A couple weeks ago my good friend Jean Larroux, senior pastor ofSouthwood Church in Huntsville, AL interviewed me about LIBERATE and the gospel. Jean has taken it on the chin (and in the groin) for preaching the gospel of grace without qualifications and footnotes…and I love him for it. I cheer him on from a distance and am happy and honored to be on his team. Semper Reformanda, amigo!
What is LIBERATE all about? Is it just a conference or something more?
Back in 2010 I was traveling around the country speaking about God’s grace and the radical truth that Jesus + Nothing = Everything. Regardless of where I was people would come up to me and ask two questions (often through tears): 1. Is what you just said true?and 2. If it is, why have I been in church my whole life and never heard this before?
They were trapped in a checklist version of the Christian faith where they heard 100 sermons about how to live the Christian life but precious few on the Christ who lived and died for us. As a result, they were weighed down and burdened by the mistaken notion that the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian. I knew the church needed to get back to the robust and liberating doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone and what that actually means for life and relationships. We came up with “Liberate” which started as a conference but has now grown to much more—it is now an annual conference, a well-resourced website, publishing projects, a pastors network, partnerships with churches and a lot more. It’s growing faster than we know what to do. There are a lot of people out there (especially pastors) who are being awakened to the radicality of the gospel of grace and rethinking everything as a result. We want to resource the church universal in any and every way that we can. I feel like a paradigm shift back to grace alone is happening and I’m just happy that Liberate has been positioned by God to help lead that charge.
Isn’t all this emphasis on grace going to make Christians lazy and ignore holiness?
[Laughs] We hear that all the time, don’t we? I always want to ask people who say that, “So are you saying that love does not produce love?” Their question assumes that the law (instruction, rebuke, exhortation) has the power to produce love. But the Bible says just the opposite. Paul makes it clear in Romans 7 that the law shows you what love looks like but has no power to actually make you loving. It can show you what to do and what you’re not doing but it can’t stimulate loving action.
Think about it—what does it do to your heart when you’re persistently criticized for failing to do something? Does that criticism make you want to do it? Does judgment engender loyalty and love? Or does it produce relational distance and frustration? The only thing that produces true love and heart-driven loyalty is love. Sanctification is nothing more and nothing less than love for God and love for others (it is the life long process of being compelled by Christ’s love) and 1 John tells us how love happens— “we love Him because He first loved us.” It is right and it is our duty to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, but the command itself doesn’t produce the love that is commanded. The only thing that produces love for God and love for others is love from God.
Is LIBERATE just for professional Christians or can “normal” people go too? How do we connect?
Liberate is connecting God’s inexhaustible grace to an exhausted world. I’ve never met anyone who is not exhausted. I’m not talking about exhausted because we’re too busy raising children and trying to pay the bills. I’m talking about emotional exhaustion, relational exhaustion and living on a treadmill of performance to ensure that our lives are meaningful. All of those things are just our own frantic attempts at self-justification.Liberate is for weary and heavy-laden people like that. Therefore this message is not just for professional Christians or pastors. It is not just for old people, young people, married people or single people—it literally is for humans. All of us, every human being who needs the rest that only Jesus offers.
If you had to condense the Gospel into an “elevator pitch” how would you describe it?
The gospel is the good news that Jesus has come to do and secure for you and me what we could never do or secure for ourselves. And He has come to freely give to you and me what we could never get for ourselves. No one wants to live a meaningless life. Everyone wants to matter. Most of our pursuits are fueled by this thirst—this longing to validate our existence. To justify ourselves. To rescue ourselves. To set ourselves free. And the gospel is the good news that Jesus has come to set the captives free. The gospel is an announcement, a declaration that One has lived for us and died for us.
At Southwood we often talk about the Gospel redefining our identity. You are Billy Graham’s grandson. How does the Gospel free you to rightly rejoice in who you were born to be and concurrently reject some persona that people would falsely expect you to be?
Trying to do it all will cause an inevitable crash and burn. That happened to me just after coming to Coral Ridge. When you are flat on your back, you finally get honest with God and yourself. One of the greatest gifts that come when you reach the end of yourself is the fresh realization that your identity—who you are—is ultimately anchored in Christ’s performance not your own—His obedience, not mine. I am defined by His work for me, not my work for Him. So who we really are in Christ has absolutely nothing to do with us. It has nothing to do with our behavior (good or bad), or our family background. What relieves me of the pressure to perform is the realization that I wake up every morning with something infinitely better than a clean slate. I wake up perfectly loved and perfectly accepted despite my unclean slate.
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