Category: Sanctification

On October 24, 2008 I began a series on Christian growth. Seven weeks ago, on December 19, I suspended that series because of the press of time. I’d like to revive that series, but first, we need to review.

Our contention has been that the God who loves us and through Christ gives us hope in the life to come, also gives us hope in this life, a hope that we can change and become more like Christ. We can become more like Christ.

But to say this is to awaken frustration. If we are to be more like Jesus, why I am so much like the same broken person I’ve always been? Why don’t I change at all or faster?

The natural response to this is to try harder. But try what? Generally, we simply try harder to keep the law. Bad choice. As we try harder, we either grow increasingly despairing or, worse, increasingly self-righteous.

It was in my own experience at this point of despair (and hidden self-righteousness) that a friend gave me a paper written by Dr. Paul Kooistra for the board of Covenant Theological Seminary. The paper argued that sanctification is a work that God does. Our growth in Christ-likeness is GOD’S work.

For years, I read that paper over and over trying to comprehend what that meant for me. This was, and is, liberating. God is working his change in us. He alone has the power to change our hearts, to change us at the deepest level. He reaches where our efforts cannot touch.

But if that is the case, what are we to do? What are we to make of all the law, all the exhortations to godly behavior, all the instructions of Scripture? In short, what is our role, if any, in this process?

Within a framework of God’s gracious changing of us are five concrete things we can be about. These are the things God wants us to do. Through these things HE works HIS change in us. We explained each of these as we explored them. They are:

1. Know who you are

2. Seek the work of God’s grace to change you

3. Put yourself in the way of grace

4. Mortify sin

5. Rejoice in the gospel

If you are new to this series, I would encourage you to visit the posts outlined below and ponder them.

I’ve learned these things from Scripture. I’ve learned these things from books.

But these things would not have the certainty they do for me if I had not lived them in life.

– – – – – – – –
Here are links to the previous posts in this series:

People Like You Will Never Change

You’re No Good, You’re No Good, You’re No Good

Where Can I Buy a Heart?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

It Doesn’t Make Any Sense at All

War: What Is It Good For?

Forgetting What Lies Behind, We Press On

“With Painful Steps and Slow”

Shhh…

Hi. This is Randy’s conscience. He doesn’t know that I’m doing this, so it’ll be our little secret. Okay? Great.

You see, he was supposed to compose another post in his series on Christian change – sanctification to use the fancy word – and he ‘didn’t get around to it’.

Yeah, right.

Sure he had some extra meetings this week, but that’s a crock, isn’t it? I mean, we all know that if he wanted to, he could have fit in the time. If you all were important to him, as you should be, he would have fit it in. If he really cared, he’d have done it.

But, no, as usual, he loused up. Isn’t it just like him to…

Uh, wait a minute. Did you hear that? Who’s that coming? Uh-oh. I think it’s Grace. Oh, why’s she always have to show up and ruin everything?

Look, I’ve got to run. She spoils all the fun, always saying that Randy’s failures (which are many, I dutifully point out – and he listens, too, when she’s not around) are not to be dredged up and dwelt upon. Something about their being serious and worth mention, but still and always insufficient to bring any condemnation from God or others.

Where’s the fun in that? I mean, what good is it if we don’t dwell upon these things? She’s such a pain.

But I gotta go now. I don’t understand it, but he’s made her the boss.

Bummer.

PS You should know that Randy overslept this morning, too. He…

Okay, I’m gone.

When I was teaching my youngest son to ride his bike, he would fall often. When he would fall, he would at times look at me and say, “I’m sorry” and act in such a way that made me certain that he thought I was displeased with him. I wasn’t. I was trying to help him ride without falling but he was too busy trying to please me.

It is clear that God wants us to ride without falling. His call is to holy living and fruitful character change. But we fall so often that we wonder if what we are called to do is at all possible.

Then we are told, rightly, that change is God’s business, that ‘sanctification’ is a work of God’s Spirit. What a wonderful truth that is!

But then, we puzzle, why is it that some seem to change more radically than others? And we struggle with why change seems such a dim reality for us. Further, we puzzle over the passages of scripture which tell us to do certain things, and we wonder if there is a role for us in the matter of sanctification after all.

These are the puzzles brought to me by a correspondent last year which I have been trying, in my own way and from my own wrestling to answer. I trust this has been helpful. (If they have been, tell a publisher. Okay, just kidding.)

I have suggested that there are things which a Christian ought to ‘do’, but not what we ordinarily think of doing. Many falsely assume that the path to change is to, well, just change. Scripture and experience suggest that change, real heart change, is not within our reach. Only God can change us at the level we need change.

So what can we do? I suggest five interlocking actions. Click on each and you will be taken to the post where that has been previously discussed.

1. Know who you are

2. Seek the work of God’s grace to change you

3. Put yourself in the way of grace

4. Mortify sin

But even after all of this, we will fall. And when we fall, we will look up at our heavenly father, and say, “I’m sorry” and wonder if he is yet pleased with us. He is. And that is the truth which must be kept before us. So a critical part of our sanctification is one that seems to have nothing and everything to do with it:

5. Rejoice in the gospel

God has done a most amazing thing. While I was a sinner and before I evidenced any desire to be delivered from that sin, he became a man, incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. Knowing the darkness that would define my heart, he gave his son, Jesus, to die in my place, to die the death that I deserved, to suffer the displeasure of God in HIS body, the displeasure that MY sin evoked. While I was far from him, and showing no inclination to serve him, he raised Jesus from the dead, pouring life into him which, in him, I am privileged to share. And while I was walking away from him, he sought me, profligate with blessings, he loves me when my sin would make me unlovable.

This is the gospel. (And if it is foreign to you, please make it a point to download and listen to the sermons listed under ‘gospel’ on this page.)

This is the gospel which tells us that no matter how many times we fail him, in Christ God is always pleased with us. He is not blind to our sin like some self-deceived wife who chooses to overlook her husband’s infidelity pretending that it does not exist. He is well aware of our failure, but does not count it against us since the full punishment of it has been born by his Son. His work is finished, and we have been made his forever.

The prophet Isaiah says that he ‘remembers our sin no more’. This does not mean that God has a faulty or altered memory. It means that because that sin has been fully dealt with by Jesus, he chooses not to bring it to bear against us. He cannot love us less than he does now.

Knowing these things (as poorly as I do) has two results. The first is that I am awed and struck with a wonder of great refreshment. I know at this point the ‘hug’ of God. At the same time, I am deeply sorrowful that I do not live up to what he has made me to be. His love for me is a far greater motivator to holiness than any threat of judgment or hint of displeasure.

So, what we must do in our struggle against sin is rejoice in this gospel of God’s grace to us. I pray often that God would restore to me the joy of His salvation. This is what David prayed after his failure with Bathsheba and it is what we should be praying. When I fail, I have to return to the cross and be reminded that Jesus died for that sin, as well as all I will commit. I need to be reminded that God loves me no less for that horrendous failure. I need to be reminded that God brings glory out of my weakness, and that I who have sinned have yet to see what wonder he will produce out of it and in me.

What you need to know and think deeply on when you fall down and look up to your father is that you name is ‘son’ not ‘exile’.

How do you do this? I don’t know how else other than to worship. We need to be in a community of believers who celebrate the gospel. We need to hear the gospel preached. We need to sing songs which emphasize the gospel.

Yes, Christian, there are things you can do. You can call to mind who you are. You can pray earnestly that God would change you. You can diligently put yourself in the way of grace and you can dutifully mortify sin. But your ultimate hope lies not in effort or act, but in the faithfulness of God displayed in the Gospel.

Rejoice in that gospel.

I joked on Tuesday about marketing a Bible that would provide all the appearance of holiness with none of the work. What made that funny (to me anyway, and to the two of you who called me ‘brilliant’) was the supposition that holiness requires real work.

This is the point of confusion for many of us. We believe that sanctification is a work of grace in which we cannot boast. We believe that the development of a beautiful Christlike character in us is something for which God should receive all the glory, for it is impossible for us. We believe all of this, and yet we at the same time say that there is hard work involved. How can that be?

We have been trying to sketch an answer to that question. It is important to stress that though God is the author of our sanctification, it requires real blood and sweat on our part.

So far, we have suggested that our actions fall out along three lines. You can see how each of these was developed by clicking on the links.

1. Know who you are

2. Seek the work of God’s grace to change you

3. Put yourself in the way of grace
We turn our attention to the fourth action, the mortification of sin. By far, I think this is the most foreign to us, and the most difficult.

I went to college at Michigan State University, a beautiful campus in the middle of a very, very, very flat part of Michigan. While there, for a PE credit, I took skiing. Our ski ‘mountain’ was, I think, a reclaimed landfill. Nothing to boast about. Fortunately, for someone as unfit for skis as I, the bottom of the hill was close to the top of the hill.

To ski beyond the beginners’ ‘snowplow’, I found out, required perfecting several movements, several very foreign movements, all at once. I think our growth in Christlikeness must be seen in the same way. There is not one magic key. As much as I think points 1 through 3 are ESSENTIAL to our growth, we cannot really separate them from the fourth and still hope to get to the bottom of the slope intact. We must be addressing our desire for change on all fronts at once. And the mortification of sin is no doubt the hardest of the lot.

4. Mortify sin

How often in addressing change in the Christian does Paul tell his readers to ‘put to death’ sin? It is a key part of the Bible’s teaching. In Romans 8, he puts it this way:

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8.13)

We are to put sin to death. We are to inflict a mortal wound in those deeds of the flesh which are contrary to the desires of the Spirit. If there is a sin which haunts us, we are to slay it. This is violent language because it is a violent work we need to perform.

But danger lurks.

If we are content with mere externals, some may find that by the flesh they can conquer the flesh. If my definition of sin terminates on some act that is not really a great problem for me, I might very easily remove it from my experience and take all the credit for it. Pride ensues, and holiness remains an illusion. I have not mortified sin; I’ve simply modified behavior.

To mortify sin is to identify the sin that clings to us and consumes us and to see to its death in us. I have yet to meet a person who really struggles with anger or worry or pride, really struggles with it, who can simply say, “I won’t worry any more” or “I won’t lose my temper any more.” How does one do that? How do we slay worry or fear?

The only way I know is to starve it. Siege warfare is not quick and it is not pretty, but it the best analogy for what we are discussing here. We must identify the sin, determine what feeds it, and cut off its supply lines. When it overcomes us, we repudiate it, repent of it, and cry out for grace, but we never stop the siege.

Take anger, for example. We tolerate anger for a variety of reasons. Normally it is because something we treasure very highly is threatened by another – our reputation, our sense of control, our possessions, our status, or whatever. When someone strips that treasured thing from us, we lash out in such a way as to get revenge, to hurt the one who denied us what we so treasured. We need to no longer treasure the thing we seek to protect.

Thus, our lust for, say, a sense of control, is what feeds our anger. To starve that, to slay it, will mean replacing our demand for control for a contentment with Christ alone. As our satisfaction in Christ grows greater, our need to feel in control will grow weaker. Our sin will be starved, and grow weaker, and approach death.

In the midst of this process we will repeatedly fail. In each time of failure, we must confess our sin, confess it to those whom we have offended, confess it to God, and repent of it. And when we fail again, we must do the same. We must never lose heart and never give up.

I was an angry man, and I threw things. I still fight that. It is not as visible as it once was, for my propensity to anger easily has diminished (though not disappeared). One day, years ago, my oldest daughter was standing near me at the kitchen sink and I had a dishcloth in my hand. Something she said or did angered me. I stood there with the dishcloth in my hand, and I started to laugh. Almost in tears I looked at her, the provocation no longer important, and pointed out to her that I did not throw the washcloth! I was so happy to see change that I had not accomplished. The urge to throw it simply did not come as it once would have done. The inner sin had been starved away. It was not that I at that moment noted the law (that anger is sin) but the urge to act out anger simply did not happen. Real change had occurred.

I hated my sin. I confessed my sin. I prayed for the sin to be removed. I repented of my sin when it came. But when it did not come, I realized that the change was not the fruit of my strength in law keeping. The change was the fruit of the Spirit’s gracious work in me.

I long to keep the law, which is good, and I therefore attempt to cut the heart out of those things which feed my disobedience. This requires some care, some introspection, perhaps in some cases some counsel. But it is good, and it may take a lifetime.

But God will honor our warfare and work change in us.

While discussing the fascination many have with entertainment that exposes the worst of humanity, I was sent this quote in which the creator of The Sopranos, the massively successful and critically acclaimed HBO drama, reflects on the evil of the main character Tony Soprano.

“He is a sociopath. No doubt about it. But, a lot of people said, ‘You know, we thought that maybe there was a chance that Tony Soprano would turn his life around and in the end there would be some morality to it. And that in the end he would transcend his evilness.’ And this, to me, is amazing because you wonder, ‘Do people pay attention to the story?’ In Season One, the guy’s mother tried to murder him. So, he, of all people, is supposed to rise above that and be happier than he was before that happened? It doesn’t make any sense at all. He never got over that.”

(The full article is here.)

That is an interesting observation which gets at the heart of our question (introduced here and here): is change possible, and if so, what can a Christian do to facilitate change in his life?

I don’t want to minimize the significance of what this man says about his creation, Tony Soprano. The depth of his past defines the nature of his present. That is true of all of us. Our past certainly makes us who we are. Transcending that past is not something that is easy, and in some cases, it is never complete.

Tony Soprano’s creator says that it does not make any sense that someone would change. I’m grateful that OUR creator says that we can. He is the one who changes us.

But if he changes us, what can we do? We have said that there are several things necessary.

1. Know who you are

2. Seek the work of God’s grace to change you

3. Put yourself in the way of grace

4. Mortify sin

5. Rejoice in the gospel

We’ve discussed the first two. What is this third idea?

3. Put yourself in the way of grace

This has been the most helpful thing to me. I know that it is God who changes me, and I know that it is his grace to do so. I am not changed by upping my church attendance, praying more, or reading my bible more frequently. We sometimes act as if God must reward us for these things, and fall into the trap where we think, implicitly, that God must give us the gift of change because we have done good stuff. That turns the good stuff into an economic transaction, which God despises and rejects.

But are these things valuable? Yes.

God does dispense his grace ordinarily in specific contexts. Paul, for instance, tells us that faith (which is what we need in this battle) comes by hearing the word of God. So the one who is drinking deeply of the Scriptures (and I think primarily Paul means the scriptures preached) is going to be more open to the ministry of the Holy Spirit than the one who neglects with regularity this means of grace.

We long for the grace which changes us, but grace is freely dispensed. It is ordinarily dispensed as God chooses through those things to which he attaches it – his word, prayer, the sacraments, the fellowship of the church. The more we avail ourselves of these things, the more we place ourselves in the position where God is likely to act. He is not bound by this, and we obligate him to nothing. But this being where he shows himself active, then it behooves us to go where he is active.

Those seeking healing in the gospels knew instinctively to go where Jesus was. They still needed his grace to be healed. But by placing themselves where he acted, they opened themselves more fully to his intervention. The same is true for we who want healing in our struggle with sin. We need to go where Jesus is.

I am not saying that the path to holiness is to ‘read your bible and pray’. That can be law. If I think that there is a connection, a reward, for these activities, then it is law. If I think that God is attending to my hours invested and rewarding me accordingly, that is wrong.

Rather, the means of grace are just that. Not works, not magic formulae, but places where, as one author puts it, the distance between God and his people is ‘thin’. They are places where God’s Spirit works upon our Spirit and makes us more sensitive to him, more desirous of him, and, I have to think, more able to resist sin. The whole complex of worship, scripture, sacrament, fellowship (Heb 10.25 does have a sanctification context) and the like are places where God feeds our faith and grows us up in him.

Well, I could go on about this. It is too easy to see the means of grace and spiritual disciplines as works of the law, when they are not that at all. They are places where we go to meet Jesus. And they are places where we can hope, and pray, that he will meet us and slowly and significantly weaken the grip of sin on our lives.

Meeting Jesus often enough, we may find that even those long icy fingers of our past may begin to loose their grip on our heart.

Are you listening, Tony?

In our first two posts, we posed the problem (here and here). How does a Christian grow, and specifically, what is the Christian’s role in that growth? Last week we began to outline what that role is, looking specifically at five actions which a Christian can engage to create the proper environment for growth. Those five are

1. Know who you are
2. Seek the work of God’s grace to change you
3. Put yourself in the way of grace
4. Mortify sin
5. Rejoice in the gospel

Keep in mind that all of these are important all at once. These are not five steps to holiness; they are five realities which create the environment in which change occurs. Today we consider the second:

2. Seek the work of God’s grace to change you

This may be obvious. Just like it is obvious that cigarettes or a steady diet of french fries will kill you. But a whole bunch of people ignore the obvious.

If we lack something, we must ask. The sin with which we struggle is not “curable” through mere moral effort. Our sin is so deeply rooted in our personality, our background, our upbringing, our context, that to simply decide to ‘stop’ it does not ordinarily lie within our reach.

The law cannot give us the power to make right choices, it cannot shield us from wrong choices. It simply reveals our sin, amplifies our sense of need, and, if we are not careful, feeds our pride.

I don’t have a struggle with internet pornography. Some of my closest and dearest friends do. We all know that it is wrong, that it is in its most obvious way a violation of the 7th commandment. The law is clear here. But the law does not help my friends change. What attention to the law can do is make those of us who do not struggle with that sin feel pride and cause us to look down upon those who do. We can be led to think that we do not sin in that way because of some superior quality in ourselves. In reality, God has just in his grace spared me this struggle.

My struggles lie elsewhere. I don’t know what to do about my anxiety. I am a worrier. In times past, the anxiety has been so great that I would physically shake. There is no law that can help me at this point. I can’t simply say, “This is wrong – I must stop.” The law is powerless at my point of weakness. I can’t stop. I hear Jesus say, “Do not worry” and Paul say “Be anxious for nothing” and I long to be there, but my flesh is powerless. What can I do?

In the immediacy of the situation, I must cry out to God, “Father, take the anxious thoughts away!” We must not underestimate the importance of this.

We must not, but many of us do. In our church we allow people to share prayer requests during our worship on Sunday morning and in our small groups. What is rare is to have people ask that others would ask God to deliver them from their pride or anxiety or doubt or anger or greed or selfish ambition.

That makes me wonder to what degree the content of our private prayers neglects such requests.

Seek the work of God’s grace to change you. This is not all we can do. But we ought not to think that there will be much progress without it.

And while you are at it, lay off the fries and the cigarettes.

BTW, I encourage you to reflect on what this means for how we might be used to change others. If we see weakness and sin in another, should we tell them their sin or pray for them? And if both, in what proportion?

The problem we face as Christians is how we grow in Christ-likeness. Our doctrine of sin explains why we fall so far short of God’s holy ideal. We are familiar with and reject the teaching that says that we will be made better by just trying harder. We can change by ‘trying harder’ for sure. But such change can only reach to our surface behavior, and cannot address in any lasting way our inward motivations. And Jesus says, of course, that what truly corrupts is what arises from within. So, how do we change?

When we affirm that real change, sanctification, is something that the Holy Spirit accomplishes in us, and is therefore something we do not accomplish on our own, so that He receives ALL the glory for whatever change is observable in our lives, the question arises, “Well, what, then, is MY role in that?” Instinctively we know that we must do SOMETHING, and Scripture does confirm that. But we puzzle over how ‘doing something’ differs from seeking simply to ‘try harder’. The difference is in where we are looking for the change to occur. To ‘try harder’ is to look to our own strength in hoping to bring about change. In reality, change can come only when we are looking not to ourselves but to Christ.

As I’ve wrestled with this over the years, I’ve concluded that there are five ‘things that we do’.

1. Know who you are

2. Seek the work of God’s grace to change you

3. Put yourself in the way of grace

4. Mortify sin

5. Rejoice in the gospel

If I were to think more fully I could expand the list. But this seems to be the five things you need to keep in mind as you seek godliness in your life. Over the next several weeks, I intend to address all of these. Succinctly. I promise.

1. Know who you are

This is the starting place. Paul in his discussions of sanctification is quick to say ‘consider yourself’ followed by some reality of our union with Christ. I have a choice to make in considering who I am. I can look at myself as the low down, no good scumbag that an analysis of my most recent outburst or anger or oversight of a Christian duty reveals me to be. But that is NOT who I am. Those outbursts or oversights are aberrations, contrary to who I really am. Who you are is defined by your union with Christ, not by your feelings or your actions. If you trust in Christ, you are united with him, and all the fruit of that is true of you. You are justified, fully accepted and love. You are adopted, open to all the blessings of the child of God. You are liberated from the bondage to sin – you do not have to sin. There is another way opened to you.

I quoted Linda Ronstadt in my last post. This ‘voice in our head’ tells us, endlessly, “You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good, baby, you’re no good….” But the gospel tells us otherwise. We are beloved, we are welcomed, we are righteous, we are the apple of our Father’s eye. To know this and to believe this is to start to have the foundation upon which to battle sin.

As I was preparing this post, a funny thing happened. I was listening to music new to me on Pandora Radio (more on this in a subsequent post). As I was typing, a song was playing whose lyrics caused me to sit up and take notice. It is a song by an artist named Johnny Flynn. I know nothing about the guy. But in this song, ‘Tickle Me Pink‘, his lyrics express a familiar longing:

Don’t know where I can find myself a brand new pair of ears
don’t know where I can buy a heart
the one I’ve got is shoddy
I need a brand new body
and then I can have a brand new start

My boy, you can’t buy a new heart. Mine was pretty shoddy, too, but the old is gone, and the new has come. I’ve been given a new heart, and if I can begin to really believe that, I can have a brand new start. Do you believe that to be true? Know who you are.

And for those voices in our head?

Pray for the people inside your head
for they won’t be there when you’re dead
muffled out and pushed back down
pushed back through the leafy ground

And who am I?

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Each Friday for a few weeks we are focusing attention on how Christians change. We introduced this topic last week by suggesting that change indeed is possible. We did not say that it comes easily.

Mr. Hyde found to his horror that his wicked nature was uncontrollable. Jeckyll could not be contained. That this is true is the fear of many Christians. There is a part of them whispering (singing, actually, to a tune by Linda Ronstadt), “You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good, Baby, you’re no good.”

At some level we know that this is true, or was. But we also are told that the Christian is a new creation. There is something about the old being gone, and something new being created. So, my correspondent poses this question, still in terms of the story of Jekyll and Hyde and in the light of a sermon I preached on the subject:

“What could he have done to save himself?” The point of the sermon leads to the answer: nothing. There was nothing he could have done to save himself. Okay. I got that. Now…what if Dr. Jekyll knew Jesus? How does living like a regenerate man who has NOT forgotten Romans 6 look?

This is an excellent question. We can believe that it is God who changes us, but we instinctively believe that there is something that we must do. What confuses us is that we are told that keeping God’s law is not the path to real change. That was Jeckyll’s downfall. Lawkeeping stokes our pride, and condemns us. So is there anything we can do to further change in our lives?

To frame it in a Romans 8 way, the question is this: what does it look like to “walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh” (Romans 8.4). Clearly living a Christian life involves “walking”. There are actions involved, choices, direction, duties, responses, whatever you want to call them. We either walk according to the Spirit or we walk according to the flesh. Paul’s point is that walking according to the flesh, seeking to do that which pleases God by mere obedience to law, is fruitless and worse.

So the question then is really, how do we “walk” according to the Spirit. There is a path. There are actions to be embraced which are fruitful, but not dependent upon the law. This can confuse us.

“In my struggles with sin, I am turning to the law to overcome the sin. For example, I pray for more patience, more self-control, etc. Would you say that this is simply depending on the law to overcome my lack of patience and self-control?”

No, I would not say that. To long for patience and self-control, among other things is good. This is to long for Christ-likeness. To long for the things of the Spirit, to lust, even, after the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) is a good thing.

To deal with that desire by simply trying harder (“I resolve today to be more patient, and by gum, I’m going to do it!”) is to apply the law and depend upon the flesh for our sanctification. But to long for what the law teaches (patience) and to be lead by our own weakness to see that we cannot produce in it ourselves and therefore to plead with Jesus to build patience into us, this is a good thing.

There is much more to say than this, but to pray that the fruit of God’s spirit would be worked out in my life is not law-dependence. I need to keep in mind that the law is good. It teaches us what is good; it awakens us to our need, and it shows us what Christ-likeness looks like.

Frankly, to feel the weight of this struggle, as wearying and as frustrating as it is is a good thing. I think the more mature a Christian is, the more he struggles with the presence of sin in his life. For the impatient, the evidence that the Holy Spirit is in him is that this desire for patience is warring in him against a desire to have his own way at the expense of others. (Galatians 5.17 “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”)

So, to walk according to the Spirit is to first know (by the law, even) where we are supposed to be, as painful as it is to realize that we are not yet there. But where do we go from here. We’ll consider this beginning next Friday.

Comments are welcome. If you are more comfortable emailing your comments, you can do so here.

The title is an allusion to the book/movie/musical Les Miserable and was the theme of the policeman Inspector Javert as he relentlessly tracked down the thief-turned-good-guy Jean Valjean. In the end, it is Javert who cannot change, and it is Valjean who, through a gracious impartation of mercy, is transformed.

Within each of us is a Javert, who speaks to us relentlessly, and persuasively. This voice in our head insists that, no matter how much we might long for change, “People like you will never change.” And that refrain is all to easy to believe when we see in our lives, or in the lives of those we love, patterns of failure and frustration.

The model with which we are programmed to attempt change is a model of moral effort. If I am to change my moral behavior, I must determine to do better, and then do better. Tim Keller, though, has used Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde to prod us into confronting the fallacy of this. The chemical mix which Dr. Jeckyll would drink had the effect of suppressing his ‘good’ part and giving his ‘evil’ part free reign. Once he came to loathe that behavior, he resolved to stop drinking the juice. That was his moral effort. Once he did that, he forgot the evil in him, took pride in his righteous behavior, and began to look down in judgment upon those who were not as “decent” as he. And at that moment, deeply enmeshed in his pride, the darkness of his heart became clear to him, and he became Mr. Hyde with no juice and no return.

What Keller intends for us to see (and I, too, as I ‘stole’ his allusion to Jeckyll and Hyde when I preached on Romans 6 and 7 last year) is that the result of moral effort is not to change the heart, but is rather to suppress one expression of sin for another.

So, do we believe that people like us will never change?

No. People like us can change. The gospel simply reminds us that change does not come unaided. If we are to change, it will be a change worked in us by the power of God, rooted in the Gospel of his Son, and produced by the inworking of his Holy Spirit.

These thoughts, when I preached them, spawned a series of questions from a member of our church who was struggling, as we all should do, with how this process of change looks in a real life. Particularly, she was struggling with where in this process of change resides our own effort, if any, and if we exert any effort, are we in that way again depending upon the law or upon morality to effect the change.

I confess, these are complicated questions, which have been given much better answers by people much more qualified than I. However, what I’d like to do over the next several weeks is to share portions of the correspondence which dealt with these issues. My intention is to post a new segment in this conversation each Friday. (I have my correspondent’s permission to do this.)

My hope is that this will be helpful to many of us. It is also my hope that as you read you might have the courage to post the questions which these thoughts generate out of your own experience. Post your questions (annonymously, if you like), or email me privately. I’d like this to be a helpful dialogue on an issue lying in the center of our Christian experience.

I, unlike Javert, believe that people like you, and even me, really do have hope for change.