“The blog almost ruined my wife’s life.” These were the words of Tul­lian Tchivid­jian when reflect­ing on a painful time as the newly-installed pas­tor of Coral Ridge Pres­by­ter­ian Church. A ton of peo­ple didn’t want him in the church, and they were try­ing to oust him, malign­ing his wife, and key­ing his car. They even started an anti-Tchividjians blog. It was a good ol’ fash­ion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian free-for-all church fight (in the worst pos­si­ble sense). As God grew him, Tchivid­jian emerged from the fray with a greater real­iza­tion of the char­ac­ter and work of Jesus Christ.

Book Review of Jesus + Noth­ing = Every­thing, by Tul­lian Tchividjian

• Title: Jesus + Noth­ing = Everything
• Author: Tul­lian Tchividjian
• Audio Nar­ra­tor: Adam Verner
• Pub­lisher: Crossway
• Date: Octo­ber, 2011
• Length: 209 pages, 6.35 hours

The Big Idea of Jesus + Noth­ing = Everything

Tul­lian Tchividjian’s book, Jesus + Noth­ing = Every­thing con­tains the lessons he learned dur­ing this time of trial. The point of the book goes like this, our strug­gle for ful­fill­ment and our propen­sity for fail­ure as Chris­tians stems from an incom­plete under­stand­ing of what Jesus accom­plished for us — in all its daz­zling com­plete­ness and full­ness. Jesus’ all-sufficiency lib­er­ates us from the bondage of our insuf­fi­ciency, and enables us to live with true hope and joy.

Per­sonal Impact

I real­ize that 19 mil­lion other peo­ple have reviewed this book already. I also real­ize that I can’t spell the author’s name with­out look­ing it up. I wanted to write a review, though, because the book was pro­foundly help­ful for me. I am grate­ful. It’s not often that I read a book that guides me to a bib­li­cal vista that takes my breath away. This was one such book. It’s not like a the-biggest-secret-you’ve-been-missing-out-on kind of a Chris­t­ian suc­cess book. It’s solid the­ol­ogy — a big arrow that points straight to Jesus, show­ing him for who he is…and how that real­ity changes us.

Thoughts on Jesus + Noth­ing = Everything

Many peo­ple have crit­i­cized the book. I have read some of the crit­i­cism. To (overly) sim­plify it, the con­cern goes like this, “If the Chris­t­ian life — sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion — is all about God’s grace, then what do we do? Where’s the human respon­si­bil­ity part?” Here are a cou­ple thoughts:

• Grace as demon­strated in sal­va­tion and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is mind-shatteringly para­dox­i­cal, and I don’t even know if “shat­ter­ingly” is a real word. The para­dox is this: On the one hand we’re involved. On the other hand, God does it all. We think that there has to be some­thing more to do — some way of earn­ing it, deserv­ing it, receiv­ing it, or enjoy­ing it. But to do so is to despise the very essence of such grace. We just can’t get our heads around this.
• We have a respon­si­bil­ity. Of course. The Chris­t­ian life involves work, toil, pain, dis­ci­pline, prac­tice, and striv­ing. The New Tes­ta­ment is full of such words in rela­tion­ship to our walk. To dis­miss these as involv­ing noth­ing of human respon­si­bil­ity would be to over­look the neces­sity of true obe­di­ence. And yet I feel that para­dox com­ing back again, because the enabling for this respon­si­bil­ity all comes from God.

Jesus + Noth­ing = Every­thing is both deeply con­vict­ing and incred­i­bly lib­er­at­ing book. I am thank­ful that through read­ing this book, God allowed me to get more of a glimpse into his glory in salvation.

Dis­clo­sure of Mate­r­ial Con­nec­tion: I received this review copy for free as part of the chris­tianau­dio Review­ers Pro­gram of christianaudio.com. I was not required to write a pos­i­tive review, even though I did…this time. The opin­ions I have expressed are my own. I am dis­clos­ing this in accor­dance with the Fed­eral Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als in Advertising.”