A whole new way of seeing God

I read this this morning by Tim Keller and it changed what I was going to write. So this is Tim Keller on A whole new way of seeing God.


"But Christians are those who have adopted a whole new system of approach to God.
They may have had both religious phases and irreligious phases in their lives. But
they have come to see that their entire reason for both their irreligion and their
religion was essentially the same and essentially wrong! Christians come to see that
both their sins and their best deeds have all really been ways of avoiding Jesus as
savior. They come to see that Christianity is not fundamentally an invitation to get
more religious. A Christian comes to say: "though I have often failed to obey the moral
law, the deeper problem was why I was trying to obey it! Even my efforts to obey it has
been just a way of seeking to be my own savior. In that mindset, even if I obey or ask
for forgiveness, I am really resisting the gospel and setting myself up as Savior." To
"get the gospel" is turn from self-justification and rely on Jesus' record for a
relationship with God. The irreligious don't repent at all, and the religious only repent
of sins. But Christians also repent of their righteousness. That is the distinction
between the three groups--Christian, moralists (religious), and pragmatists
(irreligious).
Summary. Without a knowledge of our extreme sin, the payment of the cross seems
trivial and does not electrify or transform. But without a knowledge of Christ's
completely satisfying life and death, the knowledge of sin would crush us or move us
to deny and repress it. Take away either the knowledge of sin or the knowledge of
grace and people's lives not changed. They will be crushed by the moral law or run
from it angrily. So the gospel is not that we go from being irreligious to being
religious, but that we realize that our reasons for both our religiosity and our
irreligiosity were essentially the same and essentially wrong. We were seeking to be
our own Saviors and thereby keep control of our own life. When we trust in Christ as
our Redeemer, we turn from trusting either self-determination or self-denial for our
salvation--from either moralism or hedonism."