Bible Study The Three R's of Christian Living.

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Jude 1:24-25
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,
25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.​

I don't know about you, but for many decades my reflex as a Christian was to do for God rather than to let Him do for me. Oh, I'd give lip-service to the idea that "God does it all" but in practice I was constantly running ahead of God, in my own power trying to honor Him by being a holy person, doing all of the things He said to me in His word I should do. It was so frustrating, so exhausting, and always inevitably a failure. And despite all of my efforts, I was no closer to God, our fellowship was no richer, my personal experience of God no deeper.

One can only go on like this for so long and then, well, in my case, I threatened God with quitting the whole Christian-life thing. Walking with Him had to be more than just maintaining fidelity to a set of religious propositions, more than a constant, bitter struggle against myself. I wanted to know God in the way He told me in His word I could; I wanted the "abundant life," (John 10:10; Ephesians 3:20) the life of peace and rest (Matthew 11:28-30), the life of love and joy (Romans 5:5; 1 John 4:16-19; Galatians 5:22-23, etc.) walking with Him was supposed to be.

The problem wasn't with God, though. He had told me quite plainly in His word how to walk well with Him, how to enjoy Him daily in the abundant life given to me in Jesus Christ. I had this idea, though, that living the Christian life was 98% Self-effort and 2% divine power. My thinking was that when I ran out of my own "gas" living God's way, He'd step in and shore me up, providing to me what I lacked to be a godly person. Mostly, though, I just had to dig deep, strain my hardest, struggle fiercely against myself, and try to be who God wanted me to be. I couldn't let go of this perspective - even after it had failed repeatedly. I just had to try harder, I thought, learn more, make this way work. The abundant life in Christ was just around the corner! I needed only to keep plugging away, never giving up, keeping the faith, pray more, read my Bible more. Blah, blah, blah. Ugh.

Sound familiar?

Don't get me wrong: prayer and study of God's word are vital to a rich experience of Him; standing firm, unmoved in our faith in God, is crucial to Christian living; enduring in the midst of trial and temptation is necessary. The how of doing so I had all wrong. My motives for living to God's glory were badly confused and the mechanics of my relationship to God were profoundly awry.

I've written a fair bit about submission to God, walking by faith in the truth of God's word, and about the crucified life, all of which are key elements of enjoying God deeply and daily. But another way of thinking about how to walk with God properly that I've found very helpful is to think in terms of the "three R's":

Receive.
Remain.
Reflect.


Receive.

When I was saved, born-again spiritually, I could do nothing to spiritually-regenerate myself, to make myself born-again. Being "dead in trespasses and sins," bound under the power of the World, the Flesh and the devil (Ephesians 2:1-3), all I could do was receive, by faith, the work of God on my behalf that He accomplished through Christ's atonement for my sin on the cross. I couldn't earn my salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 3:8), I couldn't cleanse myself from the stain of my sin, I couldn't produce the standard of holy perfection God required. And God wasn't asking me to. All He required from me was a willingness to receive from Him, by faith, the life of Christ in exchange for my Self-centered, sin-fouled life.

In regard to being a recipient of God’s work, nothing changes after conversion. Though I am a born-again child of God, I am still on the receiving end of things in my relationship with Him. God works in me both the desire and ability to do His will (Philippians 2:13). I can only work out what I have first received from God. By faith, I receive from Him, from the Holy Spirit more precisely, all that God wants to see in evidence in my life. What does this mean, exactly, to how I walk with God?

Well, for one, it means that God does not want me intruding into what He is doing in me with my own effort, trying to do for Him what He intends He should do for me. Like begets like: My self-effort can only produce more of self, of me. If I want to be godly, I must allow God to make me so. And when I do, when I receive God's work, past and present, the result is that I am naturally, powerfully and profoundly transformed.

At the moment of my conversion, God redeemed me, justified me, and sanctified me by placing me "in Christ." (1 Corinthians 1:30) At the moment I was saved, I was "made new" spiritually, made a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), crucified with him and thus freed from the old person I was, bound in sin, able now to live consistently out from under the domination of sin. (Romans 6:1-11; Galatians 2:20; Galatians 5:24; Colossians 3:3, etc.) All of this God has already done for me and it remains only for me, by faith, to believe it fully and truly accomplished and receive it as the truth of who I now am - regardless of what I feel or experience.

This is the "labor of faith" that "enters into rest" (Hebrews 3 & 4). The work of faith is the struggle to believe God in the absence of any concrete evidence in support of what I'm believing. Especially at first, a new, immature Christian will have no history with God, no evidence in their practical experience, of what has become true of them spiritually. They must walk entirely by faith with God, believing in their new, spiritual status, just as they have believed in the Gospel by which they were delivered into that status. And it is only as they do that the truth of their new identity in Christ will begin to manifest in their living.

The Christian, then, is always a receiver, by faith working out only what God has first worked into them. The mark of this sort of living is the absence of torturous wrestling with oneself in order to be a holy person and, instead, the natural, restful, progressive and profound transformation, not merely of one's conduct, but of one's core desires and thinking. This living is characterized by joy, and peace, and victory, not strain, and frustration, and failure.

Matthew 11:28-30 (NASB)
28 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
29 "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.
30 "For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

Philippians 4:6-7 (NASB)
6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:13 (NASB)
13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Ephesians 3:16 (NASB)
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,


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Remain.

As I, by faith, receive the work of God in my life, first in the matter of my spiritual regeneration, and then in the transformation of my life in its mundane, practical dimensions, a battle between the new life in Christ in which I now exist and my former, Self-centered pattern of living arises. I have been freed from bondage to my “old man” (Romans 6:6), to the godless, fleshly, temporally-minded, Self-centered person I was without God, but not necessarily from the established habits and practices formed under the rule of my “old man.”

God has made us habit-forming creatures, settling into patterns of behavior, often very rapidly, for good or ill. Never have I seen this tendency more clearly-demonstrated than in how people have become so powerfully-habituated to their cell-phones, turning constantly to them, checking for texts, or responding to notifications, playing games, taking their phones literally everywhere they go. There are many other sorts of habits we form, though, across the entire spectrum of our lives, ordering our relationships, our thinking, our preferences in diet, or entertainment, or fashion. We can’t help it; we’ve been made by God to develop these patterns of thought, feeling and action.

The more deeply-set a habit is, the more difficult it is to abandon and/or replace, as we all know. Any addict can tell you the awful power of a habit grown so deep and large that it becomes irresistible and destructive. The potent force of habit certainly comes to the fore when our life in Christ runs up against habits we’ve formed under the rule of Self that must be forsaken but that fight – and often win – against our efforts to abandon them. Even when we earnestly desire to be free of some particular habit, weeping over its power in our lives, forsaking it can be a deeply frustrating, failure-plagued business.

The apostle Paul described something of the inner battle that rages between the “law of sin,” occupied with the flesh, and the “law of the mind,” desirous of a godly life:

Romans 7:14-24 (NASB)
14 For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.
15 For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.
16 But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.
17 So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.
22 For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,
23 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

We all have an echo of Paul’s experience in our own lives. And we all know the failure that Paul described, doing what we don’t want to do, practicing the evil we despise. It is very easy when this is so, to migrate away from the truth of one’s identity in Christ, from one’s “new creation” status in him, into conformity to the power of the pattern of one’s former life, developed under the rule of Self.

It is at the point of temptation to “return to Egypt,” to slavery to the “old man” once again, that the matter of remaining becomes prominent. Like the Israelites at the border of the Promised Land, the believer may assume that what is evident to their physical senses, what they feel and see, is what is real and true. The pressure of deeply-set habit can be very strong, overwhelming our resistance, sometimes very rapidly. The power of habit can feel all-powerful and when we yield to it, having tried to resist it, we feel confirmed in thinking that it is, in fact, irresistible.

This was the case for the Israelites at the border of Canaan (Numbers 13-14). In the land God had given to them, they saw great cities and the many powerful inhabitants of the land, and seeing them, the Israelites felt weak, vulnerable and afraid. As the Israelites considered what opposed their possession of what God had promised to them, as they focused upon what stood in their way rather than upon Jehovah who had liberated, protected and sustained them all throughout their journey to Canaan, the barriers enlarged in their minds and hearts while God and His promises and providence diminished.

Christians today fail in this very same way all the time. They are moved from the power and promises of God, from His truth and the reality of their identity in Christ, into feelings of impotence, doubt and fear, cowed by what they feel and experience into “drawing back” from God and what He has told them is the truth.

So long as these believers are moved away from their position in Christ and out from under the control of the Holy Spirit, in doubt and fear overcome by past patterns of thinking and acting, they drift into a sort of spiritual wilderness, full of scrub brush and dust, far from the “milk and honey” of the spiritual “promised land” that is theirs as co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17; Hebrews 3-4).

What is needed in this circumstance is that the believer would learn to remain, by faith, in their position in Christ, standing unmoved on the promises of God to them.

Ephesians 6:10-14
10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
11 Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

The believer is enjoined here, not to charge forward and overcome the Enemy, but only to stand, to remain in place, refusing to give up the ground upon which they stand in Christ who is himself the “armor of God.”

Colossians 1:21-23 (KJV)
21 And you, who were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now has he reconciled
22 In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:
23 If you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister;

Here, Paul reminds the believer that in refusing to be moved from the truths he proclaimed to them, in remaining “grounded and settled in the faith,” they would experience the life that was theirs in Christ.

1 Corinthians 16:13 (NASB)
13 Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

Again, the command here is to “stand firm,” to remain, unyielding, in one’s place in the faith, which is to say, in Christ, in whom all believers abide. (John 15:4-5; Ephesians 2:6; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:17)

1 Corinthians 15:57-58 (KJV)
57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

Once more, the command is issued to be unmovable, to remain fixed in place spiritually, anchored in the truths and promises of God, trusting in Christ who “gives us the victory.” This remaining, this standing firm, is a work of faith, however, a trusting in the Person and promises of God; it is “walking by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), by an act of the will choosing to stand, unshakeable, in what God has said is true rather than in what we feel and see.

When the force of habit bears down on the believer, pressing them mightily to yield to old, ungodly patterns of thought, feeling and behavior, the “work” is to believe God, to trust in His proclamations concerning who they are in Christ, and in what God has promised to His children in response to their submission to His will and way, to turn away from the “mighty cities” and “giants” of the land of Self-rule barring their way to their spiritual inheritance, and by faith “reckon it so” (Romans 6:11), refusing to be turned in their God-ward focus, or moved from His truth.

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Reflect.

As the believer remains, by faith, in who they are in Christ, refusing to be shifted from the reality of the Spirit’s regenerating work in them, remaining continually submitted to His control, a divine transformation of the believer occurs. This “sowing to the Spirit” yields a harvest of the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), the fruit of righteousness, goodness and truth (Ephesians 5:9), reflected naturally and inevitably in how the believer lives.

This reflection is as certain and natural as the reflection of oneself in a mirror. By this I mean the reflection happens unconsciously, subtly, without torturous inner wrestling, or exhausting exertion. When the Spirit is in control, applying His awesome, divine power in transformation of the believer, the change is not typically explosive, or dramatic, or even apparent, but like the growth of a tree-branch, imperceptible, continuous, working at the “cellular level” of the believer’s mind, heart and spirit, building strength and the capacity for fruitfulness over time.

2 Corinthians 3:18 (NASB)
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

John 15:4-5 (NASB)
4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
5 "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

Philippians 2:13 (NASB)
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

When, by their own power, believers achieve some degree of change in themselves, at the end of the process of doing so they only know themselves better, their ability to reform themselves. In contrast, when the Spirit makes changes in them, believers increase in their knowledge and experience of the Spirit, of His power and His process of transforming them.

As well, when change in a believer occurs by dint of their own effort, the consequence is often mere repression of desire - and inevitable exhaustion. Finite, natural human power simply cannot achieve supernatural, divine ends. This is apparent in the matter of a believer’s salvation and it continues to be the case beyond conversion in the daily walk of the believer with God. When a believer draws chiefly or solely upon their own strength in pursuit of godliness, then, the result must always be, at best, short-lived, superficial success ending in collapse and depletion. But when God goes to work on the believer, they experience change that is accomplished and sustained by the endless reservoir of His power, leading to greater power, not less, to greater and greater spiritual heights not repeated, predictable spiritual implosion.

Too often, though, the expectation of the believer of the process of becoming like Christ is an experience of all-out war full of violent struggle, fierce inner striving, harsh self-repression and onerous self-sacrifice. And this expectation can be so strong, so deeply-set, that the idea that peace and rest (Matthew 11:28-30; Galatians 5:22; Exodus 33:14), spiritual abundance (John 10:10; Ephesians 3:20; 1 Timothy 1:14), joy, delight, and inexhaustible power (Ephesians 3:16; Colossians 1:11; Philippians 4:13) are the spiritual birth-right of every believer, is rejected out-of-hand.

As well, believers sometimes mistake their role in walking with God as one akin to a puppet to Puppeteer, waiting on God to infuse them with an overwhelming, irresistible desire to do His will, to “pull their strings,” and/or utterly eradicate all impulses that move them contrary to God’s will. They want a light, over-riding, positive desire to obey God, thinking this is the only way God would, or could, move them to walk rightly with Him. But, then, the feeling, the desire, quickly becomes the Power Source of right action, not God.

God works upon our desires, conforming them to His will and way as we submit to His doing so, but those divinely-altered, or entirely new, God-given desires, are only products of God’s work, not sources of power, or ends, in themselves. Oddly, we can easily become occupied with desiring right desire, of desiring the feeling of wanting God, rather than God Himself. And so, God doesn’t generally infuse us with strong feelings of desire that propel us in leaps and bounds into spiritual maturity and godly service. Again, like the tree-branch, His work is far more subtle and profound, always orienting us upon Him, not merely the effects of His work in us.

In any event, as the Holy Spirit changes us, we can’t help but reflect that change in the manner of our living, in our joy, holiness, spiritual power, in our experience of God day-by-day, ever-increasing in our knowledge of Him, and living naturally and enthusiastically to His glory.

In this condition, we are fully-equipped to “enter the land” spiritually and take it, progressively, in God’s power, overcoming all opposition to our complete possession of it, as the Israelites did the land of Canaan.

Colossians 2:9-10 (KJV)
9 For in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
10 And you are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power:

 

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