In the first part of this two-part blog post, Gospel-Centered Life Questions, I began by quoting Michael Horton, in his fine work, The Gospel-Driven Life, where he notes that:
“… we typically introduce the Bible as the ‘answer to life’s questions.’ This is where the Bible becomes relevant to people ‘where they are’ in their experience. Accordingly, it is often said that we must apply the Scriptures to daily living. But this is to invoke the Bible too late, as if we already knew what ‘life’ or ‘daily living’ meant. The problem is not merely that we lack the right answers, but that we don’t even have the right questions until God introduces us to His interpretation of reality.”
I then started comparing the world’s 8 ultimate life questions to the Word’s 8 ultimate life questions. And we began to see that the world doesn’t even get the questions right!
Today we look at ultimate life questions 5-8—contrasting the world’s shallow questions with the Word’s profound questions—and answers.
Ultimate Life Question # 5
The World’s Question: “How do people change?”
The Word’s Question: “How does Christ change people?” “How does Christ bring us peace with God?”
The world’s question focuses on human self-effort—which is the very definition of secular thinking. It’s all about me and my self-sufficient efforts to be a “better me” in my power for my good.
The Word’s question focuses on Christ-sufficiency—it’s all about Him, His power, for His glory—and becoming more like Christ, not simply a “better me.” Yes, there is a role that we play—but that role is a grace-empowered role. Already changed by Christ, we now put off the vestiges of the old us and put on the new person we already are in Christ—through the Spirit’s empowerment. And Christ not only changes our inner person; Christ changes our relationship with the Father from enemy to family, from alienation to peace.
Ultimate Life Question # 6
The World’s Question: “Where can we find help?”
The Word’s Question: “Where can we find a place to believe, belong, and to become—like Christ?”
The world says, “It takes a village.”
The Word says, “It takes a church.” Sanctification is a community journey with our brothers and sisters in Christ. As Ephesians 3:14-21 reminds us, it is together with all the saints that we grasp grace and grow in grace to glorify our gracious God.
Ultimate Life Question # 7
The World’s Question: “Where are we headed?”
The Word’s Question: “How does our future destiny impact our lives today?”
We all want to know, “What’s the point?” “What’s our purpose?” The world asks these questions in a vacuum.
The Word asks the destiny question knowing the answer and relevantly tying our future to our present. As Christians, our future destiny is eternity with God on a new heaven and a new earth where we have intimacy with God, purity in our hearts, and victory in our lives. Since this is true, the Bible urges us to live today in light of eternity. As saints who struggle against suffering and sin—our future makes all the difference in our lives now.
Ultimate Life Question # 8
The World’s Question: “Why are we here?”
The Word’s Question: “What’s our calling/purpose?” “How do we become like Christ”?
The world’s take on the question of ultimate meaning begins with a shallow question and responds with an even more superficial answer: “To be a better me.”
The Word sees our purpose as a calling in relationship to God and others. And the Word focuses our answer on Christlikeness. We are here to glorify the Father the way the Son glorified the Father. We are here to increasingly reflect Jesus. Each of us will do so in unique, idiosyncratic ways because we are each fearfully and wonderfully made to reflect Christ in a billion different ways.
The Right Questions and the Right Answers
I summarized Part 1 with this tweet-size summary, which also summarizes both of these blog posts:
To offer wise & loving biblical counsel, we must ask & answer gospel-centered biblical questions.
The world not only gets the answers wrong, the world’s questions are impoverished.
The Word not only gets the answers right, the Word’s questions are rich, robust, and relevant.
Join the Conversation
How are you biblically answering life’s second four ultimate questions?
- “How does Christ change people?” “How does Christ bring us peace with God?”
- “Where can we find a place to believe, belong, and to become—like Christ?”
- “How does our future destiny impact our lives today?”
- “What’s our calling/purpose?” “How do we become like Christ”?
Tweet It
To offer wise & loving biblical counsel, we must ask & answer gospel-centered biblical questions.
