Chapter 3

A New Kind of Effort: How Faith Brings About Obedience

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'" (Romans 1:16-17)

By and large, modern Christians understand that they are saved only through faith in Jesus Christ. This is good and true, but it often lacks a vital element. When we say that we are saved through faith, most think this means that (a) we were reconciled to God through faith and (b) we will receive eternal life in the future through faith. But what we have often failed to see is that we are sanctified through faith, too, meaning that the process of spiritual growth is something that can only be accomplished by faith, as well.

For many Christians, faith is only practical in that it provides the assurance of salvation. It provides the comfort of knowing they are forgiven, in right relationship with God, and ultimately going to heaven despite their current state of sinfulness. But do you see how this limited understanding of faith only has to do with the beginning and the end of the Christian life? What about this whole thing in between called life? Through faith, are we only delivered from the consequences of our sin, or are we delivered from our sin, too? Of course, it is the latter.

As we said in the last chapter, we need to connect the dots between believing and obeying, such that there is no difference between the two.

Identity Drives Actions

It is a fact of human life, and well-researched in psychology, that our sense of identity drives our actions. What we believe about ourselves in terms of our inward being is the driving force of our outward doing. Herein lies much of the gospel's power.

If liquid water thought itself to be ice, it would not flow. If a butterfly thought it was still a caterpillar, it may never fly. Likewise, we live according to the identity we believe we have. For example, if a child is taught they are rotten, all their desires to be good will be overshadowed by the seemingly inescapable identity to which they have been subjected. “Should I be kind and obedient today?” they will think to themselves. “It sounds nice to stay out of trouble and make some friends, but unfortunately, that is too hard for me. That is just not the kind of child I am.”

In the same way, Christians who think of themselves still as sinners are sure to go on sinning. But those who “consider [themselves] dead to sin” (Romans 6:11), as they truly are in Christ, will naturally stop sinning. This is not to say that a true Christian will never sin again; rather, it is to recognize that when we do, it is not due to a faulty self but to a false understanding of self. If after sinning, we think to ourselves, “I must have wanted to do that; there is still something wrong with me,” then we have misidentified ourselves with the flesh, with which we are no longer to identify (see Romans 8:9; 2 Corinthians 5:16; Colossians 2:11). The truth is, we did not sin because we wanted to but because we thought we wanted to. We were deceived. Thus, failure to grow in holiness or to obey at any given moment is always linked to some failure to see (or believe) who and what we truly are.

To be very clear, this is far better than the power of positive thinking. It is the power of spiritual thinking, which is only possible with the Holy Spirit. Regarding our identity, God's word says that he has caused us to be reborn, literally, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ — no longer "in the flesh but in the Spirit" (Romans 8:9); not of natural descent, “but of God” (John 1:13). It is not simply that he has convinced our old self to follow him and love him, but that “[t]he old has passed away… the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Now that we have been given a new life, a new identity, and a new nature altogether, we do not pretend to be new, nor do we try to think of ourselves as something better than we actually are. Instead, we learn to think of ourselves as God says we are, and it naturally begins to translate to our daily lives since it is already true. What he has already put inside of us will be revealed or manifest in us outwardly as we renew our mind according to the inward and unseen reality.

If you are tempted to feel condemned by any of this, or if you hear me blaming you for not having enough faith to be free from sin, then you are missing the point. In Christ, you are a child of God, made entirely new in his image — how could you be condemned? Satan wants to shame and discourage you for still struggling with sin and not having enough faith to change. But no amount of faith can add to or take away from who you already are in Christ; it can only help you bear the fruit of it. Satan’s tactic is to keep you thinking that you're still the same old sinner because, just like the butterfly who thinks he is still a caterpillar, the only thing standing between you and your new life is the knowledge that you have been transformed. God has done it. You must fight to believe it.

Being vs. Doing

I have heard many sermons and even preached some myself on the topic of “being versus doing.” One classic scripture for this subject is the story of Martha and Mary — sisters who had Jesus into their home for dinner (see Luke 10:38-42). A common takeaway is the importance of spending time being with Jesus — usually pertaining to more contemplative activities like prayer, scripture, worship, or recreation — over and against doing things for Jesus. Most would agree it is not that serving him is wrong by any means, but that it should not take precedence over “sitting at his feet.”

All mean well who preach this message, and there is truth to it. But I would propose that it has done unnecessary harm to the Church. Thinking that we are contrasting being and doing, is it possible that we only have spoken of two kinds of doing? The activities may look different outwardly — whether prayer or service — but each is still an activity, whether we like to admit it or not. For many people, sitting with Jesus feels more like serving him and, to others, vice versa. Perhaps we felt bad for not serving Jesus enough; now, after hearing about the importance of being with him, we feel bad that we are not spending enough time in prayer. Or perhaps we felt prideful for serving Jesus a lot; now we feel prideful for praying a lot since we have heard that prayer is more important. Maybe we feel ashamed for our inability to strike the perfect balance between being and doing, or otherwise proud when we get pretty close.

The sad reality is that, for many Christians, all of life has become doing, anxiously striving to please God. This is what happens when we reduce being to a specific kind of action, like prayer. Even prayer becomes a counterproductive work. The goal here should not be to contrast being with doing, for in this, we have turned being into just one more thing to do. Instead, we should eliminate doing altogether and strive only to be (in accordance with our new nature) since right doing is a natural result of right being. If we understand our new life in God, then every good activity — including both prayer and service — becomes an outflow of our being so that there is no more striving or works-righteousness.

So, once again, the wonderful freedom of the gospel is found first in knowing who and what we are. This is the true meaning of the “rest” for which we are to strive, “for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works…” (Hebrews 4:10).

A friend of mine once admitted that it was hard to comprehend how, in life after death, we would not want to sin anymore. But all one needs to do is consider how God never sins. It is quite simple — sin is not in his nature (see 1 John 3:5). In other words, God cannot do what God isn’t. Or else, consider how earthly creatures never sin. From the birds of the air to the fish of the sea, there is no doing which conflicts with their true being. Just the same, there will be a day when Jesus returns to “transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21), and we will “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4, my italics), freed forever from the corruption of our flesh which currently wages war against our souls. In the meantime, we must learn to live through Jesus, who has already overcome sin in the flesh and has put on this new nature for us. He is our new being, and we abide in him through faith.

Christ did not die to change our doing; he died to change our being. He did not die to redeem our behavior; he died to redeem our nature. He did not die just so that we would love him in our actions; he died so that we would become love, as he is love. He did not die for us to remain in the impossibly constant tension between sitting at his feet and serving him; he died so that there would no longer be a distinction between the two. “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Abiding in Christ

This is how Christians remain in bondage to sin. We have reduced the things that we already are, by God’s doing, into things that we must ourselves do but can never actually accomplish. Take, for example, the idea of “abiding in Christ” (see John 15:1-17). How is it that you have been taught to do this? I always thought that to abide in Christ, I had to be actively thinking about him, praying, obeying his commands, reflecting on his love for me, etc. How often, then, did I fail to abide in him?! For even when I perceived that I was successful in this matter, it was by my own effort, by which no one is united with him. “[R]emember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you” (Romans 11:18).

The only way one truly abides in the Vine is by trusting that one has already been grafted into the Vine through faith. “They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith” (Romans 11:20). It is not we who connect ourselves to Christ, but Christ who has connected us to himself. By grace alone, “in Christ” is our ongoing state. Therefore, we abide by simply believing it is true.

If you are not yet convinced, perhaps the Greek will help to bring the point home. The Greek word translated as “abide” in John 15 is meno, which means specifically to “remain” or “stay.” This being the case, we might ask, what sense would it make to tell someone to remain somewhere they are not? When someone says they have chosen to remain at their job, it is a given that they are speaking of a job they currently have. When a parent tells their child to stay at home, we assume that the child is already at home or otherwise will be at home whenever this command becomes relevant. In the same way, Christ’s instruction to remain or stay in him should indicate to believers that we are already there. Christ never commanded us to get into him but to stay where he has put us by the same means that we got there — faith.

The same logic applies to many ideas with which we are familiar. For instance, just as we abide in Christ through faith, we walk by the Spirit through faith, as well. There is nothing anyone can do, by an act of their own will, to “get into” the Spirit. As children of God, all believers are in/of the Spirit by nature. Therefore, to walk by the Spirit means to live in alignment with our actual state of being, which happens naturally when we think of ourselves correctly. This is what Paul means when he says, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:15, cf. 2:20). In other words, he is saying, “Let us act according to who/what we truly are.”

Or how about all this talk of “dying to ourselves?” Have we not yet learned that we are already dead and that Christ is our new life? Once again, there is nothing anyone can do, by an act of their own will, to “die to themselves” except to hand themselves over to Christ, at which point they die completely, immediately, and literally. We progressively “die to sin” by considering ourselves already dead to sin (see Romans 6:11). We crucify the passions of the flesh by believing that “those who belong to Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24, my italics). We “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4) by believing that we “are not in the flesh but in the Spirit” (Romans 8:9). If we want to experience the fruit of the Spirit, we must stop trying to do that which we already are, seeing ourselves as truly one with Christ.

What About Effort?

I hear some people screaming, “Grace is not opposed to effort but to earning!” It is a catchy phrase, but it is not always true. Grace is definitely opposed to effort when the effort we put forth is to obtain “the things freely given us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12) as if we did not already have them.

For example, if you're trying to love God more, perhaps you have failed to see that you already do love him (see Romans 5:5 and 1 Peter 1:8) with the same love that he loves himself. With this in mind, we can recognize that, even though this love is somewhere within us, what we really desire is to manifest or experience or feel it in greater measure. This is the proper way to view it. And in pursuit of that goal, we should no longer look outside of ourselves, waiting for an experience to prove that it is true. (I did this for years, and all it did was leave me wanting, relying on the flesh to walk by the Spirit.) Instead, we should look to our already perfect union with Christ, making every effort to believe what we cannot yet see, to access what is rightfully ours in him.

Here is another example. If you're trying to get closer to God, perhaps you have forgotten that you cannot be more in him than you already are. Every effort you make to be closer to him — whether prayer, reading your Bible, going to Church, being good today, etc. — is counterproductive if you do it on the presumption that you are not already perfectly close to him through faith in Christ alone. Every time you try to get closer to him through your works or activities, you reinforce your belief that there is some other way to be joined to him than by faith, and you undermine the power of the gospel which says otherwise. Similar to our previous example, it is still proper to desire the feeling or experience of closeness. But again, we must distinguish between the outward manifestation of it and the inward reality. In doing so, we can place our efforts where they belong — in renewing our minds toward the inward, unseen, spiritual reality, which will eventually bear fruit in our feelings as we get established in the truth.

Others may think that how I speak about faith diminishes the believer's responsibility to respond to God’s call with serious personal devotion (usually some sort of religious activity). But given what I have written thus far, it should be clear that I have no intention to absolve the believer of their responsibility to pursue God. On the contrary, I aim to equip believers with the knowledge they need to fulfill that responsibility. To set the record straight, we should not be opposed to effort (see 2 Peter 1:5-10 and Philippians 2:12). But again, all the effort we put forth should go toward believing the Truth. All the striving we do should be to "enter that rest" (Hebrews 4:11), which we do by believing (see Hebrews 3:19 and 4:3). If we do that, then we can expect that everything else will flow.

So, then, what does effort look like? Well, it certainly warrants prayer to begin with, which is always the place where we align our thoughts with God's thoughts. You can do this all throughout the day, sure — wherever you are and whatever you're doing. But if you have not developed the discipline of setting aside time for you and God to talk, with no distractions, you may find it is much more difficult to keep your mind right throughout the day as you are bombarded with life, responsibilities, unexpected interactions, and temptations. Now, you should see that making room for quiet time with the Lord isn't about "being a good Christian" anymore, as if there is some law to how much time you must set aside for this. Rather, it is a highly practical way of aligning your thoughts with God's, allowing you to be very intentional and diligent toward renewing the mind.

Coupled with prayer, the discipline of fasting is also an incredibly powerful way of training your mind not to rely on the flesh. It is not that "good Christians fast" or that there is some rule to how often you should fast. It is that fasting is downright helpful when it comes to the renewing of the mind. If you're struggling in any particular area, you should seriously consider fasting as way to build up your faith and to discover that spiritual food Jesus was talking about in John 4:32.

This logic can be applied to all our efforts. The finished work of Christ doesn't leave us without anything to do. Rather, it serves as a foundation upon which the things we do become fruitful because they are reaffirming the truth that sets us free, as opposed to tearing it down.

If you ever hear that voice in your head saying, "You're not doing enough," that is most likely not from God, but the Accuser. I find that God will say things more helpful like, "You're not thinking right about this." And then he will sometimes suggest things I can do to proactively renew my mind and exercise my faith, knowing that faith alone will produce fruit.

Like myself for a long time, many Christians have thought that the key to their spiritual growth is more religious activity, like getting up early in the morning to spend more time in prayer and scripture. "If only I could put in the effort required to do that every day, then everything would change," they tell themselves (or their pastors tell them). The problem with this is that I have met people who know their Bibles front to back but are some of the angriest people you'll ever meet. I've met people who spend exorbitant amounts of time fasting and praying, and their lives are falling apart due to their immaturity. And I know firsthand how quickly lies and law-driven effort can undermine the productivity of all these practices.

So, while these kinds of life habits are good and necessary, don't for one second believe that the habit/discipline itself will change you. Only having the mind of Christ will change your life, and these spiritual disciplines are just tools for accessing his mind. Knowing this, we can rightly approach these activities, understanding their purpose, and greatly benefit from doing them.

My Besetting Sin

For a long time in my life (on and off for 15 years), I wrestled with a pornography addiction. It was what I would call my "besetting sin."

It felt like I had tried nearly everything to be free of it — prayer, confession, repentance, accountability partners, accountability software, self-help books, group studies, etc. I truly wanted to be free; I despised this sin. But it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, even if I was able to keep it at bay for weeks or months at a time, I always fell back into it. And even when I was temporarily "pure", there was still a constant battle with lust going on in my mind. The best anyone could tell me was to try harder or to stop trying so hard. The former never worked, and the latter did not sit well with me.

I had been desperate for a solution for years, and one day, before I ever learned the gospel the way that I teach it in this book, I came across a simple practice that would change me forever. It was a wonderful piece of wisdom for building faith and praying more effectively. It goes like this. When you ask the Lord something, only say please once. Then, as you continue praying, start saying thank you. It may sound a little presumptuous, or perhaps too bold, but it is grounded in an amazing biblical promise: "ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you" (Luke 11:9). And, "whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mark 11:24). And, "If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it" (John 14:14). Etc.

Saying thank you for something you've asked for (before you appear to have received it) is a simple way of putting your faith into practice because, in order to say the words sincerely, one must put their trust in God. In this way, it trains the mind to trust in the Lord — his word, his promises, his provision, his love, his goodness, etc. — despite everything else telling us to think otherwise. If you have never prayed like this before, do not be surprised if it feels insincere at first. In this case, your unbelief is being exposed. Praise God that he is bringing it into the light so that it can now be dealt with.

Some are opposed to this kind of prayer, but it should be quite evident that their contention is with Jesus, not me. I am simply taking God at his word. Perhaps they think it misleads people to pray for things that are not in God's will. Yet I would propose, for starters, that there are some things we can be entirely certain are always within God's will, and we ought to pray for them boldly and expectantly. One of these things is freedom from sin, which, in this story, happened to be the content of my prayer, anyway.

So when I learned about this new way of praying, I immediately applied it to my addiction. One day, for probably the ten-thousandth time, I prayed, "Lord, will you please free me from pornography forever?" And then it struck me — I would never again ask God to free me from this addiction. Committed to this new prayer of faith, I said (maybe for the first time ever), "God, thank you that you will(?) free me from pornography," a little unsure of how far I could push it. And then two things happened.

The first is that I felt a surge of hope. I felt encouraged to finally stop agreeing with the defeatism and despair that had defined this struggle for so long, and simply to trust in God again as the real and imminent solution to my problem. This was exciting. But the second thing that happened was even a little more interesting. I continued to pray this way for a couple days — thanking God that he would do it eventually — until a very peculiar thought crossed my mind, which I think came from the Holy Spirit:

When will I ever be able to confidently say, "God, thank you for setting me free?" When can I ever be sure that the work was really finished? After a week of purity? No, that's probably not long enough. After a month of purity? I had gone that long before without watching pornography but still fell back into it. After 6 months of purity? Maybe, but still, I'm not so sure. How about 10 years of purity? Hold on, isn't it always at least possible for me to stumble again?

Then, in that moment, I realized how foolish of a prayer this was — that God would eventually set me free from this sin, as if I wasn't already free from it (just like my Bible says). The fact is, whatever magical moment I was waiting for was not in my future but in my past, when I was baptized into Christ and born again. I am either free now or free never (at least in this life). And so I prayed a new prayer once more: "God, thank you for setting me free from my addiction to pornography." Honestly, when I prayed this, I did not even know how it could be true. It did not make sense to me. But I knew it had to be true and that I had to believe it in order to begin walking in it.

Moving forward, whenever I prayed about this subject, I resolved only to give thanks and praise to God for his perfect deliverance and my total victory, regardless of how I felt about it that day. This was in contrast to the way I had prayed in the past, continuing to ask for it and waiting for explicit evidence to confirm I had received it.

To my delight, it did not take long for me to start believing that God had set me free, the fruit of which was that I began to experience victory over sin. Without even knowing exactly how, I was beginning to walk in the victory that had been mine all along. As I came to learn, this was not so much an answer to prayer as it was the result of my faith. It was not necessarily a new outpouring of grace but an application of the grace which had always been available to me. I had just never accessed it because I never had the faith to do so. The deliverance I had prayed for regarding my addiction had been accomplished long before I ever prayed for it, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I simply had not been walking in that grace until I began believing that it was there.

In other words, I had been enslaved to sin (although not really) only because I believed I was. Every time the flesh barked at me with its temptations — say, with an impure thought or a powerful feeling — I believed the narrative that I still needed deliverance, that there was still something wrong with me. As a result, feeling defiled by the temptation itself and weighed down by the seeming inevitability of failure, I was unable to draw near to God and rely on him for help, left alone in my own strength to keep from sinning. Then when I failed, it reinforced the belief that I was still under the power of sin, and I continued living under oppression. Thus, my supposed identity as a sinner compounded my sin. Sound familiar to anyone?

In my mind, I thought that I needed hard evidence before I could claim total freedom. I was always looking to string together months or years of purity to prove that I had overcome this sin. But of course, this is the very mindset that kept me imprisoned for so long. The solution? Look only to the Cross. The moment that I found confidence in my victory through the finished work of Christ, according to the word of God rather than anything else, is the moment that sin stopped being able to control me.

In the months after this revelation, I relapsed a couple of times, but these instances were not like the rest, for one explicit reason: Afterward, I did not let the sin define the truth (because sin, in essence, is a lie). I did not let it convince me that I was yet to be free or victorious. Instead, I simply realized that I had been duped. My flesh came knocking at the door, and I momentarily believed the lie that it was still me. Once I came to my senses, all I needed to do was look back to the Cross to confirm the truth, walking out of it once again a perfectly free man, giving thanks to God through Jesus Christ that I had been made new.

In all honesty, this was not as easy to do as it is to retell. Believing in the face of lies takes conviction, trust, persistence, and effort. But the effort is in believing and walking in what God says is true, rather than striving to make something true which is yet to be. The two are very different.

The flesh (and Satan) will come on strong at times, making a superbly convincing case that we are still in sin, that we have not yet been made new. We may think to ourselves, "If I am truly free, then why am I still being bombarded with all these fleshy thoughts and feelings?" We may think that because there is an ongoing battle, there is not yet victory. But then we have misunderstood the situation. The victory is ours; we are truly free. We must now fight to believe it. Our freedom is perfect; our faith is not.

Along the way, we might find ourselves in times or seasons of weakness, where we have fallen into the trap, believed the lie, followed the flesh, and given into temptations of all sorts. Does this mean that we are still our same old sinful selves? By no means! Does this nullify the grace of God or undo the work of Christ, which is received through faith alone? Absolutely not! It means we were lied to; we were gullible; and it is time now to plant ourselves firmly in the unchanging truth of the gospel, as opposed to the always-changing state of the flesh. It is time to "put off your old [man], which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and… be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and… put on the new [man], created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:22-24). This is true repentance — putting off falsehood and putting on Truth; believing in the unseen reality, despite what we see.

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