In Christ, "Should" Becomes "Can"
It was my first missions trip.
Russia, 1992.
One thing about visiting another country is realizing how different the food is. It was not unusual for our Russian hosts to serve fried eggs with supper or cold peas with breakfast. That kind of variety wasn’t difficult to adjust to.
But one experience stands out in particular: that delicacy they sometimes served with breakfast.
That one dish that stands out because once I realized what it was, I was so conflicted about eating it.
One morning for breakfast, they served a cold meat dish that was more succulent and tender than any meat I had ever tasted. As I was relishing the experience, I noticed that that my friend sitting across from me, another American on our team, wasn’t touching his dish.
He asked me if I knew what I was eating. I didn’t, but I knew it was delicious, so I didn’t really care.
Until he told me what it was.
I was eating cow tongue.
From that moment on, and for the other five or six other times they served cow tongue, my mind and my stomach roiled back and forth between two extreme reactions:
· This is the most succulent, most delicious meat I’ve ever tasted! How could I have never eaten this before?
· Ewww! Cow tongue! Gag reflex!
The meat never changed. It was always tender and succulent, but it was also always cow tongue.
What changed – and changed so dramatically from one moment to the next as I looked at it on my plate – was my own internal reaction to the experience, even the prospect, of putting it into my mouth and tasting it.
I know, that’s a pretty dramatic word-picture, but it was what came to mind when I thought about how I used to look at the Law, at God’s expectations for our behavior.
One the one hand, there is the “Should” of the Law that both inspires and terrifies me.
Our feelings about the Law are not simple. We are, in fact, deeply conflicted about the Law.
On the one hand, we admire and approve of the Law. It describes the kind of loving, ethical person we want to be. Who doesn’t want to be kind and honest and courageous and compassionate?
But on the other hand, that same Law that I admire so much is vicious and unrelenting in its condemnation. This is something I don’t have to be told; I know it instinctively.
God’s revealed Laws – the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, all the other moral exhortations I find in Scripture – only make explicit what I already know. I know that I should love God with all that I am, and I know that I should be as caring for the well-being of my neighbor as I am for my own well-being. But just as I know I want to be that kind of man, I just as surely know that I am not, nor can I ever be that kind of man. It is utterly and always beyond me to be the kind of man that the Law describes.
CS Lewis portrays our dilemma in Mere Christianity:
These, then are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea [“the Law”], that they ought to behave in a certain way and they cannot get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law; they break it.
Before Christ, the only way we can think about the Law is the way I thought about eating cow tongue. I am so deeply conflicted; I have such an intense love-hate relationship with the Law.
I love and admire the way of life the Law describes. That’s the kind of man I want to be.
But I also know that the Law will always condemn me. Regardless of whether I encounter it implicitly in my own conscience or explicitly in God’s revealed Word, I come to the same dismal conclusion: I stand condemned and without hope.
And left to my own devices, this is where I will always live and what kind of man I’ll be when I die and why I have no hope standing before a Holy God.
But then the most beautiful words in Scripture: “But God…”
In Christ, God took it upon Himself to change the trajectory of my life once for all. In sending Jesus to die in my place and in sending His Spirit to animate my spiritual life, God completely reorients my relationship with the Law.
Christ kept the Law completely and entirely. He lived the kind of life I’ve always wanted to live. His was a life of integrity, courage, and compassion.
Then he, the perfect Law-keeper, died in my place. He took the blows and insults, he endured the agony and disgrace, he died the death I should have died. And his death paid the debt for my sins.
Then he conquered death; Christ rose from the grave in glory and power.
And now it’s that same power that now animates and redirects my spiritual life. Once I put my faith in what Christ has done for me, God’s Spirit begins the life-long process of reorienting my moral instincts, over time making it more and more natural for me to be like Jesus, the kind of honest, kind, courageous person I’ve always wanted to be.
This doesn’t happen all at once, of course. Changing my moral instincts, making me more like Jesus, is going to be a life-long process for this self-absorbed legalist. But God’s Spirit ensures that it will happen; from the inside out He will remake me, re-form my habits and outlook, change me drastically and finally.
Theologians call that life-long process “sanctification.” And I can be confident that God’s Spirit will finish that sanctifying work in my life; “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion in Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6).
As with all epiphanies, I can still vividly remember the time and place where I first understood the certainty of God’s sanctifying work in my life.
His name was Paul Rader. He was at the time president of Asbury College. He was the guest speaker at the Baccalaureate service for Dayton Christian High School, where I was a teacher.
Toward the end of his address, Rader walked over to the far end of the platform and pointed toward the back of the sanctuary, as if he were envisioning something far away.
And he said the words I’ll never forget:
“If you could see into the future, if you could get just a glimpse of the kind of person God is making out of you, you would say, ‘That’s the kind of person I’ve always wanted to be!’”
I may stumble on my way, I might even take a detour that I regret, but by the resurrection power of God’s Spirit I know that He will see to it that the character of Christ is formed in me. I will someday be the kind of person the Law describes, the man who loves God and his neighbor rightly, the kind of person I’ve always wanted to be.
In Christ, “Should” gloriously becomes “Can.”
Because Christ has paid the penalty for my sins – all of them – and because His Spirit is patiently and constantly at work reshaping my appetites and desires, I can look at the Law now and see not condemnation but a confident hope that I will someday be the kind of man the Law describes.
And because reshaping my inner man is God’s project, not mine, it is not just “Can” but “Surely Will.” God’s Spirit has assumed the responsibility for fitting me for heaven. He’s making actual in my daily habits what is already actual in my standing before God. This means that I can stop striving to do better and try harder.
Yes, I want to live a holy life.
Yes, I want to live a life that pleases God.
But in Christ I want to do all that for entirely different reasons:
· not because I desperately hope to please a distant, aloof Deity...
· not because I must assuage my anxieties by improving my performance…
· and especially not because it’s up to me to finish by my self-discipline what God began by His grace…
Now, when I see God’s Law, I don’t see “Should” with all the conflicting implications embedded in that awful/wonderful word.
Freed from the suffocating restrictions of “should,” I have a new motivation and a new confidence.
I want to live a holy life for the same reasons that a man who loves his wife wants to surprise her with flowers.
Not because he should but because he can.
Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Weekly
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