Chapter 12

Applying the Gospel: Practical Ways to Walk By the Spirit

“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4).

Hopefully, you see by now that faith is much more than attending to our churchly duties, having peace through difficult circumstances, having the assurance of our salvation, or even taking occasional bold risks for the kingdom. These are certainly part of it, but truth is applicable literally every moment of the day, meaning that faith is applicable just as often. As cliché as it may sound, Jesus really is always the answer. The gospel applies to every area of our lives, leaving nothing untouched by the power of the Cross and Resurrection.

In this chapter, I hope to show you in a wide variety of ways how this is true (though there are countless more). Taking all that we have learned so far, we will use some examples of day-to-day struggles that are common among us to demonstrate how it is that we can begin to stand in the truth and overcome.

Communing With God

One day, as I was learning about my identity in Christ, I was driving in the car alone for about an hour and a half. I am not exaggerating when I say that I was in a state of euphoria for most of the trip, an unbroken smile stretching from ear to ear. I was not just in a good mood that day. Nor was this due to beautiful weather or the right music or any other sort of temporal thing. Rather, I was just being with God in silence, basking in his perfect love and reciprocating it in a measure that I never thought possible.

What made this time of communion so much sweeter than times past is that I believed more than ever that my love for God was as pure and undefiled as his love for me. And I hadn't realized how much my doubts about my own love for God had been restricting me from loving and enjoying him freely.

At one point during this drive, the thought came into my mind that perhaps I wasn't being sincere, that I did not truly love God, that I was “pretending” to love him in this moment. In the past, this would have led me down a rabbit trail of doubt and self-condemnation, ultimately stealing from this wonderfully intimate moment. But the Bible says that God’s love, which is perfect, is in my heart (see Romans 5:5). Therefore, God's word not only gave me permission but required me to believe that this self-deprecating thought could not be true.

I erupted in praise and thanksgiving: "God, I love you so much! You are so beautiful, so worthy of my adoration! Thank you for showing me how good you are! Thank you for putting your love within me!" Because I understood my identity in Christ, I was able to put off the lie, and my communion with God remained uninterrupted. In fact, the thing that Satan intended to hurt me with, God used for my benefit to build up my faith.

In prayer and worship, we must be able to say to God, “I love you with all of my heart,” and to believe that it is true. When experiencing intimacy with God, the enemy will attempt to disrupt. He may assault you with evil thoughts, making you feel defiled, unrighteous, or unworthy. Do not be surprised if, in the midst of enjoying God, you hear things like: This isn’t real. You don’t actually love God like this. Who are you kidding? You’d rather be doing something else. Look at how you sinned just earlier today. Do you really think God is pleased with you? Do you really think he enjoys you?

But if you become fortified in the Truth, you will find that the Truth defends you so that these types of thoughts can no longer distract you or affect you at all. In this way, unwavering faith leads to unbroken communion.

Discovering Love For Others

Let's say you are a parent who wants to love your kids more. The first thing, in my opinion, is to recognize that the true you cannot love your kids any more than you already do. Beneath the flesh and all its irritability and selfishness, which blurs our vision, there is s/Spirit who loves with total abandon.

This is an important starting point for our thinking because, as we have discussed many times, our ability to approach the throne boldly and access the grace we've been given depends on a clean conscience, which depends on knowing we are holy like God. This is just Identity in Christ 101. If we confuse ourselves with our flesh, which lacks the perfect love of God, then our conscience will be defiled, we will not have confidence before God, and we will be left to deal with our sin on our own (i.e., under the law). I know this trap full well. The spiral of shame and condemnation that can ensue from focusing on your parenting failures is quite real, and it does not lead to transformation but only reproduces the dysfunction you utterly despise.

So then, as we seek God's help in prayer, we shall not wait for some new feeling to believe that he's done something. We understand that God's feelings will emerge organically in us as we become more established in the truth, but until that happens, we still have everything that we need, via the Holy Spirit within us, to walk in love toward our children.

But we do not stop here. For the mere belief that God's love is in our hearts will probably not take us very far. The real question is, What is the substance of this love he has given to us? There is a reason God loves with such passion, and if we are to experience that love, we must see what he sees, know what he knows, think the way he thinks. So we ask him, "God, why do you love my children? What do you see in them? What do you believe about them that stirs your passion?" Then, we let him teach us how he thinks, and whatever he teaches us, we set our minds on these things, giving thanks and rejoicing as always. As we learn to habitually think this way, our thoughts will be aligned with God's, and the love that is already in us will begin pouring out of us.

Regarding One Another

"From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh… [I]f anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)

The gospel, as we have learned it, must be something that we apply not only to ourselves but to one another, as well. This means that, if someone confesses Jesus as their Lord and Savior (see 1 John 5:1 and Romans 10:9-10), then we must grant them the benefit of the doubt that they are one with Christ, that the love of God is inside them, that they desire more than anything to do his will, etc. For these things are not the essence of maturity but of mere Christianity. If a person is born again, then all these are true, and we ought to regard the person as such, regardless of whatever externalities we may observe.

A wife is married to a husband who, like her, professes faith in Jesus. Each week, they attend a small group together with other members of their church, and she is bothered by the fact that he is always a little different around them than when he is at home. At home, he rarely leads their family in prayer. At the small group, he is eager to do so. At home, he almost never talks about spiritual things, let alone offers spiritual wisdom. But with the group, he does both. At home, he is quick to get angry and is somewhat controlling. In front of others, he is much more gentle and reasonable. At home, he does not seem particularly Christian. But when they gather with other Christians, he fits right in.

All of this leads her to believe that, in the small group, he is being superficial. It's a mask or a show to hide who he truly is, which none of these people can see because they don't live with him like she does. When he shares his thoughts and prayers with the group, they all seem to be encouraged by his sincerity. His wife, on the other hand, sits there, quietly resentful, unable to take anything he says seriously because, to her, it is all just a facade.

At worst, she figures he is lying to these people. At best, perhaps he is lying to himself. Either way, she eventually begins to feel quite confident and justified in her conclusion that he is not the man they think he is.

Do you see where I am going with this? The wife is, by definition, regarding her husband according to the flesh. She has prematurely concluded that all the Christ-like things she sees at the small group are fake and that all the things opposite to that, which she sees at home, are the truth about him. But doesn't the gospel that we've learned tell us otherwise? In fact, it does. She has gotten it completely backward. The version of him that she sees around other Christians is who he truly is. And the version of him that she sees at home is not who he truly is. Instead of growing resentful toward him, she should be encouraged when she sees his true righteousness revealed in the small group. And she should have compassion for him, that he so easily forgets who he is when they leave the group and go home.

This is not to say that her observations are inaccurate. It is not to suggest that she must act like he is a mature Christian or that his demeanor at home is righteous when it clearly is not. She can acknowledge his worldliness and his lack of maturity at home, but she must be very careful not to think of these observations as "spiritual discernment." Observing faults or flaws in a person's flesh and then misappropriating them to their spirit is an overt lack of spiritual discernment and is sure to propagate nothing but death in both parties.

I am sure that some of you are wondering, What if she's right, though? What if he is actually a wolf in sheep's clothing? Or what if he's not actually born again? Well, then this will become evident in due time, and likely much more quickly, if she starts giving him the benefit of the doubt that he is a saint. From this perspective — that is, viewing her husband as a righteous child of God who truly loves God and delights in his will — the wife will speak to him differently. She will treat him differently. She will intercede for him differently. Her resentment will find no place to stay in her. She will begin to enjoy him and affirm him, whether in speech or in actions. And in doing so, her very presence in his life, especially at home, will be productive and helpful for him.

She may even come to find that this kind of identity reinforcement is what he needed all along, which he received from others at the small group but which only she can provide at home. As a believer like the rest of us, he does not need someone doubting and questioning his sincerity, joining forces with Satan to pile on law and condemnation, which only makes it harder to put on Christ and walk in the Spirit. He needs someone to see the light in him, to see Christ in him, and to afford him the same kind of grace that God has afforded to them, creating more opportunities for mind renewal, not less.

You would be surprised, brothers and sisters, how much more quickly and accurately we will be able to discern who is born again and who is not when we assume the best about one another — seeing each other in Christ and not in the flesh. For if we minister to one another this way, always clothing each other in Christ, then those who are not born again will reject this identity in one way or another, and those who are born again will receive it. Unfortunately, there is not enough space for me here to give more examples and further details, though I have many.

My simple encouragement to you is this: when you see sin manifest in a believer's life, always assume that it is in the flesh, not in the spirit. Take the same radical position regarding one another that God has taken with you (despite the sin in your own flesh), which is predicated on nothing more than your faith in Christ, and relentlessly love one another from that state of mind, knowing that you share the same heart (see Jeremiah 32:39). This doesn't mean we don't address sin in each other's lives, for the scriptures are very clear that we must. It simply changes the way that we address it and makes us much more effective, as we are now ministers of grace and truth, which sets us free, as opposed to ministers of the law and lies, which only produces death.

Wrestling With Unforgiveness

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14–15).

We do not like to acknowledge this verse (and others like it), but it is there nonetheless. Let no one fool you into thinking that God forgives your sins if you are still willfully holding onto bitterness or resentment in your heart toward others. God himself says otherwise. Do not reason your way out of the plain meaning of his word. Instead, give thanks that God has shared his forgiving heart with you, for his word is now in you. If there is even one person whom you refuse to forgive, just one whom you fail to extend the same grace that God has given you in Christ Jesus, then you are rejecting the grace that God has shown you.

How can this be so? Are we not saved by grace alone through faith alone? Are you saying that forgiveness is a work that I must do to be saved?

As I said before, faith and repentance are the same thing, and they are the one condition required for our salvation, from beginning to end. Unforgiveness, then, is both unrepentance and unbelief. It is a refusal to agree with the truth that is in you — the Truth being Jesus, who died for all and held nothing against us. “[W]hoever lacks [forgiveness] is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (2 Peter 1:9).

Remember that you “have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20), and now the crucified Christ is your life and identity. If you believe this truth and live according to his Spirit within you, then you will see others from this perspective, and you will give your life for them as Jesus did. It is not simply what you need to do, despite what you want. It is who you are and what you want to do, despite what you feel.

This may seem like a hard word, but please do not be deceived. A hard word is one that leaves you with a hard heart, defined by what others have done to you rather than who Jesus is in you. I am truly sorry that you have been hurt. This was never the way that it was supposed to be. God hates injustice, and he weeps with you. He does not make light of your pain and suffering. Rather, he is the most compassionate being in existence — so much so that he stopped at nothing to make up for what has been done to you.

Consider this. The Father did not give up his Son in order to simply acknowledge and relate to your pain. He gave up his Son to heal you and make you strong. Christ is a victor; therefore, the one who is in him is not a victim. You have been vindicated; therefore, you have no need to be validated. Renounce the lie and believe the truth.

But I am a good Christian otherwise. Doesn’t that count for anything?

There is no amount of obedience in the world that can make up for a lack of mercy. In Matthew 9:13, Jesus tells the Pharisees, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” God desires mercy; therefore, you do, too.

But they were in the wrong, and they treated me unjustly.

And while hanging on the cross, Jesus cried, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Put on the mind of Christ, and you will see that this complaint is not from him. You now have a new purpose, and it is to shine his light, manifest his life, and complete his sufferings. Rejoice in this, for it is the very reason you exist, and it is where you will find true freedom.

I cannot or do not want to let go of it.

That is your flesh speaking, or else it is Satan. The Spirit within you — who is your life and identity — is already free of it. He loves this person. He gave his life for this person. He is love, and as such, he does not keep a record of wrongdoing (see 1 Corinthians 13:5). He gladly “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). And he defines you; therefore, you do, too. Unforgiveness is deception. Tell God, “Thank you for giving me your heart for this person.” And to whatever degree necessary, let the fear of God be at work in you to draw you into repentance, lest you be cut off from Christ.

I am trying to let go of it, but it is proving to be very difficult. I still feel very angry.

Praise God that your spirit is willing! Be encouraged that you are fighting. Do not put so much weight in the feeling of forgiveness, but simply come into agreement with it, refusing to agree with the lies of entitlement, revenge, resentment, etc. Just as you are able to forgive someone's monetary debt to you even if you don't feel like doing so, you can also choose to forgive someone's sins toward you, simply refusing in your mind to "press charges" against them despite however you may feel.

Sometimes, this is the best we can do, and it is enough until the Lord gives us greater clarity on how to renew our minds. Remember, you are not responsible for your feelings; you are responsible for what you set your mind on in this moment. If you've set your mind on God's will, then you may regard the unforgiveness that you continue to feel as a mere product of the flesh. Since feelings no longer dictate your beliefs, you are free to believe that you have forgiven. Abide in the truth. Abide in Christ. Continue thanking God that he has poured his overwhelming love for this person into your heart — because he has (see Romans 5:5) — and walk according to that reality.

Something else you may find helpful is to ask God, "What are you thinking about right now?" Trust that the first thing that comes to your mind is from him (as long as it aligns with your understanding of who God is). Then, make an effort to think those thoughts with him. God does not ask us to think like him. Rather, he gives us his Spirit so we can think in him (i.e., think his thoughts). And from this renewed thinking, we are transformed.

So, as you wrestle through feelings of unforgiveness, instead of praying the way that most people pray — that is, dictating the subject matter and then firing off all their thoughts and questions and concerns about it — what if you just ask God what he is thinking about? You may find that what God is thinking about has nothing to do with your past, your enemies, your feelings, or anything you were thinking about, but instead (just for example), he is thinking about how beautiful of a day it is. So you give thanks to him for today's beauty. Or maybe he's thinking about his desire for someone to be saved, so you share that desire and intercede for that person. All of a sudden, you naturally discover forgiveness by simply not dwelling on the things that make it impossible. In the mind of Christ, there is peace.

Making Decisions

I remember when I was writing this book the first time around. For that season, it was my full-time job, and it was my first time working from home. My wife had also begun to stay at home with our two young children, so there were things we were still figuring out about how to function in the same space all the time.

For me, one of the hardest things was knowing when to focus on my work and when to help out around the house. It went something like this:

In the middle of writing, I hear the baby crying in the background while my wife is busy unloading the dishwasher. I immediately feel torn.

On the one hand, I would love to help out with the baby or the dishwasher, but that would distract me from my writing. Not to mention, I understand the importance of setting clear boundaries and roles within one's occupation and household (for everyone's benefit), and I know that the more I cross those lines, even with good intentions, I leave the door open for clarity to erode, expectations to shift, and resentment to build between my wife and me. If I help this time, she will just wonder why I don't help the next time. Before you know it, I will never be able to sit down and focus on my work for an extended period of time because, the fact is, there's almost always something I could be helping with around the house.

On the other hand, if I prioritize my writing and leave my wife to deal with the child and the dishes, and then I continue to operate with that mindset all the time, then I would have to deny the part of me that feels undeniably Christ-like, which desires to be a blessing and to help out. The truth is, I don't want to be so rigid and confined by unnecessary rules and boundaries that I am not open to the Spirit's leading, to letting love compel me.

So, I am trapped. It feels like my desire to be helpful around the house requires me to neglect my writing duties, and my desire to be faithful to my job requires me to be a bad husband. No matter what I choose, I am failing and feeling condemned. It is a lose-lose situation. This is not what Jesus promised me.

Needless to say, I tend to over-analyze things a bit, but welcome to the mind of my flesh. Anyway, I am sure many of you can relate to this difficulty of decision-making and the angst that often comes along with it.

Thankfully, through that season, God was teaching me how the gospel applies to everything. And I began to see very clearly that my ultimate desire was to be faithful to God, whatever that entails. I didn't always know the "right" thing to do, but perhaps that is because both of these options were good things and because there is freedom. In other words, there was no "right" or "wrong" answer that God made clear to me. In that case, God wasn't so concerned that I knew exactly which thing to pick, but that whichever one I chose, I did it in faith through love (see Galatians 5:6). With that in mind, only by seeing myself in Christ could I see that love was the thing compelling each of these pursuits.

Before learning the gospel, I would fall into the lie that I only desired to help around the house because I am a lazy employee, and it's easier to do the dishes than to sit down and write. Or, the opposite, I would believe that I only desired to write because I was a selfish, distant, and insensitive husband. As a result, fear controlled my decision-making process — fear of failing and sinning as a husband or a worker — and I was, therefore, not really doing anything by faith or love. For "[t]here is no fear in love" (1 John 4:18).

It is true that there were, at times, both lazy and selfish desires at work in my flesh. I am not saying that sinful desires weren't present at all. But the mere presence of these desires does not necessarily mean that those desires were my true motivation. For I also had godly desires at work in my spirit, which were motivating me to consider both courses of action. Thus, to discern whether your actions are righteous, you cannot simply ask, Was I experiencing fleshy desires? Instead, you must ask, Are my fleshy desires the thing that ultimately motivated my decision? If they weren't, then you can be sure that your decision was not fleshy, and there is no need for confession/repentance despite all the feelings you may have felt.

So, with my identity now firmly rooted in Christ, I could see the truth that Love is what made me want to be helpful around the house, and Love is what made me want to be diligent with my writing. Thus, the fleshy desires (while sometimes present) just became irrelevant. And it was no longer a lose-lose situation but a win-win. I could choose either option with peace and joy, with no condemnation. I now understood that "against such things [e.g., love] there is no law" (Galatians 5:23), and I am only called to walk by faith, by which my heart remains clean and pure. In Christ, I could freely choose either of these wonderful options, to the glory of God, without needing to question my motives, all the while continuing to pray and lean on God for wisdom. And at some level (at the risk of exaggerating the impact this had on my life), this was the difference between enjoying life and not enjoying it.

We are all faced with decisions like this throughout our lives, which require us to choose between multiple apparently good things. To be very clear, we are not talking here about things that we know to be sinful, for if our identity is in Christ, then we do not actually want to sin, nor can we choose to sin in faith. With sinful options, there is not freedom to do it but freedom from it and slavery to righteousness. But the point of this example is to demonstrate why it is that, within the realm of righteous options, being rooted and grounded in your identity in Christ is just as essential and practical. To have clarity in these types of decisions, we must be able to look past the feelings and motives of the flesh to see our heart's truest desires. Apart from this foundation, fear controls us; our consciences are defiled; we cannot abide confidently in Christ; we cannot receive wisdom from God; life becomes heavy; and we fail to bear fruit.

You are not called to walk in perfect knowledge, which God knows none of us have, but in faith. It is only through faith in Christ that we remain a holy vessel to God, and it is only when we place our trust in him that our decisions are judged righteous, for they come from a righteous heart. "To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure… (Titus 1:15). Therefore, "whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3:17). Let us not be so worried about doing the right things, but let us concern ourselves with believing the right things, that we may walk with the Lord confidently and freely in whatever we do.

And remember, our fellowship with God — in which we receive wisdom and guidance for all things — depends on a clean conscience. So, the worst case scenario here is that not knowing the best course of action, we make a decision in faith, and then God needs to correct us later, which we are eager for since we desire to do his will. God isn't angry that he has to correct us; he is honored that we are trusting in him. All the while, our fellowship with him remains unbroken and undefiled as we learn and grow.

Overcoming Idleness

Let’s say that you are tempted with the desire to watch television instead of spending your time more productively as you know you should. In the past, you would have taken the temptation to mean that there is apparently still some laziness to root out of your heart. You would have thought, If I just cared more, this would not be a problem. You would have believed that you truly wanted to indulge in television despite feeling that you should not. The ultimate conclusion would be that your will is not in alignment with God’s. You are lazy, you are a sinner, and you still have some “dying” to do.

All of these thoughts occur within a split second, of course, and by that point, before you had even decided what to do, you had already lost. Whether or not you decided to indulge in television in that moment, you believed the lie that you wanted to, and so you further perpetuated the law-based, self-reliant mindset that is contrary to God's grace in your life. You identified with the flesh, thinking that its desires were your own. And worse, you lost your confident access to God because, in your mind, you are no longer holy like he is. You gained no ground in terms of gospel freedom, for your mind was left unrenewed.

That is how you used to handle such encounters with laziness. But now it is different because you know who you are. In the same scenario, you hear the voice saying, “It sounds nice to be lazy, doesn’t it?” You feel the burning desire to agree, the flesh raging to get its fix. Everything in you says, “I want this, I want this!” except the Word of God, who says, “No, you do not.” Then you look to Christ and his glory, and you recognize that because these feelings cannot be his, neither are they your own. They come entirely from the flesh, which is on you, not in you. They are like a cancer on the skin, as opposed to a cancer in the soul. It is not a product of you; it is a foreign entity around you, causing you some temporary discomfort. There is no defilement of thought because it is not your thought. There is no unholiness of desire because they are not your desires. There is no fault in you whatsoever because you are not even in the flesh but in Christ.

So, how do you approach the throne with this temptation to be lazy? You give thanks to God for making you clean and holy! You thank him that you do not want to be lazy at all and that you love being productive and prayerful! You may not feel it in the moment. In fact, you may feel exactly the opposite. But you no longer walk by feelings. You walk by faith in God’s word. And you rejoice that he has given you his energy and diligence, making you new in his image.

Sometimes, faith really can look this simple. You just walk in it, and it works. But often, we find that even with all the truth we know, lies are not so easy to put off. In this case, let us realize that God has ordained this moment of weakness to train us to rely on him (not just knowledge). In this case, I encourage you not to try to look away from the temptation, stuff it down, or dismiss it. Instead, look at it with God. Don't try to avoid the suffering, but go through it with God.

I am reminded of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, who told his disciples, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death" (Matthew 26:38), and he prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me" (Matthew 26:39). Let this be our chief example for sincerity in these moments of weakness. It is noteworthy that Jesus did not pray from a place of strength, like so: "Father, thank you for revealing your love within me! Thank you for showing me that these desires aren't really my own! Thank you for the privilege to die for you! I delight in doing your will!" No, he fully acknowledged the weakness and desire of his flesh, unafraid and unashamed to present it both to his brothers and to his Father. And in doing so, he was able, with the help of God in prayer, to gain clarity and to receive the strength he needed to overcome.

Also, please remember that none of this is intended to be a formula but simply to open your mind to the ways of God and the practicality of believing the gospel. Our identity in Christ is just the starting point that ensures that we are able to abide in Christ and receive from him in times of need. As you lean on him, keep your mind open. Listen. Learn. There may be more that God wants to teach you than what I have outlined here. Let him do so, and then believe what he tells you!

In the next chapter, we will continue to discuss some profound ways that the gospel applies to our lives. For now, I encourage you to take some time to pray and reflect on what I've shared in this chapter before moving any further.

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