RELIGION:  I obey-therefore I’m accepted.

THE GOSPEL:  I’m accepted-therefore I obey.
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RELIGION:  Motivation is based on fear and insecurity.

THE GOSPEL:  Motivation is based on grateful joy.
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RELIGION: I obey God in order to get things from God.

THE GOSPEL:  I obey God to get to God-to delight and resemble Him.
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RELIGION:  When circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or my self, since I believe, like Job’s friends that anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life.

THE GOSPEL:  When circumstances in my life go wrong, I struggle but I know all my punishment fell on Jesus and that while he may allow this for my training, he will exercise his Fatherly love within my trial.
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RELIGION:  When I am criticized I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person’.  Threats to that self-image must be destroyed at all costs.

THE GOSPEL:  When I am criticized I struggle, but it is not critical for me to think of myself as a ‘good person.’  My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on God’s love for me in Christ.  I can take criticism.
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RELIGION:  My prayer life consists largely of petition and it only heats up when I am in a time of need.  My main purpose in prayer is control of the environment.

THE GOSPEL:  My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration.  My main purpose is fellowship with Him.
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RELIGION:  My self-view swings between two poles.  If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people.  If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel insecure and inadequate.  I’m not confident.  I feel like a failure.

THE GOSPEL:  My self-view is not based on a view of my self as a moral achiever.  In Christ I am “simul iustus et peccator”—simultaneously sinful and yet accepted in Christ.  I am so bad he had to die for me and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time.  Neither swaggering nor sniveling.
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RELIGION:  My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work.  Or how moral I am, and so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral.  I disdain and feel superior to ‘the other.’

THE GOSPEL:  My identity and self-worth are centered on the one who died for His enemies, who was excluded from the city for me.  I am saved by sheer grace.  So I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me.  Only by grace I am what I am.  I’ve no inner need to win arguments.
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RELIGION:  Since I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols.  It may be my talents, my moral record, my personal discipline, my social status, etc.  I absolutely have to have them so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, whatever I may say I believe about God.

THE GOSPEL:  I have many good things in my life—family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc.  But none of these good things are ultimate things to me.  None of them are things I absolutely have to have, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness, and despondency they can inflict on me when they are threatened and lost.

Adapted from sermons by Tim Keller.  HT: Tullian Tchividjian.