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I am bearing witness today that there is a growing hunger around the world, including among some of us here in the US.
There is a growing desire to move from the safe and familiar performance of religious duties to an unfamiliar and more costly life as authentic disciples of Jesus Christ.
How will we make this shift from religious duty to living discipleship?
We can ponder things often discounted by modern Christians like the pursuit of holiness or purity of life.
We can recapture personal transformation from the self-help hucksters and spiritual con artists marketing their “5 Easy Steps to a Transformed Life?” But there is an inconvenient truth.
Life transformation takes effort.
As G.K. Chesterton declared in the 19th century, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
Or as John Ortberg writes more recently: “Spiritual transformation is missing in many churches because failure in the pursuit of it has caused us to settle for less.” In what ways do you or I “settle for less” than genuine transformation?
One way is focusing on conversion (getting into heaven) and not transformation. Jesus didn’t call for “decisions.” Jesus called for disciples–men and women who would follow him in living a whole new quality of life he called the Kingdom of God.
A second way we “settle for less” is replacing genuine transformation with more do-able behaviors or beliefs.
John Ortberg again: “If people do not experience authentic transformation, then their faith will deteriorate into a search for the boundary markers that masquerade as evidence of a changed life.”
Ortberg remembers that in the church where he grew up, a prideful or resentful pastor could keep his job but if the pastor was ever caught smoking a cigarette, he would be immediately terminated. Why? For those people, smoking was a boundary marker–it defined who was spiritual and who was not.
Today we still have boundary markers that “masquerade as evidence of a changed life.” Slow down and ponder: what boundary markers do you use to identify spiritual people? (Pro-life? Vote Republican? Use the right kind of “God talk?”)
A third way we “settle for less” is, paradoxically, focusing on God’s word. At the end of his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells the story of the house “built on the rock” which stands against the raging storm crashing against it, while the house “built on the sand” is swept away and destroyed. (Matthew 7:24-27)
The house that crashes is the house of those who listened attentively to Jesus’ words, but did not put them into practice. Listening to sermons, attending Bible studies and knowing biblical truths will not transform us!
Dallas Willard puts it well in his classic book, The Divine Conspiracy:
“It is not enough, if we would enable Jesus’ students to do what he said, just to announce and teach the truth about God, about Jesus, and about God’s purposes with humankind. To think so is the fallacy underlying most of the training that goes on in our churches and theological schools. Even relentlessly pursued, it is not enough.
Our mind on its own is an extremely feeble instrument, whose power over life we constantly tend to exaggerate.
If we are to be transformed, the body must be transformed, and that is not accomplished by talking at it.”
So, how do we move beyond our minds? How do we move from more ideas to more action?
Transformation Requires Both ‘Putting Off’ and ‘Putting On’
 The apostle Paul tells us spiritual transformation actually takes place through a rhythm of “putting off” and “putting on.” (Col. 3:5-17)
Scholars agree that Paul’s metaphor harkens back to early Christians baptism, where those baptized literally took off their old clothes before going down into the water, and after coming up out of the water put on a new white robe to symbolize a new life that was now beginning for them.
The question you’re probably asking yourself is “how do I get this putting off and putting on going in my life? Tell me what to DO!!” Here’s the problem—the Bible never gives us a formula. But Dallas Willard says we have something better:
“Thus, although we are indeed not told in formulaic terms what to do in order to build our life upon the rock, everyone who knows anything about Jesus’ life really does know what to do to that end or can easily find out. It is not a secret.
So, basically, to put off the old person and put on the new we only follow Jesus into the activities that he engaged in to nurture his own life in relation to the Father. ” The Divine Conspiracy
Willard points out that we usually focus so much on what Jesus says, we forget to notice what Jesus DOES, which is every bit as important.
- Jesus spent much time in solitude and silence—perhaps. so should we?
- Jesus was a thorough student of the scriptures, and could quote many by memory—how about us?
- Jesus had prayer and worship at the center of his life—if we want to be like him, why not join him?
In short, we can engage in the same activities we see Jesus used to nurture his own life with his heavenly Father.
We’ll discover that some of these activities are more focused on “putting off” our old way of living—like solitude and silence, or a simpler life. Others are focused on “putting on” our new life in Christ—like prayer, or scripture or worship.
Imagine a house with the warm sun brightly shining outside. The house has heavy blinds across all the windows, so that the rooms are dark and cold. How do we bring light and warmth into the rooms?
First, we make the effort to open the blinds. Notice, opening the blinds does not CREATE the sunlight—it existed outside the house all along. Opening the blinds removes an obstacle that is preventing the light from penetrating into the house.
After getting the blinds out of the way, we next throw open the windows to let warm air circulate throughout the house. Again, like the sun, the warm air was already there–opening the windows only created the pathway it needed to enter and warm the house.
You and I can push aside (“put off”) the obstacles that prevent God’s grace from penetrating our lives. You and I can also throw open (“put on”) the pathways through which God’s grace naturally and easily flows into us.
We will look at five of these key activities in Jesus’ life over the coming five weeks of Lent.
Will you use these next weeks to slow down and ponder what God is calling you to “put off” and “put on”?
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