This past Sunday was a special day. For the second year in a row, we had a combined service in the parking lot of the new building for our north campus. There easily could have been around 4,000 people there in attendance and it was exciting to be together worshipping God with one voice. And John Piper was back! He again thanked us for his sabbatical, and then delivered a great message.

As is typical upon his return from a writing leave, Piper preached a message birthed from his thoughts and labor over the writing of his books during the past few months. As soon as the sermon is posted onine at Desiring God, I plan to link to it. [update, it is posted now, read it by clicking here. Also, Justin Taylor recently provided the link to the audio, in a recent post providing an excerpt from this same sermon.] But I couldn’t wait until then to comment on it. The sermon’s text was Luke 18:9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and tax collector. While his main point had to do with his book on Justification’s importance (an answer to N.T. Wright), he also touched on a topic relative to his other book on the demands of Jesus in the Gospels. I want to discuss both of these points below.

The Gospels

Piper stressed that in going through all of Jesus’ commands in the Gospels, he discovered one very important consideration. You must read the Gospels backward. By this he meant that you must always keep in mind that Christ was coming to die and shed His blood to provide for our justification and redemption. This thought really riveted me, as I will explain in a second, but first we must look to his proof.

Piper showed that each of the Biblical writers of the Gospels had clues in their book that this was the case. Matthew, Luke, and John all have such clues at the beginning of their works: Matt. 1:21, Luke 2:10-11, & John 1:29. And for Mark, the very structure of his book trumpets this fact. His book spends half of its chapters dealing with the very last week of Jesus’ life. I would marshall a few other considerations to defend Piper’s point. One, Mark 1:1 would be in the vein of the opening declarations in Matthew, Luke, and John mentioned above. But, secondly, consider that all of these Gospels were written several years (30 to 50 or more) after Jesus’ life. Certainly as the writers themselves had been experiencing the new covenant blessings bought by Christ’s death, they were writing in light of them. They were not out to give a historical biography primarily, rather they were trying to give a thematic biography centering on Jesus’ gospel/the gospel of Christianity–which centered on Christ’s atoning work on the Cross and His resurrection. That is why each of those books begins with the title, “The Gospel according to…”.

This truth, that the everything in the Gospels has the cross ultimately in view, has some astounding implications. Piper stressed one of them. Namely, that Jesus’ commands are not suggestions for living a blessed life. They are not a creed for having a successful Business. (Piper was pretty emphatic on this, saying it made him sick that people use Christ’s teaching as a basis for business success, when they really need to hear Christ’s message and be saved.) Neither are they requirements for living the kind of life that will let you in to heaven. Rather, the commands first highlight your guilt in the fact that you cannot keep them, and then they point you to dependence on the only one who can keep them–Jesus Christ. Further, they are given with the seeking and saving ministry of Christ fulfilled on the Cross in view.

Another implication that I immediately considered has to do with a proper hermeneutical approach. Dispensationalists often emphasize that Christ came to offer his kingdom first and then being rebuffed, went to the Cross. Now some make it seem like His purposes were thwarted, while others emphasize that He knew all along that he would be rejected, but in either case this view leads to such extremes as a hyper dispensationalism which disallows virtually any application of the Gospels to our Christian life today, and free grace theology which declares that Christ’s hard sayings in the gospels are not for us today–they have no bearing on what is necessary for salvation in this dispensation. Not all who hold those extreme views would say it exactly as I do above, but many think that way, I am sure. This is where reading the Gospels backward seems to demolish these views. Every chapter of the Gospels has the end of Christ’s life in view–in the author’s mind, and even in Christ’s mind for he is speaking and working to that end. This should at the least inform our hermeneutic. And it might help us avoid some of the extremes birthed from an incorrect view of the Gospels.

Justification

The core of the message centered on the doctrine of justification. From the first and last verses in the story, Piper concludes it is clear the passage is about justification. But he made an important assessment of the passage which has great bearing on N.T. Wright and his doctrinal teachings concerning justification.

Piper sees no reason to doubt the Pharisee’s self assessment. He had a righteousness which was moral, ceremonial, and God-given. Piper highlighted the words “God, I thank you that…”. While we cannot say for sure if the Pharisee was a synergist or monergist, Arminian or Calvinist, clearly he attributed his righteousness to God and not his own self merit. So Piper argues the Pharisee is NOT a legalist. He was not working for his salvation, he saw his works as being given graciously from God.

But he WAS trusting in his righteousness to secure his standing before God–this much Christ makes clear. N.T. Wright and a rapidly increasing number of theologians are saying that our Christ-wrought righteousness is the very basis of our acceptance with God/our justification. Yet this passage teaches that it is not a God-given righteousness in which we should trust, but rather we should be looking away from ourselves and trusting/pleading for God’s mercy as the publican does. This is not to say God-given righteousness is not important, but it is to say that looking at the righteousness as our surety is not only wrong but perilously so.

With sadness, Piper concluded the message emphasizing four words Christ spoke: “rather than the other”. Piper said he can see no reason for those four words in v. 14 other than Christ making it absolutely clear what we should expect of the Pharisee and others who “(trust) in themselves that they (are) righteous”, namely that they are not justified and have no place in heaven. Piper made it clear that he would rather not think such of those who disagree with the historic doctrine of justification–for he knows many people who do; but this passage forces him too. He also made it clear that he believes some who follow this new teaching do not really believe it, but sadly others like the Pharisee do. It was a sobering message, for sure, and a foretaste of his book which hopefully will be published soon.