Billy Graham’s grandson takes Christians to task

William Graham Tullian Tchividjian is the grandson of the iconic American evangelist, Billy Graham. But he's also much more than that. Tchividjian is senior pastor of Ft. Lauderdale's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church--formerly the congregation of the late D. James Kennedy--as well as a visiting professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, a contributing editor for Leadership Journal, and the author of several bestselling books including Jesus + Nothing = Everything. In his most recent book, One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World, Tchividjian takes Christians to task for their legalistic focus on performance. But he also casts a vision for a more grace-filled future. Here, we talk about what he thinks is wrong with the Christian church today and what he believes the answer is.

JM: One criticism that has been leveled against the church is that we’ve been more concerned with behavior modification than with grace. Am I correct in saying that you believe this is a valid criticism?

There’s no question that for far too long the church has been primarily concerned with external change. Preachers are afraid of grace because they think it undercuts obedience and encourages apathy. If Jesus paid it all and it is finished, if the judgment against us has been fully and finally taken care of, aren't we opening the door to lawlessness? This is what Judaizers were afraid of: they didn’t like Gospel of free grace because they thought people would get out of control. If God is not mad at me and if he will never love me more than he does right now, then why can’t I party my way through life? The underlying fear is that unconditional grace leads to licentiousness.

While attacks on morality will always come from outside the church, attacks on grace will always come from inside the church because somewhere along the way we've come to believe that this whole thing is about behavioral modification and personal moral improvement. We've concluded that grace just doesn't possess the teeth to scare us into changing. As a result we get a steady diet of "do more, try harder" sermons; we get a "to do list" version of Christianity that causes us to believe the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian. So we end up hearing more about “Christian living” than the Christ.

We think this will be what gets people to clean up their act, to fix themselves, to volunteer in the nursery, to obey, to read their Bibles, to change the world--but it actually has the opposite effect. A steady diet of "do more, try harder" sermons doesn't cause people to do more or try harder...it makes them give up. Legalism produces lawlessness 10 times out of 10.

The fact is, that the solution to restraint-free immorality is not morality. The solution to immorality is the free grace of God. Only undeserved grace can truly melt and transform the heart. The route by which the New Testament exhorts sacrificial love and obedience is not by tempering grace but by driving it home. Charles Spurgeon nailed it when he said, “When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I beat my breast to think I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so and sought my good.”

JM: Where do you think Christianity has missed the mark of offering living water? How did we get where we are today?

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