Grace Message

The basic premise of this understanding of the Gospel is the idea that the Christian life is not something that I live; rather it is something I allow the Holy Spirit to live in and through me. Just like the brain controls the rest of the body, Jesus is supposed to control His Body, and we are members of that Body. We don’t decide what to do or where to go any more than our fingers or toes act independently of the brain. (Or rather, if they do, then something is seriously wrong, and it’s time to call in Dr. House.)

Now, even though every earthly analogy falls short, I particularly like the one in which a child attempts to write words, and the father closes his hand around the child’s so that even though the child is holding the pen and moving it across the paper, the father is actually responsible for what appears on the page. Even so our lives are our own, and we live them, but the Christian has the opportunity, the honor, and the responsibility to allow the Father to live our lives for us, to direct our will and actions and words. But it is much less obvious who is doing what than the analogy makes it seem, naturally. We can only be sure of the Father’s activity in our lives by the results: if the results are capable of being accomplished through our activity and ability, then it stands to reason that we are the originator of it. If, however, what happens is beyond our ability to control or create, if it is truly miraculous, something impossible to orchestrate apart from the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God, then we may safely assume that it was God working through us to do His pleasure. Just like, to complete the analogy, a ragged, illegible scrawl can be attributed to the child’s handiwork, while a clear, eloquent and firm script must be the work of the father.

You may ask where this idea is supported in the Bible, and rightfully so. The clearest expression occurs in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” In other words, I no longer call the shots in my life; not my will, but His be done. Or a chapter later, when Paul berates the Galatians: “I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?” (3:2-3). In other words, we were saved completely through the actions of God and Jesus, and we access that salvation by abdicating our will and our lives, our attempts to please God through our own actions. Are we actually saying that, after being saved by faith, by depending upon the work and office of Jesus, that, now saved, we are going to discard Jesus until we get to heaven, we are going to revert back to the pre-Christian mentality of trying to please God through our sweat, blood and tears? Which is why Paul rails against them so much, and why he says in Colossians 2:6, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.”

Romans constructs this argument, especially in chapter 5, verses 9-10: “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.  For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” The cross justified and redeemed us, but the resurrection saved us, because we are saved by the life of Jesus. And even as His life is not a single thing but an ongoing process, so too our salvation and sanctification is an ongoing process, not a singular event. If that weren’t enough, the next chapter hammers it home: “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (3-5). Our sins were buried in His death and entombment, and so our lives were raised when the stone rolled away, that we may “walk in newness of life” right now, on earth. To think otherwise is to say that eternal life begins after we die, after life on earth is over. But the Gospel doesn’t say this; Jesus rose on earth, walked on earth, and concluded His ministry on earth, ascending to the Father only so the Spirit could come down and continue the work in the new way.

Here’s the final confirmation, from the lips of Christ Himself. While preparing His disciples for the crucifixion, He says that “He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.   Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me” (John 14:9-11).  Or in John 5:19: “Then Jesus answered and said to them, ’Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.’” This is the final example of the Christian life, the life that Christ lived. He did not live His own life, according to His own will, but rather the will of His Father. In like manner are we to live.

And this is why this understanding of the Christian life has so captured my heart and mind. Because I have always tried to do the right thing, to live a good life, to be good. Basically my entire life has been lived as a Christian, and it kills me to look at my past littered with sin and failure. I despair. If there was one argument that might have convinced me of the falseness of Christianity, it would have been this concept that someone can be saved, and see little difference in their everyday life, no matter how honest and earnest their desire to change, to be different. It’s one thing if a person “converts” and then never demonstrates either a change or the desire to change; such a person’s conversion can be seriously doubted. But I have ever longed to please God, to live a life that He could say of it, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” And I have always failed. That has been a greater torment to my soul than my poor self-image based on body image, zero relationships, lack of career, etc. And when I read what Ian Thomas and Bill Gillham wrote, when I listened to Thomas’ sermons, it was a weight falling off my back; the sun switching on in my spirit. At last the Christian life made sense! At last it seemed feasible! At last, a practical application of the words of Scripture! Because I grasped what the problem was: me! I was trying to do my best for God, to live a righteous life on my own steam and out of my own desire. But my own desire to live righteously prove time and again hopelessly inadequate to overcoming the desires of the flesh, the old man that twists and perverts every good thing, every good impulse and healthy ambition. Not to mention the fact that the servants of Hell would hardly allow me free rein to live a righteous life. Even as I was unable to resist my own sinful nature before conversion, so I was unable to dismiss my sinful nature after conversion. And God never expected me to! He isn’t interested in rehabilitating my flesh; He wants to replace it, with His Spirit. He wants me to exchange independence for dependence on Him. To live is Christ, Christ in my living, thinking, working, sleeping, eating, hoping, loving, everything. Christ in me, the hope of glory.

And so, as Paul says in Philippians 2:12-13, “Therefore, my beloved…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;  for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” That is why I am confident in my ability to lose weight, to find a career, to gain a wife, to overcome. Because I’m no longer confident in my ability, but rather I am confident that “He who has begun a good work in [me] will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6). I am His piece of work, and He’s the one who’s going to polish me off.