How Are We Transformed? (Giving I)

Discipleship is transformation, so how does it happen? That is the question at the center of learning to live and love like Jesus. How, for example, are wounds from our past (or present) transformed, from holes within ourselves over which we keep tripping into scars and limps that ultimately remind us of the love of God that continually makes us whole? How are old habits that keep us mired in misery replaced with habits that keep us grounded in the life and grace of God, living as ambassadors of the Reign of God? How are we changed to live for the world in a new way, loving those Jesus gives us to love? 

These are big questions, and there are many assumptions about what catalyzes transformation. A huge assumption in the Western world—rooted as we are post-Enlightenment and focused on reason and the supremacy of science—is that information will lead to transformation. In other words, just get enough knowledge into your head and transformation will naturally follow. Of course, Paul says that “knowledge puffs up,” and we all know that there are a lot of smart people who prove it.[1] No, information by itself does notnecessarily lead to transformation. We can all attest to this if we’ve read great books or heard great sermons that have done little to change our lives.

Some would say that we act our way into transformation, doing things that we don’t necessarily feel aligned with and hoping that our heart and mind will catch up with our actions. You’ve probably heard the advice, “Smile even if you don’t feel like it and you’ll eventually feel happy.” It sounds a bit trite, but is there any truth to it?

These are important considerations. Do we think ourselves into a new way of behaving, or do we behave ourselves into a new way of thinking?

It’s a false dichotomy, of course, because information is valuable, as are sermons, classes, conferences, and book study. Still, information without action remains mere theory, with little punch. In other words, transformation takes both right knowledge and committed action. (Yet another both-and, if you’re keeping track.)

Our problem is that we often overly favor the theoretical, the informational, the conceptual, leaving knowledge unmarried to action and perhaps missing both the critical relationship between knowledge and action and the reality that transformation is always embodied in our habits, not just in our thoughts or beliefs. It is true, after all: something does happen in the act of smiling. Thinking about smiling is different than actually smiling, and choosing to smile has a physiological effect on your body that can change the way you feel.[2] If we take action, our hearts and minds do end up following. Anyone who has forgiven someone when they didn’t feel like forgiving them, or given thanks when it was hard, knows this reality. Knowing you are supposed to forgive is entirely different from doing it. Thinking about gratitude is entirely different from giving thanks. 

Indeed, the idea that faith expresses itself as action is fundamental to Hebraic thought: faith, to Israel, was not primarily something you ascribed to but rather something you lived out.[3] In Judaism, there is very little focus on doctrine per se—certainly not like you find in Christianity, which was eminently influenced by Greek thought and its focus on conceptual truth and logic. In Jewish thought, there is instead a huge focus on faith as what we live and do. Faith, to the Hebrews, could only be seen and identified in the context of an embodied, practicing life. Jesus, of course, says that our work is to believe in him, and that those who do are saved.[4] This sounds, at first, quite conceptual, as if “belief” is something that happens primarily or only in our minds. But Jesus makes it clear that it’s those people whose faith takes action for the sake of another who are saved.[5] To Jesus, then, faith is not just something we believe or ascribe to, it’s something we live out. Saving belief always expresses itself in action, or it’s not actual belief. This is why James can later write that “faith without works is dead.”[6] It’s not a dichotomy between belief and action, it’s the proposition that true faith always expresses itself as action.[7] Without action, James says, our faith is “worthless.”[8] In fact, we who live on the far side of the Reformation tend to be very concerned about tainting grace with “works theology,” the belief that you can earn God’s favor or your own salvation by what you do. It’s a good and fair concern, as truly we are saved by God’s movement toward us, and not the other way around. But in that concern we might miss how often the New Testament tells us that faith requires us to move in good deeds, for the sake of the world.[9] Paul says, for example, that everyone will be judged by what they do.[10] This emphasis on action is hard to miss in the Scripture, if you read the text honestly. And it puts us in touch with yet another both-and: apart from Jesus we can’t do anything, and yet we are called to do the good things he’s prepared in advance for us to do.[11] We must act, knowing that we can’t act without God. 

New Testament scholar Matthew Bates makes the argument that what we call “faith” can, in fact, be more accurately understood in its New Testament context as “allegiance,” a whole-bodied expression of belief in everyday life.[12] The problem is that walking out and embodying our faith can be quite uncomfortable. We really like the idea of faith as mental assent; it gets us off of the hook. We can (supposedly) be good Christians by simply ascribing to some creeds without ever needing to encounter—let alone trust, obey, and submit to—God nor doing any of the vulnerable things Scripture commands, like being transformed, forgiving, giving thanks, and so on. 

I once returned to the South to visit family after a particularly grueling season of pastoring in California. Our community had just walked through some painful relational breakdowns, marriages blowing up, secrets being exposed. A real pastoral enchilada. I was exhausted, and many in our community were hurt and angry. Upon my arrival in Alabama, the father of one of my friends quickly asked me, “So, let me ask you this: What do you think about the five points of Calvinism?” It was not a casual question; the man’s bearing let me know that I was on trial, and that I was to be judged as passing or failing based on my theological acumen. I honestly don’t remember how I responded, but inwardly I was thinking, “Our people aren’t overly concerned with this finer point of theology right now, and at the moment, neither am I.” Our concern was to get through an emotional trial and to be obedient to Jesus in the midst of it, whatever that meant or looked like.

Let me be explicitly clear: I’m not saying that theology is not important; far from it. Theology is of great importance, and it helps structure our sense of reality. It’s just that theology can be a very safe place for people—for Christians—to hang out (and, dare I say, hide?) in a conceptual world in which we get to be right. The problem is that this is exactly where those who crucified Jesus were hiding out. Being right about our theology can quickly become our own way of making ourselves powerful, and it can cause us to miss walking in the humble spirit of Jesus. The point is, you can only do truly good theology from the humble place of “a poor spirit.”[13] It’s always easier just to be dogmatic about our doctrines without having to do them, although this robs our theology of any power, even if it’s right. Ascribe to this catechism and you’re saved, voila! You can then have certainty and “be right,” even if you aren’t transformed. 

But Scripture and our own experience point us to a different reality: real faith always involves ambiguity, wrestling, and heartache. Faith, by its definition, demands uncertainty. You can’t have faith if you have certainty. Abram trusted God despite not knowing how it was all going to work out; he just trusted, because of who God is, that it would. He didn’t know how God was going to make him “the father of a great nation,” but he trusted, nevertheless.[14] This kind of faith requires heart-level trust in the midst of uncertainty. Biblical faith, thus, means taking action even when we don’t understand how everything will resolve. It’s this faith which embodies itself in the midst of tension, despite uncertainty—like Abram getting on a camel and leaving Ur or walking the long path to Mount Moriah—that experiences resurrection life.[15]

The invitation of Scripture, then, is to take action and see how God visits our trust. It means giving thanks even when things seem bleak or forgiving even when we feel it will kill us. This kind of trust and action transforms us. In the process, we become confident in our right knowledge as it goes from concept to reality, from an idea that exists in our mind to a reality experienced in our being. 

Faith, then, becomes very practical. It plays out in the everyday patterns and habits of our lives as we align our lives with God’s Spirit and His words. It plays out in what we do with our time and money, in how we spend our seconds and our cents. This is why the spiritual life is built on habits, behaviors that are consistently practiced. As we engage practices that open us to God, we truly live our way into a new way of thinking and a new way of being. 

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1] I Corinthians 8:1.

[2] There is debate about the scientific viability of this theory. See Radiolab Podcast’s “Stereothreat” episode. November 23, 2017.

[3] I’ve heard it put this way: if a Greek wants to know who someone is, he asks them what they think. If a Jewish person wants to know who someone is, he goes and lives with them for a week. In the Greek mindset, we tend to think of faith as mental assent, whereas in the Hebrew mindset faith is seen as embodied. To Israel, “faith” means “faithfulness.”

[4] John 6:29.

[5] E.g., Matthew 7:21-23; 25:31-46.

[6] James 2:20.

[7] This is not an argument that we are somehow saved by what we do. We can be assured of salvation by grace alone because God has chosen us before we’ve gotten everything sorted out, and we love Him because He first loved us (I John 4:19). We are always responding to grace, never earning it. The point, rather, is that a faith that responds—which is the type of faith Jesus always highlights and for which there is plenty of room for failure, missing the boat, and struggling toward maturity—has often been replaced with a notion of “faith” in which the struggle for maturity has been completely divorced from the spiritual journey. Such merely conceptual faith is not faith at all, in the biblical sense. Faith as mental assent really only makes sense if you relate to salvation as “going to heaven when you die,” and in which, therefore, correct mental belief is akin to a password into the club. But if salvation is a relationship with God, then of course it demands response, for there is no relationship with any being, human or Divine, in which love can ever remain merely conceptual. If I say I love my wife but then run around on her, don’t provide for her, and don’t listen to her, you would rightly conclude that, words aside, I don’t really love her. 

[8] James 2:20.

[9] James 1:27: “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.”

[10] Romans 2:6.  

[11] John 15:5, Ephesians 2:10. 

[12] See Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King by Matthew Bates. Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, MI. 2017.

[13] See Matthew 5:3. The “poor in spirit” are aware of their great spiritual poverty and their great need for God. Their poverty lends them humility.

[14] See Genesis 12:2ff.

[15] Genesis 12:1-9, Genesis 22.