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Exchanged Glory II: The OK Stronghold
Our relationship with Jesus can be much more than any other friendship. …It is impossible for us to experience intimacy with anyone in the same way we can with Him.
If we are eternally OK by the blood of Christ, what motivation do we have to deny ourselves and obey God? Fear that we will suffer on earth and desire for treasure in heaven help, but fright and delight can only take us so far. Human beings usually need more than future punishments or rewards to inspire them.
Punishments and rewards also have the drawback that they appeal to our self-centeredness. Though God is gracious enough to make it so that the best thing we can do for ourselves is to follow Him, even our healthy self-interest tends to warp into selfishness. Many of us have repented of being sensuous sinners only to become spiritual sinners. We turn into hypocrites who use our religion as an excuse for pride, greed, and control. We need something to hold us back from these sorts of human weaknesses.
The only ongoing miracle I have found that can save me from myself is a living relationship with Jesus Christ. His loving involvement in my life is the magnet that daily attracts my heart away from my own desires and toward true love.
But what does it mean to have a relationship with Jesus? When we grow in friendship with someone on earth, we bounce our thoughts and feelings back and forth until our hearts form a bond. We learn enough about the other person to predict what they will do before they act. Their body language speaks to us subconsciously, so that their feelings affect us even when no words are spoken.
How can we do that with Jesus? His body is in heaven. We can’t see His facial expressions or watch how he reacts to what we do. Even His Scriptures can be a mystery to us.
Let me share an analogy that has helped me to understand what it means to know Jesus. I will introduce it by looking at a few verses in Romans 6.
So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving?
(Romans 6:1, The Message)
Paul asked a similar question to what I asked at the start of this chapter. If God keeps on forgiving us, why not keep on sinning? It is painful to obey. Is there a good reason we shouldn’t sit back and indulge in the benefits of mercy?
In the first part of Romans 6, Paul gives a surprising answer. He says we shouldn’t continue in sin because we have changed. We have become a different kind of person, one who is dead to sin and alive to God.
Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
In Exchanged Glory: A Vision of Freedom, I described my struggle to understand these verses.[34] I talked about a renewed mind, strongholds, and mental train tracks. I now need to add a few thoughts to show how Romans 6 relates to knowing Jesus.
In the TV show Star Trek Deep Space Nine,[35] there were characters called simbiots. They were made up of two beings. The first was a human like creature (humanoid), and the second, a wormlike creature that lived inside the chest of the humanoid.
It was not a simple process for the two to be joined. First, surgery was performed to insert the worm into the humanoid. Then they experienced a time of confusion as the thoughts of the two minds mixed. Finally the internal conflict resolved, and the two beings learned to think as one.
God does a similar work with us. When we believe in Jesus, He comes to live inside of us.
But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.
When Jesus moves in, we turn into a different kind of man or woman – a spiritual simbiot. The Risen Lord and a human being have been fused together into a new Holy Spirit-empowered person. We are in Him, and He is in us. We are no longer merely flesh and blood; we have become new creatures.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
With this union, the thoughts and feelings that spin in our hearts are no longer ours alone. Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, is adding His. Many times, there is a conflict.
For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.
An example of this can be seen in a person who at one time felt very little guilt about buying and looking at pornography. After believing in Jesus, he suddenly finds himself looking over his shoulder at the drug store checkout line. He may not know why, but he is no longer comfortable with others knowing what he is doing.
What has happened? Jesus has moved in, and Jesus doesn’t want to look at those pictures! He is adding His pure thoughts and feelings to the man’s twisted ones. There is a conflict between the man (the flesh) and Christ in the man (the Spirit). It is like the adjustment the simbiot went through after being joined. The man struggles to find a new equilibrium that works for both himself and Jesus. He has to come to a new place of peace.
The only place of peace is for us to submit to Christ. We have to surrender and let Him show us how to live.
Having Jesus in us can be annoying. We want to relax and enjoy our favorite sins, but He gently objects. He tells us we can live without the pleasures that formerly gave our life meaning. We may fight Him, but He is persistent. We find internal conflict as His heart for our good contradicts our desires.
When Paul says, “Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” (Romans 6:2), he is saying, “How shall we who have become a new kind of human being continue acting like the old kind? If we do that, we are fighting what Jesus is stirring within us. We can no longer be comfortable with sin. Christ in us has a different plan for our life!”
It takes time for a person joined to Jesus to learn His ways. Our hearts are full of strongholds that keep us from understanding what He is doing, so we continue to stumble. As we work with Him, however, we are slowly renewed. Our thoughts and actions change to match His.
If we follow Him, in time our hearts become an expression of His. The attitudes He imparts by His word and Spirit work their way into our deepest emotions, and we develop the habit of judging life with the insight He has built into us. We can say about ourselves that we have the mind of Christ.
But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ. (emphasis added)
In Exchanged Glory: A Vision of Freedom, I shared an example of how this worked in my life. It took me over eight years of walking with Jesus and reading the Bible before I finally grasped the basic truths about sin, God’s judgment, and our total need for the death and resurrection of Jesus.[36]
Until that time, my feelings reacted to God’s wrath by saying, “I don’t know how the God I am reading about can be a God of love. He makes me want to run from Him. I’m not even sure how I can like Him, let alone love Him.” My mind was stuck in a way of thinking that wasn’t able to hold His reality.
I had been joined with Christ, so His thoughts and feelings were driving His word home to my heart, but I couldn’t make sense of it. There was an inner war as His Spirit and my flesh fought for control (Galatians 5:17). In my immaturity, I choked on His words like an infant would on solid food.
And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able …
I still thought like a natural man, and His revelation seemed like foolishness to me.
But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (emphasis added)
My humanity didn’t easily adjust to Christ in me. All sorts of conscious and subconscious misconceptions, desires, and fears fought against Him. By His patience and grace, however, He wore me down to the point where I surrendered. I grew to understand His wrath and how I should fear Him.
Like the simbiot who eventually resolves his internal conflicts, my thoughts and His became one, and I put on the mind of Christ (I Corinthians 2:16). I wasn’t perfect, but I had a set of mental “train tracks” that allowed me to, at least in part, judge life by the Spirit (I Corinthians 2:15).
The example I just shared shows how we grow to know Jesus. He communicates His heart to us by His word and Spirit, and as this happens, we learn how He thinks and feels. The more we submit our mind, emotions, and will to His, the more clearly we understand Him. He makes Himself plain to us as we work with Him in the process of obedience.
The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that's who loves me. And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him.
(John 14:21, The Message)
As we seek Him, our eyes are opened. Our hearts become pure enough to see Him.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
This process transforms us in practical ways. When we look at the world around us, we see it as He does. Sin and injustice grieve us. Truth and love draw us, and we are stirred to action. We become like Him.
All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
(2 Corinthians 3:18, The Message)
The work of Christ’s death and resurrection becomes an experience rather than just a theology. The power of the living God becomes a practical reality in our lives.
Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. …Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
(Galatians 2:20, The Message)
Our relationship with Jesus can be much more than any other friendship. Who else knows everything about us, inside and out? Who else can live through us? It is impossible for us to experience intimacy with anyone in the same way we can with Him.
It is hard to find words to describe what God has given us. It is incredible, awesome, and amazing! We have a relationship with the Creator of the universe! He shares His concerns and desires with us and asks us to join in His work. It is the most fulfilling life a person can live. Paul makes it clear that nothing in the world can compare with it:
Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant — dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ
(Philippians 3:8, The Message)
Paul had spent the first part of his life in the OK Stronghold. He achieved many goals as a zealous leader in a strict religion. He was good at it and was respected.
When he was converted to Christ, He left everything he thought he had going for him and considered it dog dung. The supernatural experience of Jesus living in him made every other option look empty.
The Greek word used for “dog dung,” skubalon, indicates something that is thrown away as vile and totally worthless. “Dog dung” is actually overly polite. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that compared to knowing Jesus, the parts of our lives that make us feel OK – our jobs, talents, looks, accomplishments, religious activities, sex, drugs, etc. – are like a stinking pile of crap on the floor.
If we truly understand what God has made available to us in Christ, we will embrace the fourth OK Buster: “Life isn’t about feeling OK by my standards; it is about knowing Jesus.” His Spirit in our hearts is a treasure above all else.
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