My friend David passed along this great insight from Tim Keller, revealing why so many of us believe in religion more than we believe in Christ:
The gospel is “I am accepted through Christ, therefore I obey” while every other religion operates on the principle of “I obey, therefore I am accepted.” Martin Luther’s fundamental insight was that this latter principle, the principle of ‘religion’ is the deep default mode of the human heart.
The heart continues to work in that way even after conversion to Christ. Though we recognize and embrace the principle of the gospel, our hearts will always be trying to return to the mode of self-salvation, which leads to spiritual deadness, pride and strife and ministry ineffectiveness.
He uses the example of honesty to show us how this works in everyday life:
What if you find that you have a habit of lying? What do you do about it?
Moralistic ways to stop lying: Fear: “I must stop doing this because God will punish me, he won’t bless me.” Pride: “I must stop doing this, because I’m a good Christian. I don’t want to be like the kind of person who lies.”
The gospel way to stop lying: First, ask the question: “why am I lying in this particular situation?” The reason we lie (or ever do any sin) is because at that moment there is something we feel that we simply must have–and so we lie. One typical reason that we lie (though it is by no means the only one) is because we are deeply fearful of losing face or someone’s approval.
That means, that the ‘sin under the sin’ of lying is the idolatry of (at that moment) of human approval. If we break the commandment against false witness it is because we are breaking the first commandment against idolatry. We are looking more to human approval than to Jesus as a source of worth, meaning, and happiness.
Here’s the gospel root of honesty (and every other thing we strive for):
What is true virtue? It is when you are honest not because it profits you or makes feel better, but only when you are smitten with the beauty of the God who is truth and sincerity and faithfulness! It is when you come to love truth-telling not for your sake but for God’s sake and its own sake. But it particularly grows by a faith-sight of the glory of Christ and his salvation.
For more on this topic, check out Mark Driscoll’s new book Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions