Category: Walking in the New Nature

Lacking Nothing

The apostle Peter introduces his second letter in the New Testament with these words of encouragement, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.  For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature.” (II Pet 1:2-4).

What does life look like for a “partaker (i.e. sharer) of the divine nature?”  Peter goes on in verses 5 through 7 to list the evident qualities of our spiritual life – faith, virtue, knowledge, self control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love – in a pattern similar to the fruits of the Spirit of Galatians 5:22-23.  Peter’s catalog begins with faith.  Faith is the foundation of our fruitful life.

Faith is believing that “God’s divine power has granted us everything pertaining to life and godliness.”  Faith is believing we are “sharers of the divine nature.”  Faith is believing the “precious and magnificent promises of God.”  Faith is believing that everything God promised to make new at our salvation did in fact happen.  The promise of a new nature, a new identity, a new heart, a new disposition, a new relationship with sin, a new power, a new Spirit inside, a new freedom, and much more has been the theme of this blog for several months.

By faith, we believe that one outcome of the new birth is a fruitful life.  Fruit is the natural result of a healthy tree.  It is not the result of a tree working hard to produce something that does not come naturally.  It is the same in the Christian life.  Spiritual fruit should come naturally to us because we are infused with divine, resurrection power.  We often picture spiritual growth working in opposition to our deepest desires – characterized as dark and evil, but this is not the case.  Our deepest desires now have a God-bent and the “working out” of our Christian life – the “practice” of our Christian life – is watering our God-bent desires, feeding these desires, and allowing them to come to full bloom.

It all starts with faith.  Growth in the Christian life is the result of believing “the precious and magnificent promises of God” (vs 4), not the result of working harder to keep this list or any other.  Do you see the difference?  We will continue to explore the difference as we move forward.

A Flood of Dissipation

Our last post included a quote from I Peter chapter 4.  I include it again here, extending it to verses 1 through 5.  “Therefore, since Christ has suffered death in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered death in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.  For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousals, drinking parties and abominable idolatries.  And in all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they malign you; but they shall give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (I Pet 4:1-5).

Beginning in verse 1, follow these powerful word pictures with me.

  •  Christ died “in the flesh,” i.e. as a man.
  • Because our flesh “died” with Christ, sin is no longer our normal practice (“he who has died has ceased from sin”).
  • In fact, with the time we have left on earth (“the rest of the time in the flesh”) we should be following “the will of God,” not our former lusts.
  • Following the “lusts of men” was our former course and many of these activities are described here in verse 3.
  • But these activities are clearly in our past (“the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried these out”).
  • For those who have not “died with Christ,” (i.e. have not become His children by embracing His message), they continue on their sinful path, our former path; a path described as a “flood of dissipation.”
  • They are “surprised” or “shocked” that you no longer join them, and they “malign” or “heap abuse” on you because of it.
  • But take courage under their persecution, God the righteous judge is on your side.

“Flood of dissipation” is an interesting phrase.  It is translated from two Greek words; ANACHUSIS, meaning overflow, and ASOTIA, meaning wastefulness.  In physics, dissipation is defined as “a process in which energy is used or lost without accomplishing useful work.”  In other words, dissipated energy is wasted energy, energy that is not captured for any useful purpose during an energy exchange.  Peter is painting a picture of our culture’s fascination with sin – in its entertainment, debauchery, and idolatry – as an overflow of dissipation, a flood of waste.  And who, if we have been paying attention to our entertainment and news culture, wouldn’t agree with Peter’s assessment, and who among us hasn’t felt that sense of waste when we have been caught up in it.

We somehow have the mistaken idea that evangelism happens when we join the culture in their “flood of dissipation.”  That somehow our “good” will rub off in these sinful situations.  That somehow engaging the culture around its sewer enhances our “identification” with unbelievers.

This passage suggests just the opposite.  Our witness and our allegiance to Christ shines brightest when our friends and family are “surprised” by our lack of participation.  This does not mean we become isolationists.  We still engage our unbelieving friends across the family, neighbor, work, sports, etc. spectrum throughout our circle of influence.  We are brothers and sisters with our unbelieving friends under the tent of all of us being created in God’s image, an origin that all humanity shares.  But as far as where our steps go from there, we are to be radically different, not in an obnoxious way, but in a winsome way that invites our unbelieving friends to join us in something better.  Join me in thinking about and praying for all the winsome ways that we can shine the message of Christ in our relationships.

The New Identity Family

We now want to explore what the new identity looks like in a family setting.  Remember, our new inclination at its deepest level is to practice our moral resemblance to Christ; to imitate the author of our everything new.  “And the Word [Jesus Christ] became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14).  We want to imitate the “grace and truth” of Jesus Christ in our family life.

What does imitating Christ in truth look like in a family?  It starts with a family life built on the truth of God’s Word.  The most succinct explanation of God’s plan for your family is found in Ephesians chapters 5 and 6 and Colossians chapter 3.  “Husbands love, wives respect, children obey, parents train.”  This divine instruction flies in the face of the myriad of voices proclaiming expertise in modern family life who, in my opinion, not only have no clue as to the spiritual realities of family life but seem to have lost their common sense as well.

What does imitating Christ in grace look like in a family?  It starts with love, acceptance, affirmation, and forgiveness.  The practice of grace in your family is not only of utmost importance, it is of incredible value.  Grace in your family is centered around building relationships and the only way to build is with love.  Love that trumps knowledge and a million other things that we hold as important.

Before I became a parent, I thought the New Testament had very little to say about family life.  But over the years, God has revealed just how much our families are mini-churches and how all the biblical instruction concerning body life in the church can be applied to the family.  Grace-infused family life is all about relationship building.  One of the strongest desires in the life of a community of believers, and rightly so, is the desire “to know and be known.”  We were created for community.  It works the same in a family.  To quote Charles Swindoll, “Developing a relationship with your child is as important as establishing rules of control.”

Healthy family life is a balance of truth and grace.  A balance of love and control.

Full Circle

With our latest post on perfection, we have, in a way, come full circle.  We started this blog with the conviction that rightly understanding the extreme newness of who we became in Christ at our conversion will influence how we live.  Particularly, how we relate to and achieve victory in our conflict with sin.  Our theme has been, “Put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph 4:24).  Our thinking has progressed something like this:

  • At salvation, we were given a new identity and all kinds of new that came with it.
  • Our new identity has a moral resemblance to God Himself.
  • This fact is something we need to know.
  • This fact is something we need to “reckon” or write in our accounting book.
  • This fact is something we need to “walk in”.
  • We walk in this fact by walking in the Spirit.
  • We walk in this fact by walking by faith.
  • Walking in the Spirit (obey) and walking by faith (trust) lead to victory over sin.
  • The root of our sin is selfish ambition, pride, or any expression of the old nature.
  • The expression of our new nature is love, the essence of God’s character inside us.
  • The ultimate fruit of our faith is love, not theological knowledge.
  • We can only love well by the power of the new life.
  • We received the power of the new life at salvation when we were given a new identity and all kinds of new that came with it.

God is love and we demonstrate His life inside us when we love well.  Let me close with this quote from To Love as God Loves, an introduction to the writings of the desert fathers (circa 300-500 AD), pointing to love as the ultimate goal, “Perfection is a concept that appears over and over in a wide spectrum of early Christian literature, and our own suspicion of the idea would have struck our Christian forebears as both odd and frightening.  The gospel, after all, is clear in its demand for perfection…To be a perfect human being, a human being the way God intends human beings to be, is to be a fully loving person, loving God, and every bit as important, loving God’s image, the other people who share the world with us…For the sisters and brothers of the desert, ‘to love is human; not to love is less than human.’ ”

We like to think “to err is human.”  And it was under the old arrangement, the old covenant, the old nature.  But for the believer, “to love is human”; the full expression of who we have become in Christ and the new normal, the “supernatural Christian life.”

Perfection and Perfectionism

The lawn mowing season in Texas is a long one.  Ours started a couple of weeks ago when we were blessed by two young fellows coming over to mow the lawn.  (Our former, conscripted yard crew up and left for college last fall – can you believe it?)  As our new charges took turns on the riding lawn mower, their father asked me, out of the blue, “Why do you think believers do not take what Jesus said more seriously?”

I believe our lack of taking “what Jesus said more seriously” is two-fold.  In the first instance, Jesus’ radical call to discipleship which is a large part of what my friend was referring to is at odds with our pursuit of selfish ambition, materialism, the American dream, personal peace, affluence, or whatever else you want to call it.  You know what it is.  This challenge has been addressed many times with the current title, Radical:  Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt, the most recent incarnation.  It is a question we must all consider.

The second instance for downplaying the seriousness of Jesus’ words is more subtle.  It stems from our confusion over perfection and perfectionism.  Perfectionism is a judgmental, self-righteous attitude that was condemned by Jesus on many occasions.  It parks itself on the faults of others and is unsympathetic to the frailty of the human condition.  It is an attitude of superiority that no one likes and appropriately so.  It is the opposite of humility.

However, in our effort to appear “humble” and our desire to rightly avoid the perfectionist label, have we rejected the worthy goal of perfection as summarized by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48)?  Have we “dumbed down” our expectation of following Jesus’ call as closely as possible and the seriousness of His teaching so as not to appear too “pious”, not to appear too “holier-than-thou”?  Do we downplay our spiritual progress fearing that sharing our successes may appear too prideful?  We somehow think that labeling ourselves as “sinners saved by grace who have not made much progress since” is a sign of humility.  It is a false humility at best.  At worst, it is an outright rejection of God’s gift of a new identity for those in Christ Jesus.

We become what we label ourselves.  When we label ourselves as sinners, first and foremost, we are turning our backs on God’s gift of a new identity, a new heart, a new nature, a new power, a new Spirit, a new purity, a new disposition, a new relationship with sin, a new everything that we have been writing about in the last few months.  And, quite frankly, it becomes an excuse to not aim higher, an excuse to shirk the goal of spiritual maturity, an excuse to remain in our sin.  We were made for so much more!

Will we arrive at moral perfection on this side of heaven?  No, we will not, but we will certainly move in that direction in new and exciting ways when we understand and enjoy all that became new in us when we embraced the gospel message of Jesus Christ.  And we will wholeheartedly pursue all that Jesus taught.  Rather than talk our way out of the seriousness of what Jesus taught, let’s join arms to lift each other up to higher expectations.  Not to reach some height of moral superiority, but to lay hold of what God has given us by His divine power: “…everything pertaining to life and godliness” (II Pet 1:3).  This is the good outcome of taking what Jesus said more seriously.