Transformation, not Modification

As people we make an effort to present ourselves well when we stand to benefit.  A prospective employee ensures they look fit for the role when attending a job interview, and before a first date people want to look and smell their best.  Before going to a high tea, wedding or funeral we wear attire appropriate for the occasion.  When I worked in construction I was always amazed by the uniform transformation during the annual Christmas party of men who usually wore jeans and cotton shirts besotted with mastic to wearing custom suits and silk ties.  With wives and partners coming along the language cleaned up dramatically as well.  For a night we could have fooled some we were actually a civilised and well-mannered crew.  Go into the shop on Monday morning, however, and a completely different side of the boys would be revealed.

It is likely this same hypocrisy exists at some level in various areas in the lives of every person.  From our childhood we have learned what is acceptable social behaviour and what constitutes good manners.  We learn how to avoid stirring up trouble for ourselves by foul language or physical violence.  Because parents and teachers cannot change the heart or mind of others by force, they taught us to clean up our act with negative consequences and positive reinforcement.  While this may or not be true for every case, these very general statements merely make the point we have learned from family, authority figures, and society to navigate according to our will and conscience for our benefit.  While our speech, dress and behaviour provides a small glimpse of our hearts, it represents only a small aspect of us as people.

When I worked as a youth pastor, it first dawned on me that when I met with kids for counselling or teaching that I was seeing them at their best.  Their behaviour wasn't perfect, but they wanted to put their best foot forward.  I have observed people can be very good at saying what they think you or others want to hear.  I was convicted after classifying my own sinful conduct as "a moment of weakness" when God revealed to me that was actually the reality of my flesh--without the veneer of good manners or being polite--shining through in truth.  Today it occurred to me that at our worst it still would not reveal the full range of the wickedness of our hearts because God has imposed strict limits to our bodies.  Imagine if a raging toddler had the strength of Superman!  The world would not be safe!  If man was endowed with the ability to express his own sinfulness to the full, it would mean the destruction of that person and all others.  This is why we must be born again to have transformed hearts and minds, for behaviour modification falls woefully short of God's righteousness.

Paul wrote this in Romans 7:22-8:1:  "For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. ²³ But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. ²⁴ O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵ I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. ¹ There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."  Praise God by grace through faith delivers us from the wretchedness of our sinful flesh.  God is merciful to put in us the will to do what pleases Him.  Those who are in Christ are free from the bondage to sin and the condemnation of the Law.  How good it is to own our sin so we might walk in the freedom and joy of the new life provided us by Jesus.  When our eyes are opened to God's goodness we see our sinfulness; when we are willing to confess and repent of our sin and wretchedness we are divinely enabled to walk in victory:  not because we are now good but because God always is and will be.