Làm Thế Nào Để Thay Đổi — Phần 1

17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

20 You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21 Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

This is God’s Word

Now we’re looking at this passage. Starting in verse 17, we said last week from here on Paul is explaining what he had called us to do in verses 14, 15, and 16, and that is to grow up into the likeness of Christ, to grow up into his character, to become like him in the way in which we are, to develop his power and his insight, his might and his wisdom, his love and his joy. Become like him.

Now starting in verse 17, what’s happening is Paul is explaining how we can go about growing into that. So he’s being very, very specific. What we actually have in verses 17–24 is a remarkably detailed explanation by Paul then on how to change. How to change! We’ll take tonight, and next week we’ll be looking at it too.

How to change. This is a rather momentous subject. When you stop and think about it, all education, the entire educational system, all the counselors, all the social workers, all the urban planners, most of the sociologists, the government officials, what are they out to do? Do you realize a tremendous number of people spend all of their time, their job, their profession, getting people to change? Those of you who are in those professions realize we need to know how people change, because we really don’t know. Very, very important.

Paul actually lays it out. In verses 17–19 (we looked at this the last couple of weeks), Paul actually gives us first a remarkable analysis of where we have come from. We’re talking about how to grow into the likeness of Christ, but in 17, 18, and 19, he gives us a little psychology actually of unbelief. A psychology: How people’s minds and hearts and lives work apart from Jesus Christ. There we saw one of the things he mentioned was our lives apart from Christ are marked by futility or vanity. We talked about that last week.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger has a couple of great words for it. He calls it angst. German words are wonderful, aren’t they? They explode. Or another one is geworfenheit, my favorite word. Angst means anxiety. Geworfenheit means thrownness, a sense we’re not making any progress, a sense that ultimately we’re not getting anywhere. We’re not accomplishing anything. That’s what Heidegger says. People who know themselves and who know reality feel that way, and that’s what Paul is saying.

Paul is saying the mark of our lives apart from Christ is a sense of doing an awful lot of work and doing an awful lot of things and not getting anywhere, not accomplishing anything. Also, he says this leads to, “Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.” Paul says this means eventually we get to see we are given over to things. Given over. There are things we say, “Well, maybe the futility I experience will not be so bad if I do this,” and we find they become addictions. We talked about this last week. We’re given over to things. There are certain things we have to do.

We’re given over to work. We’re given over to relationships. We have to have them. We’re given over. We realize, “I have to have financial security. I have to have somebody on my arm. I have to have good looks. I have to have these things. I’m given over to them, and yet the more I give myself over to them, there’s a continual lust for more. The less satisfied I am.”

Now a lot of people spend years on reflection and therapy to finally realize, “Yes, I’m not satisfied and I’m given over to things and there are things that drive me.” But thank God Paul doesn’t stop at verse 19. That’s where we have to stop apart from faith. Apart from religion we have to stop there.

I love the great story that Becky Pippert writes. I guess her husband had a fellowship at Harvard for some reason and she was able to go to class. Since she was his wife, she could go free to classes. She took a psychotherapy course, and at one point she asked the professor who had just taken a case and used a certain theory of psychotherapy to show how this man’s problems came from the fact he hated his mother.

After he triumphantly showed how his particular view of psychotherapy really explains what this man’s problem is, Becky Pippert raised her hand and said, “That’s great. That’s what’s wrong with him now. In your theory of psychotherapy, how would you help him forgive his mother so he can get out of the pit he’s dug or that has been dug for him?”

The man just said, “Well, I don’t know. That’s another department.” No, literally I can quote it. He says, “If you’re looking for how to get a new heart, I think you’re looking in the wrong department.” In other words, the best scientific analysis of what you’re given over to and what you’re sucking on without getting any satisfaction out of can get you to verse 19, and that’s it. It can show you exactly what’s wrong with you. “Now what are we going to do?” “Well, I don’t know.”

In Becky Pippert’s book, Hope Has Its Reasons, a great book if you ever get a chance to read it, she was explaining that scientific analysis can only take you so far in these things, and somebody said, “Yes, I’ve spent years figuring out I’m very, very, very hostile and angry and mean to people, and now I’m still hostile and mean and angry, but I know why I’m hostile and mean and angry. Now I understand where it came from, but now what do I do?”

Thank God, Paul goes on, because the Bible goes on beyond saying, “Here’s what’s wrong with you,” and says, “Here’s where you need to go, and here’s the power to get there.” That’s what the gospel is. The gospel is not just a personality theory even though it has lots and lots and lots of psychology in it, but it’s not psychology. It has lots of philosophy in it, but it’s not philosophy. It has lots of ethics in it, but it’s not an ethic. It’s a life system. It’s the power of God unto salvation, Paul says. Now one more quick thing, by the way, and this is just an aside, but I’ll try to make it a 90-second aside.

You can scientifically analyze where a person is at, but in order to change them, in order to say, “You need to change. You need to change and become like this,” to change anybody, you must get into the area of religion. Science can only analyze where you are. It can’t tell people how they ought to be. Science cannot tell you how you ought to be. As soon as you say you ought to be like that, you are into the realm of faith and religious values, and you’re making decisions, and you’re assuming things about the nature of the human heart and whether there’s sin and whether there’s a God.

Psychology is a science. In psychology, you study why people get angry, under what conditions people learn, why certain kinds of parenting produce certain kinds of children. That’s just saying, “Here’s how it is.” But as soon as you get into the realm of telling people how they ought to be and how they ought to change and how they can change, you are into the area not of science. Science cannot tell you whether or not you should get a divorce. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter how many degrees the guy has. Science can’t tell you that. That’s a value judgment.

Science can’t tell you whether you can engage in homosexual behavior or not. It can’t tell you that. It can’t tell you what’s healthy and what’s not healthy. It can’t tell you what human beings ought to be like! That’s the realm of faith. As soon as you start to tell people how they ought to be and how they ought to get there, as soon as you tell people to change and say, “Go in that direction,” you are being religious. You’re making faith assumptions.

Oh I know, there are some people who say, “Well, I don’t tell people how they ought to be. I don’t give any values to them. I just help them find their own moral values.” That is a moral value. You can’t say that. As soon as you’ve decided morality is so relative that it doesn’t matter what that person becomes as long as he or she becomes what she wants to be or he wants to be, that is a moral value, and you are operating on the basis of it, and you’re being religious.

The only difference between Christian counselors and other kinds of counselors is Christians are coherent about their faith and they have a basis for it and they admit that’s what it is. The Christian counselor, or the Christian pastor, or anybody, or a Christian friend who helps you change says, “I know what a human being ought to be like. You ought to be like Jesus. Jesus Christ, the image of God, righteousness and holiness. That’s where we’re going.”

When I read about Jesus, now I know what I ought to be like and what you ought to be like. Now I know what true humanity is. When I see how he treats people, when I see how he relates to people, when I see the beauty of his character, now I know. Otherwise … listen … it’s every man and every woman for him or herself.

How do you know what you ought to be like? How do you know what real humanity is like? How do you know what a person ought to be like? As soon as you start to say, “I think a person ought to be like this,” you’ve made a religious statement. You are basing what you’re saying on religious assumptions, on faith.

Where did you get your faith? Did you get it from the Word of God? Have you thought the thing out? Have you looked and seen, “Well, maybe God has spoken? Maybe God has come to earth as Jesus Christ?” Or have you just picked up your religious assumptions from the Reader’s Digest and from “Dear Abby” and from Religion 101 and from your friend who used to talk about God over the bar? Is that how you put it all together? Don’t you see there’s no way to get beyond verse 19 without faith? No way at all. We know what people need to change into. They need to change into the fullness of the stature of Jesus. They need to grow up into Christ.

All right. Now look at what he does. When he gets beyond verse 19, he says, “You, however, did not come to know Christ that way.” He says, “You’re different than that. You’re not in verse 17, 18, or 19 anymore.” “Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.” Now it’s actually in verses 22, 23, and 24, he lays out his model for change, but this little statement is too good and pregnant actually to let it go by without a quick statement.

He actually literally says, “You did not so learn Christ.” Then it says, “But you heard him (literally) and you were taught in him in the truth that is in Christ Jesus.” Here’s what this means: Just a couple of quickies. First of all, don’t let anybody put this over on you. Christianity is more than understanding. It’s more than doctrine. It’s more than information. It’s more than a certain body of truth we hold to, but it’s not less than that. Christianity starts in the understanding, in a sense.

There are certain things you have to believe or you’re not a Christian. There are plenty of folks who’ll say, “Well, all that matters is that I experience God, that I love God.” No, that’s not all that matters. There’s a place in 1 Timothy 2, where Paul says, “… God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” To be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth are the same thing.

The reason I bring this out is there are a certain amount of things to be a Christian you have to believe, you have to understand, you have to know, and (this is the last thing I’ll say about this) that body of truth is described here as the truth that is in, not Christ … the truth that is in Jesus. Now Jesus was a historical figure. Jesus is a personal name. A lot of times Paul talks about Christ and the Messiah and Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus, the Lord Christ. He says the word Jesus here, and the reason it’s important is it’s referring to a historical figure.

You may hear people say, “Hey, I’m a Christian. I don’t know whether Jesus was raised from the dead. I don’t know if he said the things the Bible says he said. I don’t know if I believe in the virgin birth. I don’t know exactly what happened there on the cross, but those things aren’t important. What I understand is that in Christ I find forgiveness. I find renewal. I work for reconciliation in the world. I work for the spread of the kingdom.”

It sounds like a lot of nice words, and they say, “You can’t tell me I’m not a Christian. Those things you’re talking about, your beliefs about those matters about what Jesus said in the Bible and whether he was raised literally physically on the third day, aren’t critical and are not important.” Oh yes they are, and I can prove it.

When a person talks like that, they have actually turned Christianity into another religion. They’re not just giving you a different version of it. You have a conservative version and they have a more moderate or a broader version of it. No, oh no. Listen. Every other religion, it doesn’t make any difference whether the founder lived or died or not.

If Mohammad really did those miracles, if he really fled from Mecca to Medina and he was in a cave and the people who were pursuing him suddenly found there miraculously was a spider web that was woven over the cave so they said he couldn’t be in there, and that’s where he was, and so he was safe, all those stories you get in the Qur’an, whether those things happened or not would make no difference really to the basis of Islam.

Whether Buddha lived or died or not, whether he did the miracles that are said to have been attributed to him wouldn’t make any difference because every other religion says, “Here are principles. Here are things you do. You have to do this and you have to do that.” Buddhism gives you the Eightfold Path. Islam gives you the Five Pillars. You have to give alms. You have to make your pilgrimage. You have to pray so many times a day. You have to obey the Qur’an. You do that and God will receive you.

In other words, every other religion says, “Here’s the theory. Here are the concepts. Apply the teaching and you’re saved,” but in Christianity, it says, “There were certain things that happened in history.” God became a man, became a child. He lived. He died in our place. He was raised again from the dead. Because of these things that happened in history; therefore, your sins have been dealt with for you and you can be received by God.

In other words, every other religion says, “Save yourself. Here’s the teaching; apply it.” Christianity never says, “Here’s the teaching; apply it.” Christianity says, “Because Jesus Christ has accomplished certain things in history, you can be saved.” He saves me; not me. Every other religion says you save yourself. Those are utterly different if you take away the basic historical events that have always been the heart of Christianity.

One of the great things I like about the 9:30 service in which we use old liturgical forms which have been used by Christians for centuries, right before the Lord’s Supper, right before people come to the Table, what do we say? “Therefore we confess the faith.” What is it? “Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.” Historic events.

Paul says if Jesus Christ has not been raised physically from the dead, you’re still in your sins. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter how much of the Bible you’ve read. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve applied the concepts or the principles of forgiveness and renewal and kingdom work and all that. It doesn’t matter. You have two kinds of religion: Christianity and every other.

Every other says, “History doesn’t matter. You just do these things and you’re saved.” Christianity says, “History is what saved you, certain things Jesus has done. He saves you. You don’t save yourself.” Do you see now the truth is in Jesus? The truth is in Jesus, a historical figure who lived in Palestine, who was crucified.

He was executed in a Roman execution at the age of 33. But the tomb three days later was found to be empty. Jesus! If you don’t believe those events, you’re not a Christian. You can’t be, because you have to save yourself. They’re two completely, utterly distinct and different religions. All right, do you see why you can’t go by that verse? Very important.

Now here’s the thing Paul outlines in verses 22, 23, and 24 about change. How do you change? We can spend a little time this week and a little time next week on it. I’m going to give you the overview and the outline this week, and we can go into some more details and anticipate questions you might have in your heart over these things and give more case studies next week.

Here’s how it goes: Paul says there are actually two parts with a bridge. How do you change? You notice what Paul says is there are two things that happen. There’s putting off and there’s putting on. But in the middle, between the putting off and the putting on, you have this bridge. It says, “… be made new in the attitude of your minds …” Be renewed in the spirit of your minds. The way you get from the one side to the other is through that.

Now let’s kind of briefly explain all three of these things. Next week, we can talk about why you can never have putting off or putting on separate from one another. There are churches that put all the emphasis on putting off. Those are churches that are basically always looking at you and saying, “Don’t! Don’t do this and don’t do that.” They’re legalistic. They’re constantly talking about, “Just stop it! Just say no.” That’s putting off. No power for it. We don’t know what to put in its place. If you’re doing something it’s because you’re meeting a need. There’s some need that’s driving you. You’re given over to it. Well, you can’t just put things off without putting something in its place, right?

Basically, what happens is if you try to pull all the weeds out of your ground and you till it up so it’s nice and there’s nothing growing there at all, if you don’t plant grass in there, what’s going to happen? The weeds are going to grow back. In the same way, putting off without putting on doesn’t make any sense.

On the other hand, putting on without putting off creates hypocrisy. There are plenty of churches that talk about it this way. They say, “Well, now you want to change, right? Well, the point is just let God do it. Let go. Let God do it. Just give him these problems and don’t struggle, don’t strive anymore, but instead just let him have it and just let him do it.”

I’ve talked to people who come to church and are very active in all sorts of Christian activities, but when you scratch beneath the surface you find they’re still engaging in all kinds of things that bother their conscience, that they know are wrong. You look at them and you say, “Well, how can you keep these?” “Well, I gave it to God, and I just don’t seem to be getting delivered from it. I don’t know what to do about it.”

If you look carefully, you’ll see there’s an amazing balance in this. It doesn’t say, “Let God take something off.” It doesn’t say, “Let God put something on. It says, “You put off and you put on.” On the other hand, it doesn’t say, “Make yourself new in the attitude of your mind.” It says, “Be made.” Passive tense. Remember that from seventh-grade English class? Passive tense. You can’t make yourself new in the attitude of your mind, and that’s at the root.

On the other hand, you don’t wait for God to put off or put on. Putting off means change everything you possibly have the power to change. Putting on means in its place start doing the things God wants you to do. But being made new in the spirit of your mind is something you have to seek and ask God to do.

Putting off is an aorist tense, and an aorist Greek tense means a single past action, something you say, “I’m going to do this.” You make a resolution. By the way, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to do this again and again, but it’s a kind of resolution you make. “I’m going to change my life. I’m going to give myself over to God.”

However, be made new in the spirit of your minds is a continual, progressive tense, which means it’s something that’s going on constantly and all the time. Do you see this balance? You cannot be active in the sense of saying, “I can do it,” because God has to make you new in the attitude of your mind if you’re going to make changes.

On the other hand, you can’t say, “Well, I’m waiting, God. Do it to me. I want to be changed. Come on. Do it to me. Make me different.” No, there’s a balance. It says so in Philippians 2. “… work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

On the one hand, work; on the other hand, God is at work within you even to make you want to work. It’s what the theologians call synergism, working together, two together energizing, working together, cooperation. That’s how you grow. If you’re totally passive or totally active, if you’re passive and say, “Well, God will do it to me, or if you’re active and say, I can do it by my strong right arm,” you’re going to mess up.

For example, some of you have been reading a great book because I keep giving it to you. It’s a book by Elisabeth Elliot called Loneliness. In the book, she continually says what you have to do is you have to take your aloneness, the aloneness you experience at this time in your life, and give it up to God. Give it to God.

One of the things that worries me about that is a lot of folks have been very influenced by the kind of teaching that overlooks the fact that it really says here you put off and you put on. So a lot of people say, “Okay, I’m going to give my aloneness to God. So take away all of my problems.”

Here’s what Elisabeth Elliot means: If you read the book carefully, and we know her enough to know what she means. First of all, putting off is part of that, being renewed in the spirit of your mind is part of that, and putting on is part of that. That’s what it means to give your aloneness to God. Putting off means this. To give your aloneness to God means, “I refuse self-pity.” To really give it to him says, “I’m no longer going to indulge that sort of thing in my heart. I know God’s wise. I know he knows what he’s doing, and I refuse the self-pity and bitterness that I am indulging myself in.” You’re not giving it to God unless you put that off!

On the other hand, to give it to God means to put on obedience. It means to say because you’re alone you have unique opportunities to serve God that a married person doesn’t have. On the other hand, there are plenty of problems in your life a married person doesn’t have either because you’re alone. So what you’re going to do is, “I’m going to refuse to let my aloneness be a basis for sin. I’m going to obey. I’m going to find my opportunities. I’m going to turn this into an opportunity. I’m going to use my aloneness and do things for God I couldn’t do otherwise.” That’s the put on.

Meanwhile, underneath, what you have to be doing is constantly in prayer going and saying, “Lord, I resolve to put off the self-pity, but you have to also work with me. Take it away. Enable me as I think about your wisdom to just consume my self-pity.” When you go and meditate on his wisdom, it gets rid of self-pity. When you meditate on his justice, it gets rid of self-pity.

See, self-pity basically says, “What did I do to deserve this?” The biblical answer is, “You’re kidding, right?” As R.C. Sproul used to always say to us in his living room, “Never ask God for justice! You might get it.” God created you. He keeps you alive every second. You owe him everything. You owe him everything, right? Look at the way in which you’re living. What do you deserve from his hand?

All you deserve from him to do is what you would’ve done under any other circumstances. Just imagine you hear through some social worker or some missionary there’s a poor orphaned 12-year-old boy in a foreign land. If somebody doesn’t adopt him and take him away, he’s going to be sold into virtual slavery. You fly over there and you cut through all the red tape and you have to pay the government unbelievable amounts of money to adopt the child and bring him out. You have all kinds of kickbacks because of the graft and corruption of that particular totalitarian government.

Finally, you exhaust your resources. You essentially spend your entire net worth to win this child and to bring him out and to save him and to bring him home and to adopt him and to bring him into your family. You get home and after three weeks he says, “Why don’t I have a color TV in my room? I’m going to go live on my own! I don’t need this.” What would you say? You’d look at him and you’d say through your tears … You wouldn’t know what to do? Shake him? Do you say, “On the one hand, you don’t understand what you owe me?” But even if you don’t think like that, you say, “Oh, I don’t want to talk like that.” You say, “Don’t you realize you’ll die out there? You can’t live on your own without me.”

My dear friends, that is the way God looks at every single one of us. Look at everything he’s done. You didn’t ask to be created. You didn’t ask to have the talents you have. He keeps you alive every second. Essentially, you owe him everything, and yet we complain. “This part of my life isn’t going right. Why don’t I have a color TV in my room? I’m going to live without you?”

What does that kid deserve? What does that 12-year-old kid deserve? At least, his Cheerios dumped on his head. More than that, do you know what you should do? You have every right to say, “Then go ahead. Get out. Go ahead. You want to leave? Leave, and see what happens. A 12-year-old kid from another country, go on out in the street.” What’s going to happen to him within two or three hours, in two or three days? What’s going to happen to him?

Friends, we’re in the same situation. If God gave us what we deserved, all he’d do is walk out of our lives. He’d just say, “Fine. Do you want to live on your own? Do you want to be your own god? Do you want to make all your own decisions? That’s fine.” If he did that, we would be complete goners. He doesn’t do that. He comes back. He opens his hands to us.

The more you realize that, the more you realize, “God has never given me what I deserve.” Now do you know what I just did? What am I doing? Let me show you what I’m doing. I am creating an altar for the renewal of the spirit of your mind. The reason I’m fairly good at what I just did, the reason what I said there was really pretty poignant … I know it is because I’ve been having to preach this to myself for a long time. See, I didn’t use it on you first.

How do I deal with my own self-pity? Over the years, what I would do is, from what I understand, the Scripture says if I want to change, if I have a problem in this area, so I say, “Okay, Lord, I put off! I am not going to give myself over to these thoughts, and I put on. I’m going to obey.” But meanwhile, I have to go to him constantly and I have to say, “Lord, I’m going to think about your wisdom. I’m going to think about your justice. I’m going to think about those things which you really have done for me. I’m going to think about what I owe you.”

As that happens, what happens? The spirit of your mind gets renewed. The spirit of the mind is essentially your imagination. It doesn’t say be renewed in the mind. It doesn’t say that. It says be renewed in the spirit of your mind, the governing influence of the mind. I’ll tell you what that is. It’s your imagination. Your imagination is what you vividly grasp.

For example, if your doctor says, “Don’t eat steak. It’s bad for your heart …” Some of you are out there. I know who you are. When you’re tempted to eat steak, you see it, you smell it, what are you going to do? I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. It depends on what has captured the spirit of your mind. What’s captured your imagination? You can either look at the steak and imagine how it would taste … Do you see what I mean?

You know it tastes good, but you’re imagining it. You’re letting your mind dwell on it. You’re depicting it. You know it’s bad for you, but you’re depicting how good it tastes. Or the other thing you can do is you can know how good it tastes, or you can depict yourself falling to the ground. Make it vivid. Make sure your face is ashen. Make sure you’re going and saying, “Why did I eat?” Whichever.

Those are two bits of information. “It’s dangerous. I will die if I eat like this. On the other hand, this will taste very good.” Which one will you do? How will you get self-control? How will you really get on top of yourself? Fairly simple. Whichever one of those truths you allow to govern the spirit of the mind, the imagination … whichever one you really allow to grasp. That is how you change.

You put off. That’s something you have to do. Stop poor-mouthing the fact there are certain things in your life that are not happening because you’re just refusing to discipline yourself to do it. Put on. Obey and do the things he says you should do. Stop doing the things you shouldn’t do. But meanwhile, you go to him. This is what Elisabeth Elliot is talking about with the aloneness.

You say, “Lord, I’m resisting the self-pity thoughts. I’m obeying you. I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t do, but Lord, you have to help me with the self-pity.” But how do you do it? You think about the truth. You take yourself to God and you think about the truth until the truth becomes more vivid to you than anything else and it grasps the spirit of your mind. The Holy Spirit can do that.

Here’s how I want to close: There’s a place in Luke where Jesus Christ sends his apostles out. He sends them out two-by-two to do miracles. They come back. It’s funny. To paraphrase, they say, “How neat, Lord! Even the demons are subject to our name. We’re casting out demons. We’re healing people. Even the demons are subject to our name.”

Jesus Christ says, in one of the most amazing things I think I’ve ever heard him say, “Rejoice not that the demons are subject to your name, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” That’s a command. Now do you know what he’s saying here? First of all, when Jesus refers to your names being written in heaven, he’s probably referring to the Book of Life. But more than that, he’s probably referring to the priesthood.

In the earthly priesthood, the high priest had an ephod, had a breastplate, and on the breastplate were all these beautiful, gorgeous stones. On every one of the stones was engraved the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. Because he is the High Priest, and Hebrews talks about this, Jesus is very likely referring about the fact that if you belong to him, your name is engraved over his heart. As the High Priest, he is our Advocate. He takes us before the Father. Every day he stands before the Father as our Advocate.

When the Father looks at us, he sees a beautiful jewel. He sees Jesus Christ, and he regards us like that. That’s what the gospel is! Jesus commands them not to rejoice in the power they have to cast out demons. He says, “Do you think that’s something? That’s nothing compared to the power of the joy of knowing your true position.” Or put it another way. A lot of you pray for that kind of power, don’t you? Zap! “O Lord, if I only had the power to zap this or zap that!”

What Jesus Christ is saying here is that kind of power is nothing compared to the power of knowing who you are. Or put it this way. What he is saying is most of the problems you have that you want power to zap, most of the problems you have are happening because you are not rejoicing. You are not rejoicing, thinking about the fact that, “My name is engraved over the heart of Jesus Christ. I’m accepted in the Beloved. I have access to the King of the universe. I’m exalted to his right hand. I’m adopted and I’m brought into his family.”

You’re depressed because those things aren’t governing the spirit of your mind. You’re tempted because those things are not governing the spirit of your mind. You’re not rejoicing on the platform of what you are and who you are. You take your identity from what people say about you. You don’t think of the honor of being a Christian. You toss and turn in bed at night because somebody ignored you. What’s wrong with you? You say, “O Lord, zap my self-pity. Zap my bitterness. Zap my shyness or my self-consciousness.”

He says, “Zap? What are you talking about? You have this. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Rejoice in what you are. Rejoice in the truth. Let it come in and change the way your mind is governed. By my Holy Spirit I’ll zip in there. I’ll let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.” You put off and you put on, but you go to him with your mind and you go to the truth and you recognize he has to renew that, and it’s a continual process of doing that. We’ll talk a lot more about the ins and outs of how that works next week.

But look, this is hard work. I’ll just close with this. It’s from a very, very old volume of The Screwtape Letters. The Screwtape Letters is a fanciful, fictional book in which a senior devil is writing to a junior devil on how to tempt human beings. Unfortunately, this poor guy’s client has just become a Christian.

Think about this. The senior devil writes him and says the best thing to do is when this Christian begins the hard work of change, it won’t take long before he’s disillusioned. He probably thinks it’s easy to put off and to renew his mind and to put on. When he starts to see how hard it is, then you might be able to get him.

This is what he says. “Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy [that’s Jesus] allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by stories from The Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing.

The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants—‘sons’ is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own.’ And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.”

We’re coming to the Table now. Here’s what you do: “Lord, you say my name is written in heaven. Here I’ve been praying for all kinds of power and I’ve been overlooking the main power. You need to help me now. Renew the spirit of my mind.” That’s what he will do. But what do you do? Be willing to put off the sins. Be willing to put on the obedience.

Don’t come to the Table and partake of it unless you’re willing to do that. But why wouldn’t you be willing to do that? Don’t you see? To obey is so hard, but to disobey is impossible. Oh, that’s not impossible to do; it’s impossible to endure, because in the end, disobedience destroys you. You’re built for him. So come to him. Let’s pray