Teaching Life Change (part 2)

I’m afraid that far too many well-meaning pastors and teachers stress “life change” in their teaching in a way that creates guilt, along with the sense that they do not quite measure up to the level of spirituality that the “super saints” have reached. The concept of the “victorious life” is dangled like a carrot to cajole struggling saints to walk the straight line of “Christian living”. This kind of teaching is a spin-off of  Keswick theology, and is a subtle form of legalism that can keep us in bondage and rob us of joy as we live our lives in Christ.

Just so that I do not sound like I am knit-picking here, let me suggest what I think is a better way to stress the issue of “life change” in teaching God’s people. Here it is in pretty simple words – rather than preaching life change in a way that makes it a cattle prod (to motivate people to behave in a certain way), preach life change in a way that makes it a measuring stick.

The “cattle prod” approach says “if you are a true believer, then this is the kind of changes that one should see in your life”.  This has the tendency to reduce spiritual growth to learning a new set of behaviors. You may have seen this yourself. It’s the kind of church that teaches “Christians don’t do such-and-such, or Christians should look, talk, and dress like such-and-such”. More correctly however, spiritual growth is the fruit of an increased understanding (2 Pet. 3:18) – not to behavior management. I will discuss this more in another post.

The “measuring stick” approach says “because we have a regenerate heart (i.e. experienced the New Birth) and have understood the gospel, these are the things we might see in our lives as evidence of spiritual growth”. It may seem to you that I am trying to split a theological hair, and I will admit that the differences I refer to are subtle. However, subtle differences can often have drastic effects. Especially in the discussion of biblical truths. Such subtle differences as we have here can affect whether we are walking in bondage to legalism and man-made religion, or walking in the freedom found only in Christ and the Gospel. More to come……