By Kathryn Wright
INTRODUCTION
In 2023, well-known Calvinist Tim Keller created a series of YouTube videos aimed at showing that the gospel is found in every book of the OT. Keller passed away before completing the series, but he did finish videos covering Genesis through the book of Job.
According to the YouTube description of the series, the videos aim to:
…highlight themes that point to the Gospel and help you discover the overarching narrative of God’s Word in every book—Christ coming into the world to save us from our sins and reconcile us to God the Father.
In this article, we will consider just one video. We will evaluate Keller’s attempt to show that Ezra contains the gospel message.
THE GOSPEL IN EZRA
In the video, Keller discusses how he believes the gospel is found in the book of Ezra.i He starts by explaining the book’s historical background. After seventy years under pagan rule during the Babylonian captivity, the Jews returned to the land of Israel under the leadership of Zerubbabel, then Ezra. When the Jewish exiles returned to the land, they were powerless. Keller emphasizes this point by explaining that, technically, the exiles were a colony that had returned without a Davidic king. They were still under the rulership of Gentiles and were vulnerable and weak. Even so, God worked through this small group of exiles.
While the Israelites were powerless, they no longer engaged in the sin of idolatry, which had been a consistently significant issue for the nation before its captivity. Throughout the book of Ezra, the Jews are shown as finally listening to the Word of God and the instructions of their leaders. Keller claims this is critical to understanding the gospel.
He goes on to say that through our powerlessness, we are saved. He states:
We can only connect to it when we say, “I got nothing,” when we are poor in Spirit. When I say, “I have nothing to contribute to my salvation. I am a poor sinner; I have nothing to contribute; I need absolute grace and charity.” So we can only be saved through the powerlessness of Jesus, and we can only connect to that salvation through our own powerlessness. The powerlessness of repentance and faith.
THE POWERLESS GOSPEL
At first glance, this appears to be the true message of grace, which says that mankind is powerless to save itself and that a person is delivered from the lake of fire, not by his own power or works, but by faith alone in Jesus for the gift of eternal life (Eph 2:8-9). However, Keller is not making that argument.
Keller argues that it is not enough to believe in Jesus for the free gift of eternal life. The unbeliever must first be humbled, beaten down, and made powerless. According to his theology, the nation of Israel is a picture of the gospel in that it was first subjected to years of oppression. It had to go through seventy years of captivity before it could submit to the Lord and be saved. In other words, the unbeliever must first reach rock bottom and repent before he can be saved.
Keller represents a popular view of the gospel. Many agree that repentance, contrition, and an acknowledgment of one’s sinful state are required before eternal salvation can occur. This teaching was a hallmark of the Great Awakening movement of the 1730s. During the revivals of that era, it was commonly taught that conviction of sin is a necessary step to a person’s receiving eternal life. Unbelievers must first go through a period of deep sorrow to prepare themselves to be saved.
As with Keller’s view of the seventy years in Babylon, proponents of this teaching have argued that this stage could take days or even months. Revival services centered around altar calls in which unbelievers were to remain in tears for hours in order to reach the point of total powerlessness. It was not until they reached this breaking point that they were ready to be saved. The evangelist’s job, therefore, became more about subjecting the unbeliever to a regimen of guilt and shame and less about sharing John 3:16. This evangelistic posture continues today in the teachings of Calvinists like Keller.
EZRA’S PURPOSE IS NOT EVANGELISTIC
There are two major problems with Keller’s take on the gospel and the book of Ezra.
First, Ezra does not have an evangelistic purpose. It should be noted that key evangelistic words like faith, believe, Messiah, or everlasting life are not mentioned. Neither are the words save, salvation, deliver, or deliverance (words that, in the OT, would refer to temporal deliverance from enemies, death, and disease rather than to eternal life). Ezra makes no mention of anyone’s becoming “another man” (1 Sam 10:6) or getting “another heart” (1 Sam 10:9).
Second, Ezra’s purpose is clearly Israel’s national repentance and deliverance from divine chastisement. Ezra is directed toward God’s disciplinary work on His chosen nation. It is first and foremost a historical record for the Israelites so that they will be motivated to obey the Law as they return to the land.
Then, as now, the Lord’s discipline is distinct from His saving message. The Babylonian captivity was a result of national Israel’s disobedience to the covenant it was already under. God told the nation that if they obeyed Him, He would bless them; if they were disobedient, He would curse them (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28).
Babylonian captivity was not an evangelistic tool. It was a disciplinary one. God wanted the nation to return to abiding with Him and fulfilling its purpose (Gen 12:1-3). The book is primarily dealing with the nation’s fellowship with God. It regained this fellowship by repenting and returning to the Law and the temple practices. In other words, it is a book about the return to the Law and works. It is not about the gift of eternal life.
After returning from exile, the nation was weak, but it was also obedient and responsive to instruction. This is the purpose of God’s discipline. It is meant to draw the people of Israel from the ruin of sin and back into a fruitful walk with their Lord. However, none of this speaks of God’s requiring that the unbeliever first be beaten into contrition before He will give him eternal life.
Ezra is primarily dealing with the national deliverance of Israel from exile, not with individual salvation from the lake of fire. Ezra operates within the context of the nation’s covenantal relationship with the Lord under the Law of Moses. It emphasizes the corporate identity of the nation of Israel. For example, the book highlights the importance of the Israelites’ maintaining their unique identity by not marrying Gentile women (Chapters 9-10). Individual believers today are not under that mandate. Therefore, rather than being about the regeneration of individual unbelievers, the book of Ezra speaks of the collective purpose of the Israelites. In short, rather than looking to the individual’s salvation from the lake of fire, the book of Ezra looks to the Lord’s promise to deliver the nation of Israel from oppression, sin, and physical death through obedience.
CONCLUSION
The saving message does not require the unbeliever to spend hours or days in contrition and submission. While the unbeliever may first go through a period of remorse before coming to faith in the Lord, this was never a prerequisite to receiving eternal life. The woman at the well never lamented or repented (John 4). Those who came to faith in the home of Cornelius were saved while listening to Peter preach, without hours of sorrow (Acts 10:44). When speaking to the unbelievers at Mars Hill, Paul first commended their religious zeal rather than belittling them for their adultery (Acts 17:22-23). The Gospel of John, on the other hand, repeatedly points to the Lord and the good news of eternal life by faith in Him. While Keller rightfully acknowledges the powerlessness and inability of unbelievers to save themselves, he mistakenly makes that––rather than belief in Jesus––his saving message. An emphasis on first breaking the unbeliever down eclipses the wonder of the good news of eternal life by faith in Jesus. Sadly, by adding this requirement, Keller’s gospel is indeed made powerless.
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Kathryn Wright and her husband, Dewey, live in Columbia, SC. She is the GES missions coordinator, women’s conference speaker, writer, and Zoom teacher.
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i “Discovering the Gospel in Ezra & Nehemiah—Tim Keller” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmNWGLgz1Fo.