Have you ever been in a situation where you know your
destination but can’t find your way? It happens to me with almost predictable
regularity. In fact, I’ve been lost in nearly every big city I’ve ever visited.
Just ask my wife. In these moments of dislocation and disorientation, we need
two things for our journey to be a success: a map and someone to show us where
we are in relation to our final destination. When you come right down to it,
then, I suppose we usually need a third thing as well. Especially men. When our
journey has been reduced to an ineffective mix of hunches and guesswork, we
need to admit that we’re lost and need help!
Following Jesus is also a journey, and one with a clear,
inspiring destination. According to Scripture, we are predestined to be
conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). To be holy. Most Christians
realize this and desire it. But we often feel disoriented in the midst of our
journey. Though we know where we should be going, it can seem like we’ve lost
our way.
A primary reason for this disorientation is simply that
becoming more like Jesus—a process theologians often call
“sanctification”—takes a lifetime, and life gets complicated. As the years
unfold it can become unclear how sanctification really works, and how it fits
with other elements of Christian life and thought. For anyone who takes faith
seriously, honest, important questions will eventually arise.
· How do my current struggles with sin affect my
standing with God?
· What practical steps must I take to deal with
sin and nurture spiritual growth?
· What should I expect as I pursue change?
· How do I measure progress?
· And how do other aspects of my life – my
longings for happiness, my personal disciplines and habits, my sufferings and
trials, and my relationships with other people – fit into all this?
Dangers, Toils, and Snares
This journey towards holiness is further complicated by what
the well-known hymn “Amazing Grace” describes as “many dangers, toils, and
snares.” It is both terribly sad and undeniably true that a fair number of
these perils have emerged from within Christianity itself.
Distortions of emphasis. Many Christian traditions,
all of them undoubtedly well-intentioned, emphasize certain aspects of biblical
teaching to the neglect of others, leaving unsuspecting Christians with
distorted ideas or false expectations about spirituality.
· Some
put so much emphasis on having correct doctrine that the heart and affections
get left behind in an overly intellectual approach to discipleship.
· Others
so heavily emphasize inward piety and the importance of spiritual experience
that they effectively replace joyful faith in Christ with an unhealthy and
myopic introspection.
· Some
neglect the work of the Holy Spirit altogether, leaving Christians with the
impression that being holy is wholly dependent on moral effort and
self-discipline.
· Still
others put so much focus on the Spirit that believers wrongly view the
Christian life as nothing more than a passive acquiescence to the Spirit’s
work.
Misrepresentations of the gospel. Even worse are
teachings that eclipse the transforming power of the gospel altogether. These
appear in two basic forms.
On one side of the spectrum are views that distort God’s
grace in ways that give license to ongoing patterns of sin. This is the error
that Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace . . . the grace which amounts to the
justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who
departs from sin and from whom sins departs.”
Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on
ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring
repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession,
absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without
discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and
incarnate.[i]
But on the other side of the spectrum, and even more
contrary to the gospel and more detrimental to spiritual health than “cheap
grace,” are approaches to holiness that stress moral effort while neglecting
the rich resources of God’s grace in the gospel. This legalistic approach to
holiness rips the heart out of Christianity, leaving people with nothing but
the dead form of performance-based religion.
In his essay, “The Centrality of the Gospel,” Tim Keller
captures the gospel-centered balance we need:
The key for thinking out the
implications of the gospel is to consider the gospel a “third” way between two
mistaken opposites . . . Tertullian said, “Just as Christ was crucified between
two thieves, so this doctrine of justification is ever crucified between two
opposite errors.” Tertullian meant that there were two basic false ways of
thinking, each of which “steals” the power and the distinctiveness of the
gospel from us by pulling us “off the gospel line” to one side or the other.
These two errors are very powerful, because they represent the natural tendency
of the human heart and mind . . . These “thieves” can be called moralism or
legalism on the one hand, and hedonism or relativism on
the other hand. Another way to put it is: the gospel opposes both religion and
irreligion. On the one hand, “moralism/religion” stresses truth without
grace, for it says that we must obey the truth in order to be saved. On the
other hand, “relativists/irreligion” stresses grace without truth, for they say
that we are all accepted by God (if there is a God) and we have to decide what
is true for us. But “truth” without grace is not really truth, and “grace”
without truth is not really grace. Jesus was “full of grace and truth”.
Any religion or philosophy of life that de-emphasizes or loses one or the other
of these truths, falls into legalism or into license and either way, the joy
and power and “release” of the gospel is stolen by one thief or the other.[ii]
These “two thieves” of legalism and license have plagued the
church throughout its history, doing great damage and hindering many in their
journey. It is directly between these extremes, therefore, that we must live,
safe in the truth of the all-sufficient cross of Christ. This is how we
reliably make progress toward the destination of Christlikeness.
To aid us on our way we need a good, accurate map. A map
that not only tells where we are in the journey, but one that marks the path
clearly and warns us of the dangers, toils, and snares—from our own hearts,
from the temptations of this fallen world, and from well-meaning but misguided
Christian teachers—that we will encounter along the way.
Piecing Together a Puzzle
My personal journey towards Christlikeness has certainly not
been a straight line from conversion to transformation. I’ve often felt
disappointed with my lack of progress and confused by the conflicting
perspectives on how to change. But I’ve also experienced surges of growth as
the Lord has opened to my mind the glories of Christ’s work in the gospel and
the ways of his Spirit in the heart. Nor is my journey complete. I continue to
fight sin and learn of my daily need for repentant faith in the crucified and
risen Christ. My spiritual growth has been like putting together a jigsaw
puzzle – slowly the borders have been formed and key pieces have fit into place,
and the big picture has gradually taken shape.
This goal of this book is to explain where the process of
transformation fits and how it happens in the Christian life. I hope to bring
together various aspects of spiritual formation in a way that is unusual for
most books. Many authors do a wonderful job of focusing on one or two of the
following areas.
· The
content of the gospel – unfolding what God has done for us in the cross and
resurrection of Christ.
· The
application of the gospel – discussing the implications of the cross for daily
life.
· The
priority of holiness and the necessity of mortifying sin – explaining what
holiness is and how putting sin to death is an essential and ongoing responsibility
in any Christian’s life.
· The
motivating power in Christian spirituality – describing the inner dynamics of
grace and joy in helping us glorify God through the pursuit of holiness.
· The
nature and means of spiritual transformation – explaining how people grow
spiritually through the use of various methods (such as meditation and prayer).
· The
role of suffering in spiritual growth – encouraging us to embrace trials as one
of God’s means of changing us.
· The
importance of community in our discipleship – reminding us that we need others
to help us in our journey to Christlikeness.
I have been greatly helped by many of these books, authored
by contemporary theologians and pastors such as J. I. Packer, John Piper,
Sinclair Ferguson, Tim Keller, C. J. Mahaney, Don Carson, Paul Tripp, Jerry
Bridges, and Don Whitney; as well as classic books on spirituality from
previous generations written by great stalwarts of the faith such as Saint
Augustine, John Calvin, John Bunyan, Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, Charles
Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John Stott, and C. S. Lewis. As I’ve read from
these authors over the past fifteen years, different pieces of the puzzle have
slowly come together, giving shape to a larger vision of what the gospel is
about and how it connects to the various dimensions of my spiritual life. My
purpose in this book is to bring these pieces together, presenting a single,
unified, gospel-centered vision of how to understand and live the Christian
life.
The Power of the Gospel for Personal Change
Because you have picked up this book, you must feel the need
for change in your own life. When you examine your attitudes, relationships,
thought-patterns, and personal habits, it doesn’t take long to realize how far
you still have to grow, does it? If you are like me, such self-assessment can
quickly become discouraging! We know we need to change, but how do we pursue
it?
My central claim in Christ Formed in You is that it
is God’s purpose to change us by progressively making us more like Jesus, and
that this happens only as we understand and apply the gospel to our lives. In
the pages that follow we will explore the transforming power of the gospel from
several angles.
· Part
One focuses on the foundations for personal change. We will look at
God’s ultimate goal in transforming us (Chapter One); the key to transformation,
which is the gospel itself (Chapter Two); and the application of the gospel to
our lives in three specific ways (Chapters Three, Four, and Five).
· Part
Two then takes up the pattern of personal change. We will explore the
captivating beauty of gospel holiness (Chapter Six); with its demands that we
both kill sin (Chapter Seven); and grow in grace by the power of the Spirit
(Chapter Eight); and the quest for joy that motivates us in this pursuit and
strengthens us in the battle for holiness (Chapter Nine).
· Part
Three of the book focuses on the means of personal change, the tools God
uses to transform us. These final three chapters, while building on the
foundation of the gospel discussed earlier in the book, are the most practical.
We will learn how God uses spiritual disciplines (Chapter Ten); suffering
(Chapter Eleven); and personal relationships in the body of Christ (Chapter
Twelve) to conform us to the image of Christ.
In each of these chapters, my aim has been to “connect the
dots” between the gospel, the goal of Christlikeness, and the specific aspect
of spirituality under discussion. As Keller writes, I want us to see that “we
never ‘get beyond the gospel’ in our Christian life to something more
‘advanced’.”
The gospel is not the first “step” in a
“stairway” of truths, rather, it is more like the “hub” in a “wheel” of truth.
The gospel is not just the A-B-C’s but the A to Z of Christianity. The gospel
is not just the minimum required doctrine necessary to enter the kingdom, but
the way we make all progress in the kingdom. We are not justified by the gospel
and then sanctified by obedience, but the gospel is the way we grow (Gal.3:1-3)
and are renewed (Col.1:6). It is the solution to each problem, the key to each
closed door, the power through every barrier (Rom.1:16-17).[iii]
This explains what I mean by the subtitle of this book: The
Power of the Gospel for Personal Change. The seventeenth-century English
Congregationalist pastor and theologian John Owen put it well in a sentence
that summarizes the entire thrust of my book. He said, “Holiness is nothing but
the implanting, writing, and realizing of the gospel in our souls.” [iv]
His treatises on the glory of Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit, communion
with God, the nature of indwelling sin, temptation, and the mortification of
sin provided a road map for pursuing gospel-driven holiness.
While I would never venture to compare either the depth of
my knowledge or the historical significance of my ministry to Owen’s, I have
benefited greatly from his writings (along with those of Tim Keller and others)
and hope that this book might serve in a similar way as a map for twenty-first
century believers who long to experience the life-changing power of the gospel
in their own journey toward holiness.
[i] Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
(New York, NY: Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1963 Revised
Edition) 47.
[ii] Timothy
Keller, “The Centrality of the Gospel,” Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New
York City. Available online at: http://download.redeemer.com/pdf/learn/resources/Centrality_of_the_Gospel-Keller.pdf.
Accessed February 16, 2010.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] John
Owen, A Discourse Concerning the Holy
Spirit, in William H. Gould, ed., The
Works of John Owen, vol. 3 (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1967
reprint of 1850-53 edition) 370-371.
