I got a phone call from a friend today. From one of my best Christian friends in fact, the one who astonishes me with her willingness to go the extra mile, who's generosity verges on the extraordinary, who's prayer-life I most envy of all my friends. But every now and then she calls me up in a pickle. When she is tired and low she has a remarkable tendency to succumb to the same lies over and over again. We talk them through, I point her towards the truth, we pray and often she ends the conversation in a much more positive frame of mind. I thought I might write this post for a couple of reasons, partly so she has somewhere to go back to and read the truth when I can't be there one day to give a her shove in the right direction and partly because it's a joy to share how Christ set me free from the same trap she finds herself caught in from time to time.
Because you see whenever she calls in her pickle, I feel like I am listening to myself on the other end of the line. 20 years of myself. 20 years of a very miserable self. And the way it changed for me took dozens of people, words in season, great Bible teaching and a lot of mess in my life.
I'm talking about grace. The most offensive or most beautiful word in history depending on your point of view. The easiest thing to understand and the most difficult thing to live.
You see I was an expert at explaining the offense of grace to people who weren't Christians and absolutely hopeless at living it out in my life when the rubber hit the road. I spent hours and days and months and years of my life in angst and doubt over my salvation, in despairing of my weakness against sin, of hating my sin and by extension myself for my failure to conquer it, given everything I knew. I knew Christ had died for me, I knew that I had been given a new heart to worship God, I knew I had received the Spirit within with resurrection power, the old was gone, the new was come and yet, and yet... There it was. Again. Ugly, inconvenient, ever-present. I couldn't escape it. I would repent and pray in tears, "I'm so sorry Lord, I won't do it again, Lord please help me, please don't cast me off," but time and again the same bad habits, the same bad choices the same self-centred and selfish motives corrupting even my best attempts at loving others and loving God with all my heart. Every sermon felt like a blow of condemnation, every book on holiness I desperately read for help, a tattoo beating out the words hopeless, dirty sinner.
I masked it, often well, I tried harder, or I just got so busy I didn't have time to think about it, but it always came back at those low, tired moments, just like my friend. Why does Jesus love me? How could Jesus use me? Was I even really a Christian if I could turn my back on Jesus over and over again to choose what made me feel good, when my sin was so deeply ingrained that it corrupted everything in my life, when I knew that I was barely scratching the surface with the sin I was aware of. Wasn't the gospel supposed to set me free from sin?
I was trapped in a lie of the devil. A lie, like all good lies that closely resembled the truth. But there was an important omission. Grace.
I knew all about grace in theory but my practical application, you will gather, was highly sketchy. Grace was for other people. People who had it sorted. People who didn't know as much as I did, so weren't as guilty as I was. Ultimately people who deserved it, not awful people like me. Of course, being theologically correct I never would have put it into those words, but that was my practical application for all intents and purposes of the doctrine of grace. I was a Romans 7 Christian, trapped in an endless cycle of law, despair and more law and more despair. I knew Jesus had died for my sin, but I also knew that did not excuse ongoing sin, in fact it made it worse. I longed at times for death to set me free from the body of death I lived in.
Escaping the trap was a journey of years for me which I am going to attempt to summarise in briefly below.
1) "You know God doesn't love you any less, right?"
This was probably the first major incursion into my dark cycle of misery. It came like a bolt from the blue from an unexpected source. A casual conversation from someone I knew very slightly after church one day and to whom I had been pouring out the woes of a sinful week. "I feel so bad, I let God down again, I'm so rubbish." Then the unexpected reply, "You know God loves you just the same when you feel sinful as when you feel like you're doing it all right, don't you?" It stopped me in my tracks, because no, I had somehow never realised that. Casual words, spoken in a casual way and probably long forgotten by the speaker, but not by me. God loves you just the same. That can't be right, can it? When I just did that? Just the same? But think about it just for a minute, God's love doesn't change, his promises don't change, so yes, it must be true. God's love for me depends on Christ, not me, that's the gospel, so however I feel about my sin and myself God loves me just the same. Not an excuse for sin, just a fact. Mind. Blown. But that was just the start...
2) Breaking into Romans 8
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death." (Rom 8:1-2)
I had the privilege of hearing a wonderful couple of seminars on Romans 8 some time later which was the moment that I finally realised that the answer to sin was not more law but life by the Spirit. I realised fully for the first time that in the guise of taking sin seriously I had become trapped in a cycle of law when Jesus had come to give me life to the full. As we went on I saw that the answer to my sin was not trying harder or knowing more it was sonship. The Spirit that cries Abba Father called me not to work harder to please God and defeat sin but to enjoy the life he had given me as a child. That would mean saying no to sin, for sure, but not with the burden of the law heaped up upon my back to crush me in judgement, but through knowing myself to be a beloved child, free to choose God's ways from the heart and knowing in those lovely words of Thomas Brookes, "that which it pleases God not to mortify in the flesh, he will be pleased to forgive". In other words, sanctification is not my job, it is God's, which I do my absolute best to join in with. It was the realisation that the power given by the Spirit to put to death sin is not a magical, impersonal power that was mine to wield like a comic book hero's superpower, it was Christ's power that came through relationship with him by his Spirit. So the place to go when I saw my sin was not more law, more effort, more judgement and condemnation but more Christ.
3) Separating the old from the new - and then replacing it
"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (Col 3:1-4)
This is one I continue to grapple with and which I still need to think more about. Given to me by a friend to think about, this is putting Colossians 3 into practice. When I look at my life I see nothing but mixed motives. The good, the bad and the ugly all mixed together in one big fuel tank powering my actions. In reality the Bible tells me there are two people inside me battling for ascendancy, the old sinful person and the new righteous one in Christ. Putting to death the former always gives and opportunity for the latter. Battling sin is no longer just an exercise in seeing and condemning the negative but asking what is the positive freedom that I obtain from putting that sin to death. What am I chasing, not simply what am I running from. Idolatries that have had me firmly in their grip are shaken when God gives me a glimpse of what it would be like if I was truly free to love those people, to enjoy those gifts of God. I see sin for what it truly is then, a cage, a dark room, and although it's what I know and it's scary to leave, the view from outside is breath-taking, so maybe it's worth the risk.
4) Free grace is not cheap grace
I had always been afraid that to seek grace for a sin I was struggling with over and again meant that I was holding grace cheap. Grace is not cheap. It cost Jesus his life, on the cross it cost the Father his Son. It's right to feel abhorrence at the idea of using grace as a free pass for sin. In the words of Bonhoeffer, "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." Following Christ means death to self daily, which means death to sin. My mistake was to think that the most effective way to put sin to death was to try harder, mourn deeper. I missed the first part of the quote, "he bids him come", sin dies when it is exposed to the light of the gospel, the truth of sonship, the love of God, the person of Christ.
It's when we embrace the cross that we put sin to death, as it is the cross that restores that relationship which it is the essence of sin to reject. When we fly to the cross with our sin we see that better life of freedom which is on offer which robs the sin of it's savour. When we cry out to God for salvation at the foot of the cross we finally put to death the pride of self-righteousness and the wicked delusion that we can obtain righteousness for ourselves. We submit to God's ways and renounce our own.
5) It's all about the glory
When I fight sin and defeat it for a time, I get the glory. When I run to the cross with my sin, throwing myself on the mercy of Christ, obeying his word, trusting in his sacrifice, the glory goes to him. When I study the cross, meditate on its power and beauty and God uses that to change my desires so sin loses its attraction, the glory goes to him. When I cry out to the Spirit to change my heart and help me want to desire Christ so sin can no longer rule over me, the glory goes to him. And unlike my feeble self-discipline and attempted law-keeping in my own strength, it actually works. Often slowly, often painfully, often inconsistently, real change starts to happen. Life starts to happen, freedom starts to happen. And I am no longer afraid. God is my Father, Christ is my brother, they will sanctify me and bring me home and they will have all the glory, as they should.
"'Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,' says the Lord, who has compassion on you." (Isa 54:10)
So to my friend who called today, who is truly one of the most special people I have ever known, please don't let it take 20 years. He loves you, you're his child, that will never change, and the sanctification that you so long for, that happens when you cling to the cross. I know you know this, but sometimes you don't know. This is for then.
Because you see whenever she calls in her pickle, I feel like I am listening to myself on the other end of the line. 20 years of myself. 20 years of a very miserable self. And the way it changed for me took dozens of people, words in season, great Bible teaching and a lot of mess in my life.
I'm talking about grace. The most offensive or most beautiful word in history depending on your point of view. The easiest thing to understand and the most difficult thing to live.
You see I was an expert at explaining the offense of grace to people who weren't Christians and absolutely hopeless at living it out in my life when the rubber hit the road. I spent hours and days and months and years of my life in angst and doubt over my salvation, in despairing of my weakness against sin, of hating my sin and by extension myself for my failure to conquer it, given everything I knew. I knew Christ had died for me, I knew that I had been given a new heart to worship God, I knew I had received the Spirit within with resurrection power, the old was gone, the new was come and yet, and yet... There it was. Again. Ugly, inconvenient, ever-present. I couldn't escape it. I would repent and pray in tears, "I'm so sorry Lord, I won't do it again, Lord please help me, please don't cast me off," but time and again the same bad habits, the same bad choices the same self-centred and selfish motives corrupting even my best attempts at loving others and loving God with all my heart. Every sermon felt like a blow of condemnation, every book on holiness I desperately read for help, a tattoo beating out the words hopeless, dirty sinner.
I masked it, often well, I tried harder, or I just got so busy I didn't have time to think about it, but it always came back at those low, tired moments, just like my friend. Why does Jesus love me? How could Jesus use me? Was I even really a Christian if I could turn my back on Jesus over and over again to choose what made me feel good, when my sin was so deeply ingrained that it corrupted everything in my life, when I knew that I was barely scratching the surface with the sin I was aware of. Wasn't the gospel supposed to set me free from sin?
I was trapped in a lie of the devil. A lie, like all good lies that closely resembled the truth. But there was an important omission. Grace.
I knew all about grace in theory but my practical application, you will gather, was highly sketchy. Grace was for other people. People who had it sorted. People who didn't know as much as I did, so weren't as guilty as I was. Ultimately people who deserved it, not awful people like me. Of course, being theologically correct I never would have put it into those words, but that was my practical application for all intents and purposes of the doctrine of grace. I was a Romans 7 Christian, trapped in an endless cycle of law, despair and more law and more despair. I knew Jesus had died for my sin, but I also knew that did not excuse ongoing sin, in fact it made it worse. I longed at times for death to set me free from the body of death I lived in.
Escaping the trap was a journey of years for me which I am going to attempt to summarise in briefly below.
1) "You know God doesn't love you any less, right?"
This was probably the first major incursion into my dark cycle of misery. It came like a bolt from the blue from an unexpected source. A casual conversation from someone I knew very slightly after church one day and to whom I had been pouring out the woes of a sinful week. "I feel so bad, I let God down again, I'm so rubbish." Then the unexpected reply, "You know God loves you just the same when you feel sinful as when you feel like you're doing it all right, don't you?" It stopped me in my tracks, because no, I had somehow never realised that. Casual words, spoken in a casual way and probably long forgotten by the speaker, but not by me. God loves you just the same. That can't be right, can it? When I just did that? Just the same? But think about it just for a minute, God's love doesn't change, his promises don't change, so yes, it must be true. God's love for me depends on Christ, not me, that's the gospel, so however I feel about my sin and myself God loves me just the same. Not an excuse for sin, just a fact. Mind. Blown. But that was just the start...
2) Breaking into Romans 8
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death." (Rom 8:1-2)
I had the privilege of hearing a wonderful couple of seminars on Romans 8 some time later which was the moment that I finally realised that the answer to sin was not more law but life by the Spirit. I realised fully for the first time that in the guise of taking sin seriously I had become trapped in a cycle of law when Jesus had come to give me life to the full. As we went on I saw that the answer to my sin was not trying harder or knowing more it was sonship. The Spirit that cries Abba Father called me not to work harder to please God and defeat sin but to enjoy the life he had given me as a child. That would mean saying no to sin, for sure, but not with the burden of the law heaped up upon my back to crush me in judgement, but through knowing myself to be a beloved child, free to choose God's ways from the heart and knowing in those lovely words of Thomas Brookes, "that which it pleases God not to mortify in the flesh, he will be pleased to forgive". In other words, sanctification is not my job, it is God's, which I do my absolute best to join in with. It was the realisation that the power given by the Spirit to put to death sin is not a magical, impersonal power that was mine to wield like a comic book hero's superpower, it was Christ's power that came through relationship with him by his Spirit. So the place to go when I saw my sin was not more law, more effort, more judgement and condemnation but more Christ.
3) Separating the old from the new - and then replacing it
"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (Col 3:1-4)
This is one I continue to grapple with and which I still need to think more about. Given to me by a friend to think about, this is putting Colossians 3 into practice. When I look at my life I see nothing but mixed motives. The good, the bad and the ugly all mixed together in one big fuel tank powering my actions. In reality the Bible tells me there are two people inside me battling for ascendancy, the old sinful person and the new righteous one in Christ. Putting to death the former always gives and opportunity for the latter. Battling sin is no longer just an exercise in seeing and condemning the negative but asking what is the positive freedom that I obtain from putting that sin to death. What am I chasing, not simply what am I running from. Idolatries that have had me firmly in their grip are shaken when God gives me a glimpse of what it would be like if I was truly free to love those people, to enjoy those gifts of God. I see sin for what it truly is then, a cage, a dark room, and although it's what I know and it's scary to leave, the view from outside is breath-taking, so maybe it's worth the risk.
4) Free grace is not cheap grace
I had always been afraid that to seek grace for a sin I was struggling with over and again meant that I was holding grace cheap. Grace is not cheap. It cost Jesus his life, on the cross it cost the Father his Son. It's right to feel abhorrence at the idea of using grace as a free pass for sin. In the words of Bonhoeffer, "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." Following Christ means death to self daily, which means death to sin. My mistake was to think that the most effective way to put sin to death was to try harder, mourn deeper. I missed the first part of the quote, "he bids him come", sin dies when it is exposed to the light of the gospel, the truth of sonship, the love of God, the person of Christ.
It's when we embrace the cross that we put sin to death, as it is the cross that restores that relationship which it is the essence of sin to reject. When we fly to the cross with our sin we see that better life of freedom which is on offer which robs the sin of it's savour. When we cry out to God for salvation at the foot of the cross we finally put to death the pride of self-righteousness and the wicked delusion that we can obtain righteousness for ourselves. We submit to God's ways and renounce our own.
5) It's all about the glory
When I fight sin and defeat it for a time, I get the glory. When I run to the cross with my sin, throwing myself on the mercy of Christ, obeying his word, trusting in his sacrifice, the glory goes to him. When I study the cross, meditate on its power and beauty and God uses that to change my desires so sin loses its attraction, the glory goes to him. When I cry out to the Spirit to change my heart and help me want to desire Christ so sin can no longer rule over me, the glory goes to him. And unlike my feeble self-discipline and attempted law-keeping in my own strength, it actually works. Often slowly, often painfully, often inconsistently, real change starts to happen. Life starts to happen, freedom starts to happen. And I am no longer afraid. God is my Father, Christ is my brother, they will sanctify me and bring me home and they will have all the glory, as they should.
"'Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,' says the Lord, who has compassion on you." (Isa 54:10)
So to my friend who called today, who is truly one of the most special people I have ever known, please don't let it take 20 years. He loves you, you're his child, that will never change, and the sanctification that you so long for, that happens when you cling to the cross. I know you know this, but sometimes you don't know. This is for then.
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