The gap between legalism and liberation is minuscule and mighty

If this isn’t a game changer for your understanding of the impartation of grace, I don’t know what will be. There is as subtle yet ever is so significant difference between the legalism that binds our spirituality and the liberation that frees it.

Let me cut to the chase. Suppose two types of people are doing their best to serve God in living their lives set apart for divine purposes alone; ‘holy’ in a word.

As we put them side by side, they look identical, and the production of their works is by method almost indivisible. Hardly anything separates them.

But there is a nuance of difference between them that leaves a stark contrast, and only the discerning can tell them apart.

They themselves will know the difference, if they are honest. People who do their good works because they want to do them, or they do their good works for a reason or reasons that are external to their motivation.

In popular psychology terms, one can be seen as intrinsically motivated and the other as extrinsically motivated.

One person cares about what they do so much that they don’t care about receiving a reward, whereas the other person, deep down perhaps, does their good works for some kind of reward.

That person who does their good works for choice, because they can, out of even some unknown delight and their own volition, does good because their heart has been transformed. None of this is their own doing—it was a grace given to them—but they did agree that they needed and wanted it and they did what they needed to do to receive it.

The other person, and this depicts most religious persons, can rather easily do good works. They know the moral code, they know right from wrong, and they may even know the subtleties of personality politics. They know what is required at a human level. They have a head for a good faith life. And they will generally do what is considered to be the right thing.

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But there is a sharp and stark
difference between those two.

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The first person cannot do anything else but live a transformed life. And they know it. The second person cannot do anything else but do what their moral compass says is right. But they also suspect that something is missing. They somehow know that the first kind of person has more of the grace of God than they have.

A test between the persons is this pertinent: if we cannot help but be instruments of God, and are rather chastened by the Lord’s will continually, to the point where we know our lives are no longer about us, and we keep doing things in faith that become in and of themselves their own reward, we are probably the first person. But if, when we are honest, we seem to be driven by needing things a certain way, and needing others to fall into line, and we don’t centrally desire to do the things of service for no reward that by their very nature offer no reward, we may well be the second person.

The transformed person has been liberated from, and lifted out of, themselves. Even though the self remains, and the witness of selfishness especially, they cannot help but be surrendered to the prevailing will of God that has its way over their life.

The troubled person, on the other hand, remains bonded in chains to both their sin and to the requirements they place on others. Their works are good, but their motives deep down are not to do the good for wholly good reasons. Indeed their reasons will be about pleasing others and staying out of trouble, which are both inherently self-motivated.

The difference between legalism and liberation is minuscule and mighty. The legalistic person and the one liberated may look almost identical, but their hearts are completely different. One knows they still don’t have it, whilst the other cannot help do what God wants.

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Wisdom Reconciles Idolatry (A.K.A. Addiction) Restoring Peace

Imagine if you had a formula for success.  A formula that worked every single time.  And part of that formula involved a thing called ‘wisdom’. It worked because it, like clockwork, works like mathematics. It just works. So work it! Imagine.

There is such a thing. It’s known in God. Indeed, it’s only known in God. And we can say that it’s only known in God, because technically speaking God’s put it into every part of creation. It’s a law.

Here’s how it works.

We all function in idolatry, which has its nexus in addiction, and its nemesis in wisdom. We all function somewhere along a continuum between the addiction of being under control to the peace of experiencing God’s freedom. And the Law of life, which was created by God, in as much as we’re created, suggests with certainty, that if we resist the sway of myriad idolatry, through the addition of wisdom, we reconcile the madness and bring ourselves to the place of peace.

This peace is what we were created for.

And wisdom is the vehicle to this peace.

Now, let’s accept for a minute that addiction is idolatry on anabolic steroids. Idolatry, which is something many ‘pious’ religious zealots claim they do not do, is the practice of us all, to lesser or greater extents. And the epitome of idolatry is the idol that has primacy of worth, i.e. addiction.

The opposite of addiction is peace, for one is bondage and the other is freedom. Wisdom gets us to peace by reconciling the idolatry—which requires the sacrifice of pain, which is to do without the idol or the addiction. It is possible, but it does involve pain.

Once our idolatry (or our addiction) is reconciled through the application of wisdom, peace is restored to that part of our lives.

Would it make sense to you that God wants to do this in every corner of our lives? And it can be done. We just need to want it. And we must accept that it’s God’s way of wisdom or else.

All roads to peace traverse the crossroad of wisdom, which reconciles the madness of idolatry through a sacrifice we know as pain.

See how pain is the pathway to peace? That would ought not to fear it, but learn to enter it and be healed.

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Okay, Exactly HOW is the Heart Changed?

Last night’s effort showed that the heart is the miracle behind behaviour change. Without the heart being convinced of its need to change, change—true and lasting change I mean—simply cannot occur.

My task is now to dig deeper, to plunge down to the icy depths of a human being’s regenerative transformation, and to attempt to come to grips with exactly how a heart is changed at the ocean floor.

First of all, the heart must know in a very personal way that change is required.

A person of their own opinion still,
will not have a change of will.

They cannot change, because they see no need of change, and there isn’t even any insight to bring awareness of the change required. Yet, there are many who know that change is required, but still struggle in the department of the will. They want to change, but they are not willing to pay the price of sacrifice.

Sadly, we have all been there!

But this is what this article is about: God actually changes our heart. That’s right, only through the impartation of God’s holy revelation—that stirs our soul awake—that leaves us breathless in contrition—that takes the old to death in order that the new can come to life—does change occur in our heart.

If we should crave it, and of course we should, because there is nothing in the world like the power of true heart change, we know we can go after it.

We only need to recognise change without lasting heart transformation is futile and then we get serious with God. We stop wasting our time.

We need to be sick and tired of being sick and tired, when the sickness and tiredness is borne of our self-dependence and other-than-God-dependence.

We genuinely need to recognise that the power to change comes only as a grace through God. At this point we are absolutely humble. We recognise that without God we’re not masters of our destiny.

We are, instead, a shambles. We trust, fear and love the wrong things.

But as soon as we begin to trust and fear and love the things of God, our Lord begins to bless us with right sight for the things of the heavenly Kingdom. What comes as a result—what is already apparent—is the fruit of repentance.

We’ve chosen to change our minds. We have decided to stop trusting our own judgement. We have decided that abiding by the truth is worth more than our pride. And a sense we have not chosen to change our minds; our minds have been changed for us. Of course, this is a mystery.

Everyone who seeks God but does not yet have God is open to the witness of the testimony of God in another person’s heart, as that person is witnessed as transformed. A transformed person is a walking miracle. And just about everybody who witnesses such a walking, living miracle gesticulates, as was said in When Harry Met Sally, “I want what they’ve got.”

The heart is changed by God, but it’s not out of the realms of possibility for humans to want such a heart. And with enough desperation on anyone’s part, especially given the circumstances of brokenness, just about anyone can be ‘met’ by God to this degree.

Heart change is necessary for regeneration. Nobody can be born again until they’ve been born from above, which is to be reborn from within by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

The evidence of heart change is obvious; there is a constant and flourishing turning from the ways of this world back to God; there is behaviour change where one takes astute responsibility for one’s own actions and is cut to the heart whenever another person is hurt by their person’s actions.

There is no doubting the evidence of this heart change. And this is the heart change we ought to want to see in each of ourselves, more and more; never satisfied that we know enough when we aren’t repenting enough, never content that we live any kind of lie as opposed to seeing only the lies in others’ lives, never happy when we aren’t blessing others because in fact we can, and supremely happy when we know that God sees us.

The interesting thing at this concluding juncture is that, having read these words, and having edited these words—indeed having written these words, no less—it’s impressed upon me how little I bear this note of transformation within myself, even though I’ve been transformed much.

Indeed, this little article serves as a golden reminder that I haven’t arrived; that I am still so far from the destination, even if despite my sin, which is, in this case, a coveting of a salvation that bears little fruit, I am saved by the grace of God.

This leaves you and I
in the land of perennial opportunity.

How exactly are our hearts to be changed? We must desire them to be reborn every day. We must hunger that God would change us, that our hearts and minds would ever be open in ways that those who are yet to believe would find godly attraction in experiencing us.

We must stop arguing as we are tempted to argue. We discern astutely. We must stop judging, because ‘Christians’ judge too much, where those of Christ trust the Holy Spirit to do the convicting. We must also look out to our world from the eyes of the hypocrites we are. Only the transformed can see their hypocrisy.

It’s only when we are capable of seeing our hypocrisy that we are gentler and kinder on others, because we’re too busy getting the log out of our own eye to bother about the speck in theirs.

When our hearts bleed with compassion and pump with the resolve that insists on embodying truth through love, we have no more time to judge anyone else’s sin other than our own, as we rest confident in leaving the rest of the world to God. But we must also help hold each other—the espoused transformed—to gentle yet persuasive account. Such is the grace of a love that’s committed wholly to truth. And first of all, to self-account, to ourselves and before others!

In this land of opportunity, where growth abounds, where our hearts are ever stretched, we grow comfortable in our discomfort; we sport smiles of gladness even as we rally with the contempt with which we present to God.

How wonderful it is when we can see the full and bright measure of our sin and yet feel no sense of judgement at all, and only experience the fullest measure of grace for the evidence of change in our hearts.

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Peace within the frenetic demands of life and loss

We face a battle of survival every day. Certainly anyone who discerns that this life is full of good and evil knows this. We accept this and we can prosper. It makes no sense not to accept it. The nature of life in this fallen world does not and cannot change.

Let’s couple two enigmatic challenges together: the frenetic nature of life within the finality of numbing loss.

Loss, when we face its depth, changes us from the inside out. We do not get to take the old version of ourselves with us, as we’re transformed.

Through grief we not only learn to let go of what we no longer have, we learn to let go of that essence of ourselves that was attached to what we’ve lost.

Loss malforms us and grief eventually reforms us. We cannot stay the same. What is inevitable may produce its own grief as we flail for any semblance of control we can retain.

And even as we contemplate a life of loss we cannot control and cannot even navigate at times we live amid a life that is also so frenetic it feels we’re missing our essence even as we miss out on truly experiencing all of the experiences we have.

Then there is the dilemma of getting our lives wrong, the mistakes we make, the regrets we have, the decisions we’ve decided that have proven unwise, the missed opportunities. And this kind of list runs on. We find ourselves reflective.

What is remarkable about life, however, is its nature of evening. We can turn everything around for our good, if we can only accept what’s done and move on with a redemptive mindset. God is the Lord of the second chance.

As we accept the components and facets of our life that don’t work, haven’t and won’t, accepting there is a way to be found that does and will, God will pave a way for us to create the way of our desires, within the realm of possibility. We may well be blown away with what God is about to show us and do for us, even as we’re prepared to ‘do’ for ourselves—by taking responsibility for our lives.

And all this out of loss and the frenetic nature of life.

All this out of what threatens to destroy us.

All this for what we’re destined to become.

All this and more as a compensation for what we’ve been through.

Loss is not the end; it’s literally the beginning.

The end of our demand for control is death through loss, but then there is life through a grief that sets us on a journey where we ever discover ourselves in our discovering God!

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Don’t fall for life’s cruellest curse

One of the saddest things I’ve ever heard in the counselling setting is words to the effect, “Learning this is beyond them.”

The ‘this’ I speak of is an important life lesson that would keep a relationship alive, but the person on the other side of the transaction does not show they are capable of change.

It’s life’s cruellest curse. To think that we might find ourselves united to someone in friendship or marriage or work or some other way and find that change is beyond them. It’s a curse to the hopes of both, but it’s just plain wrong, when for the want of honesty, anyone of normal capacity can learn anything.

But… the narcissist. Sorry, there’s that caricature again.

The pattern narcissist refuses point blank to see it, because they cannot believe a reality that is not rigidly theirs. They can’t cope with not being able to manipulate the reality to suit themselves. And, for that, everyone loses!

Learning is life’s goal, but people who cannot accept this are destined to live a life forever limited by their own fantasy. But they mess with the hopes of any others who yoke themselves to their buggy.

Life, as I’ve often said, is the learning ground. It’s our destiny to be open, to see, to observe, to absorb, to learn, to grow, and to transcend our doggedness to remain as children.

Don’t fall for life’s cruellest curse, which is to put blinders on and go on merrily thinking you’re right when others are hurting as a consequence. Do better. Let go of the prevailing self-perception that runs counter to the prevailing truth. At least be open to the idea that a big part of any of us is the capacity to be wrong!

It’s our wrongness, however,
that forever propounds our potential to learn.

Instead of falling for a curse that will curse others, not to mention our ascendants, who will carry the curse with them if they’re jaded enough, we could throw open our doors to an enquiry that sets itself on the truth and the truth alone.

Anyone who desires to live
accordant to the truth will be blessed.

This is a truth of life
and of faith and of experience.

The greatest acquisition we can make in the spiritual life is to live committed to the truth whatever the cost may be, for such a commitment will always cost. Indeed, I would say that this is the spiritual life:

The spiritual life is an honest life,
a learning life, a life open
to the cut and thrust of love,
which ever gives of itself to and for others.

We only get one go at life. It’s up to us whether we’ll transcend this issue of our stuckness. Can we embrace a manner of living that demands rigorous honesty? If we can, then we can become fully adult. Any of us who can be honest can do it.

Do you know what is beautiful? Two human beings in connection. Two human beings, or a team of human beings, who can depend on one another to the extent of interdependence—a fully functional, efficient and effective nuanced sense of relationship that works because it works.

When connection becomes the flux gluing humanity, humanity can achieve anything. But humanity is ever frustrated without it, and so too are the purposes of God.

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A hope beyond the despair of loss

“… everything around us is in the process of being taken away.” — Paul Tripp.

How do we know this? The Bible tells us that this is the way life works. Tripp goes on to say, “God and his love are all that remain as cultures and kingdoms rise and fall. Comfort is found by sinking our roots into the unseen reality of God’s ever-faithful love.”

Anyone who has studied the Bible at seminary will certainly have come across this phenomenon: that God alone remains when cultures and kingdoms and powers and authorities pass away. The trouble for us, being so buried in the minutia of life, is we often lose sight of how transient life is.

Loss is inherent to life. We’re forgiven for thinking we’re blessed in seasons we’re ‘favoured’ i.e. where there’s no loss, and cursed when experiences of loss abound. But that thinking is wrong, and it won’t stand up to the scrutiny of time. Loss will come and, when we’re ill-prepared for it, it will cast us into an oblivion of despair. The good news is, from such a place we can truly meet God. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can think now, while things are well,
about the meaning of loss and purpose in grief.

It is an utter paradox that only God could think up that out of loss is a hope beyond despair.

If we’re open to being taught about the nature of a life we think we know everything about, but don’t, we can begin to see that life literally starts (again) from loss; that loss is not the end, but the beginning.

Loss leads us back to God, as we see how far we’ve strayed from depending on our Lord, and our Lord alone, if God is our Lord overall.

Amid being led back, we find that we begin to let go of the dependencies of this world, because we see how faulty and futile they are. They cannot save us. They cannot help us in our time of need. As we sink our roots deeply into the One who is never overcome, we begin to found our lives on the rock that cannot be moved, instead of the shifting sands that prove unreliable and hopeless as we encounter future loss.

The best thing about loss
is it’s an equipping for future loss.

There is nothing like a present grief
to give us hope for a preparation for future loss.

All because all of life is now framed in perspective.
The world and everything in it is passing away.

But God, and who God is, remains forever.
And so do we!

Now is the time to dig deep, to learn how to suffer with support, to surrender into the arms of God and others who can hold us, and to avoid wandering off into distractions that limit and damage our possibilities for growth at such a tenuous time.

This hope beyond the despair of loss is ever real, ever reliable, ever pertinent, and ever good path.

Finally, we may be able to see that loss was actually what brought us to true strength, which is power out of the very nuances of weakness we learned to hold and contain and bear.

The hope of the world is a God who,
through loss,
can take us to an impenetrable faith.

When we neither resent nor deny our grief,
we land in a third place of growth through loss.

** Quotes from Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change. CCEF, 2002. Available here.

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