For many years now I been teaching Two Ways to Live to people and used as a resource for speaking to people about the gospel of Jesus.  It is a fantastic resource which I would recommend to all Christians.
Recently I have been exposed to Tim Keller’s three ways to live:

People tend to think there are two ways to relate to God - to follow him and do his will or to reject him and do your own thing - but there are also two ways to reject God as Saviour.  One is….by rejecting God’s law and living as you see fit.  The other, however, is by obeying God’s law, by being really righteous and really moral, so as to earn your salvation.  It is not enough to simply think there are two ways to relate to God.  There are three: religion, irreligion, and the gospel. (Gospel in Life: Grace Changes Everything, Tim Keller)

Tim Keller’s dissection of how we relate to God is helpful.  Most people don’t see themselves as sinners.  Even when you tell them they have been living out of step with God - rejecting God as their King - people find this hard to believe if they have lived a “good” life.  Tim Keller’s addition to the equation enables us to talk to people about how it is possible to be “moral” and still be out of step with God.  In fact, it is even possible that your moral deeds are the way in which you are rejecting God as saviour.

photo credit: shapeshift

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 10:39 am and is filed under Pastors thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.