Resolutions 1
resolutions: one goal, two states
(ephesians 4.11-24)
Jason Procopio
In our church, we’ve got a lot of people who grew up in church. Their parents were Christians, they grew up surrounded by it, and they’ve just always been Christians. People who grow up in church can have some slightly skewed ideas about what happened to them, and why they’re here. (And I’m including myself in this, because I grew up in church too.)
So if you’re a Christian, think about this for a minute: Why? How did you become a Christian?
According to the Bible, if you’re a Christian and you have true faith, that didn’t happen because you learned things that Christians should know, or because you saw your parents live and simply imitated them, or because you learned a catechism. Those things are definitely helpful, and God uses these things to teach us about him. But that is not how we became Christians.
According to the Bible, we became Christians when the Holy Spirit of God a) illuminated the gospel and caused us to believe it—cause us to realize that Christ lived a sinless life for us and suffered the punishment for our sins, in our place, and was raised to give us new life in him; b) applied that gospel to our lives (so that the life, death and resurrection of Christ became our life, death and resurrection); and c) made us new creations in Christ’s likeness.
If our faith is real at all, that’s how it happened.
But how easily we forget that. How easily we forget what God did in us and start living again as if we were Christians because our parents were.
The 18th-century Puritan pastor Jonathan Edwards wrote an extensive autobiography, the story of his life. It’s a remarkable read, that I recommend to everyone. But my favorite part in his memoirs comes early. He gives an extensive list of 70 resolutions, that he began when he was a young man, and continued for the rest of his life. His resolutions run from the grandiose to the mundane. For example:
Resolution 11:
11. Resolved, When I think of any theorem in divinity to be solved, immediately to do what I can towards solving it, if circumstances do not hinder.
(In other words: to think long and hard about theological questions, and not just to hear what someone else has to say about it and accept their answer as fact.)
Or one of my favorites, Resolution 15:
15. Resolved, Never to suffer the least motions of anger towards irrational beings.
(Have you ever gotten angry at your laptop when it freezes? There you go.)
Or something most of us probably never even think about. Resolution 40 (which he wrote when he was 19 years old):
40. Resolved, To inquire every night before I go to bed, whether I have acted in the best way I possibly could, with respect to eating and drinking.
Those are mostly ordinary things—eating, drinking, emotional life, thought life… But many of his resolutions went far deeper.
Here’s the very first one. Resolution 1:
1. Resolved, That I will do whatsoever I think to be most to the glory of God, and my own good, profit, and pleasure, in the whole of my duration; without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads of ages hence.
Or resolution 8 (this is golden, and we talked about it when we were in Matthew 6—when Jesus said “Judge not, that you be not judged”… This is what he was talking about):
8. Resolved, To act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings, as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.
You can probably guess why I brought this up. Many of us may feel pushed to adopt a New Year’s resolution, as do many people in the rest of the world. But those resolutions are often no more consequential than cutting out sugar or exercising more regularly. Those aren’t bad things, but they are never quite enough.
And there are a certain number of activities which the Bible calls us to, which would be far more fitting as resolutions (for New Year’s or any other time), because they are the things which will bring us into deeper relationship to God.
So here’s our thinking behind this short series we’re starting today. We just finished our fall series on the Sermon on the Mount three weeks ago. That sermon is the best possible foundation to talk about these things, and we’ve just seen it in great detail. So rather than letting time go by and drifting back into our ordinary lives, we want to capitalize on the time we spent in the Sermon on the Mount to go a little further.
I made an effort in that series to show us that, according to Jesus, true Christian obedience is not just about obeying the commandments which tell us not to sin—don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t commit adultery… These are all good commandments, and should be followed. But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shows us that we shouldn’t stop there: we should dig deeper, to discover why those commandments are there, and pursue those things.
In other words, often we reduce Christian obedience down to doing good things, that God tells us to do, and not doing bad things, that God tells us not to do. But if we want to be truly obedient to our God, a simple decision won’t be enough. We’ll need to love God more than sin, we’ll need to enjoy God more than whatever he’s asking us to sacrifice, we’ll need to love God and know God and understand God’s heart, so that we can not just avoid bad things, but actively pursue God himself.
So today, we’re going to start looking at those practices which help us do that—a seven-week series which we’re calling “Resolutions,” but which is really about what we usually call “piety”, or the “spiritual disciplines.” Here’s what we’re going to see, starting next week:
• Bible
• Prayer
• Worship
• Evangelism
• Stewardship
• Fellowship
For today, though, we need to set the scene a little.
In his book Habits of Grace, David Mathis writes: “I can flip a switch, but I don’t provide the electricity. I can turn on a faucet, but I don’t make the water flow. There will be no light and no liquid refreshment without someone else providing it. And so it is for the Christian with the ongoing grace of God. His grace is essential for our spiritual lives, but we don’t control the supply. We can’t make the favor of God flow, but he has given us circuits to connect and pipes to open expectantly. There are paths along which he has promised his favor.”
These “paths” are the spiritual disciplines, and this is why they are often called “means of grace.” In themselves, they’re not much more than things we can do, just to do them; God’s grace is necessary for them to be of any effect. And occasionally God decides to give a new abundance of grace simply by doing it, by making it happen independently of us. But most of the time, he has his regular channels.
In other words, God has promised that if we pursue him in certain ways, he will give us his grace. He will cause us to grow in Christ.
It’s a dangerous thing to teach on spiritual disciplines, because it’s very easy to fall into a kind of legalistic, formulaic approach, in which we say, “Okay, to read your Bible, you do this, this, this, and this, in this order; to pray, you do this, this, this, and this, in this order,” and so on. I’ve heard many talks on spiritual disciplines in which people are made to feel bad because they’re not doing them right, or not doing them enough.
I want to try to avoid that today, and in the coming weeks, so I’m just going to tell you my plan from the beginning. My main goal in these sermons is not to tell you how to practice the spiritual disciplines. We’ll talk about that, obviously, but that’s not our main goal. Our main goal is to talk about why we should want to practice them: why they are things we should actively desire in our lives.
Because I’d be willing to guess that the problem for most of us is not that we don’t know how to do these things. Most of us do know how to do these things. Most of us have spent a fair amount of time in church; these things aren’t new to us. So we know how to do them, we just…don’t do them.
So the question I want to ask today is, Why is that? Why don’t we do the things we know how to do? Again, we will talk about what it means to pray, and worship, and read our Bibles, and so on—so if you’re new to the faith, don’t worry; I won’t leave you behind. But looking at those things won’t be worth much if we don’t talk first about why we should want to do them. So that’s where our focus needs to be. (And we won’t be seeing much in the Bible about the spiritual disciplines today; we’ll speak much more generally, and then next week we’ll get more into specifics.)
One Goal (v. 11-16)
We’re going to be mainly in Ephesians 4.11-24 today. Here the apostle Paul gives us three separate pictures which are vital to keep in mind when we dive into this subject. First he gives us the goal—not only the goal of the spiritual disciplines, but the goal of everything we do as a church—the goal of the church itself. And then he describes two possible states Christians can find ourselves in.
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
So if you wanted an easy reference to know what the goal of the church is, there you have it: the goal of everything we do is that we might grow in Christ. This is what we saw at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus talked about the man who built his house on the sand, and the man who built his house on the rock. The benefit of true Christian obedience is stability; it is growth; it is maturity, so that we are no longer like children in the faith. That is our goal.
Of course, many people will point to Jesus’s Great Commission in Matthew 28, that we go and make disciples of all nations, and say that that is our goal. But what do we think it looks like to “make disciples”? Making disciples is not getting people to “make a decision for Christ,” and then see them simply come to church. If someone “makes a decision for Christ,” but they don’t grow in Christ, then that decision wasn’t worth much.
The gospel always brings us into growth—that we might be grown-ups in Christ, and not children. That we might be able to know when a false teacher is pulling our leg. That we might be able to remain faithful under the weight of conflict and pain. That we might be able to help our brothers and sisters in Christ grow as well. If we have truly placed our faith in Christ, that faith will push us toward growth.
Two States (v. 17-24)
But very often, people forget that. We forget that the goal of every Christian should be growth. We get the initial “high” when we hear the gospel, and then we just sort of coast along, waiting for someone else to come and feed us. And we eat a lot—we read blogs and we listen to podcasts and we listen to sermons, amassing information and thinking that that is the same as growth. These things can be useful, but ingesting them is not the same as growing in Christ.
And that’s the first problem: we start to look for alternatives to growth, things that will make us feel Christian, things that help us grow in knowledge, but that don’t actually make us more like Christ.
And that is the essence of sin itself, the essence of idolatry: looking to other things to give us what only God can give us.
Just look at what follows the text we just read. Paul tells us that the goal of the Christian life is growth in Christ; and then he shows us what it looks like to go in the opposite direction, by showing us how the Gentiles (i.e. pagans) live.
V. 17:
17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
Paul says that the Gentiles, those who don’t know Christ, lack understanding and are ignorant, not because they’re unintelligent, but because of their hearts are hard. They turn their minds away from Christ and pursue other things because their hearts are hard toward him.
So far, we’re on board. But here’s what we have to keep in mind—Paul is writing to Christians here, not to unbelievers. He’s telling them the way we used to live when we were unbelievers, and he’s telling us, you must no longer live like this. Which implies that some of these Christians to whom he is writing are probably living like this, or at least will be tempted to live like this. Their hearts are becoming atrophied, they are growing hard-hearted; and if we give in to hard-heartedness, the result is always sin.
You see the picture. It is a picture of someone who has been transformed, who has received a new identity in Christ…and who, over time, has forgotten that he is new, and so falls back into his old ways of thinking and his old ways of living.
Now there’s more that Paul’s going to say, and we’re going to get into it, but I’m going to take a leap here and suggest that this is why we don’t practice spiritual disciplines. If we’re being honest, most of us don’t pray and read our Bibles and practice generosity and practice community, not because we don’t know how to do these things, but because we don’t want to do these things. We want to grow in Christ, at least in theory…but in practice, when it comes to deciding what we are going to do in a given day, we just want other things more.
Now I don’t want to scare you—this natural hard-heartedness, we all have it. It’s something we will be working on for the rest of our lives. The only reason there is a part of us that isn’t hard-hearted is because the Holy Spirit has come in and given us faith, given us new hearts. But even new hearts can become atrophied if they are not exercised.
So that’s the first state: hard hearts which produce darkened understanding and sin.
He describes the second state beginning in v. 20. Coming off of the hard-heartedness he described in the previous verses:
20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
So here we have another picture. This is a picture of someone who has been transformed, who has received a new identity, and who always keeps that new identity firmly in his mind—who says, This is who I am now, so this is how I will live.
Paul said before that the goal of the Christian life is growth in Christ; here he describes what that looks like.
Firstly, we put off our old self. We remember the person we were before, that person who was lost and ignorant, as were his ways of living and ways of thinking and ways of behaving. And we remember that person is dead. No one wants to go around carrying a cadaver on their backs. If that person—the person I was before—is truly gone, and I am a new creation, I must not continue to carry around the dead carcass. I take it off, and I leave it behind.
Secondly, we are renewed in the spirit of our minds. He’s talking about the process by which we learn to think differently as we meditate on what is actually true. The gospel should change the way we think about everything—about our relationships, about work, about our habits, about our entertainment, everything. But that’s only going to happen if, for the rest of our lives, we actually take the time to meditate on the gospel itself, and think about how the gospel impacts all of these areas. We meditate on the gospel, and the Spirit applies it to our lives in a million subtle ways we never would have noticed before, and we find ourselves thinking very different thoughts than before.
Thirdly, we put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. To put it another way: we remember that God saved us to make us look like Christ. When God saved us, he changed the nature of our identity: we are no longer in ourselves and for ourselves, but we are now in him, and for him. If we are saved, it is not mainly so that we might go to heaven when we die, but that we might look like Christ.
So what do we do? We consciously and willingly put on that new self. We decide that if God has saved us to make it like Christ, we will begin to live like him. We’ll do it imperfectly, absolutely, and we’ll need help to do it, but we’ll do it. He’s talking about a complete U-turn—when God saves us, he brings us from one state, and brings us into another.
So we have the goal of the Christian life—growth in Christ—and we have these two states: one in which we are growing in Christ because we are renewing our minds and putting on the new self we have become, and one in which we find our understanding darkening, because of our hardness of heart, which leads us into sin.
And I told you before what I think: I think most of us don’t practice spiritual disciplines, not because we don’t know how to do it, but because we don’t want to do it. We lose sight of the fact that God saved us that we might grow in Christ, and we start imagining that God saved us to solve our problems, or to give us better relationships, or to heal us when we get sick, or any number of things. We start looking for all the things God can do for us rather than what he wants to do in us.
So what do we do? Without even realizing we’re doing it, we start drifting back to our old way of thinking, our old way of living. We start focusing on benefits we want rather than on the God who gives. And because our eyes are so seldom fixed on him, our hearts grow hard and cold, and by that time, the spiritual disciplines just seem like one more item on an already-busy checklist. Because we’ve forgotten that growth in Christ is the goal, we don’t much desire to do those things which bring about growth in Christ.
Conclusion
That is why my goal over these next few weeks is not so much to talk about how to practice the spiritual disciplines, but why we should want to. My desire is that through the time we spend meditating on and praying about these areas, God’s Spirit might soften our hearts once again, and help us to remember why these things we call the spiritual disciples are actually means God uses to continually show us his grace, and bring us to growth in Christ.
Let’s look back one more time at the goal. Ephesians 4.15-16:
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
The goal of the spiritual disciplines is to get us there—to help bring us to maturity in our faith, to help us no longer be children. Do you remember the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19? Or of blind Bartimaeus in Luke 18? They couldn’t save themselves; they couldn’t heal themselves. All they could do is place themselves in the path where Jesus was walking, and wait for him to pass by. This is what the spiritual disciplines help us to do. They place us in the path God promises to walk. And God has promised that if we seek him in the means he so often prescribes in his Word, he will draw near, and make us grow.
I don’t know how all of you are doing this morning—in terms of your relationship with God, I mean. I know it for some of you, but not even close to everyone. I don’t know how well you’re progressing, how much you’ve grown to love Christ this year. I don’t know how well many of you have persevered in the spiritual disciplines, in the time you spend doing those things which will help you grow in the Lord.
Perhaps this past year was a great year for you; you’ve developed the habit of reading God’s Word regularly, of seeking him in prayer, in growing with your brothers and sisters in Christ. I know this is the case for many of you. If it is, then thank God for it; thank him for softening your heart; be happy in the grace you’ve received from him, and pray that you might continue to grow in his grace in this coming year.
For many of you, though, I know this isn’t the case. It’s felt more like one step forward, two steps back. The spiritual disciplines have come to feel like a trial for you; and you’ve begun to love other things more than you love Christ. It doesn’t matter why this has happened—whether it’s because of an event in your life that has shaken you, or just because you’ve grown cold. If this is you, and you feel yourself drifting from God, I’ll just say one thing.
Don’t let your disappointment cause you to keep walking away from him. That is not the way you learned Christ—you were taught to put off the old self and put on the new. The only source of help and rest you have is in him—so run to him, not away from him. He’s not disappointed in you; he knew perfectly well what this year would look like for you, and he sent his Son to take your sin and be your sacrifice anyway. Run to him, and repent, and ask him to draw you close once again.
It’s not too late. It’s never too late. All growth has to start somewhere. Might as well be today.
