Spiritual Discipline

When I was a young Christian I was taught to maintain many spiritual disciplines. Scripture reading, prayer, tithing, evangelism, stewardship, parenting, marriage… the list goes on and on. In great detail, down to the amount of time one should spend praying each day, I was trained to be a Christian Jedi. A Christian Guru, if you will. And I did Christianity by the book and the clock – if I missed a quiet time in the morning it was a disaster that impacted my whole day and frequently started a slide away from my ‘faith’.

This went on for years. I could sometimes maintain my disciplines for long periods of time and feel good about myself. Then the inevitable slip would come and I would crash to the lowest lows. I found myself dreading church on Sundays but keeping up the appearance of a disciplined Christian, living in fear that someone would find out that I was faking it. At a certain point (actually several) I just gave up. I realized that I couldn't do it – couldn't maintain the pace. I couldn't cut Christianity because it just required more of me than I could give. I couldn't focus enough energy on the myriad things that I was supposed to be doing (or not doing) and gain victory in any one of them let alone master them all to the point where I felt that I had satisfied God’s requirements. And through all of this there was no one there to tell me (or I didn't have ears to hear) that I wasn't expected to cut it; that if I could cut it then Christ was of no consequence.

God created us. He knows us. He knows it is not possible for us to maintain the discipline it takes to be Christlike. No amount of spiritual score-keeping or to-do-listing can create holiness within us because He alone is holy. When He demands holiness from us, he is demanding that we be found in Him, not some imitation of his holiness, but His holiness. And because He knows we are weak, He sent his son to pay for our weakness and destroy that separation that existed between us and Him that we might come and participate in a relationship with Him which makes us holy apart from anything we do or fail to do. I frequently go back to this conversation from John Chapter 6:

Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”

Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

(John 6:28-29 ESV)

Did you hear what the son of man said? He did not say, “These are the works of God; to love God, to pray, tithe, steward, witness, be a good husband and father, attend church every Sunday, treat others with grace, avoid lust, avoid anger, avoid coveting…” Clearly these are things that God requires, and yet they are not the things that Jesus identifies as the work God requires of us.  The work that God requires is that we believe in him whom he sent. This is our assignment. This is the discipline that God requires – to continue to believe upon Christ. It is our relationship to Christ that makes us holy, and that relationship is one of faith. In order to be holy, then, that relationship must be established and strengthened by a continued faith in Christ alone. Not faith in our disciplines or our ability to maintain our disciplines, but faith in the Son of God. Faith that comes by hearing again and again the good news that “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)

So what about all the rest? What about prayer, tithing, marriage, parenting, lusting, coveting, anger, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.? If God demands these things of us, how are we to meet the demands? We are not. We cannot. If we view these demands as law and attempt to meet them ourselves, we nullify the grace of God in our lives and will never, ever succeed (Galatians 2:21). But if we realize that God’s demand is simply to believe in the one who has actually accomplished spiritual victory, what can we do but pray? Where else can we turn? Why would we not tithe, knowing that all things are the gift of a gracious Father?  How can we not be better spouses and parents, being set free from the slavish desire to seek our own interests ahead of those around us by this news that we are loved and approved even as undisciplined sinners? We become hungry for time in the scripture knowing that faith comes through the hearing of this word about Christ. From this one discipline of continued faith in Christ, these things become fruit – an organic expression of the holiness of God that works powerfully in us, almost without effort.

Make no mistake; believing that all has been accomplished in Christ and maintaining robust faith is not easy work. It requires us to seek out the gospel at every turn - a process made difficult by our complete aversion to grace and our hunger for discipline-driven goals. Perhaps the hardest commandment in the Bible is “believe in him whom he has sent” because it is so contrary to our discipline-oriented nature to do so. But this is the demand of God, and a demand that He sends his Spirit to fulfill in us that we may continue to live in the freedom he has called us to. Freedom from slavish attempts at holiness. Freedom to be holy. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless.