Do I Need to Be a Jesus Expert? Kevin DeYoung

Dave: Here’s my question to you today: have you ever had a moment in your Christian life where you thought, “I’m done! Can’t do it. It’s too hard?”

Ann: Yes.

Dave: Besides last week? [Laughter]

Ann: What happened last week?

Dave: I don’t know. When I didn’t want you to redo the basement.

Shelby: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.

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Ann: I think there have been many times where I felt like, “I just can’t do this,” whether it be when we were dating trying to stay pure with one another when I hadn’t been in the past. [I thought,] “This feels so hard” [or] parenting when I felt like, “I’m totally ill-equipped and I’m not able to do this.” But even spiritually, [l thought,] “Lord, I don’t have what it takes to walk this Christian life. I feel like I’m constantly falling down.”

Have you?

Dave: Many times. I might have quit last week. I’m kidding. [Laughter] There have been—especially when I came to Christ in college, there was a part of me, early in my journey, that said, “You can’t live this life on this campus.”

Ann: Really?

Dave: “This is something you live later when you’re an older man.”

Ann: I think a lot of people think that.

Dave: “It’s impossible.” I’m bringing it up because Kevin DeYoung is back in the studio.

Kevin, you wrote a book called Impossible Christianity, which dives into that question.

Ann: How about the subtitle?

Kevin: Yes, give the subtitle.

Ann: Yes.

Kevin: I can’t even remember it, but that’s what the book is about.

Dave: The subtitle is so long. I’m thinking, “We’re going to build the whole show around these statements.”

Ann: It’s so good, Kevin: Why Following Jesus Does Not Mean You Have to Change the World—which is what I thought I could do—

Dave: —you can’t comment.

Ann: Oh, sorry. Okay, Why Following Jesus Does Not Mean You Have to Change the World, Be an Expert in Everything, Accept Spiritual Failure, and Feel Miserable Pretty Much All the Time.

Dave: Kevin, tell us what in the world are you going after in this thing?

Kevin: Somebody said to me before—I wonder if you guys feel this way—that every author has one book.

Dave and Ann: Yes.

Kevin: I hope there is a little bit more, but there’s a lot of truth to that. We’ve got a thing we want to say, and it’s occurred to me that a lot of my books are really getting at this idea: “Can ordinary Christians and ordinary churches actually do ministry and do life in a way that God is happy with?”

I think Just Do Something: is following God’s will an impenetrable mystery or can you actually do something? You know, the Hole in Our Holiness: is it possible to be sanctified and grow in holiness? What is the mission of the church?

Ann: Kevin, you’re basically stating the books that you have written.

Kevin: I’m stating some of the books that I have written. This one, I think, is bringing together at the very tip of the spear what this burden—I’m sure we write out of our own issues; this must be something of my own issue—I talk about my not-so-illustrative running career. I’ve always loved running, and I’ve always been very mediocre. [Laughter]

I said, “Either the best of the not very good or the worst of the halfway decent.” I’ve got lots of stories. I won’t bore you with them, but lots of—my dream was to get the baton in the 4x400 relay at the Olympics and win that for Team USA. I never was anything close to that.

Dave: Did you do it in high school?

Kevin: I ran in high school; I ran in college; did the one/ten high hurdles for a year, where you can—I can make up my natural lack of speed with some long legs. [Laughter]

Dave: High hurdles are not easy.

Kevin: Yes.

Dave: That is a tough, tough race.

Kevin: I was nothing special at all, but I still love to run, and I still love to do races; but it has often felt like, “I’m never going to be really—”—you were a really good athlete, Dave— “I’m never going to be a great athlete.”

Dave: You don’t know that. You just assume it.

Ann: He is a really good player.

Kevin: I’m not going to be an Olympian. I’m going to try my best, and I can beat most people my age at a turkey trot. [Laughter] That’s what I can do. But I’m not ever going to be really good at this thing.

A lot of days, I feel like I’ve worked so hard, I’ve read all the books, I’ve watched all the videos, I’ve done all the training, and I’ll never be anything other than just average. That’s what I think a ton of Christians out there feel about the whole Christian life.

Dave: You are exactly right. That describes at least 80 percent.

Ann: Yes, especially in a day when we’re seeing all of these influencers, and they’re having their platforms that say, “We’re changing the world,” and you’re doing life day by day. It feels like: “What’s my contribution?”

Dave: Is that your—you preach every week (not every week, but most of the weeks), you’re preaching at your church in North Carolina. You’re a writer; you’ve got a PhD in theology—systematic theology at Reformed (RTS).

Kevin: I teach there, yes.

Dave: You are—you talk about somebody on paper who doesn’t sound average to me. It sounds like you’re way up here.

Ann: Let’s say, too: he has nine children. [Laughter]

Kevin: My wife is very above average. [Laughter]

Ann: This isn’t the average guy.

Dave: Yet, that’s what you often feel.

Kevin: Yes. I get done every Sunday—and I’m sure this is probably spiritual warfare, probably some pride, but I get done every Sunday—and I think, “Wow! What was that? What did I just do?”

Ann: I’m so encouraged right now, Kevin. Dave says, “I rocked it!” and I’m thinking, “I don’t even know if I did anything.”

Dave: I don’t say, “I rocked it!”

Ann: I know, but when you preach—

Dave: —our son says that.

Ann: —when you preached, you’d feel good about it.

Kevin: I never would feel good about it.

Ann: I’m thinking, “I don’t know. Did it do anything?”

Kevin: What I find—I’m in a Presbyterian church, in lots of reformed circles and very theological, which I am to the core—just talking on some of the themes of this book, it’s been remarkable how many people, often people who have been Christians their whole life or years and years, will say, “How did I miss this? How did I grow up or how did I get this message that being a Christian meant if I’m doing a really good job, I should feel pretty miserable about it? I should live with a low-level sense of guilt and failure and just accept it?”

I try to be clear in the book what I’m not saying, because some people might take that to mean, “This is a cheap grace, easy believe-ism; God just tussles your hair or what used to be hair and says, ‘Oh, you’re a sinner and no big deal. I don’t care about it. I just love you.’” That’s not at all what I’m saying.

What I’m saying is, God actually gives us the grace to live a life of obedience, not perfectly, but truly in a way that pleases Him. I think most Christians feel like, “Yes, justified, going to heaven, forgiven, got it, and that will be wonderful! But the rest of this is God, as judge, might let me into heaven, but God, as my Father, to be pleased with something I do, I don’t really experience that.”

They think they’re more spiritual for living, as the subtitle says, “feeling miserable pretty much all of the time.”

Dave: Wow! Earlier in your book, you say, “Here are seven things I’m not saying.”

Kevin: Right.

Ann: Let’s hear those.

Dave: I’d love you to hit some of those. You just mentioned one of them. The first one was, “We can be good enough to get into heaven.”

Kevin: Yes, I want to be very clear—Impossible Christianity. You might say, “Isn’t Christianity impossible?” Yes, it depends on what you mean. Do you mean, “Can we earn our way to God?” Of course, not. “Is it impossible to live a life that obeys the commandments such that we deserve to be justified?” Of course, that’s impossible.

What I’m saying is what about [if] you’re born again, you’re forgiven, you’re justified? Can you live a life of Christian discipleship such that God is pleased and that you actually obey. Here’s the thing: I think many of us think obedience is, “God doesn’t mean it when Jesus gives the Great Commission and ‘Teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you’.” [Matthew 28:19, paraphrased] They [think] there’s an asterisk that says, “Ha, ha, ha, but you can’t actually obey anything.”

One of the keys in this book is this old theological distinction, but it’s very simple; that is to distinguish between perfect obedience and true obedience. We’re not saying, “perfect obedience.” That’s what people hear. “Nope, nothing wrong with my motives, absolutely flawlessly done.”

No, we don’t have any perfect obedience this side of heaven. But “true”- can it be true obedience? I want people to not misunderstand what the book is about and think it’s an easy believe-ism, that God doesn’t care about sin, that it doesn’t matter how you live, that everything is okay: “Follow your own heart.” That’s not what the message is saying.

It’s saying, “God, as your heavenly Father, has given you the Spirit to obey Christ’s commands in such a way that you actually can have true obedience and live a grace-filled life that God smiles upon.”

Ann: That’s good.

Dave: Here’s another thing you say: “I’m not saying in this book that being a Christian is trouble free.”

Kevin: David Platt is a friend of mine. David Platt wrote the book, Radical.

Dave: Right.

Kevin: Some people say, “Is this the anti-Radical?” [Laughter] I don’t mean it as that, and I don’t think David—I haven’t asked him—would say I’m trying to make Christianity impossible. But it is possible that we’re speaking to some different dangers in different ways. What you just read there is trying to make sure people don’t think I’m saying, “The Christian life is easy; it’s totally possible; it’s a simple thing; it’s just floating to heaven on flowery beds of ease.” No. You do have to take up your cross.

Another one of those is, “We’re not saying you don’t take risks.” Impossible Christianity doesn’t mean comfortable Christianity. It doesn’t mean easy Christianity. It just means a life of ordinary faithfulness is possible and pleasing to God.

Dave: The title—you can think, “If we’re saying Christianity is impossible, it means we just quit. Can’t do it.”

Kevin: Yes, that’s right.

Dave: “So, why work so hard?” That’s why your fifth one was, “You’re not saying we should stop being so hard on ourselves.”

Kevin: Yes, I think paradoxically you’re right; that when we think something’s impossible, you don’t give it your all. You could tell me, “Kevin, run a sub-four-minute mile,” and you could give me the diet; you could give me the training. I am not going to try hard at it, because I cannot do it. I never could, and I’m not going to at 46. [Laughter]

But if you said, as my coach, “I want you to go out, and I want you to run the best you can and try to stay injury-free,” and do something I can do, I think, “Yes, I want to work hard at that.” So many of us get the idea, “Christianity is this blessed failurism.” The more you feel like a failure, then that’s a measure of your faithfulness, when deep down I don’t think we really believe that. You all could talk about heroes of your Christian life. We all know people—family members, famous Christians or ordinary people no one’s ever heard of—that we would say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

That parable in particular is instructive. It’s not just a parable. Jesus didn’t say, “Now, I’m going to tell a parable for famous missionaries and pastors.” [Laughter] No, it’s for people who take what they’ve been given—one talent, two talents, five talents—and use it faithfully. God (in the story) didn’t criticize the one with two talents for getting only two. What He criticized was the one with one who tried to play it safe. And this gets to your point: in that parable, it says he knew the master was a harsh man and he was a mean master.

What did it do? It didn’t motivate him to work harder. It motivated him to play it safe, to bury his talent. It was to that one that the master said, “Away with you. I’m giving your talent to somebody else because they were faithful with what they had been given and now I say to them, ‘Well done’.” [Matthew 25:14-30]

Dave: In your subtitle, that’s part of what I’m guessing you meant by “it doesn’t mean we have to accept spiritual failure,” because it seems like that’s what a lot of us do: “It’s who I am. I’m never going to be victorious all the time. I just accept it.” That’s part of what I’m supposed to do as a flawed, sinful follower of Christ.

Kevin: It leads us into some strange places where we don’t read the Bible at face value. For example, I talk there about preaching through 1^st John. I think 1^st John is about assurance. [In] John’s gospel, he ends by saying, “I’ve written these things so that you may know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” He starts 1^st John by saying, “I want you who believe to know.”

One’s about how do you get in and one’s about how do you know you are in—how do you know you are a Christian? He really does three things throughout 1^st John: “Do you love God? Do you love God’s people? Do you love God’s commands?” A theological test, a social test, and an ethical test.

When you get to that, because I wrote on this years, ago just giving this basic little speech about 1^st John. The responses I got were vitriol. People said, “Wait a minute. You said you know you’re a Christian because you obey God’s commands! You think you obey God’s commands?” Somebody even said, “I thought this was The Gospel Coalition. This isn’t the gospel. You are saying that you earn your way.”

I said, “I didn’t say anything like that. It’s signs.” John is not saying, “Here’s how you get into heaven.” He’s saying, “Here’s the signs to tell you that if you’re driving from Orlando and you want to go to Canada and you start seeing signs for Miami, that you’re not going in the right direction.” [Laughter]

That’s what these are. But the problem is, we’ve so trained ourselves not to see or allow any evidence of that in our lives. If you say to someone, “You should have confidence you are a Christian if you obey God’s commands,” right now most people listening to this think, “I don’t obey any of God’s commands.”

“If you love your neighbor.”

“I never do that.”

We end up then not taking the Bible at face value. As I said, we don’t hear the warnings when we need to hear them, and we don’t hear the encouragement when God means to give us encouragement. That book is written to tell you [that] you should know that you’re a Christian, and you should live in the joy and assurance of that.

As a born-again Christian with a new heart, there’s still indwelling sin, but there’s a hatred for that sin, and there’s a love for Christ and His Word and His righteousness. That’s why it’s called a fight of faith. That’s why spiritual warfare is chiefly about believing the things that are true of us in Christ and fighting the devil with the Word of God.

It’s to believe, like Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” That’s always my go-to verse for lust and temptations of the flesh because that promise is “the pure in heart shall see God.” It’s not enough to just say, “Don’t do it; don’t do it; don’t do it.” You have to fight pleasure with pleasure. So, you believe to see God in this life and in the next. “That’s a better sight than whatever this internet has for me or whatever this movie promises. This is going to be better.”

You’re trusting God, and He means to give us victory. There are a lot of Christians who have resigned themselves to not only feeling miserable, [but] that there can be no victory.

Often that doesn’t happen just like this [Snapping Sound]; though I’ve heard stories where it does. There are people that say, “It got turned off.” It usually doesn’t, so it’s two steps forward and one step back. But in community with the Word there can be real growth and victory.

Ann: Guys, let me ask you in a practical way of living, what does that look like for the two of you? Where have you found victory in your lives that you hadn’t had maybe before?

Kevin: That Matthew 5:8—I remember saying that to myself in particular situations and still having to bring that to mind: “What do I believe about the beauty of the Lord that I need to see and want to see?” As a parent, I know the sin of anger, unfortunately.

Dave: Nine kids running around the house.

Kevin: I’ve got nine kids running around the house. All of us do it. I see their anger, and I see, “Well, they get it from their hearts, but they also get it from me.” Did you ever read the book by David Powlison, Good and Angry? There was one chapter, “Do I Have an Anger Problem?” You turn to it, and it says, “Yes.” That was the whole chapter. Just go to the next chapter. [Laughter]

I think there’s been some, in fits and starts, victory over that. I think about how foolish it is and how much, in that moment, anger is really saying, “I should be God.” Even if my kids are sinning, it’s like, “You should do what I want whenever I want, and things should always go my way.” Sin is, at its root, pride, unbelief, and a desire for human autonomy.

Ann: What do you think, Dave?

Dave: There’s a personal me-and-Jesus walk with purity, and there’s a communal where I have men in my life. It’s really critical to have honest conversations with men who know me, who love me, who will walk beside me and hold me accountable. I remember—I don’t know if you used to look at Leadership Journal? Are you old enough to remember that?

Kevin: Yes, I am.

Dave: When I was in seminary, there was an article that came out anonymously by a pastor. It was his battle with sexual lust. Back then, it wasn’t internet porn but it was porn in some [form]. He walks you through it. It became very famous because everybody said, “Somebody wrote this article. Oh, my goodness.”

It was him preaching on the weekends, but he’s looking at porn during the week. One of the things he said in this article was, the thing that helped him the most was Matthew 5:8, when he realized, “When I want purity more than I want lust, there’s freedom.”

It isn’t mustered up. It’s saying, “Do I really want to see Jesus? Do I really want to walk in purity?” It’s a desire that says, “I want this more than this. This is available, and I have brothers walking with me toward that.”

Kevin: That last part is key: “Brothers walking with me toward that.” You and I are probably old enough that I remember when a buddy would come forward and dare to say that he was addicted to porn. First of all, you had to find it in magazines. It wasn’t available on your phone. It was like [inhales deeply]—it was a big, big deal. Now, you talk to anyone doing campus ministry; how many of the guys (and girls sometimes)—how many of the guys are—? “Oh, everyone.”

On the one hand, it’s good that there’s some vulnerability. On the other hand, there’s a danger that the stigma has become so eroded that it’s become normalized. And it’s like, “Yes, this is what guys just—"

Ann: “We all fall.”

Kevin: Yes, exactly.

If you get a group of guys, and you say, “Let’s all talk about: you sinned; you sinned,” and you leave feeling like, “It’s so good to know my brothers understand my sin,” have you actually moved towards holiness, or is it just a support group where you all give each other a hug and affirm that, “It will be okay, and we are all in the same boat?”

Dave: “Quit doing that.” Then they come back the next week.

Ann: But Dave, you’re saying, “I have found victory,” not perfectly but you’re—

Dave: Yes.

Ann: That’s what I’m saying.

Dave: It’s the personal spiritual war that you are in with you and Jesus, but it’s [also] brothers, and it is confession; honest confession. It’s brothers that say, “Me, too. What are we doing about this? Let’s go. Let’s walk toward Jesus together.” If we’re not winning this thing with progressive victory, we’re just being honest with each other and doing nothing about it.

Kevin: Yes.

Dave: Our wives want us to be meeting with men who are saying, “We’re going to win this thing together!” Not “I’m just going to have somebody who I can share my sins with,” and go back, and then go back to my sin again.

Ann: It is encouraging to know, “We can walk in obedience.”

Dave: It is possible; not impossible.

Kevin: That’s right.

Shelby: I was reminded just now of the conversation Jesus was having with the rich young ruler in Luke, Chapter 18, that concludes with, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Then it’s really cool, in verses 26 and 27—it says, “Those who heard it said, ‘But who can be saved?’ But He said, —” He being Jesus—“What is impossible with man is possible with God.” I love that reminder.

I’m Shelby Abbott. You’ve been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Kevin DeYoung on FamilyLife Today. Kevin has written a book called Impossible Christianity. It really helps believers answer the question: “Can we please God and live a happy life in this anxious age?”

You can get a copy of Kevin’s book by going online to FamilyLife Today.com and clicking on the “Today’s Resources” link, or you can get a link in the show notes as well. Or you can give us a call at 800-358-6329. That’s 800- “F” as in family, “L” as in life and then the word, “TODAY.”

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Now, tomorrow, Kevin DeYoung is going to be back to challenge common Christian perceptions, and he’s going to encourage realistic views of what it means to live a life of Christian faithfulness. That’s tomorrow. We hope you’ll join us.

On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Shelby Abbott. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

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