The Gospel is Not Self-Improvement

"The Bible never starts with what we need to do; it always begins with what God has already done. To get it the other way around makes Christianity just another self-help program, just another curriculum of self-improvement.  Self-improvement for the value of self-improvement is not the gospell it's not biblical Christianity. And yet so many people, both inside and outside the church, think that's what Christianity is all about."

  -Tullian Tchvidjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything, page 153

Run From Self-Help Preaching!

I like (and agree with) these comments from Chuck Collins (guest posting on Tullian Tchividjian's blog)

I have come to see that there are really just two ways to preach: one is the gospel, the other is get-better messages. The first is based on God’s goodness; the second on self-improvement. Gospel preaching presupposes that, even though we deserve punishment for our sins, Jesus Christ suffered the punishment in our place on the cross. Get-better sermons, on the other hand, is moralistic advice in which a preacher mounts a pulpit to scold the people for not doing more or getting better (F Allison).....

....My conversion to gospel preaching was gradual. I don’t remember what the initial catalyst was, except that people weren’t getting better with sermons on discipline and how to improve your marriage. Those moralistic sermons doled out plenty of advice about what to do, but it totally missed what God has done for us in his Son. Christ came, not to help religious people get better, but to help sinners realize that forgiveness and salvation is outside themselves: in Jesus Christ.....
 
....When you get to church to find out that the preacher is in the third of a 10-sermon series on “10 steps to cure depression” get up and run out of there as fast as your depressed legs can take you. It’s self-help, not the gospel. Chalk it up to a well meaning preacher who hasn’t yet realized that our real hope is in God, in the sufficiency of his work on the cross and in the salvation that is not found in get-better sermons.

From: My Biggest Regret

Growth By Shrinking

Good stuff from Matt Johnson at The Resurgance:

The Christian life isn’t primarily about growth for the sake of personal improvement, but receiving the basics of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s time we shrink from our elaborate, self-involved spiritual aspirations of do more, try harder. See, we tend toward doing because, well...doing is about our self-progress and we like to take credit for our achievements. But the gospel is about the foundation of what has already been done for us.

Much more at: 3 Steps To Shrink Spiritually | The Resurgence