Discipleship 101
a beginner's guide to
Christianity
Chapter 15
Can you trust the Holy Spirit to save
you?
A friend
recently said that the main reason he was baptized 20 some years ago is that he
wanted to receive the power of the Holy Spirit so that he could overcome all his
sins. His intentions were good, but his understanding was a bit flawed. (No one
understands perfectly, of course, and we are saved by God’s mercy despite our
misunderstandings.)
The Holy Spirit is not
something we can "switch on" to achieve our overcoming goals, like
some kind of supercharger for our willpower. The Holy Spirit is God, present
with us and in us, giving us the love, assurance and close fellowship that the
Father has for us in Christ. Through Christ, the Father has made us his own
children, and the Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual sense of knowing that (Rom.
8:16).
The Holy Spirit gives us
intimate fellowship with God through Christ, but he does not suspend our ability
to sin. We still have wrong desires, still have wrong motives, still have wrong
thoughts, words and actions. Even though we may want to
stop a particular habit, we find that we are still unable to do it. We know that
it is God’s will for us to be freed from this problem, but for some reason we
still seem to be powerless to shake its influence over us.
Can we believe that the Holy
Spirit really is at work in our lives—especially when it seems like nothing is
really happening, because we are not being very "good" Christians?
When we struggle with sin again and again, when it seems like we are not
changing much at all, do we conclude that we are so messed up that not even God
can fix the problem?
Babies and adolescents
When we come to faith in
Christ, we are born again, regenerated, by the Holy Spirit. We are new
creatures, new persons, babes in Christ. Babies are not powerful, not skilled,
not self-cleaning. As they grow, they acquire
some skills, and they also begin to realize that there is a lot they cannot do,
and this sometimes leads to frustration. They fidget with the crayons
and scissors and fret that they cannot do as well as an adult can. But the fits
of frustration do not help— only time and practice will help.
This is true in our spiritual
lives, too. Sometimes new Christians are given dramatic power to break a drug
habit or a bad temper. Sometimes new Christians are instant "assets"
to the church. But more often than not, it seems, new Christians struggle with
the same sins they had before, have the same personalities they had before, have
the same fears and frustrations. They are not spiritual giants.
Jesus has overcome sin, we
are told, but it sure seems like sin still has a grip on us. The sin nature
within us has been defeated, but it still treats us like we are its prisoners. O
wretched people that we are! Who will save us from the law of sin and death?
Jesus, of course (Romans 7:24-25). He has already won the victory—and he has
made that victory ours.
Alas! We do not yet see the
complete victory. We do not yet see his power over death, nor the complete end
of sin in our lives. As Hebrews 2:8 says, we do not yet see all things under our
feet. What we do is trust Jesus. We trust his word that he has won the victory,
and we trust his word that in him we too are victorious.
Still, even though we know we
are clean and pure in Christ, we would also like to see progress in overcoming
our personal sins. Such progress may seem excruciatingly slow at times, but we
can trust God to do what he has promised—in us as well as in others. After all, it is his work,
not ours. It is his power, not ours. It is his agenda, not ours. When we submit
ourselves to God, we have to be willing to wait on him. We have to be willing to
trust him to do his work in us in the way and at the speed he knows is right.
Adolescents often think they
know more than Dad knows. They think they know what life is all about and that
they can handle it all pretty well on their own. (Not all adolescents are like
that, of course, but the stereotype is based on some evidence.) We Christians can sometimes
think in a way similar to adolescents. We may begin to think that "growing
up" spiritually is based on right behavior, which leads us to start
thinking of our standing with God in terms of how well we are behaving. When we
are behaving well, we might tend to look down on people who don’t appear to
have their act together so well. When we aren’t behaving so well, we might
fall into despair and depression, believing God has left us.
But God does not ask us to
make ourselves right with him; he asks us to trust him, the one who justifies
the wicked (Rom. 4:5), who loves us and saves us for the sake of Christ. As we mature in Christ, we
rest more firmly in God’s love demonstrated supremely for us in Christ (1 John
4:9). And as we rest in him, we look forward to the day described in Revelation
21:4: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death
or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed
away."
Perfection!
When that day comes, Paul
says, we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye. We will be made immortal,
imperishable, incorruptible (1 Cor. 15:52-53). And God redeems the inner person,
not just the outer. He changes our innermost being, from weak and corruptible,
to glorious and (most important of all) sinless.
Instantly, at the last trump,
we will be changed. Our bodies will be redeemed (Rom. 8:23), but more than that,
we will finally see ourselves as God has made us to be in Christ (1 John 3:2).
We will then see plainly the as-yet-invisible reality that God has made true in
Christ.
Through Christ, our old sin
nature has been defeated and demolished. In fact, it is dead. "For you have
died," Paul puts it, "and your life is hidden with Christ in God"
(Col. 3:3). The sin that "so easily entangles us" and which we strive
to "throw off" (Heb. 12:1) is not part of the new person God has made
us to be in Christ. In Christ, we have new life.
At Christ’s appearing, we
will at last see ourselves as our Father has made us in Christ. We will see
ourselves as we really are, as perfect in Christ, who is our true life (Col.
3:3-4). It is for this reason, because we have already died and been raised with
Christ, that we work to "put to death" whatever in us is earthly (v.
5).
We overcome Satan (and sin
and death) in only one way—by the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 12:11). It is
through the victory of Jesus Christ, won on the cross, that we have victory over
sin and death, not through our struggles against sin. Our struggles against sin
are expressions of the fact that we are in Christ, that we are no longer enemies
of God, but his friends, in fellowship with him through the Holy Spirit, who
works in us both to will and to do God’s good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).
Our struggle against sin is
not the cause of our righteousness in Christ. It does not produce holiness.
God’s own love and grace toward us in Christ is the cause, the only cause, of
our righteousness. We are made righteous, redeemed from all sin and ungodliness,
by God through Christ because God is full of love and grace, and for no other
reason. Our struggle against sin is the product of the new and righteous self we
have been given in Christ, not the cause of it. Christ died for us while we were
still sinners (Rom. 5:8).
We hate sin, we struggle
against sin, we want to avoid the pain and sorrow for ourselves and others that
sin produces, because God has made us alive in Christ and the Holy Spirit is at
work in us. It is because we are in Christ that we fight the sin which "so
easily entangles us" (Heb. 12:1). But we gain the victory not through our
own efforts, not even our own efforts as empowered by the Holy Spirit. We gain
the victory through the blood of Christ, through his death and resurrection as
the incarnate Son of God, God in the flesh for our sakes.
God has already done in
Christ everything that needed doing for our salvation, and he has already given
us everything we need for life and godliness simply by calling us to know him in
Christ. And he did this simply because he is so almighty good (2 Peter 1:2-3).
The book of Revelation tells
us that there will come a time when there will be no more crying and no more
tears, no more hurt and no more pain, and that means no more sin, for it is sin
that causes pain. Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the darkness will end
and sin will no longer be able to deceive us into thinking we are still its
prisoners. Our true freedom, our new life in Christ, will shine forever with him
in all its glorious splendor. In the meantime, we trust the word of his
promise—and that is something worth thinking about.
Joseph Tkach
To
the next article in this series:
Salvation by grace |
