Can’t You Just Say Jesus Loves Me?

“Hold the lettuce.” The simple sentence, perhaps stated more frequently than we might hope, captures a crucial hallmark that predominates in the thinking of many. At a recent lunch with a friend, I saw this firsthand. For my friend, it wasn’t just the lettuce. The instructions he gave restrained the cook from adding anything remotely vegetable-like to the hamburger. Notwithstanding my jibe, my friend held fast to his decision. He was the one ordering. And he expected (rightly so!) to be served what he desired. After all, the customer is king.

This cluster of expectations animates the modern marketplace. We want products tailored to our specific needs. We seek out services that let us pay only for what we want. We get frustrated when we take the car to a mechanic who not only fixes the problem we knew about but also takes the liberty of repairing other problems (and charging liberally for them). In short, we want (and expect) to be served according to our preferences and felt needs.

Innocuous enough when it comes to the morsels on our plates, the reign of personal preferences involves more serious implications when it extends over the rest of life. And in the life of faith, the consequences are serious indeed. For preference-driven faith will, in the end, produce a Christless Christianity.

Have It Your Way

What do we hope for when we join the church for worship? Parsing motives presents no easy project, especially if there are children in tow or responsibilities for some aspect of the service or fellowship. Few of us have the personal or cognitive space to search out the depths of our hearts en route to the Sunday morning service.

But the way home often presents opportunities to interrogate those hidden recesses. The questions we pose shed light on what is in our hearts: “How did you like the sermon this morning?” “Didn’t the worship team nail it today?” We tend to ask not about a confrontation with gospel truth but about measures of personal satisfaction. If our questions begin illuminating this tendency, the answers we give put our motives on clear display: “I thought the pastor did a great job! I really liked . . .” or “Ya know, I just wasn’t feeling it this morning; the sermon didn’t really speak to me.” “Yes, the worship was great!” or “I thought the team was a bit off. Did you hear them mess up on that one song?” So often, whether at the sandwich shop or on the way home from church, preference-driven language bubbles out of our mouths like boiling water from an unwatched pot.

For many, our post-service concerns center far too frequently on how well certain aspects of the service met our felt needs. What did I gain from the sermon? Did I enjoy the music? Service to the ascendant self predominates. We reflect on the worship gathering in a manner unsettlingly similar to how we might reflect on a hamburger: It was decent, but I’ve had better elsewhere. I think they overdid the mayonnaise, and I would have preferred sesame rather than a brioche bun. Whether we want to admit it or not, our expectations of being served as we please spill into our perceived relationship to the church’s gathered worship.

“Grace doesn’t enable believers to carry on as normal.”

Those same expectations shape how we approach our Lord. We tend naturally, in our sin, to want merely an affirming savior. We like to hear that Jesus loves sinners so much that he died to win them, for hearing this affirms that our need for forgiveness has been met. We like to hear that his love for his sheep never falters, for hearing this quells the fear that perhaps our snide words or dubious choices or the train wreck of our inner thoughts might put our hope in jeopardy. We like to hear how our Lord railed against the hypocrisy and legalism of the Pharisees, for hearing this makes us smile inwardly, pleased that we are not so pretentious and uptight.

Messages such as these leave us content, unruffled, ready to carry on with life as normal, affirmed in our preferred way of life by a (truncated) gospel that accomplishes little beyond patching up the problem of personal sin by a Lord who demands little alteration of our lives.

But is that the true gospel that we desperately need? And is that truly the Savior we serve?

All-of-Life Gospel

When Paul left Titus on Crete, he gave him instructions to set the churches in order, charging him to teach only “what accords with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). The manner of life he goes on to describe categorically challenges any expectation that the gospel only affirms. It does not simply sprinkle a bit of holy glitter on mud pies.

Paul expects believers to exercise self-control, think carefully about applying truth to their lives, conduct themselves reverently, and by their good works “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:2–9). Paul expects that, as Titus teaches them “the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:10), their former patterns of life will fall under condemnation. He presents no easy life of surface-level faith, but a full-orbed renunciation of past preferences and desires as God, in his mercy, regenerates and renews them (Titus 3:5).

Paul wants the Cretan churches to understand that true acceptance of the gospel demands radical change. “The grace of God,” he writes, “trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions” (Titus 2:11–12). He does not mean partially, but completely. Christ “gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness.” He gave himself to purify his people so that we would no longer seek out the manner of life we preferred in our sin but would be “zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). For Paul, grace doesn’t enable believers to carry on as normal; it demands that we reject every form of worldliness and instead embrace wise, righteous patterns of life devoted to fully obeying God’s commands.

Grace-full lives such as these look to a Savior who does far more than simply deal with our past sin. Oh, he does do that (Titus 3:4). But his saving work goes far beyond. Rising from the cleansing water, we are made new, regenerated and renewed in the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). Through this rich blessing of the Spirit, God-centered affections replace the curved-in preferences of sin. He releases us from the narrow, restricting corridor of self-love that we might run rejoicing in the broad plains of his freedom as he teaches us the expansive joy of loving him and all things in him.

What is more, the saving work of Christ has a cosmic scope and an eternal end, which will become plain to all when he appears in glory (Titus 2:13). For just such an end believers hope. And Paul wants Titus to instruct the churches in this hope, preaching to them the full knowledge of truth (Titus 1:1). “Leave no stone unturned, my child,” says Paul. “Teach them truly who Jesus Christ, our great God and Savior, is. Demonstrate for them a life of unflinching faith, and charge them to walk in the renewal of the Holy Spirit, submitting their whole lives to the King for whom they wait.”

This is the true faith.

Life-Altering Grace

The Gospels tell a shocking story. The long-awaited Messiah came to his people. He told them who he was. He taught them truth. He healed their diseases. He liberated them from demons. But they rejected him. “He came to his own,” writes John, “and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). Why? Because they preferred their own way (John 3:19). They wanted a savior who would preserve their way of life, affirm their desires, and demand little.

“A preference-driven life produces only a drawn-out death.”

It is easy for us to fall into similar patterns of thought. We want a gospel that makes life comfortable. We want a savior who pats us on the back. But a preference-driven life produces only a drawn-out death. You may prefer a burger without lettuce, but a steady diet devoid of the nutritional benefits of leafy vegetables does not produce a healthy body. But just here the metaphor falls apart. For demanding a preference-shaped gospel is not like asking for a vegetable-less hamburger. It’s more like discarding the entire sandwich, as if you paid for a meal and took only the to-go box or the picture from the menu. If you seek a church that proclaims a Jesus who is all about you, who fits your categories and expectations, who ministers solely to your felt needs, you will likely find what you want. But you won’t hear the true gospel, you won’t receive life-altering grace, and you won’t be called to follow the true Son of God.

The grace of God allows no such similitude of faith. It confronts us in our sin. Mercifully, it cleanses us from our folly. It calls us to hope-filled lives, gladly devoted to God’s good commands. It trains us to renounce our sinful preferences and wait in hope for a fulfillment far greater than we have yet imagined.