beyond-belief educating of salvation by sheer grace had two edges to it. On the one hand it minimize away slavish concern. God loves us freely, regardless of our flaws and failures. But she additionally knew that if Jesus actually had accomplished this for her—she was not nher personal. She was purchased with a worth.21
As we wait in hope for the final word feast and everlasting get together, could we by no means recover from what it price to deliver us dwelling. In December 1662, a Scottish minister named David Dickson lay dying when a detailed buddy of over fifty years arrived to inquire how he was. The eighty-year-old man replied, “I’ve taken all my good deeds, and all my dangerous deeds, and have forged them collectively in a heap earlier than the Lord, and have fled from each to Jesus Christ, and in him I’ve candy peace.”22
That’s the message of the gospel, and it’s the message Tim Keller beloved to speak. Don’t simply flee your dangerous works. Flee your “good” works, too. Flee them each and collapse into the open arms of Jesus Christ.
Notes:
- Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Coronary heart of the Christian Religion (New York: Penguin, 2008), xvii. Clowney’s sermon, “Sharing the Father’s Welcome,” is on the market in Edmund P. Clowney, Preaching Christ in All of Scripture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003).
- Keller, Prodigal God, xvii.
- Keller, Prodigal God, xix.
- Keller, Prodigal God 12.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 13.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 9.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 34. See additionally Tim Keller, “The Prodigal Sons,” preached on September 11, 2005, and “The Lord of the Sabbath,” preached on February 19, 2006. He writes, “Every acts as a lens coloring the way you see all of life, or as a paradigm shaping your understanding of every thing. Every is a method of discovering private significance and price, of addressing the ills of the world, and of figuring out proper from fallacious,” Keller, Prodigal God, 34.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 37.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 37. As Keller explains in a sermon, “Jesus says, ‘You’re each fallacious. You’re each misplaced. You’re each making the world a horrible place in numerous methods.’ The elder brothers of the world divide the world in two. They are saying, ‘The great individuals are in, and the dangerous individuals (you) are out.’ The youthful brothers do as effectively—the self-discovery individuals additionally divide the world in two. They are saying, ‘The open-minded, progressive-minded individuals are in, and the bigoted and judgmental individuals (you) are out.’ Jesus says neither. He says, ‘It’s the common-or-garden who’re in and the proud who’re out.’ ” Keller, “The Prodigal Sons.”
- Keller, Prodigal God, 40.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 48. In a 1992 sermon, Keller remarked, “I’ve seen loads of individuals—who’ve been non-Christians and skeptical and beneath the affect of the flesh—come on into the Christian religion, and their flesh continues to dominate them, as a result of now they discover spiritual methods of avoiding God, whereas earlier than they had been discovering irreligious methods.” Tim Keller, “Alive with Christ: Half 2,” preached
on November 8, 1992. - Keller, Prodigal God, 44.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 45.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 51.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 53.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 54. Keller explains additional, “The youthful brother knew he was= alienated from the daddy, however the elder brother didn’t. That’s why elder-brother lostness is so harmful. Elder brothers don’t go to God and beg for therapeutic from their situation. They see nothing fallacious with their situation, and that may be deadly. If you realize you’re sick chances are you’ll go to a health care provider; if you happen to don’t know you’re sick you received’t—you’ll simply die.” Keller, 75.
- Keller, Prodigal God, 43.
- See, for instance, “Preaching the Gospel,” 2009 Newfrontiers Convention at Westminster Chapel in London, accessible at https:// vimeo .com /3484464. Elsewhere was a gardener who grew an unlimited carrot. He took it to his king and mentioned, ‘My lord, that is the best carrot I’ve ever grown or ever will develop; due to this fact, I need to current it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.’ The king was touched and discerned the person’s coronary heart, in order he turned to go, the king mentioned, ‘Wait! You’re clearly a superb steward of the earth. I personal a plot of land proper subsequent to yours. I need to give it to you freely as a present, so you possibly can backyard all of it.’ The gardener was amazed and delighted and went dwelling rejoicing. However there was a nobleman on the king’s courtroom who overheard all this, and he mentioned, ‘My! If that’s what you get for a carrot, what if you happen to gave the king one thing higher?’ The following day the nobleman got here earlier than the king, and he was main a good-looking black stallion. He bowed low and mentioned, ‘My lord, I breed horses, and that is the best horse I’ve ever bred or ever will; due to this fact, I need to current it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.’ However the king discerned his coronary heart and mentioned, ‘Thanks,’ and took the horse and easily dismissed him. The nobleman was perplexed, so the king mentioned, ‘Let me clarify. That gardener was giving me the carrot, however you had been giving your self the horse.’ ” Timothy Keller, The Gospel in Life Examine Information: How Grace Adjustments All the things (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 17. Keller first shared this illustration at Redeemer on Might 5,
1996. Although he attributes it to Charles Spurgeon, I can’t discover the unique supply. - Keller states, “It’s off the scales. It’s not midway within the center. It’s one thing else [entirely].” Keller, “The Prodigal Sons.”
- Keller, Prodigal God, 94.
- Hansen, Timothy Keller, 218 (emphasis authentic). As a younger man, Keller had, in a way, embodied each younger-brother and elder-brother tendencies: “Tim was the oldest little one who all the time did the suitable factor, and but on the identical time when he went off to school he actually did insurgent, and he rebelled largely towards his [overbearing] mom. He was torn between the dynamics of eager to do the suitable factor, but additionally the pressures of falling far brief. . . . As soon as I noticed that [he had demonstrated the proclivities of both sons], hastily Tim’s core message of the reworking energy of grace—this present from God that adjustments every thing about our lives—made much more sense.” Hansen, “Collin Hansen on The Making of Tim Keller, Overcoming Loneliness, Tim’s Teenage Insurrection, How He Completed Nicely, and Why He Wished Folks to Know About His Weaknesses,” The Carey Nieuwhof Management Podcast, July 11, 2023, https:// care ynieuwh of .com/. In his e-book, Hansen additionally shares a poignant story about Tim’s literal youthful (and solely) brother Billy, a homosexual man who died of issues from AIDS in 1998: “[Over the years] once they visited [Billy and his partner], Tim and Kathy talked to him concerning the gospel. . . . Tim tried to emphasise the distinction between grace and the legalism of their childhood. . . . [Eventually] when Billy entered hospice in December [1997], he mentioned to Tim, ‘My Christian household isn’t going to return with me once I enter eternity, and neither are my homosexual pals. So I’ve to determine what’s on the opposite facet of this life.’ . . . [Billy] had thought being a Christian meant cleansing up his life and making himself righteous. However Tim pointed to 2 Corinthians 5:21: ‘For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, in order that in him we’d turn out to be the righteousness of God.’ Lastly, Billy felt God’s love. The transformation was instantly evident. He even known as his lawyer and instructed him to offer his cash [marked for donation to gay causes] to [a local] ministry as a substitute. . . . When all hope appeared misplaced, God welcomed this prodigal son dwelling.” Hansen, Timothy Keller, 218–20.
- Keller, Prodigal God, xx.
This text is customized from Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Reworking Energy of the Gospel by Matt Smethurst.
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