Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Welcome to Gospel in Life. Why do some people grow through suffering while others are crushed by it? Peter says the answer begins with holiness, giving our thoughts and our actions fully over to God. Today Tim Keller shows us how to turn our whole selves over to the God who can transform our character and turn us into people who live joyfully even in life’s most difficult moments.

Tim Keller: For the last several weeks and for one more week we're looking at First Peter 1:13-21. Read with me. Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Be self-controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. For it is written, be holy because I am holy.

Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

This is God's word. What we're looking at and what we have been looking at is the subject of holiness. We said that the passage that Peter quotes from out of the Old Testament out of the book of Leviticus, "Be ye holy for I am holy," takes the main Hebrew word for holiness, the word *Kadosh*, which means to cut, to cut it off, to separate. We said when holiness refers to God, what it means is he's off our scales. He's transcendently above us. He's not like anything we can imagine.

We also said, however, when you apply the word holy to us, what is a holy person? What it means is we are set apart, we're separated unto God. That's a religious-sounding word. You sang about it tonight. Did you notice that in your first song? "You have called us out of darkness." You say, "We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood by your grace, we are a holy nation," and therefore, we're set apart. Last week we said if you want a real trite illustration of what it means to be holy, just imagine yourself reading a newspaper.

You're reading it, getting information, and yet, as you're reading through it, suddenly there is one article with some information that you can use. You want to use it in a sales pitch, you want to use it in a paper, you want to use it in a promotion. The only way to use it is to set it apart. You've got to cut it out of the paper. You've got to set it apart from the newspaper. Why? If you don't do that, you can't use it. And so to cut something out, to set it apart for your use, is exactly what the Bible means when it talks about being holy.

Every week we'll come back to this and look at it from another perspective. To be a holy person is not at all what people popularly think. At the worst, the word holy is a terrible word in modern English now. When we use the word holy, we almost always mean something imperious, something inaccessible maybe. We use the word holy to refer to holier than thou, condescending, self-righteous. At the very best, people think of a holy person as somebody who keeps all the rules. Don't you see this goes so much deeper than keeping all the rules?

Holiness is an attitude of heart in which you look at God and you say, "Use me." This is a tremendous clash with modern culture. In modern culture you're supposed to be independent, you're not supposed to let anybody use you, but that's the antithesis to this. A holy person is someone who looks at God and says not just "Give me the rules, tell me what the rules are so I can get to it." No, a holy person is someone who says, "I belong to you. I am set apart for you."

That's what we've been trying to get at each week. Last week we talked about holiness of mind. To be holy means to be wholly his, to wholly belong to him. And so that means first of all, we talked about the mind. Now this week and next week, let's talk about the life. It's great to say that to be holy means you have to submit your mind to God and submit your beliefs and so forth, but a person who submits the mind without submitting the life, the heart, and the will, is a hypocrite. We hate them.

Therefore, to be holy means more than just to give him your mind, you have to give him your life. What we're going to look at here tonight is a depiction of what a holy life is. It's really right here in these verses. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

There's a contrast here between a life without God and a holy life. If we look at the contrast, we'll continue to get a better feel for what it means to be holy for he is holy. First contrast: a life without God is ignorant, but a life of holiness integrates the thought and the life. Holiness, remember we said, the word holiness comes from the English word wholeness. Therefore, there is a bifurcation, the life without God is a bifurcation of thought and action, but a holy life means an integration, a coherent integration of thought and life. Let me explain this.

Most people in Manhattan who don't believe in God or Christianity, they think they don't believe in it because they know too much, because they think too much. They say, "There's Christians, that's great for some people. They're religious, fine. But my problem is I'm a thinker. I think, and rational people, thoughtful people, thinking people aren't religious people. Religious people are people who have abandoned, they've jettisoned their rationality. They've given up hard thought. They've abandoned and jettisoned their capacities for thought and reason and for consideration. And so they sort of leapt emotionally into the arms of this faith. They just take leaps of faith."

So the problem people say is, if you're Christians and for religious people is they don't think. But not me. I can't believe because I'm a thinker. I think. Now this text here and throughout the Bible, we're told that actually the opposite is the case. You see what it says here in verse 14? It says as obedient children, don't conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. A life without God is a thoughtless life. Let me show you what I mean. Some of you having come to Redeemer for a while have heard arguments up here, rational arguments for why do we believe what we believe? How do we know Christianity is true?

They sound so wonderfully compelling. So you go out and you try them on people. And for some reason they don't like them. You know why? Here's how they go. For example, ask somebody sometime who says, "Well, you're religious, fine, but I'm not a religious person, I'm a thinker." Okay, so you say, "Think. Think with me. What are you living for? What's the meaning of your life anyway? If I asked you, if somebody came up to you after the service and said, 'I'd like you to spend your entire afternoon with me tomorrow,' what would you say?" You would probably say, "What for? What's the purpose? Articulate for me the purpose of our meeting."

You say, "Well, I'm not really sure," the person says, "but I would like to meet with you." And you'll probably say like a busy New Yorker, you say, "Well, a whole afternoon, unless you can articulate the purpose, unless you can tell me what it's about, it'll be a waste of time." Well, that's only logical. All right, let me ask you a question. What is your life about? What is your life for? What are you... "Well, I'm working, I have a career." Okay, great, you have a career. What is it for? What do you actually hope to accomplish? What is the meaning of your life? What difference will it make that you have lived?

People don't like to be asked that. Oh no, they really don't like it at all. And yet I have to press you a little bit on this. You would not spend an afternoon with me unless you knew the reason for it, otherwise it would be a waste. And yet you can't tell me the reason for your life. You can't tell me what your life's about. And how do you know it's not a waste? What's it for? What's the purpose of your life? You see, what is its meaning? People don't want to think about that. They'll get irritated with you at a certain point, very quickly. They'll start to get irritated with you. Why? They don't want to think. They don't want to think about these things.

The average person's lifestyle and behavior is based on no thought, no thinking out of a philosophy of life. They don't want to think about that. They think it's morbid to think about that. They say, "Ah, you're getting religious on me." What do you mean getting religious on you? You wouldn't meet with me all afternoon because you wanted a purpose. I'm asking you what is your purpose? If there's no God, if you don't know if there is a God, if when you die you rot, then isn't it possible that nothing you are doing has any meaning and nothing you are doing makes any difference?

If when we die we rot and eventually the universe is going to burn up, nothing that you do, whether you're a violent person or a compassionate person, will make any difference. Have you thought that through? They don't want to think it through. Well, let me give you another example. This week we went to see a movie that's not a particularly good movie but it's a couple good scenes in it. It's the movie *Fearless* with Jeff Bridges in it. At one point Jeff Bridges, he's a survivor of a plane crash and he's talking with a young woman who's also a survivor of a plane crash.

He says to you, "People don't really believe in God. They just choose not to believe in nothing." He says, "People want to think that life and death has a purpose to it. They like to think that they were born for a reason. Because the Giants needed a new home run hitter, that's why I was born. Or my mother needed somebody to console her. You think that you're born for a reason, you think you die for a reason. We talk about not dying in vain." He says, "It just happens. There is no God. It just happens. Life happens, death happens. There's no reason for the life when it happens, there's no reason for the death when it happens. There's no reason for anything," he says triumphantly.

And the lady looks up at him and says, "Well, if that's true then there's no reason to love either." And he looks and says, "What?" He says, "Well, then there'd be no reason to love." And what she's doing to him in her own inimitable way, he stares at her because there's no answer, she's doing what we call presuppositional apologetics. Which means what she's doing is pulling the rug out. She says, "You know, if that's true, why are you here trying to help me?" The whole idea was he was a plane crash survivor, she's a plane crash survivor, they were having trouble adjusting, so he was there to help.

He says, "You know, the one thing you have to do is you're going to have to get rid of your... the only way to help yourself is to get rid of your idea of God. Get rid of it. You see, that's the reason why you're all full of guilt and shame. Get rid of it. I'm here to help you." She says, "Well, if there is no God, why should you help me? Why shouldn't you just scratch my eyes out?" You see, put it this way, ask somebody in... typical person in Manhattan will say, "Racism is wrong. Intolerance is wrong. But sexually you can do pretty much what you want." Now just ask for a question. Ask this question: what is the basis for that distinction?

"Well," you say, "everybody knows that racism is wrong," the person says. "Okay, well, there have been countries where everybody knew that certain races should go into the gas chamber. I don't think we should determine morality by a popular vote. Are you saying that as long as the majority of people think something is right, therefore it's right?" "Oh no." Actually the person says, "I believe that everybody has to make up their mind on their own. There is no moral absolutes. We have to all determine for ourselves what is right and wrong." Well, you ask yourself, you mean there's nothing that's always wrong?

Isn't torture always wrong? "Oh, of course torture's always wrong." Why? Maybe that's just what some people like to do. Maybe that's right for them. "Oh no, torture's always wrong because you can't mess with a human being." Why not? On what basis have you determined that people are really more valuable than rocks? On what basis? And the person, you see, they'll get mad at you. They always do. If you're trying this out on people, they will get mad. You know why? They don't want to think.

Listen, most of the simplest uneducated Christians have worked out epistemology issues. They don't know the name. They've worked out metaphysical issues. They've worked out ethical issues. Let me ask you a question. This is a typical Christian's framework. A Christian would say, "I discovered that there was a body of evidence that indicated that there was a man that lived 2,000 years ago who claimed to be God and convinced a lot of monotheistic people that he was God and that he'd been raised from the dead. And I discovered there was 500 people that saw eyewitness accounts that claimed they saw this man raised from the dead. And it was documented. And I began to study the evidence."

This is how a Christian would speak. "I began to study the evidence and as hard as it is to believe that this man was God, I decided that the alternative explanations for the phenomenon of this man were even more incredible, and I decided to believe that he was who he said he was. On the basis of the evidence, on the basis of weighing it up. Now if he is God, therefore he's my author. And that means that I have a purpose in life, I know why I was built, I was built for him. And I know what's right and wrong, whatever his will is."

Perfectly coherent. All right? Based on evidence, based on rationality, perfectly coherent. And then go further. The Christian says, "And you know as I've begun to live this life in faith, I have found that it fits my nature. I found through personal experience as I began to give myself to this the will of this one that I've decided to believe in, I've begun to find that he fits me. The things that he says, the things that he's done, they fit my nature. You know, as that one writer said, 'I'd been all my life a bell and I never knew it till he picked me up and rung me.'"

And I find out not only is this fitting me in a way I never thought before, but I find out that there are millions of people over a couple thousand years who have found the same thing out. And I read the works of Christians who lived a thousand years ago and I read their experience with Jesus and I discover this is the same relationship I've got with Jesus. Does that sound like a leap of faith? Sure, there's faith in there. Does that sound like you're not thinking? Not at all.

Let me show you a leap of faith: somebody who you press them and you say, "Well, listen, how do you know torture is wrong if there is no God? How do you know people are more valuable than rocks if there is no God? How do you know there's any meaning in life?" And they say, "Well, you just know, we just know that people are valuable just because I know it." Oh, that's a leap of faith. That's thoughtlessness. That's ignorance. That's a bifurcation between your life and your thinking. Friends, life without God is a thoughtless life. A holy life means you integrate how you live. You know why you're doing the things you're doing, because you're always thinking, "What is the meaning of my life?" and you have it in front of you.

And you're always look at what is right and wrong on the basis of the meaning in life, on the basis of who you know God is and who you know you are. There's an integration. Don't live a life of ignorance. Don't go back to that life. Okay, so a holy life is a coherent life of integration of thought and life. Secondly, just as we said a life without God is a thoughtless life, secondly, a life without God is an imitative life. Look down at verse 18. "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers."

So my second contrast is life without God is an imitative life, but a holy life is an examined life. See, let me put it this way. Again, just like I said a lot of people in Manhattan, a lot of people in New York I meet say, "I'm not a religious person because I think so much." And I'm trying to show that ordinarily a life without God is not a thinking life or reflective life, it's a thoughtless life. But secondly, a lot of people say, "Well, I'm not a religious person because I'm not a conformist. I'm an original, I think for myself." That's not what Peter says, and I think he's right.

He says, you know, a lot of people, especially people come to Manhattan and they say, "Ah, I got out of bourgeois middle America, I live in Manhattan now, I'm a sophisticated person. I think for myself." Well, what do you mean you think for yourself? You see, if you're a Christian in Manhattan, you've really got to think for yourself. You open up the New York Times, you read the op-ed pages, and you're getting... what is happening? Your faith, your beliefs, your worldview's getting blasted with every article. You've got to think for yourself.

You know, most people in Manhattan open up their newspapers of their choice and they're just kind of affirmed, and you get into your particular imitative style of unbelief. Peter says unbelief is handed down. We see people doing certain things and so we do them. You know in C.S. Lewis's book *The Great Divorce*, there's a great place where a man who had lost his faith, he used to believe but he'd lost his faith because he went to college and he began to think. And his friend said to him, "Is that really what happened? Don't you remember how we really lost our faith? We didn't want to be laughed at."

"We heard a lot of other people saying things and we wanted them to think that we were smart and intelligent and sophisticated too. We wrote the kinds of papers that our professors thought were courageous and relevant and creative." And he said, "We never thought our way out of the faith. We just wanted to imitate what was around us." And that's exactly what Peter's talking about. You know, we've all got our uniforms. There's certain kinds of... you know if you say "I'm a sophisticated person, I've thrown off bourgeois middle America values," well you have... in Manhattan the only way you let people know that is you have to dress in a certain way.

You have to dress downtown or maybe you dress uptown, but the point is there's uniforms here. There is imitation going on here. What it means to be a holy person, however, is utterly different. Nothing is passed down to us. Look, the Bible says that to be a holy person means now Jesus is your authority and the word of God is your authority, and it doesn't matter if you say, "I'm Italian, I've always done things in an Italian way." Is it biblical? "I'm Park Avenue." Is it biblical? "We've always done things this way." Is it biblical?

Is it in conformity with your Master and his will and your new self? "Well, we've always done things because I'm a Southerner." Is it Christian? "We've always done things this way because I'm from Brooklyn." Is it Christian? "I'm Irish." Is it Christian? You see the great thing about being a Christian is you're pulled up out of anything that was passed down to you. You don't say, "Well, this is the way I am, this is the way my parents were, this is the way my family was, this is the way my peers are, this is the way the people are who read the books that I read and read the journals that we read and hang out in the same parties that we hang out. This is the way we are." A Christian's life is utterly examined. Every bit of it is examined. Every single part of it's examined.

Guest (Male): Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? And how do we handle it in a way that won't destroy us but could actually make us stronger, wiser, and more hopeful? All month long on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller is teaching from the book of First Peter and looking at how Peter encouraged early believers who were facing intense suffering and pain. In his book *Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering*, Dr. Keller takes a deeper look at how, with God's help, we can face life's most intense challenges and confront the hard questions on suffering.

Through deep pastoral insight and real-life stories, Dr. Keller explores how we can face pain and suffering in our own lives. This month *Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering* is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the message of Christ's love and compassion with people all over the world. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com/give. That's gospelinlife.com/give. Now here is Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.

Tim Keller: You know, one of my favorite memories of a good example of this was how when I went as a Yankee, as a Northeastern college-educated kid, I took a church in a blue-collar Southern town. And you see, there was a culture there and I remember there was several marks of that culture. That culture was much more frugal than I was used to. That culture was much more hospitable and less privatized than I was used to. That culture was much more negative and scornful of education than I was used to. And that culture was much more full of racial stereotypes than I was used to.

And as a result, I could see all these differences, but very often the people who were living in the culture couldn't. And I remember one man, a friend of mine, who did not even graduate from junior high school. When he became a Christian, he could hardly read. And yet I remember when he became a Christian, he grasped what it meant to be holy. He knew just because all the other good old boys did things didn't mean that that's the way he should live. And so he began to examine... actually he taught himself virtually to read in order to live a holy life so he could study the Bible, so he could think things out.

He awoke. And here's what happened. He began to realize that the fact that he was more frugal than I was, that's a biblical value I had to learn. And the fact that he was more hospitable than I was, that was a biblical value. But his scorn of education he realized was a kind of ego defense mechanism, and his racial stereotype was also sinful. What was he doing? He refused to take what was handed down to him. A holy life is an examined life. Isn't this interesting? Life without God's supposed to be sophisticated but actually it's thoughtless. Life without God is supposed to be original and creative and actually it's imitative.

Thirdly, life without God is a life of slavery without authority, and the holy life is a life of freedom under authority. Now that sounds, I know that sounds weird. If you're under authority you're not supposed to be free, right? No, look. Look carefully. First Peter, look at this verse. "As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had." Now unfortunately, this is another one of those places where the text's translation is not only wimpy but kind of misleading. The word "conform" is the word that means to be shaped or molded.

And the word "evil desires," the translation of the word "evil desires," those two words is the translation of one word, *epithumia*, which is really a poor translation. Here's why. The word *epithumia* means an inordinate desire. Think of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the pyramid? And he's your more basic needs, you need to eat and drink. And then you move up, you need relaxation and recreation. And then another need is sexuality. Then you keep moving up to more complex needs, you need to be loved. You need to feel like you accomplish things, you see. You need to see your significance in the world. And these are all needs.

Now every one of those things is a legitimate need. They're all created by God. God invented food and drink. He likes them. God invented rest, the seventh day he rested. That's what it says in Genesis. God invented sex and he saw it was good. God invented our social needs for approval of other people. God gave us the desire to work and to accomplish something. They're all good. But Peter says that a godless life is not a life so much of evil desires, that's a bad translation of this word. It gives you the impression what it's talking about are people who pillage and murder and do violence and so forth. That's not what we're talking about.

He says you used to be molded, you used to be fashioned, you used to be utterly controlled by good desires that had become inordinate. That's what the word means, out of order. Too important to you. Good things. Thomas Oden has a fascinating book in which he lays out a couple of principles. He says everybody has to live for something. Everybody has to have some central value that is the basis on which we make decisions. The only way you can make priority decisions, the only way you can decide to do this and not this, is if you have a hierarchy of values and there's something that is your ultimate value, your ultimate reason for living. It could be attractiveness, it could be approval of people, it could be power, it could be anything. But everybody's got to have something that you live for.

Thomas Oden said that central value is that without which you cannot receive life joyfully. So if you don't have that, your life falls apart. He says now you can either make God your central value, which is an infinite center, or you can put something finite in the way, something finite in the center. And when that happens, he says to the degree that I center my life on a finite value instead of God, to that degree I relate to my past with guilt and to my future with anxiety.

He says, for example, "My relationship to the future will be one of anxiety to the degree that I have idolized finite values." Anxiety becomes neurotically intensified to the degree that I have idolized finite values that properly should have been regarded as limited. If the thing I'm living for is money, or the thing I'm living for is my children, or the thing I'm living for is the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, I'm always going to be experiencing anxiety because those finite values cannot last and so I will always feel threatened.

On the other hand, he says, "My relationship to the past will be one of guilt. Guilt becomes neurotically intensified to the degree that I have idolized finite values that properly I should have regarded as limited." Why? Because if you've decided the only way in which I know I'm going to be able to look myself in the mirror is because of this value: "I will achieve," "I will be loved," "I will look good." Whatever you decide you've got to have in order to feel that you have meaning in life, when you fail those standards, finite gods never forgive. Ever.

You're always down on yourself. What is Thomas Oden saying? I have guilt in my life to the degree that I idolize finite values. I have anxiety in my life to the degree that I idolize finite values. And that's what Peter's talking about. What he is saying is life without God necessarily means I am driven by inordinate desires. Good desires for good things that now fill me with anxiety and fill me with guilt.

Isn't it interesting? A life without God's supposed to be sophisticated but it's thoughtless. A life without God is supposed to be original but it's imitative. A life without God is supposed to be free but it's a life of bondage. However, the holy life, and this of course is the last thing we're looking at here, a holy life is different. It's a life of coherence between thought and life, it's a life of examination, and lastly, it's a life of freedom under authority. Look. "As obedient children."

Let's just look at that and this is the final point. You know what it means to be a holy person? First of all, it means you're obedient. It means you're obedient. Verse 14. And unfortunately, the word obedience means yes, to be holy, you have to submit your will to another's. To be obedient means there's a submission of your will to the will of someone else. There's really two basic epistemologies, there's two basic ways of knowing that are dominant in New York right now and these are kind of fanciful names: there's the scientistic view of life and the new ageistic view of life.

The scientistic view of life says, "You know, there is no supernatural. There is no spiritual realm. All that exists is matter and when you die you rot, and that's that." That's one view. So you live your life the way you decide however you see fit. Then there's the new ageistic view and of course the new ageistic view is growing. New ageism isn't just one particular group, but new ageistic view says, "Ah, that's not true. The scientistic view is wrong. Everything is divine, everything is sacred. God is in everything. God is throughout everything. You are God yourself and you must come into contact with it. You must get in touch with the greatness of what you are and the greatness of who you are."

But what's so funny is those two views look like they're against each other but they agree in one area: neither of them has any concept of obedience. The scientistic view says there's no obedience, there's no one to obey, do what you want. The new ageistic view though says get in touch with God, but you see this is a God that's impersonal, not a God that speaks. If you want to understand how new ageism believes that you should get in touch with God, you just watch Luke Skywalker. What does Obi-Wan Kenobi say to Luke Skywalker? Reach out with your feelings. Get in touch with your feelings. Yeah. Okay. No obedience. No obedience at all.

A holy life is an obedient life. Right here Christianity is running a head-on collision with the two dominant worldviews of New York City. What does it mean to be holy? It means to say, "Use me." It means to be cut out. It means to say, "I belong to you." It means to say, "You have your will, O Lord, and where my will crosses your will, my will goes." Otherwise you're not really his. In fact, let's go one step further. Notice down here in verse 15, it says, "As he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do." Let me push this a little further.

What it means to be holy means to be wholly obedient. If there's any area of your life in which you're not being obedient, you're actually not being obedient at all. See, some people will say to me, "Well, I'm a Christian and I am obeying God... except there." "And I'll get it together." All right. You're not obeying God except there. There's no such thing as obeying God except there. Think of it this way: if you can say to somebody, "You can have the whole house except for that room. You can have the whole house but you can never go in that room." Well, if you're in a position to tell somebody that they have the whole house except for that room, they don't have the house.

You have the house. Even if you only live in that room and you give all the rest of the house to that person, if you can keep that person out of that room, you still own the house. And if you say, "Well, you know, I'm going to submit to what Jesus says about this area of my life and this area of my life and this but not this area. Not now, no not right now. But I'll give him my life in every other way," you haven't done it at all.

But just as he who called you is holy, be holy in all you do. Anything else isn't holy. I'm not saying to be holy you have to be perfectly obedient. Nobody is. We've been through this before. A person is a Christian strictly because Jesus died for them, they rest and trust in that, and therefore they're forgiven. But the only proper response and the only way you can know that you've received Christ as Savior and the only proper response to him giving himself utterly for you on the cross is you giving yourself utterly to him right now.

Anything else is inappropriate. Anything else is not holy. To be holy doesn't mean to be perfectly obedient. To be holy means to be completely submitted in the sense of saying, I take my hands off my life. I give you the rights to every room in my house. Come in. I can't keep you out of any because the house isn't mine. But more than that, real holiness does not simply consist of external submission to authority. It says, "as obedient children."

As obedient children. That's the last point. If you want to know what holiness means, it's not simply getting all the rules and getting all the regulations. Oh no, think about this. Why would Peter say, "as obedient children"? Why not as obedient people or as obedient servants? Why obedient children? Because the obedience of a child is different than the obedience of a servant or a slave. A child can't obey his or her father, a child can't obey the parent unless there's already been an action on the part of the parent to receive that child.

You can't obey your parent unless your parent has had you. You can't obey your parent unless your parent has adopted you. In other words, there either has to be a biological action or there has to be a legal action, but the point is that your obedience is not the reason that your parents have you. The fact that your parents have you is the reason for your obedience. That's utterly different. A slave is scared to death. A slave or servant or an employee says, "I better do well," an employee says, "otherwise I could be fired." So the employee is completely motivated out of rewards and punishments. I want my reward, I fear the punishment. I want my salary, I don't want to lose my job. I want a promotion, I don't want to be demoted. See, that's the employee. And there's obedience to an employee, but no, not for a Christian. The essence here of a holy life is that you obey as children. I know I'm accepted.

For you know... see the entire obedience of a Christian is based on this little word "for." Why should you be obedient? Because you know it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. If you want to get to the very, very heart of what it means to live obedient life as a holy person, as a child, not as an employee, to be wholly God's, to belong wholly to him in your life, will only issue from a vision of how he wholly gave himself for you.

At the very end of the movie *The Bible*, the one that John Huston put together some years ago, George C. Scott plays Abraham. And my wife and I can never watch that thing without weeping at the end, so we avoid it. No, we don't. But you know, here's George C. Scott, here's Abraham. And God comes to him. In Genesis 15, God said to Abraham, "I will bless you and your descendants through Isaac, your son." And he walks between, God moves between the pieces of cut-up animals to show, "I will obey my promise. I will bless you and your descendants and if I don't, may I be cut up as these animals."

And yet years later, God comes to Abraham and says, "Abraham, you know that son that I promised I was going to bless you through? I want you to kill him." And the Bible tells us that Abraham wrestled and wrestled and wrestled but finally he walked up the hill with his son and he put him on the altar. And in the movie, they add a little line that's not in the Bible but it's perfectly appropriate. In the movie, as Abraham is tying up Isaac and Isaac realizes what he's doing, he says, "Father, is there nothing he cannot ask of thee?"

And Abraham says, "nothing." Why not? Why was Abraham holy? Why was Abraham wholly God's at that point? Because he was just knuckling under under the naked power of God? Did Abraham just say, well there's nothing I can do, how can I fight against God? No. The book of Hebrews tells us that he walked up with his son figuring out that somehow God was going to raise him from the dead because God would keep his promise. Ah, if Abraham was only here now.

You know why? Because as soon as Abraham had wholly given even Isaac... and see everybody in this room has Isaacs, things that we want to hold onto. And yet God says you must be wholly mine, wholly mine. And as Abraham was ready to give Isaac up, God said, "Abraham, Abraham," and he said, "here I am." Do not harm the lad. Now I know that you love me, for you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love, from me.

See now Abraham as an Old Testament figure understood that God was good. That's why he obeyed. He understood that God was loving in a general way, but boy we have something that Abraham didn't have. If Abraham was here now, you know what he would know? He would know why God was able to say, "Abraham, you don't have to kill your son." You know why? Because years after Abraham, God walked up the hill with his son and he slew him and there was nobody there to call out from heaven, don't do it.

And if Abraham was here now, he would look at God and say, "Here's why I'm wholly yours, here's why I'm wholly yours. Now I know, O Lord God, that you love me, because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love, from me." As obedient children, for you know you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver and gold but redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. That creates a motivation for obedience that no one else knows. It's not an oppressive thing, it's a liberating thing. We put ourselves wholly under him.

Holy in all that we do, obedient in every area of life. Isn't it amazing? The ungodly life is not sophisticated, it's thoughtless. It's not original, it's imitative. It's not free. This is freedom. His service is perfect freedom. You will know the truth, Jesus said, and the truth will set you free. Let's pray. Help us, O Father, to get that freedom and to get that holiness of life which only comes from a sight of you walking up that mountain with your son and slaying him for our sins so that we could know your pardon. Thank you for taking our punishment upon yourself. And I pray, Father, that everybody in this room would know tonight that only if they give themselves wholly to you, because your son gave himself wholly for us, will we know the freedom and the liberty of holiness. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com/partner. That website again is gospelinlife.com/partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1993. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.