morality

The Funeral of Your Own Independence

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“The things that are right, noble, and good from the natural standpoint are the very things that keep us from being God’s best. Once we come to understand that natural moral excellence opposes or counteracts surrender to God, we bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. The cost to your natural life is not just one or two things, but everything. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

A lot of what passes for Christianity is simply behavior modification. Back in the day, there were a lot of don’ts. Don’t drink, don’t gamble, don’t play cards, don’t dance, etc. As one pastor put it, we’d get to church on Sunday and celebrate that we hadn’t done anything.

But Christianity is a lot more than being moral. If you want to play that game, the standard is impossibly high, as in be perfect as God in heaven is perfect. Simply put, you can’t be good enough. But Jesus could. And Jesus was.

Christianity is not behaving better. It’s not being an upstanding citizen or a good moral human being. It’s about surrender. It’s about dying to self. It’s about letting God form the Christ-life within you and make you more like Jesus.

As my friend says, it’s not about making bad people good. It’s about making dead people alive. It’s about being transformed rather than just upgraded. And Christmas is the season where we celebrate the hope that means that we can be better or more improved but made brand new.

Not Good but God’s

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“For years, I begged God to help me be good. Didn’t you join up because you wanted to be good? I’d worked years trying to be good and I wasn’t good! Oh, I was gooder than I was when I started out, but I still wasn’t good because as good as I was getting, I still wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t sustain it long enough. Sometimes I’d go 7 or 8 minutes without sinning. But it still wasn’t long enough!

And the Lord spoke to me very clearly that day. He said, ‘The issue isn’t being good, the issue is being God’s. Just come to Me and I’ll provide goodness for you. Just come and love Me. Seek Me with all your heart.’

Now I’m not arguing for sin, but I am saying this: my focus these days is not on trying to be good. I am gooder than I’ve been in the past, but it’s not because I’m focused on trying to be good, it’s because I’ve focused on Him and doing His bidding. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for me and my sinning” (John Wimber).

As I’ve heard before (and maybe you have as well), Jesus didn’t become incarnate to make bad people good but to make dead people alive. See, it’s not about behavior modification and better morals. It’s about being made new.

I still think that more than being gooder, I need to focus on being more like Jesus. That can only happen when the Spirit of Jesus inside me starts to manifest outward from me as I live more surrendered and obediently. It’s no good if I behave better when I still have the illusion of control over my life and my destiny. It’s only when I acknowledge that I belong to another that I really begin to transform.

It’s not about being good as much as it is being God’s.