We cannot know what is in the hearts of fellow Christians as they seek to honor God in their daily lives, and we should not impose restrictions on believers where God has given us liberty. Although it is human nature to do so, we also should avoid comparing ourselves with other believers and thinking that they are better than we are—or that we are better than they are—for whatever reason, since all of us are sinners in need of God’s grace in Christ.

Do you ever feel like other people are better Christians than you are? Maybe they read their Bibles more, give more money to the church, pray more for others, are involved in church ministry, do more good deeds, or never seem to do anything really sinful. It’s easy to get discouraged when we start comparing our own Christian walk with other believers we know.
One of the big reasons this happens is that humans are geared to think that keeping rules is how we are right before God, and they are actually correct about this (see Lev. 18:5; Luke 10:25–28). The problem is that no one can keep God’s laws perfectly. This is why Jesus came: we need his perfect righteousness and perfect sacrifice to be counted to us through faith in Christ so we can be declared justified before God.
Some Christians can add requirements that the Bible doesn’t dictate.
Still, Christians are often prone to think that they will be closer to God by keeping certain rules and living certain lifestyles. The problem with this is that some Christians can add requirements that the Bible doesn’t command, or they may consider certain lifestyle choices to be more spiritual than others. What is a Christian to do when it comes to knowing how to live according to God’s word in this world?
The Westminster Confession of Faith gives us excellent counsel in this area in its chapter, “Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience”:

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also. (WCF 20:2)

Look at the phrase, “or beside it.” With these words, the Westminster Confession of Faith reminds Christians that they are not bound by any “doctrines and commandments of men” that are not found in God’s word. It is also true that believers must be considerate of their neighbors, not causing them to stumble (Rom. 14:13–23: 1 Cor. 8:7–13). The sixteenth-century pastor and theologian John Calvin reminds Christians to use their freedom responsibly and lovingly:

Nothing is plainer than this rule: that we should use our freedom if it results in the edification of our neighbor, but if it does not help our neighbor, then we should forgo it (The Institutes, 3.19.12)

Read More

Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Monday, July 24, 2023
Moore is a former Southern Baptist leader and Gospel Coalition council member who is now the editor of Christianity Today magazine. The mere fact that he’s now the editor there shows something is afoot, given that Moore was historically strongly complementarian and Christianity Today has long been egalitarian. As I noted in a previous post, Moore wrote a column in March of this year saying that evangelicals needed to rethink their gender wars. Though obviously in a Moore style rather than a Keller one, it is an almost perfect instantiation of Keller’s framework and strategy. 

The term “Big Eva,” short for big evangelicalism, was coined, I believe, by the theologian Carl Trueman, who has been using it since at least 2014. It’s a catchall term for evangelical elites and powerbrokers, mostly referring to the leadership of the New Calvinist movement and adjacent spaces.
New Calvinism is but one faction of the evangelical world, but is disproportionately influential, particularly in enforcing doctrinal boundaries. As sociologist Brad Vermurlen noted in his academic study of the movement, its influence is far greater than its numbers. Hence what these leaders do is highly consequential for evangelicalism as a whole. As he put it, “New Calvinist leaders’ symbolic capital (recognition or esteem) translates into symbolic power as the authority to define legitimacy and membership in the field.”
New Calvinism, along with the rest of the evangelical field, is facing a rapidly shifting landscape as a result of the transition to the negative world. The dawn of the negative world – one in which for the first time in the 400 year history of the United States, secular society views Christianity negatively – has produced significant intra-evangelical conflict, realignment, and even deformation in some cases. As Vermurlen put it:
Evangelicalism in America writ large can no longer properly be considered a unified Christian movement but instead is a heterogeneous arena of conflict and contestation—that is, a field. It is not merely diverse; it is divided.
For New Calvinism in particular, its leaders face additional challenges. First, the movement, while far from dead, is past its peak in terms of energy and influence, something Vermurlen also notes. Secondly, the leading lights of this movement were baby boomer or older figures who are retired (John Piper), have died (Tim Keller), or soon will no longer be active. The movement today needs to take steps to reinvigorate itself.
In this newsletter I will explain a core element of how some of them are planning to reposition themselves for the future by redefining “legitimacy and membership.” This strategy is to redraw the boundaries of the movement by eliminating complementarianism and replacing it with anti-fundamentalism.
Complementarianism is the gender theology that says only men can be pastors and that husbands are the head of the home. Big Eva has been firmly complementarian, treating that not as a first order matter necessary for salvation, but defining part of the boundary that defined their own community as instantiated in organizations like the Gospel Coalition. In the proposed strategic change, complementarianism would be downgraded further as becoming more a matter of personal conscience that does not function as a community boundary. (The alternative to complementarianism is egalitarianism, where women can be pastors and husbands and wives hold equal leadership weight in the home).
In other words, as New Calvinism loses traction – and comes under increasing attacks from the right of a variety and intensity previously unseen – this strategy says the movement should responds by shifting left, acquiring new allies among more conservative leaning egalitarians. Rather than a solidly conservative movement, as New Calvinism had previously been, this new alliance would be much more of a self-consciously centrist movement (possibly under new branding).
Brad Isbell, who hosts a podcast called Presbycast, has suggested an additional reason to make this move. He points to the ongoing split in the United Methodist Church, in which over 6,000 conservative leaning churches have departed the denomination. Methodist theology long ago led to an acceptance of female pastors. So creating space to ally with egalitarians creates the potential for finding new allies among this large block of Methodists (although Methodism is theologically very different from Calvinism, so it’s not clear what that would look like).
Tim Keller’s Strategy for Renewing the American Church
This new strategy was explicitly outlined by Tim Keller, arguably the most respected and influential New Calvinist leader. He wrote a four part series on the decline and renewal of the American church in 2021 and 2022. Then he consolidated these installments and added a lot of new material, publishing a consolidated version late last year.
This consolidated strategy for the future of the church was released about the same time as his final book Forgive. He had terminal cancer at the time, and died six months after its publication. The fact that this was in essence his final publication shows how important he obviously thought it was. While he cannot drive its implementation, given his intellect, thoughtfulness, track record of success, and wide respect, this strategy will and should receive significant attention from evangelical leaders. There’s a lot of good material in there and I highly recommend reading the whole thing.
Keller divides evangelicalism into four zones ranging from conservative to liberal. On his graphic of this, conservatives are to the left and liberals are to the right.
He defines Zone 1 as Fundamentalism, Zone 2 as Conservative Evangelicalism (complementarian), Zone 3 as Egalitarian Evangelicalism, and Zone 4 as Ex- or Post-Evangelicalism. He further divides Zones 2 and 3 into subregions A and B. A key difference between these sub-zones are a willingness to work with people in the other zone. So Zone 2b are complementarians willing to work with egalitarians, and Zone 3a are egalitarians willing to work with complementarians.
The fact that his “zone of renewal” spans 2b and 3a shows that he is explicitly dissolving any boundary between complementarianism and egalitarianism. Now, Keller himself has long been willing to work with egalitarians as far as I know. At the same time, he co-founded the Gospel Coalition, the key New Calvinist hub, as an explicitly complementarian organization, showing that he previously put something of a high value on this distinction.
As the chart indicates, he proposes to divide from Zone 1 fundamentalism, saying, “Something like the evangelical-fundamentalist split of the 1940s may need to happen (or is happening) again.” He calls this “dividing with tears and grace.” Then he wants a new movement that combines both complementarian and egalitarian elements.
He sums up the strategy as:
Generally speaking—the way forward is to (a) divide from Zones 1 and 4 in different ways, and (b) bring both individuals, and leaders and some older institutions most likely from the ‘right half’ of Zone 2 and the ‘left half’ of Zone 3 into a new Zone 5. (c) Then: do the strategic initiatives, launch the mission projects, and start new institutions.
This is about as clear as it gets. He wants to eliminate complementarianism as a movement boundary and replace it with anti-fundamentalism (New Calvinism having already divided from Zone 4 ex-vangelicalism). So when I say this is the strategy, I’m not making something up that’s not really there. It’s explicit.
Russell Moore Puts the Plan Into Action
Keller’s strategy could be viewed as little more than an academic exercise were it not for the fact that we see various elements of the evangelical world starting to put it into practice.
Read More
Related Posts:

The Bible alone can give us a right view of God. And it is impossible to overstate God’s greatness. Wrong views of God are always low views of him. We can’t extol God enough! “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways!”

Most theological and moral failures can be traced back to a wrong view of God. We charge God with being unfair only if we think he must submit to our concept of fairness. We will contentedly live one way in public and another in private only if we believe him to be local and limited like us. We can only believe in universal salvation if deny God’s fierce hatred of sin. To think and live well we need to know God as he truly is.
This is why God gave us his word. Some truths about God are obvious from nature—he exists and is unparalleled in power (Rom. 1:19–20). But to more intimately know his character, his unity and diversity, and how he relates to his creatures, we need the Bible. Scripture is God’s revelation, his self-disclosure. From cover to cover Scripture tells us essential truths about God, and of the Holy Trinity.
God Is Perfect in All His Attributes (2.1)
We may think about God as he is in himself, without relation to creation. We can’t define God; definitions state exactly the nature, scope, or meaning of a thing. Finite creatures can’t define the infinite. But we can summarize what God has revealed to us. We know that there is one God, not many (Deut. 6:4). This one God is alive and true; neither past being nor a figment of our imagination (1 Thess. 1:9). And he is without fault (Job 11:7–9).
Beyond this, much of what we can say about God is a denial of what he is not, or a distinction from what we are. We are visible bodies, made up of parts and passions, subject to measurement and change. We have a beginning and end. We can be studied by dissection according to ordinary laws of investigation. By contrast God is “a pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal” and “incomprehensible.”  And of every positive quality God sets the standard. He is “almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute.”
We can also think about God in terms of what he does. He “[works] all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory.” If something has happened God’s hand was in it. He had always meant to do it. It was good. And it brought him glory. More specifically, we can know God from his actions toward people. To the penitent God shows himself to be “most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.” Notwithstanding God’s sovereignty our response to who he is matters. He rewards those who seek him (Heb. 11:6). Not everyone seeks him. In his judgement against the impenitent God reveals his holiness and terrifying justice.
Read More
Related Posts: