Self-evaluation can be extremely difficult. When I am very honest with myself, I begin to see how often I am more concerned about what people think of me than what kind of man I truly am. The Bible tells us that life and death flow from the inside out. This is a recurring message, and it was taught long before the Gospel. Consider this passage from Proverbs, for example:
Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23 [NASB]
In Matthew, Jesus flipped this idea upside down when he described the human condition this way:
Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” Matthew 15:17-20 [ESV]
Jesus was expanding on the words God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:9-10 [ESV]
Reading these passages, and there are many others, it’s natural to think we are doomed, because without help we are. I know what kind of stuff slithers around in my heart of hearts. And fixing it through willpower alone has never really worked out very well. So what’s the answer? It’s definitely not slapping a fresh coat of paint over the mess.
The gospel’s answer is surprising. It tells us our hearts can’t be fixed. They need to be replaced.
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5:14-17 [ESV]
Jesus died for all of us. Therefore, we have all died. We are no longer who we were; we died with Jesus. Our Christian brothers and sisters are no longer who they were. In Jesus, we have all become something new through faith. We are a new creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
But we need to allow that new creation to grow and thrive; grace is resistible and easy to neglect. Paul gives the Colossian church this advice:
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Colossians 3:1-4[ESV]
We must fix our eyes and our hearts on the things above and the things to come. With yet another round of false prophecies about the end of the age and the return of Jesus in the air. It’s easy to get jaded and numb to the entire topic of the coming of Jesus. The devil would love to fill the world with false predictions and lies until no one wants to hear anything about Jesus returning.
Yet Jesus, and the hope of his return, is the only hope this world has. The return of Jesus should be the motivation for every Christian. Without new life and a joyful anticipation of the coming age, the Church is just a social club with no lasting purpose or hope. The future of humanity is truly hopeless apart from the grace of God.
But focusing on Jesus and his return is not the whole story, or we all end up on a hilltop wearing robes waiting for the second coming. If we continue in this passage from Colossians, we are given instructions. We are told what to do with the new life and hope we have been given in Jesus.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Colossians 3:5-11 [ESV]
The new must destroy the old. Forgiveness does not make our sins ok. Our new life gives us the power to say NO to sin. We are no longer slaves to sin, as Paul points out in Romans 6. This is a process that old-timey preachers and theologians called “mortification.” We must “mortify” our old desires and engage with our new lives in Christ. Sanctification is not a passive process. It is an ongoing and deliberate process that is empowered by the Holy Spirit. It’s the process of putting off our old desires and putting on the new creation that has been freely given to us in Jesus.
Christianity is not a process of “fake it to make it,” where we act holy in the hopes that someday it will soak in somehow. Christianity begins with our deepest desires. It does what our best efforts can never do. The gospel is good news. Jesus has done what we could never do. He has given us new hearts. We have been set free from our slavery to sin. Without the grace of God in Jesus, we would be hopelessly trying to lift ourselves off the ground by pulling up on our bootstraps.
One last point
By nature the world works by survival of the fittest. It is divided by race, class, and culture (and also male and female if you track this idea through Paul’s other writings on the subject).1 The passage we just read ends with a sharp contrast to that kind of social hierarchy. It begins with “Here there is not…” When he says “here,” where exactly is Paul talking about? The place Paul is describing is in Jesus. Our new creation does not function according to the old labels and categories. We are all new creations. What we were before faith in Jesus died with Jesus.
Since the Enlightenment, the world has tried to siphon off the benefits of Christianity but without Jesus. I think we are seeing now that this is a failed project. While we are all created in the image of God, sin has warped that image into something ugly, as we observed earlier. Only in Christ is that image of God restored, making the previous labels obsolete. We are new creations in Christ, being transformed into the image of God. In the world it is always an endless quest for power. Jesus conquered this world not by imposing his will by force but by defeating this world’s ultimate weapon, death. He conquered death, and when we join with him, we join with his death and—his resurrection.
Jesus changes the inside; this world wants to control the outside.
This week, let’s take stock of ourselves. Not to condemn but to recognize where our dead nature is still trying to control us and—by God’s grace and faith in the power of Jesus—put it to death. Let’s allow our new creation to guide us this week, allowing the glory of new life to shine on the world around us.
Have a great week!
If you are interested in learning what the Bible actually says about the second coming of Jesus, consider picking up my common-sense reader’s guide to the book of Revelation called The Time Between.
Galatians 3:26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. [ESV]
