I was thirsty. I walked down the stairs into the kitchen and to the fridge. I grabbed the pitcher of apple juice and begin to fill my cup. I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember that what looked like apple juice didn’t taste like apple juice at all. It was a type of oil! Even now, I feel the thick consistency down my throat.
INVISIBLE DIFFERENCES
I don’t know why I didn’t notice the difference when pouring, but visibly I made no distinction between juice and oil. So it is that there often are invisible differences between two things. Two men may appear to look, dress and behave exactly the same, yet are in fact completely different.
When Jesus came to earth, He introduced a new way of thinking about self in conjunction with challenging what people thought about Him. He said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross on Sunday and follow me.” No, he didn’t say exactly that. He said to take up your cross “daily” and follow Him (Luke 9:23). Jesus wasn’t chiefly concerned with morality: behavior reformation. Certainly, as christians our behavior should change, but what Jesus was after was character transformation.
The difference between a good, moral person and a christian is not one of degree, but one of essence – the root, the disposition, the direction, the orbit of their lives.
Today, it’s widely broadcast from pulpits that God has mercy on people so we can become better at who we are and what we do. But God didn’t have mercy on us so we could become better versions of ourselves; God had mercy on us so we might become a new and holy people (2 Corinthians 5:17). There is a world of difference.
TRANSFORMATION
In short, to be a christian is to be saved both from a life enslaved to sin and for a new life of freedom in holiness. Still, there are many aspects to salvation:
JUSTIFIED before God (Luke 18:14) – We are now in right-standing before the living and holy God. On the cross, the righteousness of Jesus Christ becomes ours and our sin becomes His (2 Corinthians 5:21).
TRANSFERRED – God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13)
UNITED – “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his...Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” (Romans 6:5, 8)
SANCTIFIED – “And such (sinners) were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” ( 1 Corinthians 6:11) Our position before God is one of sanctified or holy. Yet, our daily experience and condition reminds us that we are being sanctified: “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23)
For example, when my four children were born they were born Evans. There position as an Evans will never change. But they still need to grow and mature as an Evans, because the hope is that they will become fully what they are intended to be as adults. Sanctification, then, is the moving away from selfish immaturity to maturity in Jesus.
Sanctification is the transforming of self into the image of Jesus Christ. “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Corinthians 3:18) But how does this happen?
NEW DISPOSITION
Paul, writing in Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Transformation – sanctification – happens by or through the renewing of the mind. Paul helps us even more in Ephesians 4:22-23, when he says, “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and (to) be renewed in the spirit of your minds”.
It is the “spirit of the mind” that is the difference between two people who on the outside appear exactly the same, but who on the inside are completely different. There is a new disposition, a new direction, a new orientation in one that’s not in the other. This new disposition is the direct result of the mercy of God, apart from which every intention of the thoughts of our heart is only evil continually (Genesis 6:5).
Recall the apostle Paul, who before his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus was known as Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:1-9; 13:9). Saul was full of passion and incredibly intelligent. Yet, when Jesus saved Saul, He didn’t give him a brain transplant nor did Saul become lazy or less intelligent after meeting Jesus. Rather, Jesus changed the disposition and direction and orientation of Saul’s mind. Same brain, different mind, intelligence still brimming. As christians, though, we often mistakenly believe that now that we are saved, we have to undergo some sort of transplant either in our body or in where we live, work, play or study. In reality, Jesus saves us and most often keeps us in the context or culture in which He found us in (same friends and strangers, same workplace and school, etc.) But by finding and saving us He changes us, so that we can, and we will, live differently right where we are. The same passion and intelligence and skills are being applied as before, yet now with a new intent, motive and purpose behind them all.
SACRIFICE AS WORSHIP
Christians, therefore, are a new humanity – not a better humanity – but a new humanity where the human potential finds fulfillment not in self, but in Another. In Jesus we find ourselves – our life, meaning and purpose. Christians find there joy and satisfaction within the constraints and boundaries of living for Jesus and not outside those constraints and boundaries in living for self. For the christian, freedom lies in sacrificing anything and everything for the sake of Jesus. Whereas the idea of sacrificing what I want for another is more like captivity to the person living for his or herself. Sacrifice is embracing Jesus and replacing self.
In the end, because of His mercy, to offer myself in worship as a living sacrifice to Jesus is not only logical but desirable (Romans 12:1-2). Worship is understood and experienced as the dual response of my mind and my heart to my self and to Jesus, and is ultimately the difference between the unselfed life revolving around Jesus and the selfish life revolving around self.
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