'One Way Love' Author Tullian Tchividjian: Church Has Gone Off Course, Time for a New Reformation
If someone hears the message of grace and considers it "license to sin to your heart's content without consequence, (then) that demonstrates not that you don't get grace too much, but that you don't get it deep enough," he said.
In addition to people embracing the message, Tchividjian said that he sees "almost a robust, growing awakening" and signs similar to the setting that drove men like Martin Luther into action. And like Luther faced push-back from authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, the gatekeeper of the Christian faith at the time, Tchividjian insists it is the same kind of people who he feels are "some of the loudest detractors" to this modern-day grace revival.
"The masses are going, 'Oh my gosh, I've been in church my whole life and I've never heard that. This is amazing.' And the religious gatekeepers going, 'Hm, this kind of poses a threat to our kingdom because this puts everybody on the same playing field. It kind of wrestles control out of our hands'. That was one of the big controversies of the Reformation, the priesthood of all believers, that every member is a minister. That there's not this hierarchy," said Tchividjian, suggesting that the Western Christian Church has its own modern-day hierarchy.
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"In our sort of celebrity-laden evangelical world, there's a hierarchy of superstars and there are certain guys who can say something, depending on what circle you run in because there are numerous tribes within the evangelical community, but depending on who the chief of your tribe is, that guy can say something and it's gospel," he said. "You don't' have to check it, you don't have to go back to the Bible and verify it, it's gospel. And they've got kingdoms, these guys have kingdoms, institutions."
When asked if he was prepared to sacrifice and suffer like his predecessors who challenged the Roman Catholic Church, Tchividjian said, "My life would be much easier if I just toed the party line and really gave people spiritual checklists and came out and said the real problem with the church today is that we're not doing enough, we're not sacrificing enough."
He added, "There have been books written in the last few years that have just hammered home the need to sacrifice more, the need to give more, the need to be more radical, the need to be more this, more that, and these books sell millions of copies. The reason is it plays right into our natural tendency to believe that this whole thing's riding on us. It's easier for me to say that. I could probably sell more books, if I gave five ways to raise happy healthy children or six ways to ensure you have a better marriage. I'd probably have a bigger church."
And if more Christian leaders hammered this "one way love" instead?
"I think we would experience reformation and revival on a scale like we haven't seen in hundreds of years," he said. "The Bible gives great witness to the fact that the Christian faith is not good people making their way up to God. It's God making His way down to bad people, that's the Christian faith."
Tchividjian added, "It's been 500 years since the last reformation and the church desperately needs a new one, and this...message is the answer. Let's get back to preaching Christ and him crucified and get away from the message of humanity and it improved."
Tullian Tchividjian is pastor of the 2,000-plus-member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, founder of the Librate resource ministry, and, as he states on his Twitter bio, "learning everyday that Jesus + Nothing = Everything." Learn more about One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World online: http://liberate.org.
