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Purpose Driven or Promise Driven?The Promise-Driven Life - Michael S. Horton
What are you driven by? The last time I was sick, it was a Saturday and I flipped on the TV for an extraordinary long time. The whole day was exercise equipment, how to become real-estate rich with no money down, and Suze Orman gave me her steps to financial security. As much as we all make sport of this sort of thing, it attracts us. That's because we are "wired" for law: tell me what to do and I'll get it done. That is not just the American spirit, but it is human nature. God's law is inborn, in our conscience, part of our moral makeup. The average person on the street will tell you that the role of churches and other religious institutions is to provide moral instruction-practical suggestions for successful living for the spirit, just as Suze Orman and Jake are there to help us out with our banking and bodies.
Even human imperatives can be enormously effective at laying out a course of action. If I am sufficiently motivated, a good diet-and-exercise plan can help. I've never even come close to being credited with any financial planning wisdom, but even I can recognize that if I follow half of what Suze says, I'll be a much better steward. (I bought the video. Don't ever leave your credit card within reach if you spend a Saturday watching TV. I nearly bought three separate gyms and a few things for my wife.) Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura don't even have to be Christians to provide good, commonsense instruction in daily affairs. At least in terms of raw, general principles, non-Christians have law down. When Christians talk law ("How to ... "), non-Christians know that we're speaking their language. I guess that is why such preaching and teaching dominates in the church today, since "law" (however watered down) is perceived as relevant. However, it is only when we encounter God's law in its full strength that we are knocked off our horse. Instead of being in charge, answering with Israel and Mount Sinai, "All this we will do!", we find ourselves in the hot seat, the charade exposed, the spin unmasked. Church shouldn't be a place where the old self is revived for another week, but where it is killed and buried and the new self is created in the likeness of Christ.
Even as Christians, the law (in its third use) can direct us, but it cannot drive us, except to either despair or self-righteousness. Christians are not purpose-driven, but promise-driven. Purposes are all about law. To be sure, at least in Christian discourse, some promises may be mentioned, but they are usually dangled as the carrot for fulfilling the conditions that have been laid out. If you did that with the real Ten Commandments-something like, "Do this and you shall live" (Lev. 25:18), people would catch on: "That's legalism!" But the therapeutic version (easy-listening law) flies under the radar: "Hey, here are a few helpful principles based on God's instruction manual that will help you get victory in your life." Although Rick Warren's phenomenal best-seller, The Purpose-Driven Life, for example, differs from the usual pattern of self-help books by insisting that we were created for God and his glory, it offers Fifteen Principles-all of which are imperatives (commands, or rather, suggestions) that promise a life of victory for those who follow them. That, I would suggest, confuses law and gospel. And that eventually leaves resentment of God, not delight, in its wake.
The fact that purposes are about law does not make them wrong. We need purposes! Nobody can live without goals. Yet purposes and goals are always something to be reached, to be achieved and be attained by us. They require tactics and strategies. All of this is fine as long as we realize that they are law, not gospel: commands and promises are both necessary, but they do different things.
Law tells us what we should do, whether we're faced with the wrath of God (full-strength law) or by the fear of not reaching our full potential (the watered-down version). God's promise, by contrast, creates true faith, which creates true works. The church father Augustine defined sin as being "curved in" on ourselves. While imperatives (including purposes) tend by themselves to make us more "curved in" on ourselves (either self-confidence or self-despair), only God's promise can drive us out of ourselves and our own programs for acceptance before ourselves, other people, and God. While the Christian life according to scripture is purpose-directed, it is promise-driven. Both of our passages-Genesis 15 and Romans 4-bring this point home powerfully.
Do you want to read more of this article? Please continue reading in the Pastor's Articles.
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