8.8.24
This week we are looking at how spiritual transformation takes place. With Jonah as our picture, we see that a person can know all about the grace of God. They can even be a professional at explaining and preaching the grace of God. But it can still need to penetrate certain areas of their heart that have been missed.
Today we see that gospel transformation is not like our culture often thinks. It’s not walking the aisle or making a decision to follow Jesus. Rather, the gospel is something that needs to penetrate deeper and deeper throughout our lifetime. It’s never a one and done sort of deal. But we also see that it penetrates some areas more quickly, while other areas are temporarily neglected. This explains how we can fully believe and apply the gospel to our lives. And yet, we all tend to have an area or two that just explodes with selfishness or fear or anger when “touched” the wrong way. Because it has yet to deeply penetrate that area of our lives.
We see this in the life of Peter, who was a faithful Apostle of Jesus. He was a powerful and effective preacher, with thousands coming to Jesus with his preaching. And yet, years later, he’s still displaying bigoted behavior with Gentiles when Paul confronts him in Galatians 2. The gospel works on our hearts like the layers of an onion. We believe it one moment, and then there’s another layer that needs to be peeled off. And this process continues until we leave this earth and finally experience the full transformation that God promises.
And as we’ve seen, the key to this ongoing gospel transformation is to fix our eyes on Jesus. The more we see the depth of his sacrifice for us, the more it moves our hearts and affections to love him and obey him. Spiritual transformation is a process of falling more and more in love with Jesus. It’s not merely a discipline, though even our earthly loves often take some measure of effort. But the driving engine of that effort is love and thankfulness. In fact, it’s even deeper than that. It boots off of the amazement and wonder that a God this holy could love a messed up sinner that much.
This is why it’s so important to define the gospel as being more sinful than we imagined. And yet, far more loved than we ever dared hope. When we can see both at the same time…and as each polar opposite grows to see even deeper levels of sin coupled with deeper levels of love, our hearts begin to explode with a joyful transformation. Spiritual transformation is not “getting better” in our spiritual walk. But it’s falling more and more in love with the one who would love someone this messed up…and now even more messed up…and more…and yet loved and accepted fully and completely, no matter how messed up we are.
May that process never stop in our hearts. May we never replace it with mere discipline or duty. But like any healthy relationship, may our love grow more and more toward the one who would pursue us like this!