[the naked gospel] closing thoughts

Introduction

Thank you for the opportunity to write a final statement after the week of reflections on my book, The Naked Gospel.  I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the reviews and interacting with the readers as well. It’s been a privilege to be a part of it all!

I think it’s probably best for me to simply wrap up by telling a bit of my story, introducing some points from the book, and stating my reasons for writing it.

My Journey

I found myself lying on the floor of my apartment, begging God for answers. I was saying, “God, I’m doing everything they say to do. I’m reading my Bible four or five hours a day. I’m sharing my faith with everybody I meet. I’m at church every time the doors are open. But I still don’t feel like I’m growing spiritually. I’m stalled, and I can’t explain why. You say the truth will set me free. I’m anything but free!”

I needed God to start all over with me, and He did. Although I was already a Christian, my belief system was poisoned with religiosity. Over the next ten years, I began replacing old thoughts with new thoughts. And it changed everything for me.

Back then, if I were honest and vulnerable, my sales pitch would have been, “Would you like to become a Christian and be miserable like me?” But today I’d wish my Christian experience on everyone.

I’ve learned some radical, Scriptural truths that were right there in the Bible, that I never knew existed. That’s why I wrote The Naked Gospel – to share with others the same truths that absolutely revolutionized my life.

The Naked Gospel was written to serve as an intravenous shot of unadulterated truth that will stir all of us and perhaps even rattle some of us into considering how we’ve added to the gospel and hindered the pure power of “Jesus plus nothing” in our everyday lives.

The Christian’s Freedom from the Law

When Paul describes the law as a ministry of condemnation, he notes that the law was “in letters engraved on stones.” Clearly, he’s talking about the Ten Commandments. So, the Ten will only minister condemnation – to the saved and to the lost.

Of course, people will argue the importance of the Ten Commandments for Christian living today. But just ask them, “What did you do last Saturday?” If they did any work of any kind, then they disobeyed one of the Big Ten. They might say, “Well we’re free from the Sabbath now.” My reply, “So then, it’s the Nine Commandments that we’re still under?”

We Christians dice up God’s law to get it the way we like it. But the reality is that the law is an all-or-nothing proposition. James tells us that even if we keep the whole law and stumble in only one point, we are guilty of all of it. We don’t have the right to cherry pick, selecting the parts that are comfortable for us.

It’s 600+ Jewish commands and regulations, or it’s total freedom to serve in the newness of the Spirit. The choice is ours. But there’s no room for selecting from the law here and there and imposing a few on Christians. That makes no sense at all.

The Jewish Law, including the Ten Commandments, is perfect in every way. It’s so perfect that nobody can live up to it! It’s actually designed to allow sin to thrive in our lives, to convict us of that sin, and to point us to our need for Jesus Christ.

After we receive Jesus, all we need is Jesus. He produces the love, patience, and self-control we need for daily living. After the salvation experience, any return to the law or another rule-based system is essentially “cheating on Jesus.”

Jesus’ Expansion of the Law

Cut off your hand next time it causes you to sin. And pluck out your eye too! And while you’re at it, be perfect just like your Heavenly Father is perfect.  Oh, and go sell all your possessions.  OK, now you’re obeying Jesus. 

Jesus amplified the law to show that it couldn’t be obeyed. The rich man went away sad. The Pharisees went away mad. Mission accomplished.

In my mind, this point isn’t really up for much debate. We need to understand the “Great Divide.” It’s not baby Jesus lying in the manger in Matthew 1 that changed everything for us. But with our “New Testament” divider page placed just before Matthew 1, we Christians can lose sight of the fact that Jesus’ death, not his birth, initiated the New Testament era (see Hebrews 9:16-17).

Therefore, Jesus was born under law. And much of Jesus’ teaching was aimed at redeeming those who were under law (Galatians 4:4-5). He told them to gouge out their eyes and cut off their hands in their fight against sin. Pretty high standards, I think.

If we Christians were truly following those teachings, and not watering them down or dismissing them, today’s churches would look much like an amputation ward at the local hospital. Instead, we recognize on some level that Jesus was placing demands on his Jewish listeners that were just too great.

As I mentioned, we see this with the Sermon on the Mount, and with the rich man too. Jesus told him to sell everything. Sell everything, really? Yes, Jesus said to sell everything in order to enter the kingdom. But today, we don’t preach this.

You’ll never see an evangelist telling people to go home and list all their belongings on eBay in order to enter the Kingdom. Why not? Those are Jesus’ own words, aren’t they? On some level, we all recognize that Jesus’ death, not His birth in Matthew 1, changed everything for us.

In The Naked Gospel, I talk about the sweeping implications of this dividing line for how we study the Bible – the teachings of Jesus in particular – and how we relate to God and live life.

Don’t Ask for Forgiveness?

The Catholic obtains more forgiveness and cleansing weekly through the mass. The Jew obtained more forgiveness and cleansing yearly through the Day of Atonement. And today’s Protestant, for the most part, believes he receives more forgiveness and cleansing as he asks God directly for it. But all three systems ignore what the Bible clearly teaches – God’s blood economy that brought “once for all” forgiveness through the onetime sacrifice of Jesus. 

That’s why I call those other systems “Cheating on Jesus.”

The phrases “ask forgiveness” and “ask for forgiveness” are entirely absent from all New Testament epistles. It has never been about making promises to God, trying harder, or listing every sin on a legal pad and waiting to be cleansed afterward.

Although it’s very religious to ask for forgiveness, it totally ignores the work of the cross. Jesus took away our sins and cleansed us “once for all.” To ask, plead, beg, and wait for a new portion of cleansing to come our way is to ignore what Jesus said from the cross: “It is finished.”

Yes, we should turn from every sin we commit. Yes, we should be honest and open about our struggles before God. But we should also be honest and straightforward about the blood of Jesus and what it accomplished – an unconditional, irrevocable, one-time cleansing from all our sins!

Requesting forgiveness is not the same as thanking God for the cleansing we already have. Now that forgiveness has been accomplished, our job is to relish the work of Jesus Christ and to deem it “enough.” As we rest in the finished work of the Son, we please the Father.

Why is this important?  Because it’s truth. God’s truth!  And believing anything else is an absurdity.

Just think about it. How many sins have you committed in your life? Millions?  OK, now how many of those have you asked forgiveness for?  What? Only thousands?  So now what will you do?  You’ve got millions of un-confessed and unaddressed sins!  You can’t go to heaven as a partially forgiven and partially cleansed person.

This is precisely why our forgiveness cannot possibly be dependent on our memory, our words, our confession, or our asking. This is precisely why our forgiveness has to rest solely on the blood of Christ.

Early Reactions to The Naked Gospel

When some hear they can be free from religion and only need Jesus for daily living, they call the idea “naïve.” When some hear that Christians are totally forgiven for all sins – past, present, and future – no matter what, they actually get mad. They call that one a “license to sin.”

I call it the Gospel. If you’re not being falsely accused of promoting a “license to sin” then you’re probably not teaching the Gospel. The Apostle Paul was falsely accused of speaking out against Moses and the law. He also had to constantly answer this one: “Well, then, why don’t we just go out and sin so that grace can increase?”

We Christians should be accused of these things on a regular basis. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’re peddling a powerless gospel of “Jesus plus something.”

So far, The Naked Gospel has received one of two reactions – people love it or hate it. I’ve even been told that the book will “destroy America’s churches.” But I’ve also heard lots of people say things like, “it totally changed my life,” and “I’ll never be the same again.”

It’s no fun to be accused, but it’s very rewarding to see people go free. It appears that some may speak out against the book. But it also appears that the book will free lots of people to enjoy the simple, powerful message of “Jesus Plus Nothing.”

And that’s what it’s all about.

Thank You

Again, a final thank you to BibleDude.net for the privilege of being a part of all of this. It has been a lot of fun, and I can’t thank you all enough for the time you took to participate in this.

Jesus plus nothing,
Andrew Farley

 

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[the naked gospel] part 7: ego assult

by Don F Perkins

The concept of sin is so misunderstood both inside and outside of the church today. Could it be because it is of such great importance for us to understand, the deceiver has made it a priority to cloud our thinking about it since the beginning? Genesis 3:1b “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

His two favorites seem to be that “God doesn’t care about sin” or that “God is angry with you because of sin”. These two beauties have served the father of lies well in his quest to confuse and alienate God’s children. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I like Steve Brown’s (of Keylife) summary of God’s attitude toward sin: “God loves you just the way you are, and He loves you too much to leave you that way.” The truth is that God cares a great deal about sin. Why else would He send his only Son to earth to give His life to take away our sins? (1 John 3:5) There was no other way to deal with it. The only Son of God had to give His life on the cross. By His stripes we were healed. That was a pretty costly price to pay for something that doesn’t matter much to God, don’t you think?

Nonetheless, God is not angry at us because of sin. God created us in His own image. He loves us with a profound love. Sin makes Him angry, but not at us, He’s angry at sin. The reason God hates sin is that it separates us from Him. “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:2)

The day sin came into the world, it drove mankind away from God. Adam and Eve, once they disobeyed and became aware of sin, were ashamed, afraid and tried to hide themselves from God (just as many of us hide from Him today). They no longer walked with Him in the garden in the cool of the day, as was their eternal destiny. Since then, the end game of God has always been to call us back to a love relationship with Him again. He still calls out to us today, as we hide in shame: “where are you?” He wants us to walk with Him once again. Fellowship with the creator is the reason we were created. This is why we feel so empty when we realize we have been hiding from Him in sin. There’s a God shaped hole that no amount of sin will fill. Eventually it becomes painful enough that we run back to Him in repentance.

The key to the gospel message is in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned…”

If all God wanted to do was point out sin in our lives and reject us because of it, couldn’t He have done that through the law? Instead, God sent His own Son “not to condemn the world” but to save the world through Him. By His death, Jesus accomplished what no one else ever could nor ever will: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4)

Because of Jesus sacrifice, sin has the power to separate us from God no more. As the Apostle Paul puts it: “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:39)

Jesus death on the cross was not just a “pound of flesh” that God needed because of our sin. The miracle of the cross is that it was the ultimate act of love meant to stir our hearts in such a way that we will do whatever it takes to walk with God again. As we look intently into the tremendous love and the costly grace displayed for all eternity by that event, it has the power to release us from hiding and change our desires, making us want to please our God more than we want the fleeting gratification of sin.

Jesus work on the cross made it so no amount of sin can separate us from God ever again, but if a person is walking with God in the glow of His unconditional love, what makes them want to sin again? The deceiver is still trying to convince us that God doesn’t care about sin. As we come to our senses and step away from the pig troughs of this world, instead of condemnation, we will hear the gentle voice of the creator calling “Adam, where are you? Let nothing keep us apart ever again, go and sin no more.”

 

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About the author:

Don is a friend of God who lives in rural New Hampshire. His mission is to be kind, complimentary and teachable; to live with integrity as a team player always serving, growing and learning. He has been the recipient of amazing amounts of mercy and grace, is surrounded by great friends and family and hopes to share the love he’s experienced with others.

[the naked gospel] part 6: we don’t marry dead people

by Andi Shaw

I took on this opportunity because I have always been the type of person who observes the world and turns a critical eye on everything. I saw problems and was never content to just accept them. I grew up in the church with my parents. My dad has been a church worship pastor or apart of the worship team for as long as I can remember and my family has always been active in the church. Being immersed in the church as I was at a young age, I saw a lot of the politics going on behind the scenes. My family left my first church when I was seven because of the politics that caused discontent and problems in the church. That was when I first realized that the church was not perfect. I still understood God to be perfect so I just learned not to associate the two directly. The church was a human institution to me, not the body of Christ that God intended it to be.

Now, I am not anti-church. The church is human, and once understood to be, we can understand how to proceed. “Religiosity,” as Andrew Farley, author of The Naked Gospel calls it, is a human invention. God never meant for us to follow a religion. We were made for a relationship. Farley strips away all of the religion around Christianity and tries to break it down to “Jesus plus nothing.”

In the chapter, “We Don’t Marry Dead People,” Farley continues to strip away the layers and layer of ideas, rituals, and misconceptions that Christians have toiled under for years. He promised to shake the reader up and propose ideas that would maybe offend and challenge, and he does just that.

I don’t know how much time of my life has been spent worrying about whether I’m “on the right path” or whether I’m “walking with God.” I had youth pastors and head pastors that told me I should read my bible daily, pray all of the time, attend church and youth groups and get involved in children’s ministry and on and on. Growing up, I equated my spiritual life with these things. Reading my bible daily was the ultimate ritual that I thought would rank me right up there with the very spiritual people. And I would, for maybe two-three weeks at a time, get into the habit of reading my bible daily. I’ll tell you, it did help my life. Some nights I would be eager about cracking open the Word before I went to bed. Other nights, I would want to just go to bed, and think about how I should just read it in the morning (then I never would). As soon as I missed a day, however, I would get discouraged. After two or three days of slacking on it, I would beat myself up over it. Farley makes it very clear that this isn’t what God wants for us to do at all.

“What does it really matter if we’re expert scholars in biblical studies and know nothing of displaying true life?” (p. 175)

Wow. That hit home for me. Where was my display of true life while I was worrying about reading a passage every night?

So now what? So God doesn’t mean for me to beat myself up over rules. So do I not do the things I thought I should? Of course not. God wants you to read His word and go to church and all of that, but we will not find restoration of life in any ritualistic, religious activities, like Farley says. He expounds on his idea that the “New”, meaning the new life in Christ, is all we need. We won’t find fulfillment otherwise. Fulfillment and restoration is found through and in Christ and the New life in him. When God resides in us, we are fulfilled and we will want to read His word, go to church, and worship Him as a result.

“The very core of the New is that through Christ we receive what we lost through Adam, namely, the literal presence of the divine.” (p. 189)

I think that sums it up pretty well right there.

Farley addressed another problem that I have struggled with, although I’m only just realizing that it was a problem at all. This is the struggle between surrendering to Christ everything and maintaining my personality, my hobbies, me. It turns out that it’s not a problem at all. As Farley puts it, Christ enjoys us just as we are. God created our personalities, gave us our interests, made us unique because that’s how He wanted us.

These ideas of “Jesus plus nothing” are what Farley expounds on. In the chapter, his idea that you don’t marry dead people is to explain how you are not in a relationship with the dead teacher Jesus. Your relationship is with the risen Jesus. One can study the rabbi Jesus for a better understanding of who He is, but Farley points out if one wants to emulate someone and follow someone, we are not following the dead Jesus. We are following the risen and fully alive Jesus, and meant to be fully alive in Him.

I am still in the process of digesting all that Farley laid out. Not all of it is sitting well, but He meant to challenge preconceptions and norms that we were raised with in the church and around other believers. I would suggest reading the book with a very critical eye and an open mind, ready to take in the information and chew before swallowing.

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About the author:

Andi Shaw is a junior at CSU Long Beach majoring in International Business because God has given her a heart for the impoverished in third world countries and business skills to be utilized towards helping those God puts on her heart. Currently, God has placed a project on her heart to raise money for building wells in Africa, called Water4Wells.org.

[the naked gospel] part 5: cheating on Jesus

by Ken Elsner

As followers of Jesus Christ, we have, for centuries struggled living between two lives, or, more specifically, to “Testaments.” Having been given the incredible gift of the Bible, (God’s love letter to His people) we live in a tension of not wanting to ignore the Old Testament while living in the heart of the New. Our lives often reflect the Greek masks of the Divine comedy and tragedy. We want to live lives full of joy and fulfillment , but often find ourselves instead, living under the weight and guilt of the Law.

Andrew Farley’s book, The Naked Gospel, has been a challenge to read, because it pushes against the traditions and status quo of a couple thousand years of church history, tradition and dogma. That being said, I love the fact that Andrew is pointing us to Jesus…only Jesus. His death on the cross is enough!

“Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” 1 Peter 3:18

Christ’s death AND resurrection “wholly and unquestionably dealt with our sins forever.” Andrew hits the nail on the head time and time again by continually pointing us back to this fact. Jesus is not continually dying on the cross. He did it one time! And yet we still continue to go to him and confess and repent like we have to. We don’t!

“Since Jesus doesn’t die daily, our forgiveness is not issued daily.”
                                                                                                — Farley, pg. 146

Now, I do believe that part of the journey of walking with Jesus is to be in conversation with Him just like we have conversations with our close friends. But, when we hurt our friends and then ask for forgiveness, we don’t keep going back to them over and over again asking for forgiveness…do we?

“If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9

Andrew’s addressing of 1 John 1:9 was well done. Too often we read scripture and automatically assume a truth based upon our own “lens.” We need to be careful though, that we don’t presume something just because we like it or feel good about it. John was dealing with Gnostic heresies at the time of writing the letter. So as we begin to understand what he was addressing we can apply the principles accordingly to our lives here and now.

Understanding context and being contextual are two incredibly important and fundamental principles when approaching Scripture. Jesus was the master of both. Andrew continually challenged me to revisit passages of Scripture in order to better understand what Jesus was doing and saying. With regards to the Lord’s Prayer and seeking forgiveness, Andrew pushes us to rethink who is being addressed and why AND, that in light of the cross, much of what we have thought about “popular” passages is either misguided or misinterpreted.

Again, Jesus’ death and resurrection changed everything. The last few pages of “Cheating on Jesus” challenged more of our “traditional” view of judgment and treasures. Andrew takes a bold stand on confronting these often misinterpreted ideas. In the last days, the judgment found in Revelation 20-21 is for those whose names were not written in the Book of Life, those in death and Hades…NOT the church. So often we have heard that we will “all” be judged. That is simply not true. What a relief!

“Despite the clarity of God’s Word, I’ve heard some use the final judgment to instill what they term “godly fear” in believers. I’ve even heard some say that they determine the quality of a sermon by how guilty they feel afterward! Taken out of context, the great white throne judgment can seriously damage our sense of assurance.
                                                                                        —Farley, pg. 166

In the end, I want praise Andrew with his challenging and encouraging perspective. Much of what he has experienced in life and now, has written reflects a heart that deeply desires to point people to Jesus and what He did for us all on the cross. My struggle is still, and I think always has been, the tension of relating the Old Testament/Covenant to the New. We can’t discard the one without affecting the other. And, why would our Sovereign God have allowed the Canon of Scripture to be shaped into what we have now if the Old was no longer important? I’m not suggesting that Andrew is telling us to forget the Old, but as Christians we do have the “whole” of Scripture to contend with!

 

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About the author:

Ken Elsner, a Christ-follower for over 22 years is husband to Kristen and father to Alexa, Ethan , Avery and Erik. A transplanted Westcoast Canadian, Ken has been in ministry both full and “part-time” for over 20 years. A graduate of North American Baptist Seminary, Ken has planted a postmodern/gen X church in South Dakota and has been pioneering worship experiences for thousands both in the US, Canada, Mexico and Ethiopia, Africa for 15 years. Now residing just south of Denver, Colorado, Ken continues to write songs for the church and lead worship at Pathways Church and is in the beginning stages of planting a church where he and his family lives. While not taking care of his family and leading worship, you can find Ken delighting in the beauty of God’s Rocky Mountains by climbing as many Colorado fourteeners as he can.

http://www.kennethelsner.com

http://www.twitter.com/kenelsner

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