Get Your Shift Together
Shifting from an External to an Internal Person
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul asks the church there an interesting question:
“I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?” (Galatians 3:2).
The church in Galatia was feeling the pressure of Judaizers, a sect of Jewish Christians who taught that Gentile Christians (read: us) were required to observe at least some portion of the law of Moses, in addition to holding faith in Christ, in order to be saved. These Judaizers caused quite a stir in the early Church, so much so that we read in Acts chapter 15 of a council of church leaders convoked in Jerusalem to settle the dispute. How much of Old Testament Judaism was to be carried over into the New Covenant and applied to the Gentile believers? (Spoiler alert: none, for all intents and purposes).
As we know, Paul’s argument is straightforward: Law and Gospel are separate and distinct; they cannot be mixed. They don’t go together. Paul makes this argument, in one form or another, in several of his epistles.
Mental Assent Isn’t Spiritual Understanding
As Christians, we often think we understand this truth, but then our words and actions betray that we really don’t. You’ll often hear many Christians say things like, “Well, yes, of course, we’re saved by grace and not by works of the law, but we still have to obey God.” Or, “Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law, He came to fulfill it. Therefore, the law still applies to us as Christians.” Or, “When Paul said we weren’t under Law, he only meant the Law of Moses. He didn’t mean all moral law.” Or, “Paul only meant the Ceremonial and Civil Law, not the Ten Commandments or the moral law.” (We conveniently forget, of course, that the Law is a single, indivisible unit that is all or nothing; breaking just one part of it is breaking all of it [James 2:9-10]). Stick around Christian circles for any length of time and you’ll hear many variations of this theme.
The Full Gospel of Grace (a.k.a., The Rest of the Gospel)
The problem with these views is, quite simply, they miss the full gospel of grace. Christianity is not about me obeying God. It’s reckoning that Christ already obeys the Father through me. This may seem like a semantic difference, but I assure you it is more than semantics. It is, in fact, the difference between heaven and hell in the Christian life.
Notice what Paul asks the Galatians. “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law (that is, moral obedience) or by believing what you heard?” This is a rhetorical question, the obvious answer to which is the latter.
Think about when you became a Christian. How did it happen? Someone preached the gospel to you, and something supernatural then happened; you were suddenly enabled to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, without any work or striving involved. That’s the way it happened for me. I didn’t start off trying to obey God and then later coming to believe. No! Pastor Mike shared the gospel with me one evening on the way to a high school basketball game in Kaufman, Texas, and it just … made sense. He wasn’t even the first to share the gospel with me. Others had shared it with me prior to him. But it didn’t make sense until my best friend shared it with me. I couldn’t believe it, until Pastor Mike shared it with me. That isn’t to give Mike credit; that is to say that it was not yet God’s time for me to believe.
But on the way to that basketball game, most suddenly and unexpected by me, I heard the gospel, and it made sense. It didn’t even make sense intellectually; it wasn’t a brain understanding. Remember, brain understanding isn’t spiritual understanding. The truth of the gospel bypassed my intellect and went straight to the heart, the place where beliefs actually are born and live.
I went home that night and got on my knees. I prayed to the Lord Jesus to save me. I confessed my sins to Him, and confessed that He was my Lord. I believed that He died and rose again as a payment for my sins. There was no scientific or historical evidence presented. Obviously I didn’t observe Christ dying and rising again; that happened some 2,000 years prior. But I believed it. How can one believe something unseen? The writer of Hebrews tells us: “Faith is the evidence of things unseen, the substance of things hoped for.” God had graciously given me faith, and I received it.
At that moment, the promised Holy Spirit came to dwell inside me. And I was forever changed. Nothing in my life really prepared that moment. I wasn’t raised in a Christian church. In fact, neither my mother nor stepfather are Christians to this day. In fact, they weren’t too happy about my conversion, truth be told. I just … was able to believe. I received the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus, by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8-9), and my life was forever altered. A few months later I was baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at Beckley Hills Baptist Church in South Oak Cliff, TX. I was born again, just like the Scripture said, and it was not produced by me (John 3:3-6).
Now, let’s go back to Paul’s questions to the Galatians, nearly 2000 years ago. The question is: How did I receive the Holy Spirit? Did I receive it by obedience, by “doing a work” of some sort, by an action? Well, sort of; reciting the “Sinners Prayer” is a kind of action. But not really. I didn’t do any work of law to receive the Holy Spirit. Rather, God did the work—enabling me to believe (John 6:29). I simply received what God had already given, simply put my trust in Christ’s death and resurrection. I simply believed the Gospel.
“To as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God—to those who had believed on His Name,” (John 1:12).
Faith Itself Is A Gift from God
In the Gospel of John, the following conversation between Jesus and His disciples is recorded:
“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” 28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” 29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent,” (John 6:27-29).
The work God requires, as Pastor Mike likes to say … is simply to believe right. Belief (or faith) is what credits us with Christ’s righteousness (Romans 4).
But here’s what happens in our Christian discipleship. We get our sins forgiven by believing right — and then right after that some pastor or teacher or Christian friend tells us, “Now, get to work becoming a moral person. Clean up your act. Put down the bottle. Put down the bong. Stop sleeping with your boy/girlfriend, etc.” We trap many new Christians with this accursed teaching because we don’t know any better. We mean well, but we just don’t know any better.
In case you think calling such admonitions “accursed” is too strong, that is exactly what Paul called them. Right before the passage above in Galatians, chapter 3, Paul says this:
“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? 4 Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? 5 So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?” (Galatians 3:1-6).
Paul asks the Galatians, “Who has bewitched you?” That word in Greek is very strong. It connotes the idea of coming under the spell of a sorcerer or a witch. And sorcerers and witches were considered accursed in the Old Testament. So, yes, anyone who teaches you that you somehow complete your sanctification through works of obedience has, in a very real sense, cursed you.
I’ve spent many years in many different denominations under the spell of such bewitching. And it always produces the same thing: suffering, agony, anguish, despair, frustration. The reason is because that isn’t the full Gospel!
Pride Is Thinking You Can Obey God
Everything we receive from God as Christians comes in the exact same way: by grace through faith. That’s it. That’s God’s way of doing it; that’s the Way of the Kingdom. It is primarily an internal Kingdom, not an external one. You don’t receive anything by works or by obedience—these are externals. That is, they are external to your spirit-in-union-with-Christ’s-Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17). Actually, thinking that works in any way makes Abba give you anything is an expression of pride. And Scripture tells us that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6). In other words, we don’t get anything from pride; Abba actually takes things away when we operate in pride.
Do you know what one of the most insidious forms of pride is: Thinking that you can be righteous before God. Thinking that you can obey God. Thinking that you somehow can “help” God along through works of the flesh.
I got news for you: you can’t. You couldn’t even believe in God unless He enabled it. How do you think you can obey God unless He enables it?
So, Paul is trying to get the Galatians to see that this Christian life is by faith from beginning to end. It’s not: first faith, then a whole bunch of good works, then more faith. And I ain’t telling you what I heard, I’m telling you what I know.
The work God requires of us is to believe right. And believe it or not, that isn’t as easy as it sounds. Why? Because belief isn’t a simple choice; you cannot will yourself to believe a proposition. The kind of belief that God honors has to itself be granted by Him; it’s not something you can just choose to have. You can choose to agree with God’s unseen, eternal promises. You can choose to declare them. You can even choose to recite them as affirmations. But these, unfortunately, are not the same thing as actually believing them. Belief happens in the heart, not in the will (a common Arminian fallacy seen in some charismatic and Pentecostal denominations). We only come to believe by God’s gracious gifting and granting (John 14:6; Phil. 1:29; Acts 13:48; John 6;29; Acts 3:16; Ephesians 2:8-9; John 1:11-13, et al).
Faith Isn’t a Choice, It’s a Gift
When the Holy Spirit opens your spiritual eyes, and you have that inner knowing, then you can believe right. Nothing God does relies on us. Everything God does relies on Him. You died, remember? You’re a non-issue. Your old self was crucified with Christ. You—your soulish effort, your willpower, your good desires—can’t accomplish right belief. The very faith you need to please God, God has to give you:
“For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ … to believe in him…” (Philippians 1:29).
That word “granted” connotes the idea of a gift, not something earned or chosen. Believing in Christ was granted to you. It is the passive voice, meaning that it is something that happens to you, not something you actively do.
Ephesians 1:4 makes the point even more forcefully:
“4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”
God Chose You, Not the Other Way Round
God chose us to be in Christ before the foundation of the world. So, who did the choosing first? God did, right? In a very real sense, faith is something that happened to you the moment you believed, not something you chose. Now, yes, you received the gift. You had to respond to the deposit of faith given to you by the Holy Spirit; you weren’t just a forced automaton. But make no mistake—you didn’t will yourself to believe. You were enabled to believe, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus made the point, too. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said,
“44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, …” (John 6:44).
We have to be drawn by the Father, in order to believe. You don’t just wake up one day and say, “Now I choose to believe in the death and resurrection of Christ.” Faith doesn’t come that way. The Word tells us that faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the Word of God, Who is Christ (Romans 10:17).
Now, the same faith needed to be forgiven and declared righteous is the same faith needed for every other gift, blessing or miracle we receive from God. The real challenge is not to act right but to believe right. Pastor Mike likes to say, “You can only do what you believe.” And when you believe, then you can do consistently, in accordance with that belief. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us believe.
The first things we need to believe right are truths concerning our identities in Christ. We need to believe that we are the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21); that we are holy (Colossians 3:12); that we are perfected forever (Hebrews 10:14); that we are complete (Colossians 2:10); that we are blameless in His sight (Colossians 1:22). We need not just a head knowledge of these truths, not just “brain understanding." We need real, spiritual revelation of these truths that can only come from the Holy Spirit.
Why Believing Right Is Harder Than It Looks
Believing right is difficult because often the things God asks us to believe are things we cannot perceive with our five senses. They are typically spiritual truths, that is, truths of the Holy Spirit. As such, they exist in the unseen, eternal realm first, and only later become manifest in the seen, temporal realm. That makes believing right challenging. This is why Paul reminds that “we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Because we’re shackled inside these earthen bodies, we’re always tempted to walk by sight and not by faith. That is the scientific method, after all. Humanity has made tremendous discoveries in the sciences by operating on the principle of sight and not faith. In fact, science really cannot admit of faith (at least not to be effective) because that is just not how science works.
But in the kingdom of God, things operate differently. In the Father’s kingdom, we believe first before we understand. Truths abide in an unseen, eternal realm, where He is. We only see them manifest in the seen and temporal when our belief aligns with those truths. Jesus pointed out that there was a connection between faith in unseen truths and effects in the seen world when He taught His disciples that “If you had faith as tiny as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘uproot yourself and move into the sea,’ and it would obey.” Jesus wasn’t just using cute, metaphorical language there. He was pointing out a key principle of God’s kingdom.
The natural mind, however, cannot receive these spiritual truths. To the natural mind, “seeing is believing.” but to the spiritual mind, “Believing is seeing.” It’s backwards. Not knowing this backwards kingdom economy causes us lots of frustration as Christians.
Help Me in My Unbelief
Remember the story of the boy possessed of a demon in Mark Chapter 9? It is a perfect illustration of the power of belief and how belief in the unseen, eternal truths of God can actually produce changes in the seen, temporal reality:
“17 A man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. 18 Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.” 19 “You unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.” 20 So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth. 21 Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?” “From childhood,” he answered. 22 “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” 23 “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.” 24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:17-24)
There it is again: the key to unlocking the blessings God has for us is in believing right. The prayer uttered by the boy’s father is one of my favorite in all of Scripture: “Lord, I believe, Help me in my unbelief!”
Overcoming Sin
I’ll let you in on a little secret: Overcoming sin is not about trying harder to resist it, or exerting more willpower to pray, or fasting more, or reading more Scripture. Overcoming sin isn’t about your effort. Thinking that is, once again, making your self the point of reference or origin holiness and righteousness. No, overcoming sin is not about doing anything. It’s about believing right. When a particular sin is dogging us, we as Christians would do better to confess (say the same thing as) the Word when it says that we’ve died to sin, rather than draw up a plan to do more prayer or accountability group time. When we believe right, then we can do right.
Muhammad Ali once said, “It is the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And when belief becomes a deep conviction, things change.” No, this isn’t some New Age, “name it and claim it” type of teaching. We are confessing the truths already given to us in God’s Word until we believe them. We wait patiently for Christ in us, the hope of glory, to reveal these truths to us so that we can believe and be saved. We have to shift our thinking and believing (i.e., repent) in order to win in the Christian life.
Listen to Pastor Mike exhort us to “get our shift together” so that we may believe the full Gospel of our salvation!
