Read Free to Live: The Utter Relief of Holiness Online
Authors: John Eldredge
Tags: #Religion - Christian Life
Free to Live: The Utter Relief of Holiness (7 page)
I raise these examples because they reflect the times. We are urged in scripture not to let the times infect us. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). We breathe this present cultural air; we take in its assumptions. “The world” might mean our church wrapped up in technical rule-keeping and straining gnats; it might be the culture swept up in comfortable goodness and leisurely doubt.
We’re after something far more genuine: the beautiful holiness of Jesus.
2
“Refiner’s Fire,” Brian Doerksen.
“Courage! Take heart!
God is here, right here,
on his way to put things right
and redress all wrongs.
He’s on his way! He’ll save you!”
Springs of water will burst out in the wilderness,
streams flow in the desert.
Hot sands will become a cool oasis,
thirsty ground a splashing fountain.
There will be a highway
called the Holy Road.
The people God has ransomed
will come back on this road.
They’ll sing as they make their way home to Zion,
unfading halos of joy encircling their heads,
welcomed home with gifts of joy and gladness
as all sorrows and sighs scurry into the night.
Isaiah 35:3–10
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I had a horrible night last night.
I don’t quite remember every detail of the dream I had, but it involved our family and my relationship with my sons, and the theme of it was this: I was failing terribly as a father. I awoke in the dark, but the message persisted:
You have blown it with your sons
. Like an avalanche, the data rushed in: I haven’t spent enough time with them. I haven’t shown them how to study the Bible. I’ve ignored warning signs. I missed key moments in their lives. My life has been far more about me than about them. My anger has wounded them permanently. You parents know how quickly the “facts” rush in to sentence you and how horrible it feels. I felt sick at heart.
And the feeling felt “true,” as in,
It’s all true and so you ought to feel terrible
.
Lying there in the dark, I decided impulsively to begin a series of actions that would make amends: First, a sort of self-hating repentance with scoops of shame piled on.
Oh, God forgive me, what a failure I’ve been
. Followed by a mad rush of mental plans to try to atone for my mistakes by doing what I could to redeem things with my sons. This, too, felt very “real” and “appropriate.”
Except, none of it was from God. Not the conviction, nor the repentance, nor the making amends. None of it.
The “conviction” I felt was the hot breath of hell, the accusations of the evil one. (He is, after all, called the Accuser.) The “repentance” I was being swept toward was the labyrinth of shame and self-loathing he loves to pile upon us. And the “amends” were unnecessary atonements for crimes never committed.
The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time…and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire…but I beheld in my dream, that a man came to him, whose name was Help, and asked him what he did there. Then, said he, Give me thine hand: so he gave him his hand, and he drew him out, and he set him upon sound ground…And he said unto me, “This miry slough is such a place as cannot be mended: it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore it is called the Slough of Despond; for still, as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there arise in his soul many fears and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place: and this is the reason of the badness of this ground.” (John Bunyan,
Pilgrim’s Progress
)
I bring this up at this point in our search because I know the enemy is going to try to stop any real progress or breakthrough. And being the Deceiver that he is, his choice means are various forms of false conviction.
A woman I counseled years ago suffered profoundly from shame. If you were to listen to her story, you would know why. Throughout her childhood she lived under a constant artillery barrage of verbal abuse—put-downs at school, rage from both her mother and father at home. Over time the verbal assault shattered her heart and destroyed any self-worth she might have had. Shame became her “normal.” In her twenties she found Christ, or he found her; she became a Christian. But the strongholds of shame continued to operate. As she began to hear messages on holiness, or as Jesus tried to show her something in her life that needed addressing, she fell immediately into shame.
I’m such a horrible person. God is mad at me. I’m a disappointment to everyone. I hate myself.
And what was worse, the shame felt legitimate, it felt as if it were coming straight from God himself. Shame masqueraded as conviction.
But the fruit of these convictions was never, ever fruitful. She felt loads more despair, more self-hatred, but there was never any lasting change, never the beautiful holiness of Jesus. And here is where you will be rescued, friends: You shall know them by their fruit (one of Jesus’ favorite tests).
“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” (2 Corinthians 7:10)
Wow! Read it again. No regret? There you have it. This will be a great help to you as you pursue genuine holiness. When it comes to looking at our failures, there are two kinds of sorrow: One brings life, the other death. One leaves no regret, the other destroys us. What I felt in the night as a father was simply crushing. The data felt “true” and the sorrow felt “true,” but there was no life in them, no hope. It wasn’t conviction but
condemnation
. It didn’t feel like an invitation to change; it was simply and irrefutably a verdict on my life. The shame my friend felt as a woman seemed to be an appropriate hatred of her sin, but in fact it was merely self-loathing and nothing more. Never once did it bring her closer to Christ, or closer to change. Quite the opposite. If only she knew this:
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1–2)
I cannot say strongly enough how important this will be to you. Condemnation is not from God. The voice of the Father is never condemning. Firm at times, of course, but never condemning. Rather, when God convicts us of sin, it is always with the hope and invitation to leave that sin behind.
God’s kindness leads you toward repentance. (Romans 2:4)
I know too many times how “real” the Accuser’s accusations feel. Too many times have I accepted condemnation as God’s conviction. The awful hook about false conviction is that you can feel as if you’re hearing from God.
If I’m guilty, at least God is speaking to me
. The Church has practically enshrined this belief. Many Christians think the scriptures talk about “What a wretch I am.” This has been canonized in the hymn “Amazing Grace”: “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” And yet that is not how the scriptures use the phrase! In Romans 7, Paul is talking about how awful it is to find himself wanting to do one thing but doing another; not wanting to do something and finding himself doing it:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! (Romans 7:15–24)
Not “I am a wretch,” but “how wretched is this horrible quandary I find myself in.” Do you hear the difference? “How miserable I am,” not “what a despicable specimen of a human being I am.” Eugene Petersen gets the translation better into our modern language:
I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? (7:18–24
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“A wretch like me” isn’t even in the text. Yes, Paul is at the end of his rope. Yes, something has gone wrong deep within him. But rather than turning to self-loathing and condemnation, he is moved to cry out for help.
The test is simple: Does the “conviction” or the “sorrow” cause us to run to God? Does it produce
intimacy
with Jesus? Shame never brings anybody closer to Jesus. Self-reproach or self-hatred never bring anybody closer to Jesus. Yes, sin is a mighty serious matter. God is insistent upon our transformation, you bet he is. But listen:
Sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:14)
You are not under law, but under grace. Did you hear that? How will be we set free from sin? Not by condemnation. By grace.
Let’s come back to Zacchaeus and the town harlot who crashed the party to weep at Jesus’ feet. They were, both of them, very keenly aware of their failures. They knew they had fallen way short of God’s goodness. And not only did they know it, but so did everyone else. So they bore the double weight of their own personal shame and the contempt of their communities. And yet, when they encountered Jesus—a man whose goodness shone like the sun—they ran
toward
him. How could it be?
They knew he was merciful. They knew they would find forgiveness.
As will you. God’s promise to us is total forgiveness if we will come to him and ask for it:
If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
This offer is for everyone. It is for you and for me. And it is our only hope. We cannot begin to truly face our lives in the light of God’s goodness until we know that we are under grace, that all is forgiven. Think of the difference between these two scenarios: Someone whom you love pulls you aside and says, “Can I talk to you about something I see in your life?” Versus this: Someone you know who doesn’t even
like
you calls you into his office to say, “I need to talk to you about your life.” Your internal reaction is totally different. None of us wants to be exposed; none of us runs around hoping this will happen. Remember the way we act in elevators: we hide. But in the case of love, you can face your life because you know there is no condemnation. This is how it is meant to be between us and Jesus.
Whatever it is you need to face about yourself, it has already been forgiven. You can go there because though the exposure may be painful—who wants to take a look in the mirror?—you are under grace.
I share this because it is hard to face our sin. The whole thing is booby-trapped with shame, fear, condemnation, dodging, equivocating, and all manner of false conviction. The only way through the slough of despond is this: All is forgiven. Everything. Now come to Jesus so you can get things straightened out.
God set about in Jesus Christ the restoration of humanity. Your humanity.
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see that original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself and then after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun. (Roman 8:29–30
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Something absolutely wonderful has been done for you through Jesus Christ. The life you have always wanted to live is now available to you. But in order to begin to experience it—
before
we can experience it—we need a basic understanding of what has been accomplished on our behalf. Then, in the next chapter, we’ll dive into how we actually embrace what has been done. What has God done for you through Jesus Christ? How did he intervene so that you might share in his goodness?
First, through the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth upon the cross, your sins have been completely forgiven:
This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. (Ephesians 1:7)
He forgave us all our sins. (Colossians 2:13)
Through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. (Acts 13:34)
Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. (Romans 4:7)
Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you have been reconciled to God:
We were reconciled to him through the death of his Son. (Romans 5:10)
We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:11)
We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:1)
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:18)
Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you are cleansed of all your sins:
The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)
How much more will the blood of Christ cleanse our consciences. (Hebrews 9:14)
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood. (Revelation 1:5)
If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you have been delivered from the tyranny of that part of you in bondage to sin:
Our old self was crucified with him…that we should no longer be slaves to sin. (Romans 6:6)
Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:11)
I have been crucified with Christ. (Galatians 2:20)
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature. (Galatians 5:24)
Through the
resurrection
of Jesus and the coming of the Spirit of God, you now have the life of Jesus Christ within you:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. (Ephesians 2:4–5)
God made you alive with Christ. (Colossians 2:13)
And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. (Romans 6:4)
Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2)
There is simply no greater news in heaven or on earth.
There is also no other way toward the restoration of your humanity and the incarnation of a genuine goodness within you.
Before you rush on, read back over these truths several times; let them begin to seep into your being. You are forgiven. Your sin nature—that traitor within you that continually sabotages your best intentions—has died with Jesus Christ. You have the life of Jesus living in you. Now, I know, I know. It sure doesn’t
feel
that way most days. But you have to ground your life in something more reliable than experience. You begin with the truth, and then it will play itself out in your life. God set about the restoration of your humanity in Jesus Christ. First, he needed to deliver you from the power of sin and the inclination to sin, so he included you in the death of Jesus Christ. Having broken the power of sin over us—and
within
us—God needed to imbue us with a new life. So he included you in the resurrection of Jesus; he has made you alive with him; the life of Jesus Christ has been imparted into your being.
Do not look to your emotions or experience
to determine whether or not this is true. You start by accepting the truth as told you by the living God. Then you will discover it playing itself out in your life. That is why Paul says this:
Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way…You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did. (Romans 6:6–9
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This being true, he goes on to explain:
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:12–14)
What is crucial here is this:
now we have an option
. Without the cross, sin would simply rule in us and over us unchallenged. The hope of genuine goodness could never be ours. But because of the work of Christ
for
us and
in
us, we now have the possibility of living a life filled with the captivating goodness of Jesus. There are choices to be made, of course—Paul makes that clear. The joyful news is that those choices are now very real and quite possible. What an utter relief! I said it was wonderful; it is wonder-full, wonder-filled.
The old saint goes on in the next chapter of Romans to describe his own experience of coming to understand the truth of this and to embrace it for himself:
Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! (Romans 7:20–25; 8:1–5
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Friends, no amount of exposition can add to the wonder of this. Either it is true or it is not. If it is, a whole new life has opened before you.
Before we move on to how this can become our experiential reality, I need to make one more thing clear: the redemptive work of Jesus Christ reaches the depths of the human heart. This is absolutely essential for us to believe. For one thing, a good part of Christendom doesn’t understand that this is true; they have been told that their heart is still the disaster it was before Jesus found them. Not so.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36:26–27)
He purified their hearts by faith. (Acts 15:9)
Circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit. (Romans 2:29)
Pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. (2 Timothy 2:22)
The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1:5)
But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart. (Luke 8:15)
God went for the jugular when he set about our transformation in Jesus Christ. He knows the human heart is the source of our iniquities; he knows that to leave the heart untouched would sabotage his redemptive mission. He promised a new heart; he has given us a new heart. If this still sounds too good to be true, if it sounds contrary to all you have been taught, simply insert the word
wicked
into the New Testament verses directed toward the heart of the Believer:
Love the Lord your God with all your [wicked] heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30)
Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your [wicked] heart to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:19)
Whatever you do, work at it with all your [wicked] heart, as working for the Lord. (Colossians 3:23)
Pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a [wicked] heart. (2 Timothy 2:22)
The goal of this command is love, which comes from a [wicked] heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1:5)
I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my [wicked] heart. (Philippians 1:3–7)
We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our [wicked] hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you…open wide your [wicked] hearts also. (2 Corinthians 6:11–13)
How ridiculous it is to hold on to the idea that the heart touched by Jesus Christ remains wicked. God has given you a new heart. If you do not know this or believe it, how will you ever find genuine goodness, holiness that flows from the inside out? Remember, Jesus is not impressed with external rule-keeping; he wants holiness that flows from our heart.
Yes, we still need to make choices; we still need to resist what the scriptures call the “sin nature” within us. But we are never told to crucify our hearts. The only road to holiness is to know that we have died with Christ to sin; that the deepest, truest part of us doesn’t want it. What a relief. When some foul thought or desire hits us, instead of battling for hours and days in anguish, we simply get to say, “No, I don’t want that. That is a lie. My heart is circumcised unto God.” If you
don’t
believe this, then you’ll end up making agreements with whatever the Deceiver and Tempter is throwing at you. If you believe your heart is wicked, then you’re going to come under incredible shame and struggle and condemnation. If you believe you want to sin, then you’re going to have a mighty rough time overcoming it.
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. (Romans 8:1–2
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