Not 50/50

Excerpt from Matt Smethurst Interview with Tullian Tchividjian:  You Can't Exhaust It

We say it before meals. We give our daughters the name. We use the word in endless book titles. Yes, I'm talking grace.

So what does grace actually mean, and how should it revolutionize my ordinary life? In his new book, One-Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World  (David C. Cook), Tullian Tchividjian sets out to explore and revel in the untamable, unstoppable reality of God's invading grace.

I talked with Tchividjian, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, about the urgency of his message, common misunderstandings, motivations versus reasons, "holy sweat," and more.

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How do we balance the glorious reality of one-way love with the "greatest commandment" to love God back?

Well, the greatest commandment is not really a command to love God "back"; it's a command to love him period—to love him in the first place! I think we should be really careful with the word "balance," because I think it's easily misunderstood. The law (of which the greatest commandment is a prime example) and the gospel ("the glorious reality of one-way love") aren't "balanced." One shows us our need, the other announces our provision. We're in constant need of hearing both. It's not 50/50. It's 100 percent law followed by 100 percent gospel. As Gerhard Ebeling wrote, "The failure to distinguish the law and the gospel always means the abandonment of the gospel." What he meant was that a confusion of law and gospel (trying to "balance" them) is the main contributor to moralism in the church because the law gets softened into "helpful tips for practical living" instead of God's unwavering demand for absolute perfection, while the gospel gets hardened into a set of moral and social demands we "must live out" instead of God's unconditional declaration that "God justifies the ungodly." As my friend and New Testament scholar Jono Linebaugh,says, "God doesn't serve mixed drinks. The divine cocktail is not law mixed with gospel. God serves two separate shots: law then gospel."

The greatest commandment—to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength—casts an incredibly bright light on our failure to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. In fact, it's commandments like this that make one-way love so necessary. We're incapable of loving God in the way he deserves, and so find ourselves in desperate need of a Savior. Before God's holy law, we are judged and rightly found wanting. I'm not the follower of Christ I ought to be, nor am I the father, husband, pastor, or friend I should be. I wish I could say I do everything for God's glory. I can't. Neither can you. What I can say is that Jesus' blood covers all my efforts to glorify myself. I wish I could say Jesus fully satisfies me. I can't. Neither can you. What I can say is Jesus fully satisfied God for me.

Paradoxically, it's the glorious fact of one-way love that subsequently enables and empowers us to love God—imperfectly, but nevertheless, really. "We love," as we well know, "because he first loved us." (Incidentally, love for God doesn't happen simply because he commands us to love him—we love God because he first loved us. Love, and love alone, begets love.) So the greatest commandment and one-way love are related, but it's not as simple as being balanced. The command shows us our sin and drives us to cry out for a Savior. God, through this Savior, so overwhelms us with his one-way love (love for the unlovable and undeserving) that we're inspired to love God and others. Charles Spurgeon nailed it when he remarked, "When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I beat my breast to think I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so and sought my good."

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