The book of Romans tells us that we have three parts to our salvation. Believing in Jesus we are Justified (chapters 1-5). This means the wrath of God will never be out-poured on a believer. Having been Justified, we enter the process of Sanctification (chapter 5-7). This means our horrendous shortfall between God's righteousness and ours is addressed. The last part of Glorification (ch 8). I want to offer an angle on how Jesus fixes us in the ongoing process of sanctification.
All truly born again believers have two things occurring within their lives. One is the flesh and one is the Spirit. God lives in us but also our sinful nature. Sanctification is when the Lord, little by little, has us face up to who we really are. The Bible has already let the cat out of the bag and told us, in a nutshell, we are bad at being good. It is a painful experience to face us to just how true that is. On one hand we love the Lord but on the other we fail miserably at walking it out. There are ways of becoming so distracted with the Lord's work that you never really face up to self. It is possible to offset all who we really are into a religious circus and pat ourselves on the back for good works. That is in and of itself a rebellion towards God who asks us to 'Be still' before He can issue forth through us.
I am addressing those who have downed tools in the realisation that the Bible is true when it says we are to allow the Lord to work through us. As we allow Jesus to conquer our wilfulness, we become less predisposed towards choosing the flesh. The sinful nature has been rendered neutral by the cross but our will to rebel against God and prefer the flesh over Him is the problem. The Lord seems to have us become so utterly broken over our sinful behaviour that He is able to deal with our wilfulness. As we 'do a Romans 12:1-2' daily, so we are subjected to His inner workings which are dreadfully difficult to experience.
We must be careful that we don't get slack about offering ourselves up to the Lord but also that we don't engage works to solve the problems for Him. Jesus doesn't want good behaviour... He wants you to be transformed inwardly so you behave! 'Being good' is like presenting a polished garbage bin to Him - he knows what's on the inside! This sounds like I'm saying 'behave badly so as to speed up the process?' No! Just submit, yield, abandon to the Lord daily and ask God for wisdom.
If you want to be fixed by Jesus, that thought alone is an act of grace in your life. If the longing to be more like Jesus has left you and your time is taken up with Christian mission then you need to reassess your walk. All our tasks roles and functions issue forth from the way we are engaging our source, Jesus Christ, risen and glorified. I spent many years with active churches feeling like I was doing the Lord's work. Maybe the activity plays a part in the big picture. One thing I'm certain of is that idea we were the cutting edge of the Lords will and purpose was certainly not the truth. We hindered the Lord's plans by going out with a message yet not equipped to have His accompaniment. Like a bad salesman, I was part of a church where we were experts on setting the stage - Camera, lights, ACTION! But sorely lacking the accompaniment of God. People made commitments to follow Jesus but heart-breaking realisation of sin and resultant repentance were absent.
Unfortunately the world sees the activity and applauds. 'Any movement is marketing' applies to business and churches! Those who insist they will not move unless it is Jesus moving through them are seen as lazy or deceived. 'There's a lost world out there!' This slogan becomes the catch-cry of the busy. The bigger problem, and the place where I think the Lord wants us is, 'there's a lost world IN HERE!' that needs fixing and it's biggest area of deception is thinking it isn't.
Gary Ward
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