Engaging Tim Keller on the Doctrine of Sin

Hey everyone, welcome once again to the podcast,

Conversations That Matter. I'm your host, John Harris. We have one subject today, and that is the first chapter of this particular book,

Engaging With Keller. Now this book is out of print now. It cost me a pretty penny to acquire it on,

I think Amazon is where I found it. It's probably over $100. And if you can find a deal that's cheaper than that, it's actually a pretty good deal.

And I don't know fully why it's out of print. I have a suspicion that maybe one of the reasons could be, and I need to talk about this anyways before I get into the whole situation with Keller, is one of the editors of the book,

Ian Campbell, and I believe Ian Campbell's the one who also wrote the first chapter, which we're gonna go over some quotes from, did not end his ministry very well.

I'm not that familiar. I just know that when I mentioned this book in the past, someone brought up to me that Ian Campbell apparently committed suicide in the wake of the revelation or the potential revelation of an affair, and I don't really know anything past that.

And I don't really need to know anything past that. I do wanna say this about the book.

Most of the chapters are not written by Ian Campbell. I think it might even just be the first one, but because he is a general editor, this has, for some at least, been a point which the people who like to defend

Keller perhaps, I don't know, but what I'm told is that they use this as a way of discrediting the whole work.

And this is my encouragement to you, and this is a good opportunity to encourage the exercising of some legitimate discernment and good judgment.

In fact, and I'll draw a parallel case to this. I'm now a music director at my church, and one of the issues that arises often is what do you do with songs performed by people or sometimes even written by people who did not end well or their ministry's gone off or their band or if it's a soloist, their theology has gotten odd.

And I think you use judgment. There is some wisdom that must be applied.

If it's a very prominent name who is very known for a particular kind of sin or heresy, and if they had the one good song and 90 % of their songs are terrible, they're converted to Mormonism and that's what they sing about,

I don't know, I'm giving you a hypothetical, then even if it's a good song, you may wanna pull it from congregational worship just because you know it's gonna distract.

And that's really the issue is it distracts from the rest of the service. However, it doesn't make the song or the lyrics in the song necessarily wrong, especially let's say someone put a psalm to music and then ends their ministry poorly.

Does that make the psalm poor? No, they happen to be artists that put music to it. And what

I'd like to suggest without getting too into detail about my grid for evaluating these things is that in a situation like this where you have someone who did not end well in ministry, take the arguments they're making on their merits because that's what this book is about.

This book is about the theology of Tim Keller and whether or not this theology conforms to biblical and orthodox standards.

And if there's someone who, surprise, surprise, sins, I sin by the way, and less so hopefully as time goes on as I become closer to Christ, but if someone sins and they end their ministry in a state of sin without repentance, let's say, that does not mean that their arguments or the observations that they had or the just comparisons of faulty ideas to biblical ideas that they pointed out were in error.

In other words, when someone brings something like this up to discredit a work, it ends up being more of an ad hominem.

It's against the man. It's actually technically a fallacy. And I'm used to it. The left deals with in this.

That's their main argument is an ad hominem attack. They destroy people who pose a threat to them and they will do anything.

They'll string together a narrative. They'll create a false narrative. And if they have something that's low hanging fruit like this, where someone legitimately did engage in some sin and end their ministry very poorly,

I think the tendency is to point that out and to make that the issue rather than the arguments that that particular individual brought forward that were legitimate, that were legitimate.

So I wanna just say that. I also wanna say that I also put this book through my own grid and I wanted to not just take for granted or take the word of the authors as truth just because they said it.

That's not what I'm doing. I'm not doing another illogical fallacy which is an appeal to authority. That's not why we're doing this book.

And we're doing it because Tim Keller has some bad theology. I hate to break it to you and I wish it weren't true.

I really do. I might share some of my personal experiences with Tim Keller theology and seeing it, especially in campus ministry, which

I am still involved with and used to be also involved with during the times in which I was introduced to Keller.

And it's grieving because so many, so many,

I think I don't even realize the extent to which Tim Keller has been influential, especially in college ministry settings, urban ministry settings, not just there though.

It's beyond there. I mean, you have pastors in rural areas trying to implement Tim Keller things. It's just pervasive.

And this is, I think a good, this was a good attempt. This was published, I believe in 2014, if I'm not mistaken.

I'm gonna just make sure of that as I look it up. First published in 2013. So it's now, you're talking nine years ago that this was published.

I mean, that's ancient history, John, right? No, it's not. And I pointed this out before. In fact, my first book on social justice called

Social Justice Goes to Church is about this very point that many of the issues that we're dealing with right now have been around.

They just weren't as popular. You didn't see them in your circles as much, but believe me, the people who went to seminary, your pastors, your professors, if you are in seminary, a lot of these guys were influenced by more progressive evangelicals.

And you can go back to writings even in the 1970s and see this, but with Tim Keller, certainly you can go back 10, 15 years, even longer than that, and find what

Tim Keller is saying now is what he said then. And what is coming out of the mouth of his followers now that you didn't expect to hear were the things that he was saying back in the 90s, in the early 2000s.

And this would not have been a surprise, I think, had people, and in fact, this even applies to people in Tim Keller's church.

I had someone I remember from his church say, well, I never noticed this in Tim Keller, this social justice stuff until recently.

And I started looking through the sermon archives and I thought, man, if you were listening in church, you would have seen this.

And there's probably multiple reasons why we choose not to or we just don't see things that are right in front of us.

There's levels to this. But I think those who were paying attention did see this.

And there were even some blogs back in the early 2000s that were trying to shine a light on some of this and saying, hey, this

Tim Keller guy, he's going off the reservation. And it wasn't just social justice. It wasn't.

And that's what this book highlights. And that's what we're gonna talk about is the ways in which Tim Keller's theology is compromised.

But, and it, much of this actually does parallel or at least does contribute to the social justice movement in evangelicalism.

But it is not, you can separate it from that and it can stand alone. And the doctrine we're gonna go over today on sin,

Tim Keller's understanding of what sin is, is much in that same vein.

It's something that apart from social justice, this is a big, big problem.

And when I first read this, I'll give you more of my ideas on this as we go through, but I was really struck with how horrible, how honestly, dare

I say heretical, some of Tim Keller's views seem to be. And views that are, he's clever.

Views that you wouldn't notice on a first pass perhaps, unless you're very shrewd and your ears are very open.

Views, which if you're not looking for them, they don't just necessarily jump out at you because they're subtle, they're subtle shifts.

But these subtle shifts lead to monumental shifts. And we've seen a monumental shift,

I would say, in what calls itself the evangelical church. Not just politically, but a soft peddling of a softening of many of the very orthodox, very rooted doctrines that we as evangelicals believe.

Tim Keller has been perhaps the chief architect of the evangelicalism we live in today. He's not a detached observer.

He is the builder in some ways. He is the architect of this. So as we go through this series, and I'm gonna just go through each chapter, that's the plan at least, and how many chapters are there?

I think there's seven or eight. As we go through each chapter, I'm just gonna give you what

I think is a fair summation. I won't give you everything. You have to get the book if you want everything, but I'll give you what I think is a fair summation.

And then you can draw your own conclusions. That's the goal here. You draw your own conclusions. And I think this is gonna be beneficial.

I really do. I think not just if you're someone, you may be someone actually who has already dismissed Tim Keller. You say, ah, he's not really orthodox or ah, he's not helpful.

And I would encourage you, listen anyway, because if it's not coming out of Tim Keller's mouth, it's coming out of someone else's mouth, someone that he might've discipled, even if he doesn't realize it, people following his example, and they're gonna say some of the same things.

And so you're gonna need to know what's wrong with that. How do I respond to that? How do I even notice that there's an error there?

So tremendously helpful book, and not because of the people necessarily involved.

In fact, I am unfamiliar with the writings of I'd say most of them. I think the only one, if I look through this list of authors here, that I thought, oh yeah,

I know who that guy is. Might've been D .A. Hart, because I read another book of his. As far as the other authors of this particular work, yeah,

I can't tell you. I don't really know much about most of them. Yeah, I didn't even recognize,

I think. And it's because they're coming from, I think the Presbyterian world, and I'm just not as in that world.

But yeah, D .A. Hart, I did recognize, D .G. Hart. See, I didn't even get his name right. It's D .G. Hart. I did recognize his name.

So anyway, let's go through it. We're gonna start with the chapter on sin, and Tim Keller's view of that, versus the biblical orthodox view of sin.

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promo code CONVOS. Well, let's get into the subject at hand now, which is

Tim Keller. And I'm gonna start with the introduction to this particular work and some quotes from it.

So we're not in the chapter yet, but we'll get there shortly. In the introduction, which is by Ian Campbell and William Schweitzer, they say this on page 17.

We gladly acknowledge that Keller intends to teach the Orthodox truth. The question is whether or not he fully succeeds in this good intention in the specific cases considered below.

We think that the root of the difficulty arises from the very challenging task that Keller has assigned himself to communicate the old

Orthodoxy in relevant ways to a contemporary postmodern audience. They say on page 21, the problem comes in the way he chooses to express his

Orthodox faith. So here's what I want you to listen to what they're saying, the editors, versus what

I think the conclusion that I'm drawing and what many of you will draw. The editors of this book are saying

Keller's not a heretic. Keller is not a false teacher. Keller is just, he's just a bit confused.

He's just, he has such a challenging task. And it's understandable that someone would get a bit off when they're trying to undertake this task.

And he's assigned himself here. He didn't have to do it, but someone had to do it. Keller's doing it. And wouldn't you know, he got off a bit and he has an

Orthodox faith, but he just chose to express it in the wrong way. So the song makes sense.

The lyrics make sense, perhaps. But the mode or the music, it just doesn't fit these lyrics.

You can see why some might start reading this book who have an issue with Keller and just put it down at this point and say, well, whatever, like this is,

I clearly am not gonna get the truth. And I would encourage you to keep reading because I think what

I came to the conclusion at the end, I just thought the case that they're making is pretty strong against Keller here.

And it's in fact, it's so strong. I don't know how you draw a conclusion other than this guy is a subversive element in the church and he's peddling false doctrine.

I don't really know how you get around that with all the things that are revealed here. And so I don't know if this is playing politics.

I don't know if this is, I'm sure they legitimately believe this in some sense, but I don't know why they chose to say this because listen to this, this is two pages down from page 21, page 23 in the introduction, and they say this.

We are concerned with the way Keller conveys some specific doctrines, such as teaching on creation that seems to legitimize theistic evolution, a teaching on sin that seems to overemphasize the impersonal effects of sin in this life and underemphasize sin as disobedience to the law of God, a doctrine of hell that seems to minimize

God's role in condemning sinners to hell or meeting out wrath, a divine dance teaching on the

Trinity that seems to undermine the eternal begetting of the son as the procession of the spirit, and a teaching on the mission of the church that seems to say that our given task is to transform the culture.

Now, you read all this and you think, man, these are a lot of issues and pretty fundamental problems

Keller has. I mean, the Trinity, really? The divine dance teaching that undermines the eternal beginning of the son as a procession of the spirit.

I don't really know exactly how to read it other than you have a false teacher in front of you guys.

That's, yeah, I'm open to people trying to convince me otherwise of this, but the more

I read Keller, the more I think, man, this guy is good. This guy is clever, but what road is he taking you on?

Is it the narrow way? Now, I think someone can be saved through, I mean, there's, I mean,

I've met people saved within the Roman Catholic Church even. There's enough exposure to Jesus and to the gospel and to the

Bible somewhere along the line, or at least there's enough there to try to get someone curious about those things that they end up finding through God's drawing, of course,

Jesus Christ, and they become saved. And I think that can happen. I think there probably are a number of people who have been saved, perhaps even out of atheism or other things, and what

God used to draw them, perhaps could have been a Tim Keller book. I think that's, there's nothing that tells me

I have to say that all of the fruit of Tim Keller is, that it's an either or, whereas every single thing

Tim Keller touches turns to dust, and it's horrible. I think in general, yes,

I think Tim Keller's effect on Christianity has been horrific.

But God uses sometimes means, I mean, and in fact, he always uses means that are weak.

Preaching the word, I mean, fallen humans preaching, that's a weak means that God uses, and he gets credit for it.

And so if he can use Balaam's donkey, if he can use Pharaoh, if he can, I think he can use

Tim Keller. So I just wanna kinda head that off at the past, that for those who have found some truth in Keller, because there is some truth in Keller, the problem is it's mixed with error.

And the error is what we are gonna be focusing on today, and throughout this series. So let's start with the doctrine of sin.

The doctrine of sin. Keller wants to move his readers, says Ian Campbell, who authored this chapter, away from the idea that sin can be defined merely in terms of breaking divine rules, that is in breaking the commandments of God.

He instead defines sin as that which replaces God in giving a person his or her identity.

By identifying ourselves with race or status or ethnicity, we invariably develop enmity and hostility towards others, other expressions of race, status, and ethnicity.

So this is Keller's rebranding of this doctrine of sin. And you can tell right away, this dovetails with what the world is telling us, this egalitarian impulse the world has, this globalist impulse, this sexual anarchy impulse, to erase any line that might exist between people groups, between even gender, between nations, and when it comes to eroding borders, and gaining more international oversight, even over medical decisions made in our country.

You can see so many examples, almost everything that's going on right now has to do with this, doesn't it? And what

Keller is saying is that, that whole identity, seeing yourself as a particular race or status or ethnicity, you know, that's a problem.

What happens is you start to then, you start to quibble with other races, statuses, and ethnicities.

And of course, CRT kind of sidesteps this whole issue by claiming, the people who advocate it, that race is just a social construct.

And so really what's happening in that is it's a, it's purely an argument against oppression and oppressors when you identify yourself as a minority.

It's not saying anything concrete about you. It's not rooted in anything that's physical, tangible, real, created.

It's simply an artificial construction that people use to divide people up so they can oppress them.

And Keller right now is, what he's saying, dovetails very nicely with that, that these identities are the barriers.

These are what's getting in the way of human flourishing, of the world that we could have if we just didn't have these identities that cause confusion and mistrust and war and violence and feuds.

Why can't we just see ourselves in a more bland way, a general way? We're humans.

I don't know. Keller doesn't say that here, but that would be the implication I would draw is that, hey, if those things are all problems, then how should

I see myself? I mean, you could say that even seeing yourself as a Christian would be divisive, wouldn't it?

I mean, under Keller's logic. But this appeals to the zeitgeist today. Keller wants to move his readers from the idea that sin can be defined by breaking divine rules.

So it's identity issues, not your action necessarily. It's not the fact that you're lying and stealing and murdering.

All those are sins. It's something, in Keller's mind, that goes much deeper. And that is that you got an identity problem.

And guess what? Most of the people in our culture today have identity issues. They moved around a lot. They have broken families.

They don't know who they are. Especially if they're straight white males, they're being attacked constantly.

And they try to distance themselves from who they are. And we just have a lot of problems with identity issues.

I mean, it's actually something that I don't think, the church, you know, it's time for the church to step up.

Well, sure it is. But we're gonna need a miracle from God because the church is not able to bear the strain of all the issues that are going to be coming upon at the feet of the church, at the door of the church.

And it's already putting a strain on pastors. It's, I think, a great strain on counselors.

And there's just a lot of issues out there right now. And to come into this environment and to start saying that, you know, you have an identity problem, that's the issue.

It resonates. It resonates. And Keller knows that it resonates. Well, let's get off on a good foot here.

This is the issue with Keller already that he is defining sin differently.

The rule -breaking is very much in the background if he talks about it at all.

The identity issues are very much in the foreground and it's palatable today.

But what does the Bible say? Does he get this from the Bible? Now, the biblical definitions of sin, there's many of them, many passages that talk about this, at least.

But we could start it with Leviticus 5 .17. It says, now, if a person sins and does any of the things which the

Lord has commanded not to be done, though he was unaware, he is still guilty and shall bear his punishment.

Well, there you have it. What is sin? Well, doing things the

Lord has commanded not to be done. James 4 .17, so for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.

It's not doing the right thing. 1 John 3 .4, everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness and sin is lawlessness.

Sin is breaking God's law, sin is missing the mark, sin is failing in these ways. Romans 8 .7,

because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, it does not subject itself to the law of God for it is not even able to do so.

This is the dismal condition of humanity apart from Christ. There's not even an ability to keep

God's law, to please him in that way. Now, I know that some have gone overboard with this doctrine to the point where they're saying, they say things that like, we're so depraved that we can't do anything good from, and what they mean by it is from a temporal earthly perspective.

And this just doesn't comport with the biblical text because Jesus talks about even the ungodly, even the unrighteous, if their son asks them for a fish, do they give them a snake?

No, and that's the obvious answer to that question, no. There are some natural instincts that God has placed in man, self -preservation being one of them, and these are good things.

In fact, there is a law of God, as we see from Romans 1, written on the hearts of humans.

And the thing is, humans suppress that, they go against it, but there's a wiring that they have despite the fact that we live in this biblically sinful world.

And so when we're talking about mankind being thoroughly evil not even being able to subject itself to the law of God, we are talking about doing so with right intentions, doing so for God himself, so the right reasons, motive plays into this.

And this is, what happens in the court of heaven when you go before him and you say, Lord, I protected my family,

I led a good life, I didn't murder anyone. And the Lord says, and why did you do it? You're filthy, your righteous deeds were filthy rags.

So this is what we're talking about here. Motive is very important, and apart from the working of the

Holy Spirit, salvation in Christ, there's no way that humanity is capable of doing anything good.

This is what the Bible talks about. Everything that we do is gonna be missing the mark somehow, in some way.

It's gonna be breaking God's law. It's gonna be for, there's gonna be mixed motivations that an evil is going to be right there.

So this is what the Bible, crash course here. This is not exhaustive, but this is what the

Bible says about sin. That's very different than what you even have seen already from Tim Keller, but we're gonna get into a lot more.

Tim Keller says this in his book, Center Church. He says, when I first began ministry in Manhattan, I encountered a cultural allergy to the

Christian concept of sin. I found that I got the most traction with people. However, when I turned to the

Bible's extensive teaching on idolatry, sin, I explained, is building your life's meaning on anything, even a good, very good thing, more than on God.

Whatever else we build our life on will drive our passions and choices and end up enslaving us.

So you can already see this shift. Tim Keller is saying, look, I'm in Manhattan. And I start talking about sin, and I talk about you've broken

God's law. If I go down that path, I talk about what the Bible says about sin. People just turn me off, but I found that if I talked about idolatry and then framed it in such a way that, look, you're enslaving yourself when you do this.

When you commit acts of idolatry, you are, don't you feel enslaved?

And in Manhattan, this is easy. You're enslaved to your job. You might feel enslaved to certain passions and sinful tendencies you have that are, and maybe they're not even sinful necessarily in and of themselves, the motives perhaps could be.

But you might even feel trapped in family situations that you should be in, but you don't wanna be in.

I mean, the idea that people feel constrained and they want liberation, they want freedom,

I mean, that is all the rage right now. Everyone feels like they're oppressed or enslaved by something.

And so if you can just tell them, look, you're enslaved to something. It's the cops.

They're the ones keeping you down. You fill in the blank. Then that resonates.

People are like, yeah, I wanna be free and I want my liberation. And I mean, I just don't feel it.

And newsflash, no matter what happens in this life, and I'm talking about the greatest totalitarian regimes, which we want to avoid as much as we possibly can, to the most laissez -faire situations in human history, human beings, you could always drum up this sense of dissatisfaction in humans, that there's something outside their control, even if it's just the march of life and how we're gonna die one day.

I mean, there's something outside our control that's negative, that we wish wasn't there, that we feel constrained by.

And so if you start on that foot, then some people are saying, look, I get more traction. And he would,

I would think, if that's his message. Look, you're damaging yourself.

Instead of starting with, you sinned against God. You see the difference? He says this, this is an article in 2008 that he, an interview he gave,

I guess, to USA Today. He said this, they do get the idea of branding, of taking a word or term and filling it with your own content, so I have to rebrand the word sin.

Literally said that, I have to rebrand the word sin. Around here, and this is in his Redeemer Network churches, it means self -centeredness.

So what is sin to Kim Keller? We talked about what it means in the Bible, but what to Kim Keller, sin just means self -centeredness.

The acorn from which it all grows. Individually, that means I live for myself, for my own glory and happiness, and I'll work for your happiness if it helps me.

Communally, self -centeredness is destroying peace and justice in the world, tearing the net of interwovenness, the fabric of humanity.

And I think in general, people can get behind this. Even now, it's like, yeah, even selfish people, sometimes will readily admit that the issue that they face is some kind of a selfishness.

It's funny to me how many people could correctly identify Trump's narcissism, or he's so self -centered.

Sure he is, he's Trump. He's always been that way. But they neglected to see the ways in which they themselves were very self -centered.

Wasn't perhaps as gaudy, wasn't as flashy. But it's right there.

Just go on your Instagram profile and see what you see. The focus is very much on self.

It's very much on one's own. And look, I'm not saying I'm exempt from this.

I don't really get on Instagram. I technically have one. I post every once in a blue moon, but I have other social media accounts.

And look, I wanna look good. I want people to think well of me, right? That's a natural human tendency to some extent,

I suppose. But if I can even artificially make myself look good, that can be tempting.

I'm thankful I lived for most of my childhood and then my early to mid -teen years without much internet access, or I didn't have a smartphone.

Anyway, I'm not getting on a whole thing about smartphones, but I think that's a tool that has greatly amplified this ability, at least to make obvious one's concern for their own self, their own reputation, their own, and it's not wrong, again, these things, in their proper context, being concerned for your reputation is not necessarily a bad thing.

But when it becomes the driving force of your life, that you live through the opinions of others about yourself, and you're not focused on how do you help others, how do you love

God and neighbor, then you have a problem, right? Biblically speaking, because it's against the law of God. I think though, self -centeredness today, the way that many people look at it, they only see certain shades of it as being authentically selfishness.

And there's a celebrity kind of self -centeredness that's just not viewed that way by the world.

And so this is a concept that has some range to it, and some,

I would say, vagueness to it, enough that people in general will still assent to saying they're against that kind of behavior.

I'm against selfishness, sure. I think that people who only care about themselves, and CEOs that get golden parachutes, and buy themselves yachts, but they don't care about the hunger in the world,

I mean, that's selfish. And we should really, you know, that kind of thing is, the world responds to that.

And they consider that to be selfishness, and they hate that. And so it's a particular kind of selfishness, but if you start the conversation off there, you can kind of hide in the vagueness.

And Keller's not saying he's doing that, but I think that's probably what ends up happening. I'm gonna show you at the end of this, kind of how

Keller, even when he talks about the sin of homosexuality, how he maneuvers that whole conversation to, and I think one of the things is, he kind of hides in a vagueness.

He says things, they sound like they're fortune cookies, they sound very wise, but they're very confusing. And he understands,

I think, he's made a study of people in Manhattan. He understands how they think. And reifying words, or taking words that are negative to them, which

I think is probably what's happening here, taking a concept or a word that is negative to those people, and then seeing where's the parallel in scripture.

Oh, scripture also talks against selfishness. Man, we can use this. We can use this to communicate, to inject, without them maybe even knowing an understanding of sin.

He says this in Center Church, page 128, depicting sin as an act of misplaced love, not just a violation of law, is more compelling to many people in our culture today.

Of course, a complete biblical description of sin, and grace must recognize our rebellion against the authority of God's law. So this is where I think the problem comes in with Keller, is the of course here.

Of course, yeah, of course, you have to recognize rebellion against God's law. I mean, that's, of course, that's part of it.

But why take that for granted? Why just, you know, it's not just a violation of law.

You can see the priority that Tim Keller places on this, and we're gonna get into this more as we unfold, what the exact move that's happening is, because this isn't all vague.

There's a real move that's happening, which is that there's a replacement, there's a switching out of consequences with causes, and we'll get into it.

But he shows that he understands. He understands the Orthodox teaching, to some extent, at least he understands sin is a violation of God's law, the biblical teaching.

He understands where people are at in Manhattan, and how they're opposed to the biblical teaching.

And so he comes up with his own term, or his own, he fills the word sin with his own content.

He rebrands it. He switches things up. And this is, at the very least,

I would say, unbiblical methodology, praxis. You could say this is, you know, unbiblical theology, but even if you don't wanna go there, you can at least say, well, this is a wrong application, which is what the authors, that's the case that they're making.

Just a wrong application. He says in King's Cross, the book King's Cross, if you center on anything but God, you will suffer a loss of identity.

You don't really know who you are. In the darkness, you can't see yourself. Now, this is the kind of language that I think

Keller uses a lot, a lot. And I've gone over a number of his sermons on this. He constantly talks about how people are essentially alone at sea, without any bearings.

And it's true, and people resonate with it, and they're just looking everywhere. I saw this at the county fair this year, witnessing to people that so many of the younger people, especially, they're just open to anything.

They'll go to the Christian booth, and they'll go down to the witchcraft booth or something. They just, they're looking for something because they're so ungrounded.

And so if you approach it the way Tillman Keller approaches it, I think you will probably see, at least a receptivity initially, that you would not see if you had, if you start with just what the

Bible says. And maybe perhaps, maybe the allure here is we can improve upon the

Bible. You know, that's what I keep thinking through all these issues with Keller, is, man, he thinks he can improve on what the

Bible says here. How can he say that? On a practical level,

I will say this. If you start attracting someone with the wrong, in the wrong way, and you spend a lot of time with them, and then you reveal the real truth to them, and they reject it, you've wasted a lot of time.

It's better to reveal the truth, and then see who God's drawing, and then work with them.

Inadequate definitions of sin. Here we go. Here's what Tim Keller says about sin. And these are, some of this is partially true, but again, inadequate.

In the reason for God, he says, "'Sin is the despairing refusal "'to find your deepest identity "'in your relationship and service to God.

"'Sin is seeking to become oneself "'to get an identity apart from him.'" He says, on the same page, "'Sin is not just doing bad things, "'the doing of bad things, "'but the making of good things into ultimate things.'"

So what he's doing is he's taking idolatry, and he's making that the sin, that that is what sin is.

It's idolatry, ultimately. It's not just doing bad things. It's not breaking God's law, in other words. It's not just that.

It's making good things into ultimate things. Now, is that true, John? Can't you take good things?

Didn't you just say that you can do good things, like loving your family for the wrong motives? You're right,

I did say that. You can make good things into ultimate things, and you can do good things for wrong reasons.

But that's, but again, where does this steer someone? What's the emphasis? Is this adequate?

Is this an adequate definition of what sin is? The emphasis certainly isn't an adequate, it's not an adequate emphasis.

The emphasis in Scripture is it's doing bad things. It's just obeying God's law. That's what

Scripture says. You don't find this, I mean, even idolatry is disobeying

God's law, again. So this is a weird, it's not a tension you see in Scripture.

Scripture doesn't have this tension, where you don't just have doing bad things, but also making good things into ultimate things.

Scripture would just say, this is all doing bad things. The sparing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God.

Okay, well, that's, I mean, it's wrong, I guess. I mean, this is, again, so vague and kind of esoteric, it's even hard, it's not concrete enough, but it appeals to postmodern people.

But refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God, there's so many issues

I could see happening here. What if someone doesn't have a relationship with God? They're not sons of God, they're not children of God, they're children of the devil.

What is sin to them? Is sin refusing to find their deepest identity in their relationship and service? They don't have one, so it can't be that.

It has to be breaking God's law. And part of breaking God's law is idolatry.

That is part of it. Making idols in your mind of who God is, when that's not who God is.

Getting an identity apart from him. This is also weird to me. I mean, we have different layers of identity.

And I have an identity as a member of my family. I'm a Harris, okay? So did

I get that identity apart from him? Is that, I mean, am I in sin for thinking of myself in those ways?

I mean, you could easily come to that conclusion from reading this. This is sloppy stuff at best, but this is what oohs and aahs people in Manhattan.

And I don't know exactly, I mean, I know people have gone to the church and I don't want to speculate on the demographic that goes there.

But I think a lot of people also who have been alienated in their minds from other churches and pursued secularism and so forth, and now there's a version of Christianity out there that speaks their language more.

It hits the right notes, but it doesn't sound, and that's one of the,

I think, geniuses of Keller perhaps. His cleverness is demonstrated in the fact that he doesn't sound like your typical preacher.

And I think that's what people, they want. They want a TED Talk. They don't want a sermon. This is TED Talk stuff. This is fortune cookie stuff.

And that appeals to a certain demographic. It's a demographic more on the left, though, I will tell you. It definitely is.

It's not something that appeals to people on the right as much who want very concrete, just tell me the truth.

And you end a Tim Keller sermon sometimes and you're just like, I don't know what he just said. But you feel good about it somehow, and you don't know how.

You know, I feel smart. I feel like it was uplifting. It hit a high note, and it was an emotional experience, but what did it actually teach you?

How did it actually make a difference in your life? He says this on page 50 of the

Prodigal God. He says, he presents the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son as lost, yet who has no sins on the list.

So when Keller argues, this is the, this is according to the author of this section.

So when Keller argues that, quote, Keller says this, sin is not just breaking the rules. It is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and judge.

He is rather begging the question. To place oneself in the place of God is breaking the rules.

The sin of the older brother is a violation of the law. So if you read that book, you'll find that Keller makes this distinction.

There's the older brother, there's the younger brother, and they're both evil, essentially, and we don't think of the older brother as evil because he kept the law.

He didn't go off and become a prodigal son. So, you know, he's got a leg up. Keller's saying, no, no, no, he's in sin.

And he is. He is in sin for not wanting to celebrate the return of his brother. However, however, they're both breaking

God's law. That's the point. It's not that one is breaking God's law and one isn't. And so we can now come up with a new rebranding of sin based upon this, that sin is more than just breaking

God's law, or that's just one part of sin. There's another kind of sin that doesn't break God's law, but is also sin because you're making yourself out to be your own savior.

That's all rubbish because it's all sin. What the older brother did was sin. What the younger brother did was sin.

Now, I would argue the younger brother went much deeper into sin, but they're both in sin, and it's violations of God's law.

So this is the tension Tim Keller tries to strike, and that's the move. And, you know,

I think, I feel so bold as to say this is a move away from orthodoxy, is what this is.

Because if you put, you know, rule -breaking over here, breaking God's law, and that's what sin is, and you say that's not, you know, that's under the umbrella of what sin is, but that's not a comprehensive definition of sin.

Sin is also this other thing over here that is not that, that is making yourself your own savior, and you define that as something that's not part of the rule -breaking element, then you're creating a distinction that the

Bible doesn't create. And it enables you to talk to people who are secular in ways that orthodox believers of the past would never talk to them.

Because you can then, you can have, you have options. You can approach them as people who, you don't even have to get into that whole law thing.

You don't have to bring the law up as the thing that convicts them of sin. You just have to start talking about how they feel unsatisfied or unfulfilled, or they're just looking for their own identity on this journey, and then you can present that as the great problem they have that Jesus can correct.

And the thing is, see, there's some truth to this, but then, but that's, again, there's sin involved in that.

That's the thing. So you're taking the edge that the Bible gives you, that sword of the law, and you're putting it on the shelf and saying,

I'm not gonna use that. That'll cut too deep. That'll hurt them. They'll get pricked, and they won't wanna listen to the rest of what

I say when that's exactly what they need. They have to die to themselves. And you're not going to find a way to take out that heart of stone to help in that endeavor, at least, if you're not willing to take the sword.

So that's my issue with this. Keller's thesis is this. Keller's basic thesis, according to the author, is both of our condition and God's remedy for it is that our problem is the problem of idolatry, which may take many forms, but is basically the taking of things that are essentially good and worthwhile and making them our substitute gods.

Our enslavement to them leads to a distortion of reality and a corresponding failure to experience the place, the peace of forgiveness.

Only by treasuring Christ can the distortion be righted. That's Keller's thesis.

The problem, of course, with this is that Keller absolutizes the prohibition of idolatry, which subjectivizes and relativizes the issue.

He waters down idolatry to make it the driving force behind everything we do.

It's this all -encompassing sin. Some think that he got this from, some say he gets this from Calvin, Human Hearts and Idol Factory.

Some say, well, you know, he got it from Kuiper because Kuiper had this tendency to kind of, I guess, in some of his writings to make everything idolatry.

And yeah, and I'm not here to comment on that. I just know that it doesn't match what

I've read, at least. I don't think I could see Calvin on the streets of Geneva approaching things the way

Keller's here, doing it here. All I know is that Keller, when he does this with idolatry,

I think he softens it. I think he softens it. And I think if that's what he makes sin out to be, that's the main, the spring from which sin forms.

And it's things like, well, you know, you just love your family a little too much. It could be that you did something horrible, but it also could be something pretty innocuous that even comports with what

God wants you to do, in general. He wants you to have a family and love your family, for instance.

Then you make idolatry out to be this very kind of nebulous thing that we don't exactly know, perhaps in definite terms, when we're engaging in it.

We just know we are. And the symptom is that we don't feel fulfilled. That's what you get when you go down this road.

What do you do when people don't feel quite fulfilled and they're Christians? And they're, you know, I'm not supposed to be doing this. I must be in idolatry somewhere.

This, by the way, can create some very guilty consciences, despite what it says on the front end.

I know on the back end, that's what this can do. All right, part of the problem with this approach is its subjectivity, the author says.

When Keller says in center church that the biblical theme of idolatry challenges contemporary people, it shows them that paradoxically, if they don't serve

God, they are not, and can never be as free as they aspire to be. He sounds more like a life coach than a gospel preacher.

The primary focus of the gospel is to restore our relationship with God, not our personal wellbeing.

This is to reverse the Pauline argument. For Paul, idolatry is the symptom, not the cause.

And if you read Romans chapter one, you will see this clearly. Paul talks about this great problem of idolatry arising in these incrementally getting worse and worse and worse.

And it's the symptom of doing what? Of forsaking the worship of the true God. That's what it is.

It's forsaking God. Well, how do we forsake God? Well, we sin against him. We sin.

Idolatry is also sin, but so is sexual morality, so is disobedience to parents, so is, I mean, all the 10 commandments you can go through.

These are all sinful. Men love sin. Men love darkness. That's why they hate the light, says in John.

So men run towards these things, these activities that they like, and they don't want the light shining on them.

And it's uncomfortable to think of that there's this God of light that will judge them. So what do they do? Come up with their own gods.

Idolatry is more the symptom. Tim Keller reverses this. Tim Keller makes, instead of what

Paul says about idolatry being this symptom, it becomes the cause. Everything starts with idolatry, and then that's what actually motivates all your bad things.

And if you just get rid of that idolatry, then you would be fine. Keller conflates the consequences of sin in people with sin itself.

Sin becomes things like unfulfilled or unrealized identity. Keller's focus shifts in a subtle manner away from the

God against whom the sin is committed. And this is the big man -centeredness of Tim Keller's theology. I don't care how reformed you say he is, how reformed you think you are because you read

Tim Keller, this is not really reformed. Tim Keller is shifting.

Instead of focusing on God and how we've offended him, it's more on how we've broken ourselves.

In fact, oftentimes you'll hear this today, sin is brokenness. Instead of talking about sin, we'll talk about brokenness.

And this centers it on the damage it does to people. Does sin damage people? Of course it does.

Of course it does. But what's a greater crime? The fact that it offends God or the fact that it damages people?

Obviously it's the fact that it offends God. And people who are centered on themselves don't want to think about that God.

They're still in idolatry. So to appeal to them on the basis of you're hurting yourself and to make that your first step forward and the only step forward perhaps is not right.

This is not biblical. This is not the pattern we see. You can certainly mention that. That's certainly part of this recipe that they've concocted.

People who are engaged in sin have concocted. They don't realize what they're stumbling over, as Proverbs says.

But it is not the primary or the root issue with sin. It's not why, that's not what makes sin, sin.

It's not definitional to sin. It's a consequence of sin, not the definition of it or the cause of it.

Here's the danger. Keller's definition of sin as a false identity ultimately fails. By itself, it cannot explain the cross.

Think about it. If sin is just this idolatry, if this making yourself your own savior, if that's what sin is, what was

Jesus doing? He came to do what? To live a life we couldn't and pay the debts that we owe

God. What are those debts? Those debts are we've broken God's law. There's a penalty for doing that.

Keller doesn't really, and we're gonna get into the penalty stuff when we talk about hell and how Keller even in that is man -centered, that we choose hell.

He takes C .S. Lewis's line. We choose it. It's locked from the inside. Ridiculous, really.

But there's a point to be made that people, their actions are what brings them there, their sin.

But it's not as if God is just kind of aloof from this process.

Of course, God is involved in this. God is the one that is punishing sinners. Keller's definition of sin is cannot explain the cross.

And Keller does explain it. I mean, he does talk about substitutions and all this, but it doesn't make sense with the definition of sin he gives.

Without qualification, such subjectivism can actually serve to turn the gospel on its head.

The nature of sin is not idol -making, but law -breaking, of which the manufacturing of idols is a specific example.

So great point. I mean, the nature of sin is not idol -making, it's law -breaking. So if law -breaking is not the issue, there's no reason

Jesus had to come, and we've neglected what the Bible says about sin.

The condition of man under sin is much more serious than Keller's presentation would suggest. We do not simply manufacture idols.

We are enslaved in a condition of implacable hostility to God.

Now, he's riffing off of the John Calvin quote here about having a heart that's an idol factory.

I think, though, this is an important point to make, that Tim Keller's trying to give the impression he's going deeper, man.

It's more than just those fundamentalists who wag their fingers at you about drinking or something. Something sinful they think is sinful might not even be sinful.

It's not them. I'm Tim Keller, I'm gonna go deeper. I'm gonna tell you it's idols. How about we go deeper than Tim Keller?

Deeper than Tim Keller means we're enslaved in a condition of hostility to God. We start out, the default setting is sinful.

There isn't this option that we can go through life if we just don't sin. That option doesn't exist because we are, by nature, sinful.

We're in Adam. That's the problem. That's even deeper. It's part of our very nature.

Not something we choose for ourselves, some idol that we create that damages us, and oh no, we need Jesus now.

No, it's part of our very identity, or the core of our nature,

I should say, is set up against God. And that is why we sin.

That's why we do things that are contrary to God's law. Guilt cannot be explained without reference to the law.

The weakness in his discussion is that the categories of law by which he explained Jesus' death and his being made sin for us are not the categories by which he explains our own native guilt and sin.

Our derangement is not merely our self -centeredness, it is our law -breaking. Again, so why are you guilty?

You know, who did you offend? If you just hurt yourself, if that's the great problem, then why feel guilty?

You feel guilty because you know you broke God's law, and that's one of the problems that Keller's approach cannot really satiate that guilt.

Now, here's the result for believers. Keller concludes his analysis of the story of Jesus from Mark 2 concerning the

Sabbath that because the Lord of the Sabbath said it is finished, we can rest from religion forever. The author says

Keller has done the church a disservice with the suggestion that faith in Christ is the end of religion. And I thought about this, I thought about this.

If Sabbath -keeping is not important anymore, what other things are not important anymore?

How many churches are gonna be closed on Christmas this year? Question, if obeying

God's law is not important because we can rest from religion now forever.

If Keller gives, I don't know if I wanna call it easy believism, Keller's got sort of a unique, it is though, it is kind of.

It's not the old kind style easy believism though. It's different. I don't know exactly in what ways it's, every way it's different, but it's,

Keller gives the impression here that sin really isn't as bad as the

Bible makes it out to be. It's this damaging to yourself thing. And so he acts like a life coach.

Comes before you and you just gotta worship God, find your rest in God, find your identity in God and reject, you don't find your identity in your place or your race or your gender or whatever.

You find it all in God and then you'll be satisfied. And then you're good.

Like you don't need, he downplays religion so much. The rule keeping isn't important. It's not even what sin is.

And then once you're saved, that whole religion thing, you can rest from that forever. You don't need that.

You don't need that. You just need Jesus, right? That's the play here and that really is palatable to people who are, they are against the old style religion, the old religiosity, which by the way is the only way you can really have transcendence.

That's one of the problems. They reject all that, the forms, the rituals, the observances, the laws, all of that.

And there are legalistic churches, I get that. But I'm saying the whole, everything's thrown out.

The baby with the bathwater. And then the only thing is you just gotta find yourself in Jesus and that's about it.

There's nothing else to it. That creates in unbelievers a lack of, why would you even wanna go to church then?

You don't have to, I guess. Keller would probably appeal to you that this is going to enhance and it's, or maybe even it's necessary for to know

God. But I mean, really at the end of the day, if you got the Jesus thing down, you understand that your identity's in Jesus now, you don't need all that other stuff, right?

All that other stuff just causes division. It's opportunities for more idols. Man, maybe you could be too proud of even your church or your community.

So you see where I'm going with this. I have noticed a general trend and people who

I think are influenced by Keller very well could be a part of this.

That even Christians today devalue more and more and more the past tradition, but really the old religiosity.

And this eats into even the law of God. They downplay it so much to focus on supposedly the person of Jesus.

Jesus said, if you love me, you keep my commandments. So they're missing out on actually something that is more rich and deeper because they think that it's a barrier to them having a relationship that's rich and deeper with Jesus.

I think this is part of the fruit of Tim Keller, of his theology on this particular point.

People don't fear God. Why would you if you believe in Tim Keller's construction? The fear you should have is a fear that you might accidentally or on purpose create an idol that makes you miss out on the good things of life and gets in the way of human flourishing.

I mean, that's the fear that you have now. It's man -centered fear. It's not a fear of God. It's not a fear of breaking his law.

So this pacifies Christians. The thing that today that we need probably more than anything is a fear of God.

However, that fear is lacking from the church, from so many who claim to be Christians, even legitimate

Christians. They're just not on that wavelength much. I think Tim Keller's partially to blame for this, to be honest with you.

Now, what effect does it have on unbelievers? For this, I decided I wanted to play for you a clip. This clip is from,

I believe, 11 years ago. And this is Tim Keller at Columbia University.

And in this particular video, Tim Keller decides to answer a question on homosexuality.

I don't know if we'll play the whole thing. It's a few minutes. There's so many clips I could play, actually, of Tim Keller doing this, I was noticing.

But this is one I remember very, it stands out in my mind, and I just thought this is the one that I wanna play for you.

So here we go. Tim Keller at Columbia University answering a question on homosexuality. And I would assume this is to an audience that,

I mean, he's navigating this in somewhat of a hostile kind of audience to Christianity.

Again, 11 years ago, okay? So this, imagine trying to do this today. I don't think you could get away with what

Tim Keller's trying to get away with. But I think there's Christians today influenced by him thinking that they can. So here we go. The gay rights movement by the oppression and the discrimination against homosexuals.

And this questioner asks, what do so many of the churches have against homosexuals?

And what about your church's approach to homosexuality? Is it a sin? Are they going to hell?

Let's talk about my church first, which will be a little easier than try to answer for all the other churches of the world.

But I'll try. I mean, I'm representing all the churches of the world, all right, you know? But Christianity, I mean.

Yeah, I know. Let's start with mine. You go to the Bible quite often, and there are many evangelicals who will say it is listed as a sin in the

Bible, and these people are going to hell. Right, now, what you, now, what's wrong with what he said?

He's offended by this, but what, is he incorrect? It's listed as a sin, and the people who do it are going, that's almost verbatim certain

Bible verses, not just about homosexuality, other sins too, but yeah, this is a perfect inroad to, which is why we need

Jesus. And if they want to laugh at him, they laugh at him, but this is the truth.

What does Tim Keller say? Let's talk about my church again. Let's go back here.

What we would say is, I think it's unavoidable. I think most Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox Christians over the years have said, you read the

Bible, and the Bible has reservations. The Bible says homosexuality is not God's original design for homosexuality, okay?

There you have it. The Bible also says, love your neighbor. The Bible. So he's already sidestepping that it's a sin.

He's softening it into, it's not God's design. I mean, what he's saying is accurate, but I just want you to notice he's not just embracing what would be the biblical teaching that has been thrown at him, which is that it's a sin.

People who practice it are going to hell for that sin, just like any other sin. He instead wants to soften it as it's more from a, an affirming standard instead of a positive instead of a negative.

So the positive being that the best thing for humans is marriage. And at this point, actually, this is before, this is pre -2015.

So, I mean, this is a different world he's giving this in. I would argue today it would be much harder to do this. But, so not trying to be nitpicky here, but this is the on -ramp.

I will also, in fact, the Good Samaritan parable, which is how Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, you put a

Jew and a Samaritan there. So what Jesus is trying to say is everybody is your neighbor.

Gay people are your neighbors. People who are of other faiths are your neighbors. People of other races are your neighbors.

And it's the job of a Christian to do what Jesus did on the cross, which was to give himself for people who were opposing him and people who didn't believe in him even.

And so a Christian is supposed to say, I serve the needs and interests of all of my neighbors in the city, whether they're gay or straight, whether they're

Hindu or Muslim. I mean, Hindus, for example, don't believe in the Trinity. It's a different view than what the

Bible says. Gay people have a different view of sexuality than generally what you see in the New Testament. I'm supposed to love my neighbors.

So what I don't see is, at this point, I see some churches that are basically ignoring the places in the

Bible that talk about homosexuality in order to love their gay neighbor. And I see other

Christian churches taking very seriously what the Bible says about homosexuality, but in a very self -righteous way.

This is interesting, and this is, again, the third way. Tim Keller does, this is his play all the time.

He sets up a binary. There's these people who are wrong on both sides, and then he gets to be the one to navigate this.

And I mean, look, and he's so wise and brilliant. There are situations where there's two opposing sides, but for Keller, it's like every issue becomes this, it seems.

So in this circumstance, there's people who, I suppose, are legitimately loving their neighbors, and Keller, more or less, endorses them as Christians in some form, but they don't take the

Bible's prohibitions against homosexuality seriously. There's already, I think, a bit of a soft -pedaling here that those who don't take, there's an openness that people who are being unbiblical on the issue of homosexuality, they may have some really good motives.

They may just wanna love their neighbor, and that is, in fact, what they are doing. So you can see how, knowing what you know already about Tim's stance on idolatry and how idolatry is what sin is, it's not law -breaking, is,

I think, already starting to play into the way he navigates even this question. Because, and you'll see it even more,

I think, as we go through it, it allows him to soften certain things. Even the law of God, which is sharp, it's a sword,

Tim Keller can take that and dull the whole thing up and make it so it doesn't really hurt the people in the audience too bad, because, again, it's, there may be good motives for some

Christians to go the route of not taking the Bible's law very seriously and it's, there may be, he doesn't really do that for the more, he sorta does,

I guess. There may be good motives for those who wanna take it seriously, but these are the kind of Christians that everyone doesn't like, because they're equally bad, is what

I'm trying to say. They're equally bad because they're too forceful, they're too against homosexuality, they're just not loving their neighbor, and so what's the resolution to this?

I mean, he's kinda like, the question he wished the interviewer, I think, asked was, how do we love homosexuals and view it as a sin?

That's not the question that he was asked, but he's trying to, he wants that to be, I think, the question he was asked, and so that's the, he's gonna give the audience a perception of Christianity that we can hold to the law over here, but at the same time, we can also do, we can do the loving thing, and well, let's keep going in this, and then

I'll give you some more thoughts on the idolatry connection here. Do single out gay people. I mean, there are a number of conservative churches that will love their

Hindu neighbors and will love their Muslim neighbors and not their gay neighbors, and I really don't think there is any excuse for that, so that's what.

So there's no excuse for that, but is there an excuse for, it seems like there's an excuse for the soft -peddling, to love your neighbor, soft -peddle homosexuality, but there is no excuse for someone who then takes the biblical command so seriously that they fail to love their homosexual neighbors, whatever that is.

Again, it's super vague. I mean, I, therefore,

I have to take some responsibility of being a member of the Christian church for the oppression of homosexuals. Are committing homosexual acts a sin against God?

What do you mean by sin? Okay, here's the follow -up question. I'm trying not to focus on it, because I could, everything

Tim Keller says here, I'm like, no, he just took responsibility for the entire

Christianity's supposed oppression of homosexuals, I'm just like. So, today, that would not be a good move to make, but back then, it probably seemed palatable at the time.

So, the interviewer follows up, because he's like, he's thinking what I'm thinking, probably, he's like, you didn't answer my question.

So, what's the question? The answer is yes. Yes. Now, the reason, see, here's the problem with that.

So, why didn't Tim Keller say that initially? Is homosexuality a sin? He said, now he says it's yes, but he's gotta qualify it immediately.

He can't just say yes, and it's, there's other sins that are also wrong, but this one is a sin, and you better repent and believe, because fear

God, why is there no fear of God in any of this? Immediately, he's gotta qualify it.

No, you don't go to hell for being homosexual. But committing homosexual acts will get you to go to hell?

No, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait a minute. Right. No, because, you know, some people will say, no, it's not the homosexuality or being gay, it's doing gay stuff, that's the problem.

No, no, first of all, heterosexuality does not get you to heaven. Wait, well, the interviewer has better theology than Keller.

He's like, wait a minute, isn't, so doing these acts, doing homosexual acts, isn't that, doesn't that get you to hell?

Doesn't the Bible say this? Keller's not quoting scripture that does say this. Instead, Keller's making jokes.

Happen to know this. In case you missed it, he's saying, you know, hey, heterosexuality doesn't get you to heaven.

G .D. Greer repeated this years later, I think, in that infamous sermon on Romans 1, that, you know, homosexuality doesn't get you to hell because heterosexuality doesn't get you to heaven, which is like, you know, that's like saying, like, stealing things doesn't get you to hell because, you know, giving things away doesn't get you to heaven.

It's like, that's dumb reasoning. It doesn't, the point is that there are sins that do, that the

Bible says do bring you into judgment. That's the point. And he can't just fully accept that.

He has to do this weird kind of dance. So how in the world could homosexuality send you to hell?

And actually, the Bible, listen, this is true.

Jesus talks about greed 10 times more than he talks about adultery, for example, now.

This is the Bible whispers about sexual sin moment for Keller. One of the problems

Christians have here is partly, let's be nice to Christians. You know, when you're committing adultery,

I mean, you don't say, oh, you're not my wife. I mean, you know, you're committing, but almost nobody knows when they're greedy.

I mean, nobody thinks they're greedy, you know, because everybody is comparing yourself to other people. And so it's a frog in the kettle kind of thing.

However, the fact of the matter is the Bible is much harder on greed materialism. And it's a horrible sin, terrible sin. Well, will greed send you to hell?

No. What sends you to hell is self -righteousness, thinking that you can be your own savior and Lord.

What sends you to heaven is getting a connection with Christ because you realize you're a sinner and you need intervention from outside.

That's why it's very misleading actually to say, even to say homosexuality is a sin, because most people, yes, of course homosexuality is a sin because greed is a sin, because all kinds of things are sins.

But what most Christians mean when they say that, and certainly what non -Christians think they hear when they hear that is, if you're gay, you're going to hell for being gay.

It's just not true. Okay, here's the issue here. Keller has now, he has played with God's law in really fundamental ways.

He has said basically all these things that are sins, yeah, they're sins because he has to, the

Bible says they're sins, but those aren't judgmental offenses. In fact, if they're not offenses that are worthy of judgment, then

I'm not sure why you'd feel guilty for them. I'm not sure why you'd need Jesus. But he says, these are not offenses worthy of judgment.

These aren't the things that send you to hell. I mean, I don't know how, maybe if he was here, he'd disagree and say, no,

I do think those are worthy of judgment. But we're playing word games at this point. What's everyone hearing in the audience? Those don't send you to hell.

No thief, no adulterer will inherit. Anyway, all liars will have their part in the lake of, well, we don't want to get all biblical here because the

Bible is going to contradict what Tim Keller says, but what does he do? What is his substitute for the law then?

He said it right there. The thing that gets you sent to hell is your own self -righteousness, thinking that you're your own savior basically, which is what we've been going over today.

It's the idolatry thing. There's the one distasteful thing that's also, just like he said, greed is kind of subjective.

He picks something else that's subjective. And he says, that's the thing that gets you sent to hell, trying to be your own savior, thinking too much of yourself.

Like that's what sends you to hell. So what in effect is happening is

Tim Keller is using a very, I think, sophisticated, clever way, reasoning to implement a new standard, a new law.

And it is palatable with the new law that's coming upon us. I pointed this out last week with the reaction to alleged white supremacy or antisemitism and how in about 0 .5

seconds, you can get universal condemnation, even from people that are in that conservative Christian kind of side of things.

And it's like, it's the worst thing you can possibly do is say something that even could be construed that way. And that's why

I say we're all woke now. I mean, that's like after 2020, especially, like even the 90%,

I think of the people who say they're not woke, have a bit of wokeness in them. Maybe that's still, is that too high? 60%, 70%, it's a majority,

I think. The people who think they're not woke, they don't realize where they actually are because they've now adopted, so most of us have adopted a new standard where we downplay certain things that just aren't as important, but God says they're important.

Like for example, the sexual anarchy before us, it doesn't really get castigated even in our circles until it's full -fledged like pedophilia or drag queen library hour, grooming.

I mean, it's gotta be pretty bad. And even then, the left doesn't accept it, right?

But things like adultery, things like unjustified divorce, things like the side

B, revoiced theology, I mean, these are not, these aren't, you'll hear on this podcast how this doesn't comport with God's law and this is evil.

You're not gonna find it in the greater conservative Christian world. You're just not. But boy, man, if you say, even if it's not hatred for a person of another ethnicity, if you just happen to misstep by saying something that could be even deemed racially offensive, man, you're done.

And so, this is just one example. I think there's probably many examples of where our standards are very much changing.

And it's not that, it's obviously wrong to hate someone of a different racial background or something and to say hateful things to them because of that, on the basis of that.

The thing is, though, we want to have a standard that is shaped by the

Bible more than anything else. I think it's wise to go to tradition and church history and to see how this has been applied in other eras by godly men who had blind spots,

I'm sure, just like we do. But it's, the standard is God's character, which is, we find in the

Bible. We find that in special revelation. And we have a clear example of this, as Christians who have all the

Bible studies tools in the world available to us. Kim Keller, though, is softening all of this.

It's obvious to me his standard is not, there's another influence here that's creating a new standard.

And it might be a synthesis with the Bible, but it's not coming from the Bible directly at all. Absolutely not true.

So then what's the, how is homosexuality a sin? I'm not, well, homo, this is such a good question.

So you just, he's picking up what I just said. So how is homosexuality even a sin,

Tim Keller? If you just, you're saying it doesn't send you to hell. So, but it's, so you're still saying it's a sin, though.

How? Greed's a sin. In other words, it's not, doesn't help human flourishing. Basically, bingo, that's where it is.

It doesn't help human flourishing. Not because it offends a righteous holy

God. It doesn't help human flourishing. That's a man -centered view of sin, folks.

Christianity has an account of what we think human beings were built to do and what will therefore help human flourishing.

So we would say, if you spend all your money on yourself, that's bad, not only for your own soul, but for everybody else's.

We would say homosexuality is not the original design for sexuality. Therefore, it's not good for human flourishing.

We want people to do things that are good for human flourishing, but that's not what sends you to heaven or hell. Now there, maybe we ought to talk about that.

What sends you to heaven or hell really has to do with your faith in the gospel, which is that you can't be your own savior through your performance and your good works.

Now here, I'm coming at this like a Protestant now. Everybody's gotta be a particular.

I think the Orthodox people that like Keller, they wait for these certain Orthodox things he says, and they, oh good, he said it.

He said, I mean, obviously that's incomplete. It's what Jesus did. But yes, the starting point is you gotta realize that you can't make it there.

But in the process of saying all this, he just said that the problem with homosexuality isn't that it sends you to hell.

It's that it just is bad for human flourishing, and that's the Christian position on greed, apparently, too. They're just bad for us.

It's like eating candy instead of broccoli. That's apparently where homosexuality is.

The Christian, and there's difference of opinion within Christianity about this. But no, being gay doesn't send you to hell, and sin doesn't send you to hell like that.

The sin underneath the sin is, I am my own savior and my Lord, and that's the reason why Phariseeism, moralism,

Bible -believing people who are proud and think God's gonna take them to heaven because they're good, that's sending them to hell.

So this is a very persuasive way at an audience that's already wanting to hear this kind of thing, to convince them that it's those fundamentalist,

Christian nationalist types, those really serious about their Bible Christians, or the ones who just really wanna apply

God's law. You get into this weird place where breaking God's law doesn't send you to hell, but boy, sure, applying

God's law to people can send you to hell. Do you see this? Applying God's law to people can send you to hell, but breaking it, nope, that doesn't send you to hell.

This is actually pretty disgusting. This actually is so unbiblical, it's amazing. But Keller somehow gets away with this kind of thing.

Now, what's the effect of the people in the room, of the Christians in the room, or the non -Christians? What are they gonna take away from this, you think?

Are they gonna be like, oh, I need to go to Jesus? Because I, you know, no, they're gonna say, they're gonna think, man,

I guess I don't need to feel guilty for that. You know, that's Keller's view, but I don't have anything to fear.

Keller doesn't seem to be too concerned about my homosexuality, or my greed, or other sins, and as long as I don't impose biblical laws on other people, and as long as I'm cool with Jesus, that I realize

I can't really get there on my own, I need Jesus, then I guess I'm good. I guess I'm good. I mean, this is the death knell for the church.

This is not a way to survive what, at that time they thought was coming, and is now here.

This is a way to make sure that we don't survive any of that, and it was a mechanism for staying longer, for having influence longer, but ultimately, this is, it might get you liked by certain people, because you're not focusing on the rock of offense here, but you, in the long run, it will just, it just kills the church, it subverts your own people.

I mean, I know this is a lot to take in at once. It's a lot. Yeah, I mean, this is, but inside our church, therefore, there's just not going to be this disdain of homosexuals, it just can't be, not when

I'm teaching the gospel like that. Well, there shouldn't be a disdain of homosexuals, but there should be a disdain of homosexuality, and there should be a recognition that the people who practice it are going to hell.

That's, I'm not, that's the Bible. I'm not, convince me we're in the Bible.

It says what Keller's saying here. You know, show me that all the verses on this don't actually say what they say.

That's what you'd have to do. All right, well, I hope this was helpful for everyone. This is just the first installment in the series on this particular book, and we'll go through more as time goes on.

A quick announcement for everyone who's waiting, the patrons who are waiting on the Richard Weaver book that we're gonna discuss, that is still gonna happen.

My dad's been sick, and I'm gonna do it, I think, with him. I was gonna do it with my brother, but he moved on me, so probably my dad and I, and we're going to do this exclusively for patrons, and then they can participate in some way, but then we're gonna air it for everyone on this channel, so you won't miss out even if you're not a patron, but you won't be able to ask questions or participate, so that is gonna happen.

I don't have a date set yet, but it will soon, and I appreciate all the patience with me as I worked up to this

Keller stuff. I hope it's valuable for you as a believer in understanding where he's coming from, and really the damage that's been done to the church because of Keller's influence.