People do not come out of the womb fully formed, mature Christians. I love my children, but I don’t always enjoy having to make and enforce rules for them. Yet one of the goals of parenting is to help our children learn how to make wise choices and develop strong character.
But could we shepherd our children’s hearts so that they would self-moderate? If there were not a rule about helping out in the kitchen, would they do so anyway if they had the right internal motivation to love their family and eschew self-centeredness? Is it necessary that there be a rule for every good thing we would like to see in our lives or a law to eliminate every bad thing?
Such rules and constraints ultimately have no power to transform the heart—they only regulate behaviors. Even for those who obey, the law may simply mask an unconverted heart. Often teenagers who grow up in heavily-regulated homes go “wild” when they get to college, indulging their newfound freedom in the cornucopia of vices found on a college campus.
The deeper solution is transformation that comes only from freedom joined with the transforming work of God’s Holy Spirit.
Think about it: The fully transformed life would be a rule-free, law-free, sin-free life. Complete freedom, but without sin. How is this possible? The prophets of the Old Testament looked forward to a day when the laws of God would be written on the human heart:
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me. (Jeremiah 31:33-34a ESV)
The Spirit-filled person needs no command or rule telling him the right way to go; his heart will internally govern him. The Lord’s Spirit will instruct from within.
You see, the real test of whether the character of Christ is in us is not whether we follow the religious rules and laws well. The real test is this: when the rules and laws are removed, do our hearts remain fixed on knowing and loving the Lord? The truth about a person’s character is revealed not by what she does when she is compelled to do it, but by what she does when she is free to do whatever her heart desires. The heart is the key.
Ironically, even a life controlled by religious rules can mask an unredeemed, rebellious heart. Here is a place where those of us who follow sacramental practice and are liturgically minded must be very thoughtful about our patterns of Christian formation. The outward manifestations of the Christian tradition can appear quite pious and proper. But they can also be disconnected from God’s grace and internal spiritual heart change.
Christian formation is not about making sure we check off all the religious boxes on our heavenly entrance form. It is about making sure our hearts are aligned with the heart of God, revealed in Jesus Christ. The battle against the desires of the flesh will not be won by external religious regulation but by the renewed desires of the Holy Spirit. “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:17-18 ESV).
The Holy Spirit convicts the hearts of believers so that they know when they are not walking in the Spirit, for the works of the flesh are obvious to the Spirit-filled person: “… sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Galatians 5:19-21a ESV). There is always the danger that the free person may imperil his freedom by small choices to gratify the passions of the flesh.
The key to ultimate change is the conversion of the heart. Your call is to put to death the desires that lead to such works through keeping in step with the Spirit. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24 ESV).
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23 ESV). You never have to put a hedge around having too much love. Joy and peace need no regulation to keep them in check in your life. Nor is the fruit of the Spirit accomplished in your life by external mandate. The Spirit governs by the internal constraint of love.
Our challenge in our maturity, then, is to learn how to walk by the Spirit and not simply be compelled by laws. Laws and rules are helpful to the school-teacher seeking to regulate children. But the mature believer will live for God with no need for a legalistic guide. A child is taught to paint by numbers and color inside the lines. But an adult artist knows internally the rules of color, depth, and perspective, can create from the minimal constraints of a blank canvas, and paints a magnificent work of art, beautiful in form and splendid in design.
Freedom does not mean that we gratify the desires of the sin nature, like law-bound children released to college hedonism. Rather, real freedom means that the Spirit of God takes over the job of self-regulation and we walk in the desires of the Spirit. Do you have that kind of freedom in your life? Ask the Lord to enable you to walk by His Spirit and you will not seek to satisfy the desires of the flesh. You will be truly free!
Excerpted from The Spirit-Filled Life: All the Fullness of God.
The Rev. Charlie Holt is the rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and School in Lake Mary, Fla. He is also the President of Bible Study Media, Inc. and an instructor with the Institute for Christian Studies. Fr. Holt is the author of the Spirit-Filled Life: All the Fullness of God, Part Three in the Christian Life Trilogy series. He and his wife, Brooke, have three children.