In the story of the prodigal
son, Luke uses a curious phrase when the younger son realizes what he
has lost and determines to go home. The King James Version translates
the phrase, “He came to himself.” That phrase has always fascinated me.
How do you come to yourself? Can you set yourself down somewhere and
then forget where you left yourself? Actually, it is something like
that. We can become so buried under mistakes and failure, stuffed under
grief and regret, that we get to the place where we no longer
recognize ourselves. But God’s “yes” changes all that. When the Spirit
changes our true identity in Christ, we leave behind everything that is
false and start walking toward the truth of Christ and who he created
us to be.
Changing your mind
Walking away from the lies and destruction of sin is very close to the practical meaning of biblical repentance. It goes far beyond feeling bad about your sin—all the way to literally changing the direction of your life. And to change your life, you have to change the way you think. A change in your life’s direction means you stop fighting the current of God’s grace that flows in your spirit. Now you start flowing with the current of grace. As you reorient your life in the direction of God’s leading, you find your efforts are amplified through the Spirit’s presence in the same way an ocean current enhances the work of a ship’s sails.
Walking away from the lies and destruction of sin is very close to the practical meaning of biblical repentance. It goes far beyond feeling bad about your sin—all the way to literally changing the direction of your life. And to change your life, you have to change the way you think. A change in your life’s direction means you stop fighting the current of God’s grace that flows in your spirit. Now you start flowing with the current of grace. As you reorient your life in the direction of God’s leading, you find your efforts are amplified through the Spirit’s presence in the same way an ocean current enhances the work of a ship’s sails.
When we talk about Christian
conversion, we emphasize feelings of conviction and a decision to
confess our sins and seek forgiveness. But we don’t stress the
essential role played by our thinking. The problem that results is we
don’t change the way we think, so we end up not changing our behavior.
For a total transformation of a person’s life, the mind as well as the
heart must change. We live the way we do because we think the way we
do. The mess is in our heads before it is in our lives, but it moves
from the mind to daily life.
I am not naive. I understand
the lure of sin and the effectiveness of its deceptions. And I am
familiar with the consequences of sin. I have sat with large numbers of
people and listened as they recognized and talked through the harmful
consequences of their actions. When the cost of their failures sinks
in, it is devastating. A man’s infidelity cost him his wife and
children. For a few minutes of pleasure, he traded away a future with
his family. It takes only one incident to disrupt a friendship, a
career, a family, a life. Lies are told, discovered, and confessed in
tears, but how can a person regain trust? Sin looks good in the moment
but only because it’s hiding the future consequences.
Changing your frame of reference
If in obedience to Christ we are going to make different choices, we have to adopt Christ’s way of looking at things. God will create a new mind in you and me, but we have to join willingly in the process. And part of thinking differently is letting go of old assumptions and preferences and accepting the preferences of God.
In Acts 10 we read the story of
the early church hearing from God a “yes” that led to its dropping of
ethnic barriers. A Roman centurion named Cornelius was praying, and in
his prayers he was told to find a man named Peter. Peter, in the
meantime, also was praying. In his prayers Peter saw a vision of a
sheet holding all kinds of animals—and they weren’t kosher. Although
Peter was told to kill and eat, he refused. Again the vision came, and
again Peter refused to eat. Each time, Jesus confronted Peter with the
following rebuke: “Do not call anything impure that God has made
clean.” Only when Cornelius’s messengers appeared at his gate did Peter
begin to understand the message of the vision. Nothing created by God,
people most of all, can ever be called unclean.
God created Gentiles just as he
did Jews, and no one—Gentiles included—was inferior to anyone else. God
loves those outside the nation of Israel on a par with the descendants
of Abraham. Having grown up under the influence of Jewish traditions
and biases, Peter must have had difficulty processing this. But to his
credit, he was obedient to Christ and changed the way he thought about
these matters. And not just the way he thought, but his life and his
preaching as well.
Free of condemnation
There are two reasons we should not condemn others or ourselves. First, we all are created in the image of God. And second, Christ died for sinners. This is the price God was willing to pay for our redemption. We are called to live in the glory of knowing what we are worth. And when we don’t, we damage ourselves, one another, and the world we live in. Sin devalues us as people and causes us to see others and all creation as lacking worth. Sin negates the good work Christ does in us and in the world. Where Christ speaks “yes,” sin says “no.” We have things in our lives that cause shame or grief, and they act as a giant but to the good news of Christ. He promises us new life, which sounds great, but...“my family business went bankrupt after I misspent some accounts. I was going to pay it back, but then everything collapsed.” And suddenly we forget the promise of Christ. He promises forgiveness and second chances, but it’s hard to believe the second chance could still apply after the things we’ve done.
There are two reasons we should not condemn others or ourselves. First, we all are created in the image of God. And second, Christ died for sinners. This is the price God was willing to pay for our redemption. We are called to live in the glory of knowing what we are worth. And when we don’t, we damage ourselves, one another, and the world we live in. Sin devalues us as people and causes us to see others and all creation as lacking worth. Sin negates the good work Christ does in us and in the world. Where Christ speaks “yes,” sin says “no.” We have things in our lives that cause shame or grief, and they act as a giant but to the good news of Christ. He promises us new life, which sounds great, but...“my family business went bankrupt after I misspent some accounts. I was going to pay it back, but then everything collapsed.” And suddenly we forget the promise of Christ. He promises forgiveness and second chances, but it’s hard to believe the second chance could still apply after the things we’ve done.
Why do we think that we alone
committed a sin so horrible it exceeds Jesus’s ability to forgive? This
kind of thinking is the ultimate heresy. What we are saying is the
death of Jesus was payment enough for everyone else’s sins, but our sin
is so monstrous that his death isn’t enough to cover it.
Let Christ change the way you
think so you can let go of that lie. Jesus paid it all. No part of the
debt has been left for you or me to pay by working hard to clean up our
own lives. On our own we can’t get clean enough to impress God.
Whatever we might try, we will always be unworthy of his love. The gift
of God’s “yes” in Christ is unearned, given to us freely. Our
relationship with God is not a contract; it is a covenant, a bond of
mutual love and commitment. In this covenant the parties are not equal,
but the arrangement is mutual. Christ died for us and offers us his
salvation, and we accept what he did for us as a free gift—on his
terms.
Christ opens the door; we need
only to walk through it. We then live our lives in loving response to
God’s grace expressed in Jesus. This is the mutual love and commitment
of the covenant. Yet, for some reason, we have a hard time believing
the gift of salvation is free. Who would give away something like that?
So we think we have to earn it.
Adapted from The Gospel of Yes by Mike Glenn with permission of WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
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