Chaplain's Corner

Many of you have heard of or enjoy the music of Steve Bell.  A few months back my wife and I went to one of his concerts.  Steve’s concerts are a mixture of music and personal reflection.  He sings and reflects on spiritual themes, his music it seems is his way of working out the spiritual kinks we all have, his way of making sense of things, his way of bringing the truth and his experience together. One of the things I like most about Steve is that he is not afraid to explore the spiritual traditions of groups other than the one he was raised in.  He draws from many different spiritual wells as he reflects on God, God’s grace and the manner in which grace welcomes us into relationship with God without exception and with but one requirement:  That we open our hearts to God in needy faith.

At that concert Steve said something like, “The Christian’s goal in this earthly life is to become by grace what we are by nature.”  Interesting statement isn’t it?  One of the spiritual realities that the Bible speaks of many times, is the fact that when a person comes by faith to God, seeking forgiveness for sins and new life, God forgives and grants everlasting life.  The Scriptures speak of this reality so matter of factly that there is little if anything that can be debated about this reality.  This reality is at times called the “new nature”.

Yet we all know, whether we are embracers of this reality or we find ourselves standing back and passing judgment on the apparent hypocrisy of those who claim to have been forgive and claim to possess everlasting life, that our experience, our lived reality of being forgiven and receiving the gift of eternal life is not always evident.  If those of us who have come to God in faith requesting his gifts of forgiveness and everlasting life are honest, we often pass judgment on ourselves for not living this reality out very well.

This is where Steve’s statement finds relevance in my life. “The Christian’s goal in this earthly life is to become by grace what we are by nature.”  The Bible teaches that those who place their faith in Jesus for forgiveness and everlasting life are “new creatures  that they have received a “new nature”.  This means that a radical change has taken place in their life.  It means that God has performed one of the greatest of miracles; that of changing a sinner into a saint; that has got to top turning water into wine or getting water to come from a rock by a country mile!

So, according to the Scripture, those who humbly place their faith in Jesus receive a new nature, it is a gift, the transformation takes place entirely without our effort, it is a consequence of receiving the gracious gifts of forgiveness and eternal life.  What Steve said then is a claim that living like a new creature is something that takes place by grace as well.  “The Christian’s goal in this earthly life is to become by grace what we are by nature.”

This statement reflects on the age old spiritual deception that states that in order to become what God wants us to be, we must perform up to God’s standards, we must be diligent and vigilant.  We need to work at it.  This is the philosophical foundation on which every religious tradition in the world is built, except biblical Christianity.  Sadly, even many traditions within Christendom have adopted this philosophical foundation.

I sat recently in an Ethics Committee meeting and one of the participants joked about his hope that St. Peter would make an exceptions to this “I have earned my way in” rule, for he feared that his balance sheet would not look very good on his day of reckoning.  Frankly, part of the twisting that the curse of sin brought onto the human race is this “I have earned my way in” rule.  That is why it is such a universal spiritual reality.

In Steve’s statement, “The Christian’s goal in this earthly life is to become by grace what we are by nature” flies in the face of this almost universal philosophical foundation that most world religions and spiritualities are built upon.  Steve is basically saying that we can only be changed into a good person by an act of God’s grace and we can only live out that goodness by that same grace.  So from beginning to end, any God-accepted change that takes place in us begins and ends with God’s grace.  It has nothing to do with our efforts to meet God’s standards, whatever a person might consider those standards to be.  This isn’t to say that we don’t play apart, but the part we play is the believing.

So this statement “The Christian’s goal in this earthly life is to become by grace what we are by nature” is somewhat revolutionary.  It is not a new statement, it has been made in various ways for millennia.  But there is something with us, something within the natural human spirit that screams:  “It just can’t be!”  And this tug of war between being and becoming by grace and being and becoming by sheer, personal will-power and effort rages on, and will rage on till this old world comes to an end.

But my work constantly reminds me that what Steve said is true, “The Christian’s goal in this earthly life is to become by grace what we are by nature.”  I meet people every day whose lives are directed by the dictum, “If anything good is going to happen in me, I must be the engineer of that change.”  This philosophical foundation that has directed religious and spiritual energies since the day of the fall; in every country of the world, regardless of culture, race or religion is exhibited in the conversations I have as I provide spiritual care at Bethesda Hospital.

It is my privilege and part of my personal mission to share in winsome, personal conversations the miracle of the grace of God that changes our nature and then begins and continues to change our behavior to match the new nature that we are given.  But it is a process.  Theologians call it sanctification but most of us know the process more by the cries of our heart, the desires that spring from our souls, the prayers that rise to God asking that He make us more loving, more patient, more willing to suffer for doing what is right, willing to show compassion and a myriad of other holy desires.  We know this truth because as people of faith we live in the tension of knowing what we should be and realizing that we aren’t fully that yet.  It is in this space that Steve’s comment makes so much sense, “The Christian’s goal in this earthly life is to become by grace what we are by nature”.

As we move in that direction, remember the words of a fellow pilgrim who shared our pilgrimage, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  (Philippians 3:12-14 NIV)