Category: Christian Living

As we put off the sin that so characterized our life before Christ, and as we renew our mind to avoid conformity to the world’s manner of thinking, so we put on righteousness to more closely resemble Jesus.

Here are six practices that should help us put on righteousness.

Gospel Gazing

We pursue holiness through the spiritual disciplines because the Lord is conforming us to holiness. If we engage in practices that aren’t dependent upon the Lord’s working in us through the Spirit’s power, we might we doing something, even something strenuous, but it isn’t spiritual discipline.

We are told in 2 Corinthians 3:18 that we are transformed into the image of Christ’s glory as we behold “the glory of the Lord.” But no one has seen the Lord, and Jesus now sits at God’s right hand in his ascended body. What, then, does the believer “behold”?

Paul gives us a clue in 2 Corinthians 4:4 when speaking of the unbeliever. The god of this world, the Devil, has blinded the unbelievers’ eyes so they do not see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” And, in 2 Corinthians 4:6, we are told that the cure to this gospel-blindness is that God shines the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus.”

What we behold, because we temporarily see neither God nor Christ, is the glory of the Lord and the glory of Jesus in the gospel.

Beholding carries here the meaning of being transfixed with, centering our attention, energy and passion on. “Gospel Transfixion” isn’t quite as catchy, so I call this Gospel Gazing.

We see that the ultimate result of beholding the glory of Jesus without mediation or buffer is that we will be like him, “because we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). In the meantime, we are changed as we center our attention on the gospel of Jesus, and behold his glory in it.

This isn’t a one-time, occasional, or sporadic remembrance or review, but a continual and dedicated practice of the one whose mind is set on Christ, where he is.

We “preach the gospel to ourselves” and “rehearse the gospel” as we contemplate and meditate on God’s holiness and justice, our sinfulness and weakness, Jesus’ love and sacrifice; on the aspects of the good news that increase our knowledge of sinfulness and increase our knowledge of God’s holiness.

This, in turn, increases our knowledge of the greatness of the gift of salvation, the glory of the cross, and the excellence of Jesus. In a mysterious process we can’t quite fathom now, beholding glory in the gospel changes us.

Obedience

Actually doing what we hear God telling us doesn’t come naturally, or easily, which is why James had to chide us to be doers, and not merely hearers, of the word. Obedience, then, becomes practice, which becomes habit, which becomes character.

Obedience demonstrates that God has loved us, and that we love our Lord, who said “if you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

 Service

We are told repeatedly in Scripture to consider others more important than ourselves, to give up our own interests, and to lay down our lives for others. A significant aspect of re-focusing our attention without, rather than within self, is to serve. In fact, one biblical author summarized our role in the body of believers “as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another” (1 Peter 4:10, ESV). We serve God in worship, serve other believers in ministry, and serve the world in witness and compassion.

Submission

Every single person does not submit to every single other person, but each of us is called to submit appropriately as the relationship requires.

The parent wouldn’t submit to the child, for instance, but would submit to his employer. The child wouldn’t submit to every adult, but to his own parents. The wife doesn’t submit to every man, but to her own husband. Church members submit to the elders, and the elders submit to the Word (and congregation acting on the Word).

To receive eternal life, we submit to the Lord who saves. Whether we submit in other, human relationships, as God directs, indicates whether we have truly submitted to the Lord righteously.

Submitting to one another in appropriate relationships is a practice that helps us submit to Jesus, obey him, to grow in holiness.

Disciplemaking

The subject of the Great Commission, making disciples of all nations is the call of every disciple of Jesus.

Among other things, making disciples and all that it entails teaches us many aspects of Christlike-ness. In helping one another be disciples, we learn humility, dependence on God, reliance on the Spirit, obedience to the Word, how to be centered on the gospel, and faithfulness, among other things.

Stewardship

Like obedience, stewardship is not something that comes naturally or easily to disciples of Jesus, who still carry around the sin nature.

Practicing stewardship with regard to our time, our money, our passions, and our priorities reminds us whose our things are, and whose we are.

These practices are more general than we might expect for a list of spiritual disciplines. We might expect more particular things like Bible reading, visiting prisoners, using your spiritual gift, evangelism and tithing.

But putting on righteousness is not so much found in the particular acts of righteousness as it is in the attitudes of righteousness, beginning with the foundation of gazing intently upon — being transfixed by — the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus.

Some Christians have supposed that they can employ techniques of yoga without jeopardizing their faith.
If we mean by this that we can practice the physical exercises of yoga without the meditative elements, then, yes, we can. But at that point, it is not so much yoga as it is stretching.

A Christian cannot employ the meditative elements of yoga — or any other system — and remain true to the Christian faith. The reason is that yoga requires the “emptying” of the mind, whereas Christianity requires its filling, and transforming. And other systems, if the adherent meditates on anything, he meditates upon those things that are contrary to God’s revelation of Himself in nature and in Scripture.

But most of us don’t need to worry about improper meditation, because we can’t be still long enough with our own thoughts to call it meditation. Our error, instead of meditating wrongly, is that we don’t meditate at all.

One reason is that it seems to be hard work.

But when we consider our behavior in other areas, maybe it is not so hard as we think. For instance, consider the behavior that prompts someone to say that you are “dwelling” on some thing, or “obsessing” with some person. When we think that we have been wronged, it is not difficult at all for us to “meditate” on the event: the precise order of events surrounding the personal insult; who else, other than the offender, knew about the act, helped plan it, secretly enjoyed it, talked about it behind our back; how we might react to save face, show strength, get revenge, protect our own. We meditate, after all, on those things that we value.

Thomas Watson defines meditation as a “holy exercise of the mind whereby we bring the truths of God to remembrance, and do seriously ponder upon them and apply them to ourselves.” To help with the subject, or object, of meditation, Watson suggests several things:

1. meditate seriously upon the corruption of your nature
2. meditate seriously upon the death and passion of Christ
3. meditate upon your evidence for heaven.
4. meditate upon the uncertainty of all earthly comforts.
5. meditate on God’s severity against sin.
6. meditate upon eternal life.

So, while we don’t sit in the Lotus position pleasantly — but mindlessly — repeating ohmmm, Christians should meditate, upon the reality of God’s character, our nature, His redemption, and our future state in glory.

As we are putting off sin and putting on righteousness, we should also be renewing our minds according to the pattern of Ephesians 4:22-24. These aren’t sequential steps that are left behind upon completion, but logical steps that are repeated in application.

1. Bible Intake

Bible-reading is one of the “twin pillars” of the Christian life, together with prayer. That Bible reading and prayer are pillars of the Christian walk is certain, but the imagery may not suffice. Two pillars won’t support much, but need at least a third pillar to constitute a proper structure.

Similarly, Bible reading and prayer inevitably lead to at least a third and fourth “pillar” for mind renewal.

Bible intake refers to the various aspects of how we encounter and relate to the Word of God in written form. There are four such aspects: Reading & Hearing; Studying; Meditating; and Memorizing.

Reading & Hearing the Bible is no more complicated than it sounds. When we read we are “hearing” the words in our head, and it is no accident that the heard word is crucial to God’s revealing himself to man. A good practice of Bible intake will include both reading and hearing the Bible, whether we hear as we read aloud, ourselves, or hear others read aloud. This is where Bible reading plans come into play, and involves regular intake of the Word in quantity.

Studying the Bible goes further than simply reading or hearing. This is where the various Bible study methods are employed (e.g., Observation, Interpretation, Application) and outside resources are consulted to help gain a better understanding of the text’s meaning. While Reading & Hearing are for the regular intake of the Word in quantity, Studying is for particular intake of the Word in quality.

Meditating on biblical truth is filling the mind with the truth of God’s word for personal application and change. Thomas Watson remarked that “The reason we come away so cold from reading the Word is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.” Terms for meditation in Old Testament include aspects of “growling” and “murmuring”, and is why one commentator refers to biblical meditation as “muttering over” the Word. My grandfather would have called this “chewing the cud,” in homage to the cow, who will chew, swallow, and bring back up to chew some more.

Meditation might include such things as emphasizing different words in the text, writing the text in your own words, praying through the text, and deriving personal applications from the text.

Memorizing the Bible is almost a natural result from Reading, Studying and Meditating on it. In an age of instant access to the Internet and a plethora of Bible sources, memorization is a skill that has fallen on hard times. But as ubiquitous as Bible sources are for us, memorizing still has enormous benefits for us, spiritually.

2. Prayer

If Bible intake is the primary means by which we hear God speaking to us, the primary means of our speaking to him is prayer. The “twin pillars” of Bible intake and Prayer form the facade, or entrance, of our disciplines structure.

Prayer should be natural to the believer, and for that reason times of spontaneous, informal prayer are those with which we are most familiar. But prayer should also include times of planned, intentional prayer. A good practice is to write a list of every person, circumstance, need and concern that naturally comes to mind, and every one that the Bible tells us to pray. This will demonstrate for us that another good tool in prayer is a schedule for regular prayer for all the people and concerns in our lives.

As Jesus’ pattern prayer demonstrates (Matthew 6:9-13), a key function of prayer is to re-orient our thinking and asking to God: “hallowed be your name; your kingdom come, your will be done.” This is mind-renewal at its core.

3. Self-Examination/Reflection

A life worth living is a live worth examining. Or, an unexamined life is not worth living. Someone said something similar, but the important thing is that God has told us in his word to examine ourselves. When we arrive at an understanding, however imperfect, of what God’s word says, the next thing to naturally assess is what it requires, of me.

Journaling is a key aspect of self-examination and reflection because it allow us to review previous conclusions about our reading and study, matters we’ve offered to God in prayer, and areas of needed improvement. If “journaling” is problematic, just make some notes about those things, and review them occasionally.

Whether or not you journal (or keep notes), it is vital to renewing our minds that we compare ourselves to the standard of God that he sets in Scripture.

4. Learning

It might seem redundant to list Learning after Bible intake and Prayer, or contrary to the idea that the Word is our necessary guide for all matters of life and faith. But we recognize that we learn in community with the family of faith, in discipling, in mentoring, and so forth. There are many good and useful books out there, after all.

Additionally, to apply biblical truth to all of life, exercising dominion as in the creation mandate, then we would also learn about aspects of life to which we want to apply it, such as politics, medicine, science, culture and so forth.

In an upcoming post we’ll talk about the Putting On practices of spiritual discipline.

If praise is, as C S Lewis proposed, the natural expression of one’s pleasure in an object (where expression of delight is necessary for the completion of delight), then the ease with which we praise earthly things is an indictment on our reticence, or imagined inability, to praise God in worship.

We express appreciation to one another, with relative ease, in many earthly contexts:

• sports fans over an athlete’s monster slam dunk, game-winning grand slam home run, or touchdown bomb;
• music aficionados over the driving beat or haunting melody of the latest release;
• investors about a great stock acquisition or windfall real estate profit;
• comedy buffs over that well-timed punch line;
• a crowd’s collective oohs and ahs at the city fireworks display.

Acknowledgment of an object’s excellence is more than mere academic assessment. Some critics might assess a work of art at the museum as follows: “The composition is good, subject matter inspiring, use of color apt, and attention to detail superior.” But that observer is much more impoverished in the face of excellence than the less well-heeled onlooker who, nudging the patron next to him, says “Wow! Dude, that’s awesome!”

Many professing Christians and habitual churchgoers can recite the technical specifications of the God we claim to worship (doctrine and theology), but one has to wonder whether delight is at all a customary component of it. Many regularly attend to the worship of God without ever having said to himself, much less to anyone else, “Wow! Dude, God is awesome!”

Why does watching song and dance bring such pleasure and enjoyment that we might even pay to see others do it well?

Why don’t we consider other things — performed just as well — worth watching? Would we pay to see a carpenter build a bookcase? To watch the baker mix batter for a cake? To see the cleaners iron our shirts? We even have jokes to acknowledge the fact that no one wants to see sausage or laws.

Instead, we simply want the result of some skills: the bookcase, the cake, and pressed shirt (a good kielbasa or a decent law).

Neither do we see God, truly (sinners die in the presence of a holy God), yet we worship him, anyway. For now, we don’t see him in action, but we see the results of his actions.

We are told in Ephesians 4 that if we have received Christ we will put off sin, be renewed in our mind, and put on righteousness.

This Put Off/Renew/Put On pattern has been in use among biblical counselors for some time, and is of great help in thinking through the spiritual disciplines, as well. We will consider the personal spiritual disciplines in light of this pattern.

We must first recognize that these aren’t discrete steps of our spiritual walk, like rungs on a ladder. That is, we don’t first establish ourselves in our walk with Christ by putting off, complete that task, and then move on to renewing our minds. Instead, we should be continually putting off sin, continually renewing our minds, and continually putting on righteousness, at least until we die or the Lord returns.

The Bible speaks often of this aspect of “putting off” sin.

The believer is told to “deny himself” in order to follow Jesus (Luke 9:23); to “abstain from every from of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22); to “flee from youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22); and to “put away” specific numerous sins in light of our redemption in Christ.

“Putting Off” Practices

There are as many opinions about what constitutes a “spiritual discipline” as there are authors who write about them. What I have attempted here is to include those things that relate to the major sin groups to avoid, and which correspond to or facilitate the opposite “Putting On” practice.

Simplicity. The practice of simplicity is not Luddite in its anti-technology, nor romantic in its view of the “simpler” times of life on the prairie before cell phones and the Internet. Instead, it is “austerity in embellishment” (American Heritage College Dictionary), and reflects Jesus’ admonition that “life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15), or, as it were, power, influence, reputation, meetings, and so on.

Simplicity is the practice that puts off such things as pride, greed, covetousness, and haste.

Frugality. To be frugal is not to be Scrooge, pinching every penny in order to store it somewhere of no use to anyone. Frugality avoids wasteful spending, either on oneself or others. The point in being frugal is not to spend less in order to hoard more, but to spend less in order to give more.

Frugality is the practice that puts off pride, profligacy, and greed. It leads directly to giving and stewardship.

Chastity. Chastity is living in sexual purity, whatever the circumstances we’re in. It is to find sexual fulfillment and gratification, whether in the actions or in the thoughts, in only those ways that the Lord has approved.

Chastity is the practice that puts of gratifying sexual desires in pre-marital or extra-marital relations, adultery, or the sexual fantasy life of the thoughts and imaginations including porn and “soft porn” and all sexual immorality.

Solitude & Silence. In today’s world we seek out diversions of all kinds in order to avoid being alone with our own thoughts. These diversions usually include noise from TVs, computers and phones, as well as the company we find in kids’ sports, recreational events, moms’ groups, and so forth. Jesus’ example is that he often withdrew from the noise and company to be alone, usually to pray. The believer should join solitude and silence with things like learning, self-examination and prayer so that his silence and solitude does not come to resemble the Near Eastern meditation goal of emptiness.

Solitude & Silence is the practice that puts off the distracted, hurried, un-examined life.

Fasting. Fasting is the believer’s intentional abstention from food (or other things) for a certain period of time in order to focus on communion with God. We fast from food in order to feast on the Lord. The believer should always accompany fasting with Bible study and prayer, and perhaps other practices as well.

Fasting is the practice that puts off the flesh’s demand for priority over the spirit.

Repentance & Confession. Repentance is the believer’s continual turning away from sin and self and toward holiness and Christ, including the “mortification of the flesh”. Confession is saying what God says about sin, not what the compromising world or excusing flesh would say. Repentance & Confession go right along with rehearsing the gospel, “preaching the gospel to ourselves,” and what I call “Gospel gazing” (which we discuss in the article on “Putting On” practices.)

This is the practice that puts off pride, self-righteousness, indifference, and apathy.

Remember that Putting Off is only part of the process. We talk about the other parts — Mind Renewal and Putting On — in upcoming posts.