The Path to Transformation

Have some time on your hands? What if you spent your time in this crazy season intentionally deepening your walk with the LORD on the path of transformation? Over these next few blog posts, I want to walk us through some of the basic spiritual disciplines.

Before we get started, it is important that we make a few distinctions regarding obedience and grace. It is very easy for Christians who have been burned by legalism to reject the spiritual disciplines outright. "I've spent enough of my life being told that I HAVE to do this or I HAVE to do that" some might say. Salvation is by grace not by works (Ephesians 2:8-10). There isn't anything that I have to do as a Christian that Christ did not ultimately do on my behalf, and to require someone to do this or that confuses the Gospel of Grace and turns relationship into religion. Enough of that. I will live by Grace!

This is a very convincing argument and with it comes some very important things that we need to consider as we move forward in discussing the disciplines.

Ephesians 2 is my favorite chapter in the entire Bible (right now at least) and verses 8-10 give us the most straightforward explanation of justification by faith in the entire Bible.

"8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." (ESV)

Justification is the fancy theological term that means "to be declared righteous." Justification by faith is the idea that when we believe and trust the Gospel, the perfect life, substitutionary death (in our place as a substitute), and resurrection of Christ, our sins before the righteous and Holy God are immediately dealt with never to be brought up again. At that moment, the perfect life of Christ ie; his perfect obedience to the Law, is transferred to us so at one time we are declared not only forgiven of our sins with our debt completely wiped out but also we are made righteous in the sight of God. Now when God looks at those of us who have placed our faith in Christ He see's the perfect righteousness of Christ instead of a sinner in need of a bath. This is what it means to be saved by Grace.

We who are sinners, through no effort or merit of our own, are brought into the family of God by the life, death, and resurrection of our elder brother Jesus Christ. We are not asked to work for grace. If this were the case, grace would not be grace but something that we earned. We are not asked to get our act together first. We are not asked to change our behavior or the language we use. We aren't even asked to go to a church. No, grace is given to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ and we are simply asked to believe and trust that He did all that was necessary to make us right with God. The old adage "Just-as-if-i'd-never sinned"(get it? Just-if-ied? Very clever Christians) rings with truth.

But the beauty of the Gospel is that while God loves us where we are, in spite of where we are even, He loves us too much to leave us there (Matt Chandler, you genius). We are not made right with God so that we can simply coast in the Christian life. If Ephesians chapter 2 is one of the clearest explanations of Grace, James chapter 2 is one of the clearest explanation of what our works in Christ look like.

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
James 2:14-24 (ESV)

James and Paul agree that we are not made righteous before God by the things that we do. We are saved by Grace, which by definition is undeserved. At the same time they both say that if our lives do not look different after we place our faith in Christ then we have reason to doubt if we really believe what we claim to believe. If the theology we believe in our head doesn't move down to our heart and impact the way that we live then it is a dead theology and regardless of orthodoxy, it is it is meaningless apart from a transformed life. This is what Paul says in Romans chapter 6:1-4.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:1-4 (ESV)

If we have truly been saved by Christ, it will show in our lives. Remember, Ephesians 2:10 says that we were saved in order that we might walk in the good works that God has prepared for us. The Christian who has been saved by Grace is called to an obedience that is fueled by that same saving grace. If you truly believe (not just in the head but with your affections; with the center of your being) that Christ saved you at great personal cost to himself and that His salvation is freely offered to you in the Gospel, then your life should be one of joyful obedience. We live obedient lives not in order to EARN what Christ has freely offered to us in the Gospel, but out of THANKFULNESS for the gift that has been freely given to us.

Legalism says "you MUST do this in order to be acceptable to God"
Grace fueled obedience says "Because I am acceptable to God I MUST do this out of thankfulness"
Legalism says "You are not a Christian unless you follow these set of rules"
Grace fueled obedience says "Because I am a Christian, I know obedience brings joy rather than drudgery because I long to look like my heavenly Father"
Legalism says "the spiritual disciplines make God love me more"
Grace fueled obedience says "God loved me when I was His enemy, when I was unlovely, when I was far from Him, therefore the spiritual disciplines do not make God love me but help me grow in my love for God"

Do you see the difference? It's a matter of motivation. Legalism is motivated by performance, grace-fueled obedience is motivate by the cross. The Gospel declares that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we have ever done that could make God love us less. God loves us perfectly because we are in Christ. Our standing before God does not rest on our shoulders, it rests on Christ's. We are loved not because of our obedience, but because of His.

 None of us want to be told how to live or what to do, especially if we grew up in a legalistic environment where our performance was what measured our acceptance. It's hard to get over the hurdle of religious performance, but the disciplines are not about performance, they are about growing in grace.
The spiritual disciplines are not practices that we use in order to get blessings or acceptance from God, they are gifts of grace that God uses in order to grow us in His grace. 

I pray that this eases your mind as we embark on this journey together. This journey is hard, but don't we all know that the really good things in life come only with some difficulty? No one wakes up one morning and up and decides to run a marathon (well I tried to do that with a 5k but it certainly didn't work out well for me). The same is true with the disciplines. They are hard and we do have to work at them, but in the end, what we receive is well worth the work. After all, the cross was incredibly hard for our Savior, but look what came from that.

Because of Christ's work on the cross, we have been adopted into the family of God and this was something He did on our behalf without us earning or deserving it. When we practice the spiritual disciplines we are transformed more and more into the family resemblance. This is not something we do in order to GET adopted, but rather we do it BECAUSE we have already been adopted and we want to look more like our Father. Our Father is a good Father who delights in giving good gifts to His children, and wouldn't you know it, the disciplines are one of the best gifts He gives us. If you want to be transformed, this is the path to transformation. Lucky for us, our older brother Jesus paved this path for us ahead of time.