#8 - Jesus + Nothing = Everything

I recognize that I could be a bit partial to this book because Tullian Tchvidjian went through something similar at his church that I just went through in my church. The circumstances are somewhat different, but there were a lot of similar elements. So I could be biased because I could relate so well to his story, but I think Jesus + Nothing = Everything is the best book I have read in a long, long time.

This book is not just for pastors though every pastor should read this. Every Christian needs this book because every Christian needs to understand and grow deeper in the understanding that he has EVERYTHING in Christ already! The Gospel of Christ is crucial for every Christian, every day, to rescue us from seeking our joy in something smaller than Jesus, apart from Jesus.When we seek to add something to our salvation in Christ (Jesus + something) whether it is family or relationships or financial security or control of our circumstances or authority or titles or whatever, we are saying in our hearts that Jesus is not enough.

But when God strips away those things out of love for us, He shows us the idols in our hearts. He shows us that we have been seeking to find our joy in something other than Jesus. He strips away those small things so that we can have nothing...but Jesus, who is everything.

Tchividjian also spends a lot of time addressing moralism aka legalism aka performancism aka Phariseeism. When we focus on what we can do, our lives are so small and debilitated. But when we focus on the greatness of Christ in the Gospel, we are so free! We are free to love, to serve, to try and to fail because Christ has already made us perfect and righteous and holy. There's nothing more that can be done. He has done it all. The key is remembering and resting in this new identity we have in Christ.

Here are a few gems. Ok - here are a LOT of gems:

• Idolatry is simply trying to build our identity on something besides God. An idol is anything or anyone that you conclude, in your heart, you must have in order for your life to be meaningful, valuable, secure, exciting or free.
• Legalism happens when what we need to do, not what Jesus has already done, becomes the end game.
• Our performancism leads to pride when we succeed and to despair when we fail. But ultimately it leads to slavery either way, because it becomes all about us and what we must do to establish our own identity instead of resting in Jesus and what he accomplished to establish it for us. In all its forms, this wrong focus is anti-gospel and therefore enslaving.
• For those of us who've been in church a long time, we know it's wrong to worship immorality, like everybody out in the world seems to be doing; we find it hard to see that it's just as wrong to worship morality, like everybody in the church seems to be doing.
• In our bones, we know that God hates unrighteous 'bad' works; we're not nearly so convinced that he hates self-righteous 'good' works just as much, if not more. In fact, the most dangerous thing that can happen to you is that you become proud of your obedience.
• A Christian may not struggle with believing that our good behavior is required to initially earn God's favor; but I haven't met one Christian who doesn't daily struggle with believing - somehow, someway - that our good behavior is required to keep God's favor.
• But none of us really has it together - ever. When we open our eyes, we'll see the Bible's confirmation that we're a lot worse off than we think we are - much more self-centered, arrogant, and greedy than we would ever admit to ourselves, let alone to other people. Those ingredients produce the most fertile breeding ground imaginable for self-idolatrous, legalistic moralism.
• When life is all about us - what we can do, how we can perform - our world becomes small and smothering; we shrink. To have everything riding on ourselves lead to despair, not deliverance.
• The hard work of Christian growth, therefore, is to think less of ourselves and our performance and more of Jesus and his performance for us. Ironically, when we focus mostly on our need to get better, we actually get worse. We become neurotic and self-absorbed. Preoccupation with our effort instead of with God's effort for us makes us increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective.
• We will be able to recognize that every temptation to sin is a temptation to not believe the gospel - the temptation to secure for ourselves something we think we need in order to be happy, something we don't yet have: meaning, liberty, validation, and so on. When we succumb to temptation we are failing to believe in that moment that everything we need in Christ we already have.
• By their behavior, legalists essentially are saying this: 'I live the Christian life by the rules - rules that I establish for myself as well as those I expect others to abide by.' They develop specific requirements of behavior beyond what the Bible teaches, and they make observance of those requirements the means by which they judge the acceptability of others in the church.
• We've all become pretty adept at establishing these rules and standards that we find personally achievable. Legalism therefore provides us with a way to avoid acknowledging our deficiencies and our inabilities. That's enough right there to make it attractive to us. But it's also appealing to us in how it puffs us up, giving us the illusion (as we've seen) that we can do it - we can generate our own meaning, our own purpose, our own security, and all our other inmost needs.
• It's all so attractive because it's all about us. Legalism feeds our natural pride. While abiding by our self-established standards and rules, we think pretty highly of ourselves. It's a gratifying arrangement because it allow us (we think) to control our little world, to protect ourselves from the chaos without.
• The gospel liberates us to be okay with not being okay...Because of the gospel, we have nothing to prove or protect. We can stop pretending. The gospel frees us from trying to impress people, to prove ourselves to people, to make people think we're something we're not.
• When you understand that your significance and identity and purpose and direction are all anchored in Christ, you don't have to win - you're free to lose...Since Jesus is our strength, our weaknesses don't threaten our sense of worth and value. Now we're free to admit our wrongs and weaknesses without feeling as if our flesh is being ripped off our bones.
• The gospel frees us from this pressure to perform, this slavish demand to 'become.' The gospel liberatingly declares that in Christ 'we already are.' If you're a Christian, here's the good news: who you really are has nothing to do with you - how much you can accomplish, who you can become, your behavior (good or bad), your strengths, your weaknesses, your sordid past, your family background, your education, your looks, and so on. Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; his strength, not yours; his performance, not yours; his victory, not yours. Your identity is steadfastly established in his substitution, not in our sin.
• Real slavery is living your life trying to gain [or keep] favor; real freedom is knowing you already have favor - the difference is huge.
• But only the gospel can cause you to rejoice and be glad in your expendability - because the gospel shows us that while we matter, we're not the point. That's liberating, because when we become the hero of our own story, life becomes a tragedy...Real slavery is self-reliance, self-dependence.
• When I came to see that Christian growth doesn't happen by working hard to get something you don't have, but rather it happens by working hard to live in the reality of what you already have, this gospel insight radically transformed my life.

It may seem like I just wrote down everything in the book, but trust me, there's a whole lot more! This book is a must read.