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    The Gospel According to Jesus: A Faith that Restores All Things
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    The Gospel According to Jesus: A Faith that Restores All Things
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    The Gospel According to Jesus: A Faith that Restores All Things
    Ebook233 pages3 hours

    The Gospel According to Jesus: A Faith that Restores All Things

    By Chris Seay

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    Most Christians are living a distorted Christian life. You don't have to be one of them.

    Imagine a church where 84% of Christians are completely unfamiliar with the essential tenets of their faith, with a crippling misunderstanding of the word righteousness and, in turn, the gospel of Jesus.

    According to a recent survey conducted by Chris Seay and Barna Research Group, this is not just speculation; it's the reality for the church today.

    The Gospel According to Jesus takes an in-depth look at this research study, which examines our understanding of the command, "Seek first the kingdom and His righteousness." Most Christians define righteousness as morality. This means that what's being preached by the church is not at all the gospel Jesus intended for His followers.

    Through personal stories, interviews with today's church leaders, and a detailed study of the book of Romans, Chris uncovers a staggering disconnect between the gospel according to Christians and the gospel according to Jesus--the redeeming, restorative gospel that a broken world so desperately needs. Our role, he says, is to join Jesus in restoring the world. Will you?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateSep 27, 2010
    ISBN9780849949340
    Author

    Chris Seay

    Chris Seay is the pastor of Ecclesia, a progressive Christian community in Houston, Texas, recognized for exploring spiritual questions of culture and breaking new ground in art, music, and film. Chris is the author of The Gospel According to Tony Soprano and The Gospel Reloaded. He lives in Houston with his wife, Lisa, and their four children.

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    Reviews for The Gospel According to Jesus

    3/5

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    • 4/5
      I received this book from Thomas Nelson as part of their Booksneeze program. Seay sets out to combat what he sees as a misunderstanding of Jesus and a dangerous focus on tallying up our rights and wrongs. I must admit before I started going to church that's what I thought Christianity was all about. I was fortunate that my introduction to church in my early twenties was at a church and with a group of people that had really grasped the grace of God and knew what it was to live it. I guess that's what grabbed my attention in the first place.Chris Seay writes in an easy to understand style and covers quite a few important areas over the course of the book as he looks into the question, what does it mean to seek God's righteousness. These include the difference between relying on our own good works instead of God's work in us. Our tendency to label people and things as good and bad instead of admitting their brokenness and God's ability to redeem them. And also what it means to be human and created in the image of God. I felt some of the chapters finished just as things were getting interesting but I guess that leaves some room for further thought and study.One little thing, I did feel the title is a bit presumptuous, my Hubby walked past while I was reading and commented "What does Jesus have to say". There were a couple bits where I think he pushed his point a little too far. At one point he concludes that the world is such a mess because the church is ignorant when it comes to justice and righteousness. For me that's just a little too close to the secular utopian view that most of our mess is caused by ignorance. That being said, I definitely agree that the church as a whole and the world in general would be in a much better shape if we understood and cooperated more fully with God's redemptive plans.
    • 2/5
      It is no secret that Americans are not very well-versed about Christian doctrine and theology anymore, and such may shed some light about why profession of Christianity is far more prevalent than the practice thereof.Chris Seay's particular concern, as expressed in The Gospel According to Jesus: A Faith that Restores All Things, is in regard to how people understand the concept of righteousness. His argument, expressed through his own discussion, discussion with a "who's who" list of trendy young Evangelicals, and through exposition of Genesis and Romans, is that righteousness is primarily the concept of "restorative justice," with other aspects being understood in that light.There is much that is commendable in this book. The idea of having discussions among different people with their different perspectives is refreshing and thought-provoking. The author's emphasis on the need to live the life of faith is handled well, and the principles he establishes for right living (using the more trendy Evangelical term, shalom) are Biblically rooted and beneficial. The use of art in the middle of the book is intriguing and is probably more meaningful for people who are more inclined toward art than I am.There were some doctrinal/theological matters in the book with which I had to wrestle, and I did appreciate the opportunity to do so. Seay advances the notion that sin (and, for that matter, righteousness) really should be understood more relationally than legalistically. He draws on Romans 7 to indicate that focus on sin leads to sin and, ultimately, not to doing righteousness. His points have some validity but are not absolutely true. There is benefit in understanding sin and righteousness in relational terms and the emphasis on the relationship with God; nevertheless, there are too many times where sin is discussed in judicial imagery for it to have nothing substantively "legalistic" about it. I was a little surprised that in a discussion about Christian focus that the author did not advance Philippians 4:8 in the discussion. While it is true that obsessively focusing on sin is ultimately destructive, never addressing the topic is no better-- the same Paul who tells believers to focus on the positive was not against explicit warning against sin (cf. Galatians 5:19-21, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Ephesians 5:3-5, etc.). Ultimately, though, I must take theological issue with the ultimate theme of the book and especially as it relates to the title (The Gospel According to Jesus). It is evident, throughout the book, that Seay is wrestling with understanding the emphases prevalent in the "emergent" or "missional" strands of modern Evangelicalism in terms of the traditions of Christianity, and particularly in the Protestant tradition. Seay's main concern is that the Protestant understanding of justification by faith alone has not received the emphasis that he feels it deserves. Much of the book-- and his exposition of Romans-- is based in this theme. He constantly addresses or refers to Luther and seems to want to place modern discussions of faith, justice, and righteousness in terms of the "500 year discussion" that he imagines is begun by Luther. I do not adhere to the premises of justification by faith alone or of Christ's imputed righteousness, and the author does. As to imputed righteousness, such is an unnecessary concept-- as N.T. Wright ably demonstrates, righteousness is not a gas or some transferable property. Even with a view toward "restorative justice," such ends in a standing, not a property, and thus the idea of "imputed righteousness" is unnecessary. Yes, we are reconciled to God through Christ's work on the cross, and through Jesus' redemption we are reckoned as righteous, which is far different from having righteousness imputed to us (Romans 5:6-11, etc.). The problem is not justification by faith, which Paul most eminently demonstrates is true in Romans, Ephesians, Galatians, and the like; the problem is with justification by faith alone, which the Bible itself repudiates (James 2:24). The difficulty comes from Seay's reliance on Luther and by presuming the discussion to be 500 years old. Interestingly, one of Seay's conversation companions speaks of Luther's imbalance in many things, and this is the major downfall of the book: while the discussion over the past 500 years has been directed by Luther's and Calvin's presentations, they were continuing the discussion prompted by the Scholastics before them, who were trying to reconcile and make sense of the body of tradition and belief bestowed upon them by Greek philosophy and the Western Christian tradition as understood through the Augustinian lens, itself dominated by the presence of Augustine, who is codifying the traditions that had accrued for the 400 years before him, and often at variance with that tradition and with the understanding of, say, Eastern Christendom.The discussion, therefore, is really 2,000 years old, and in that light, Luther's emphases stand in stark contrast with Paul's purposes in the New Testament. Luther is over-reacting to works-based Roman Catholicism, indeed; Paul is opposing an ethnically-based view of salvation. It does not surprise me that Seay never tackles Romans 6 in his examination; the same Paul who speaks of justification by faith and says that no one is saved by keeping law speaks of dying to sin in baptism and being a slave of Christ. That image of the Christian-- the slave of Christ-- is conspicuously absent, and emphasis is placed in the book on the image of Jesus as the "Liberating King," but the nature of the "liberation" is never addressed. This is too bad, considering that liberation in American understanding is antithetical to the Biblical understanding of liberation-- not freedom to, but freedom from. In the end, The Gospel According to Jesus is not the "Gospel According to Jesus". It is an over-emphasis of one aspect of the Gospel of Christ as elaborated upon by Paul at the expense of other aspects. Seay is right to say that too many Americans accept a works-based Gospel, and too many are convinced that good people are saved by virtue of being "good" and that "bad" can be counteracted by "good," which is false. However, to set forth a Gospel that goes too far the other way, one that has never comfortably handled the tension between man's inability to save himself with God's imperative for humans to live in a holy way, is not the solution. Shane Claiborne, in one of the conversations, speaks to the need for balance, and that is appreciated-- and that is exactly what is needed when talking about the Gospel of Christ. Human beings are redeemed, not on the basis of works or anything they could have done in "righteousness," but through the grace of God manifest through the death of Christ, indeed, as Titus 3:3-5 indicates. But they are saved by the washing of regeneration of washing (baptism) and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, in order to become heirs in hope and live lives of submission to the will of God in Christ, as Paul demonstrates in Titus 3:6-8. The result, in many aspects, is similar despite the difference in paths: believers are to conform to the will of God. But the ends do not justify the means, and we must maintain a balanced, Biblical theology. The same Paul who says that no man is justified by works also says that everyone will be judged on the basis of what they have done in the flesh and must become obedient to God in Christ and conform to Him (cf. Romans 2:5-10, 6:1-23, 12:1-2). He does not sense a contradiction there, and neither do Peter (1 Peter 1:3-9, 22), John (1 John 2:1-6, 2 John 1:6-8), the Hebrew author (Hebrews 11), James (James 2:14-26), or especially Jesus (Matthew 7:13-14, 21-23)! Merely because Augustine or Luther could not reconcile the tension without finding reconciliation between faith and obedience manifest in works does not mean that there really is contradiction!A final word about Seay's choice of "translation," one upon which he worked, The Voice. Personally, I fail to see the need for yet another dynamic equivalent "translation" that is as much exposition as a rendering of the relevant texts into English. The challenge I continue to have with such works is that the very people who are most liable to distort and abuse such "translations" are the ones to whom they are marketed-- those who otherwise do not understand much about the Bible and its message. Perhaps we should learn from those before us who understood that you leave the text alone and explain it in conversation, preaching, and teaching so that the full dimensions of God's Word-- not just the basic meaning, but all of its flavor, implications, and even its vagaries-- can be hallowed and respected. The Gospel According to Jesus has the right spirit-- trying to get to a better understanding of the core doctrines of Christianity and helping people recover a truly Biblical way of looking at themselves and the world-- but suffers greatly from directing that spirit toward a resurgence of a doctrine that never really squared properly with the Scriptures. Justification by faith alone is not the true Gospel but is a perversion thereof, in the same category as the "works-based" salvation message condemned as its foil. Instead, we should promote and advance God's true Gospel-- justification by a faith that in all things submits to its Author and Perfector (Romans 1:16-17, Romans 6:1-23, 8:1-10, 12:1-2, Hebrews 12:1-2)!*-- book received as part of an early review program.