Let’s begin by defining what this More-Than-Enough Life is, something I failed to do last lesson.

As best I understand, Willard would define this life as transformation, a life of abundance and obedience.

What did Jesus actually say?

In its verb form, the word translated life refers to being alive, as opposed to existing perhaps.

And the word abundant can quite faithfully be rendered more than enough, more than is expected.

If we leave the verse in its context, we can avoid a common error of interpretation.

Taken alone, the verse can become a Prosperity Gospel proof-text.

Until one looks at the context: Jesus is shepherd (the obeyed one); we are the sheep (the obedient ones).

Side Note: The thief is the one who enriches self or advances a personal agenda at the expense of the sheep.

But if abundance without obedience can lead to an indulgent Prosperity Gospel, obedience without abundance leads to a modern Pharisaic legalism.

Since neither of these errors is easily identified with the “gospel” from the left, how is that gospel a barrier to the More-Than-Enough Life?

Before we can evaluate Willard’s critique of that “gospel,” we need to look at the “liberal” Social Gospel in America.

The social gospel was a manifestation of classical liberalism in America.

It was a late 19th-early 20th century movement applying Christian ethics to social ills.

It arose as a reaction to the poverty and related issues created by the Robber Barons and the Gilded Age.

Reforms included labor unions, child labor laws, and introduction of the 8-hour workday.

From this we get Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps, precursor to the 90s WWJD movement.

Reflecting the Enlightenment belief in Progressivism, those who believed in a Millennium were post-millennial thinking humanity would have progressed to the point the world’s ills would have been conquered and the Rapture would occur.

This liberalism was wounded by WW 1 and finished off by the atrocities of WW 2.

Willard maintains that in terms of their teaching and personal morality, these liberals were closer to Free-Gracers and Lordship Salvation-ers than their modern descendents.

The fact that Rauschenbusch acknowledged the individualistic gospel had made individual sin clear but had done little to address institutional evil would seem to indicate the SG movement was just an expansion of the “Gospel” from the right.

While heirs of the movement certainly go farther afield theologically than their ancestors, it is a difference of degree, not kind.

Like their liberal forbears, their difference from the right is a difference of kind, not degree.

There are at least 4 critiques of the “Gospel” from the left that are valid.

The Christian ethics are divorced from Christ.

If the right tries to be Christian without any felt need to be Christ-like, the left tries to be Christ-like without being Christian.

These are generalizations and not all inclusive but they are fairly descriptive of the movements as movements.

They are too tolerant.

This grows out of the liberal, and now conservative, political belief in the absolute belief in human freedom and the religious belief the individual can be trusted to set responsible limits.

We can understand this error from the left which sublimates revelation to reason; it is harder to understand this error from the right when they profess such high regard for the Word.

Love has ceased to be descriptive of God and has become God.

Transformation is not required, perhaps not even possible, as the Bible presents it.

Both these “gospels” are obstacles to the more-than-enough life because, for one thing, Jesus the teacher is missing.

The right has Jesus the Savior; the left has Jesus the Moral Example.

But both are missing Jesus the Teacher.

For the right, just using the phrase will elicit cries of dismay.

With some justification, they claim that the phrase is a precursor to a denial of his divinity.

The problem is we cannot be like Jesus which means we cannot have the more-than-enough life if we do not sit at his knee and learn from him.

The left is a bit disingenuous when it comes to Jesus as teacher.

They dismiss Jesus as Savior and sacrifice but laud him as a great teacher.

But then they dismiss huge segments of Jesus’ life as we know it from the Bible, notably anything that requires supernatural interaction, like prayer.

So, Jesus is left with huge gaps in his resume, reducing him to an ethicist, not a life coach.