Tullian Tchividjian

Latest

• 
  Sep 24, 2012

  The Man at the Bottom

  Contrary to popular belief, Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is about bad people coping with their failure to be good. That is to say, Christianity concerns the gospel, which is nothing more or less than the good news that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

• Sep 15, 2012

  Freed From the Prison of Why

  There's no doubt, the Why questions of suffering are utterly perplexing. And as we search the Scriptures and consider stories such as Job's, we are tempted to see those as worst-case scenarios designed to help us get our heads straight in relation to our comparatively small "first world" problems.

• Sep 1, 2012

  Minimizing Suffering Minimizes the Cross

  It is ironic that one of the most beautiful and encouraging verses in the Bible is also one of the most dangerous. You probably know which one I'm talking about. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose"

• Aug 23, 2012

  The Pastoral Practicality of Law-Gospel Theology

  Our church was recently hit with a high-ranking moral tragedy. It was discovered that a staff member (and close friend) was engaging in marital infidelity. How do you handle something like this? What do you tell people?

• Aug 12, 2012

  Explanations Are a Substitute for Trust

  Have you ever felt like you couldn't share the details of a difficult situation without someone immediately offering a solution or a spiritual platitude? Have you ever responded that way yourself? The required cheerfulness that characterizes many of our churches produces a suffocating environment of pat, religious answers to the painful, complex questions that riddle the lives of hurting people.

• Aug 4, 2012

  How Are You Hiding From God?

  There are two ways we can miss the mark of righteousness before God, two ways the relationship can be destroyed. One is more or less obvious: outright sinfulness. The other is much less obvious and more subtle, one that morally earnest people have much more trouble with.

• 
  Jul 28, 2012

  You Believe in Karma

  To conclude that suffering people have somehow heaped up trouble for themselves on the Cosmic Registry and that God is doling out the misery in direct proportion would be more than mistaken; it would be cruel.

• 
  Jul 12, 2012

  Theology of Glory vs. Theology of the Cross

  It is not exactly breaking news to say that our culture has an aversion to suffering, regardless of how inescapable it may be. This is because we—you and me—have an aversion to suffering. Who wants to suffer? But the conscious avoidance of pain is one thing; the complete intolerance, or outright denial of it, is another.

• 
  Jun 28, 2012

  Dating Your Wife?

  A religious approach to marriage is the idea that if we work hard enough at something, we can earn the acceptance, approval, and life we think we deserve because of our obedient performance.

• 
  Jun 9, 2012

  Cheap Law

  Jesus shows unambiguously that the greatest obstacle to getting the gospel is not "cheap grace" but "cheap law" – the idea that God accepts anything less than the perfect righteousness of Jesus.