The Discipline of Faith

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.  For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. – Galatians 6:7-8

To paraphrase something Dr. Charles Stanley says every so often, a lot of people sow the seeds of their own destruction then pray to God for a crop failure. 

I'm doing a little rehashing as I try to work through my own understanding.   We have talked some recently about the reality of Christ in us, of the incomprehensible truth that the Holy Spirit of the Triune God dwells within the frail, mortal clay of humanity.  Jesus made us the promise in John 14:15-17, saying: 

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper,  to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. 

 That is “another Helper” of the same kind as Christ Jesus Himself, according to those who have studied New Testament Greek. 

In his First Epistle John tells us something else startling:  No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God  (I John 3:9).  I guess John never met Jimmy Swaggert or Jim Bakker.  Or me.  Ah, but wait, maybe I missed something there.  Sometimes people will emphasize the fact that John talks about “practicing sin habitually”.  But there’s perhaps a more important point in that he speaks of the one who is “born of God”. 

I’m not going to go through and quote and references all the Scriptures with regard to this because it is about half of the New Testament and common knowledge to most of us.  Nicodemus came to Jesus asking questions about the kingdom and Jesus said that to enter the kingdom, to be a part of the new Israel, the Church, one would have to be born from above, i.e., born of God.  When a person is conceived, he or she acquires a human nature.  I do not understand the mystery of how that happens in the biological, material realm, and I certainly do not pretend to understand it in the spiritual.  But I know it happens materially because every person I have ever met appears to have a human nature.  Some are very limited; some are very warped.  They are still human. 

Feral children fascinate me because, though they are born humans, if they are reclaimed past a certain point, they do not appear to be capable of becoming fully human.  It bothers me that in evangelical circles so much emphasis is placed on “conversion” and so little on teaching people how to live as Christians.  The Great Commission is not “make converts” but “make disciples”.  By ignoring the one-on-one nature, the nurturing and the investment that discipleship requires, we can create a multitude of feral Christians.  If I did not become such a one, it is because there were people who cared enough to invite me, a swaggering smart-ass, not to their churches, but to their dinner tables.  Their contribution was not to impart doctrines to me but spirit and life.  They showed me what it means to follow Christ and to be filled with the Spirit. 

Because of the Cross, we are reconciled to God – all of us, I might hope.  We can have the seed of the Spirit implanted in our hearts and be born with a new nature, with a new and eternal kind of life.  As I said before, I do not understand how it works, but I have seen it so I know it does.  The old human nature has been crucified with Christ and is dead.  Sadly, we are still dragging the old Adam around, rather like the Mariner’s albatross.  No doubt a death-stiffened bird with its wings outstretched would look like a cross.  I don’t go much for decorative jewelry – my watch is a Casio and my wedding band is tungsten carbide, but if I wore a cross, that is what it would symbolize – the death of the old me.  Who shall deliver me, Paul asks, from this body of death?

We have a choice every waking moment to play “Weekend at Bernie’s” with a corpse, to animate the old man like a marionette, or to push that old nature aside and live in and by the Spirit.  Paul makes an interesting comparison in Ephesians 5:18, … do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.  Like wine, the Holy Spirit involves surrendering to what we might call an altered state of consciousness.  We realize that Christ dwells in us, and we decide to let Him have control.  We stop trying to be the puppet master, controlling a lifeless mannequin. 

It is in this surrender to the indwelling Christ that we find victory, deliverance, peace, and joy because it ceases to be about “me”.   The disciple slowly begins to realize that the old nature can be put off, pushed away, and ignored.  Vigilance is still necessary, but we do not have to depend on the mere self when we have direct access to ‘I AM’.   We live, then, by faith. 

Here is Colossians 3:1-4 from Wuest’s Expanded Translation:

In view of the fact, therefore, that you were raised with Christ, the things above be constantly seeking, where Christ is, on the right hand of God, seated.  The things above be constantly setting your mind upon, not things on the earth; for you died, and your life has been hidden with Christ in God.  Whenever the Christ is made visible, our life, then also you with Him shall be manifested in glory.