AP

There is a poignant account in Collin Hansen’s biography, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation (Zondervan, 2023) in which he discusses the relationship between Timothy Keller and his brother William (‘Billy’). The book on Keller’s whole life is excellent, but below is an edited extract from one particular section which I trust you find especially edifying:

Billy’s Robe

‘In the Keller home back in Pennsylvania, Tim becoming a PCA had been scandalous. But Billy—Timothy Keller’s brother—coming out as gay in 1981 was another order of magnitude…

It wasn’t until 1992 that the family found out he had AIDS. Billy had tried to reconnect with his family at a beach reunion to take photos for his mother. The Kellers rented two cottages. Sharon’s family [TK’s sister]  stayed with Billy. Sharon asked him point-blank. ‘You don’t have AIDS, right?’ Billy tried to lie. His partner, Joachim, had contracted AIDS from unprotected sex prior to their relationship. At the time, Bill had been teaching classes on how to protect from AIDS.

William Christopher Keller died on May 22, 1998.

Tim and Kathy had met Joachim on numerous vacation trips south. They would always stop in Baltimore with their sons and go out to dinner with Billy and Joachim. And they visited Billy in Baltimore before he died. Billy entered hospice care in December 1997. Every day until Billy died, his parents sat by his bedside, singing and tending to his failing body. Doctors didn’t expect him to live long, as fungus ate into his brain. Two Baltimore-area pastors, Frank Boswell and Mark Gornik, visited him every week.

Their visits amazed Billy. It was his first glimpse of real Christian community. “He saw a vision of the church that we really didn’t have growing up”. Sharon Johnson said. By contrast, Billy’s friends didn’t visit him. And even before he died, his lawyer liquidated his assets to distribute to various gay causes.

Tim Keller preached his only brother’s funeral on June 8, 1998. No more than thirty-five or forty-five people attended. And Keller turned to Luke 15:23-32 for the occasion…

Why bring this up in a funeral? Tim explained that prodigals were attracted to Jesus, and Jesus was attracted to prodigals. That’s the whole message of the parable: the younger, prodigal son was closer to the heart of the Father than the older brother who always obeyed God.

Sadly, many churches don’t welcome prodigals, Tim admitted. They’re more like the older brother, and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, than they want to admit.

In general, Billy, like so many of his friends, avoided orthodox, believing Christians. Why? Not just because he disagreed with them, but because he felt rather beat-up and condemned by them. We learn here that if prodigals are not attracted to our graciousness and humility and understanding, we are like the older brother, not Jesus. Jesus had them coming in. We do not. We need to humble ourselves here. This is a way of honouring Billy.

Jesus shattered the world’s categories when he said you don’t come to God by obeying his law. Neither do you find God when you pursue your own truth to fulfill yourself. The world isn’t made up of good people and bad people, Keller explained. Only the humble enter the kingdom of God. The proud are left out.

The prodigal son limped home in tatters. He had squandered his entire inheritance. And yet the father still gave him the best robe and threw him a feast with the fattened calf—the fattened calf that belonged to the older brother. In Jesus’ parable, this bitter brother represents the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.

So what should the elder brother have done? What Jesus came to do.

Who is the true elder brother? Who is the one who truly obeyed the Father completely? Who truly  has lost his robe so he put it on us? Jesus!

Jesus has done for us what we could not do for ourselves in fulfilling the law perfectly. In every other religion, God owes us blessing in exchange for our obedience. But in Christianity, we get Jesus’ perfect record, so we owe him everything. This grace infuriated the elder brother.

‘In fact,’ Tim explained, ‘the elder brother doesn’t fail to go in to the father’s feast in spite of his goodness, but because of it.’

Prodigals, though, understand they can be saved only by humility and grace, by weakness and brokenness, through the cross.

When Billy entered hospice in December, he said to Tim, “My Christian family isn’t going to come with me when I enter eternity, and neither are my gay friends. So I have to figure out what is on the other side of this life.” They talked at length, Pastor Frank Boswell came to visit. Billy said that he was thinking hard about what it means to be righteous in Christ. He had thought being a Christian meant cleaning up his life and making himself righteous. But Tim pointed to 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Finally, Billy felt God’s love. The transformation was immediately evident. He even called his lawyer and told him to give his money to Mark Gornick’s ministry instead.

“To my joy, Billy Latched on and got it,” Tim Keller told the mourners. “Thus he went into the Father’s feast.”

Billy took the robe.’

Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation (Zondervan, 2023) pages 215-219.

–  compiled by Mark Powell