How Do Christians Grow: Part 2

So for three weeks, we're asking the question how do we grow as Christians?

And this is not guilt on you or fear on you, and you better or else or you better do these things or else.

No, what we're saying is in Jesus, you are already fully forgiven.

In Jesus, you are already fully righteous.

In Jesus, you're already fully accepted.

All those things are fully secure in Jesus.

God's delight in you is secure in Jesus.

So this is what we said last week.

We are free from earning God's love.

So, how do we grow in that lavish love?

Over the past few weeks, our family's been watching the Olympics.

Y'all have been watching the Olympics?

Did you see the trampoline?

Did you know?

I didn't know.

I didn't know I didn't know people were gonna be jumping that high.

That surprised me.

I was like, he's the he's really going high.

And then I saw the horse like stomping around.

That was interesting.

But the gymnastics is my favorite.

Any other gymnastics, right?

And we love her.

Do we not love Simone?

Everybody loves Simone.

I love Simone.

She dominates.

She dominated and she helped win the team gold.

And then she dominated and she helped win the all-around gold.

And then did you see the vault?

She did.

Do you know about the Biles 2 vault?

This is a double pipe vault.

No lady has ever done this vault in competition except her.

She is the GOAT, the Sigma, the greatest.

She's like, it is her.

She's it.

She's Jesus and a Leotard.

That is that's what we're seeing right there.

And just when I thought she is supernatural, I saw this picture.

So that's a real, that's a real picture.

That is real.

That really happened.

So she's the best ever.

She does a vault nobody else can do.

She can flip her body 12 feet in the air.

But you know what she can't do?

She cannot will herself with all of her discipline and strength and self-effort.

She can't will herself to grow a single inch.

Because some things we just don't have the power to do within ourselves.

And that's the point about Christian growth.

That our spiritual growth as Christians is always inside of God's grace, which empowers the growth.

Some things we just don't have the power to do on our own.

This is why Tim Keller said it this way: the gospel is not just the ABCs of the Christian life, but the A to Z of the Christian life.

We do not leave the gospel to go and start growing as Christians.

We have to grow ever deeper in it.

That's why I love this Titus II passage, one of my favorite passages, because it so clearly lays this out for us.

Titus 2, 11.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.

Okay, so the grace of God appeared.

Through Jesus we have salvation.

ABC.

But it's also the A to Z, verse 12.

So this grace training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

So it is by grace that we are saved, and it is by grace we're changed.

That's point number one.

Jesus gives us our salvation and empowers our change.

We could say it this way: God's love is not a result of our transformed lives.

For a long time I lived that way as a Christian.

I thought that God's love was a result of me becoming just a little bit better.

No, no, no.

God's love is the source of our transforming lives.

This week I was reminded of the theories of change.

We studied this about a year ago.

This comes from an article called The Cure of Souls by Dr.

Simeon Zoll, which is a Cambridge theological professor.

And he sort of summarizes four different theories of change.

There are a bit of simplification, but all these theories of change are going on in different churches and different Christian realms.

If you've been at church at all, you've experienced disease.

These theories have actually been done to you.

So as I review them, just think through what you've experienced.

Theory of change number one, the sacramental participation approach.

This says you better get baptized and you better take communion.

Because this theory says, take the sacraments as to be holy.

Take the sacraments and you will be godly.

Through the sacrament, you are these things.

Because in this approach, the sacraments don't just symbolize something, they actually cause the change.

Theory of change number two, the Christian information approach.

This says you better learn your Bible facts and your doctrine.

This theory says the Bible contains instructions for life, so get to know the instructions for godly living.

The more you learn, the more you will change.

The instructions, the learning of it will actually change you.

So get more in you.

Theory of change number three, the Pentecostal and charismatic approach.

This says you better have more and more and more emotional worship experiences.

This theory says that the next experience, the next one is more important than the one you just had.

And then after you have that one, you need another one.

And you just move from experience to experience because through the experience and the emotion of it, that's where you're changed.

Now let's pause.

Just sort of think about the churches you've been in, the different worship experiences.

Can you spot it?

Can you spot what's been done to you?

Maybe even your personal theory of change.

We all have a personal theory of change, whether we realize it or not.

We've accepted some theory of change about how we're going to change.

What's your theory of change?

Is your theory of change actually working?

Or are you just becoming more exhausted as a Christian?

Now, theory of change number four is the one that Dr.

Zoll likes.

This is actually the one that Redeemer Marietta practices and believes in.

The Augustinian approach.

Now, we would just say it this way: grow in grace by diving deeper in Jesus' goodness.

St.

Paul says that the demand of what we should be as Christians, the demand on its own is not enough to empower the change to get us to be that very thing.

So the demand doesn't hold the power.

And this is why we need more than information and we need more than experiences, even though those things may play into our Christian life.

We actually need the Holy Spirit in us to meet us in our nothingness.

Not in the thing that we're bringing, and then he kind of helps us out along the way.

No, we bring our surrender, our repentance.

We're falling into our belovedness, and he is changing us.

Human beings receive the Holy Spirit so that there arises in their minds a delight in and a love for that highest and immutable good that is God.

Even now, while they walk by faith, not yet by sight.

By this love given to them, like the pledge of a gratuitous gift, they are set afire with a desire to cling to the Creator.

So he says the only reason we'd even desire change or have change is because a love has been given to us.

And that is God's gift to us.

So thinking back to Titus 2, 11 and 12, just as I read this, think about how the grace of God is working.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

So theologically, we could say it this way: our sanctification happens as we grow deeper in our justification.

Now, those are big church words.

Justification is our enoughness to God.

Holy enough, just enough, righteous enough, forgiven enough.

We are justified before God.

Our justification is in Jesus.

One-time event.

Our sanctification is the process of becoming more like Jesus.

This is the process of being a Christian.

Now I was taught that justification happened when I converted and became a Christian, surrendered my life to Jesus, and now I need to leave my justification.

I need to move on to being a Christian, doing the spiritual practices, my sanctification.

But I was taught wrongly.

Because actually the sanctification is a going deeper in the justification.

We never leave our justification.

It happens to us, and our life of a Christian is learning just how wonderful this is.

Which means that we grow deeper by growing into the great wealth of our identity in Jesus.

This is why we said last week.

So you can be like, you can try to act smart and sound smart to your friends, and you can say, well, the Christian life is our sanctification happens as we grow deeper in our justification.

So you could say it that way.

And you will be right.

People in your small group be very impressed.

Oh, whoa, whoa, that's great.

Or you can just say, we grow as Christians as we grow deeper in Jesus.

They mean the same thing.

So what do we do?

What do I do?

If I'm free, if I'm free, what do I do?

Two implications for growth and grace.

Implication number one, collapse and confess in Jesus.

In God's kindness, we're drawn to repentance.

So our confession is in God's grace.

We collapse into Jesus.

We voice our mistakes, we voice our mess.

I mean, we're voicing that we need help.

I don't have this.

I don't know what to do.

I don't know how to engage this person.

I don't know how to have this conversation, or I messed up with that conversation.

I'm overreacting, I'm abreacting.

I need help.

This is a collapse in a confession in Jesus.

And in that, we're remembering just how lovely He is, how sufficient He is.

This practice actually matures you.

The collapse in the confession.

This actually matures you.

The bringing your nothingness to God and saying, I need help actually creates change.

Years ago, I saw this chart.

This was very helpful to me, stuck with me for a long time.

So we have this point of conversion, we become a Christian, surrender our life to Jesus, and then inevitably we all begin on this path where we are growing in our awareness of God's holiness, how big God is, how great He is, how glorious He is.

And at the same time, we are inevitably discovering we're not as put together as we thought, we're not quite changing like we thought we would.

We're not quite the Christians we thought we would be.

So we're growing in our awareness of our flesh and our sinfulness.

So a gap is occurring over time.

And what happens so often is we fill the gap with a little bit of Jesus and we fill it with some pretending and we fill it with some performing.

And this is why, as Christians, it's so often to live with condemnation and exhaustion.

But there's another way to live the Christian life.

And that's this chart.

And that is that Jesus just keeps getting bigger.

That you're growing in your awareness how great God is, how glorious, and how holy He is, and you're not as put together as you thought you were, and like, oh yeah, I thought you were great, but then my motives are messed up and all sorts of stuff, and you're growing in that awareness of your flesh and sinfulness, and instead of inserting, pretending, and performing, you just let the cross, Jesus, get bigger and bigger for you.

Dane Ortland in his book Deeper writes this.

Christian growth is, among other things, growth and sensing just how impoverished and powerless we are in our own strength.

How hollow and futile our efforts to grow spiritually are on our own steam.

The point in all of this is that we must come face to face with who we really are, left to our own steam.

Christian salvation is not assistance, it is resurrection.

The gospel does not take our good and complete us with God's help.

The gospel tells us we're dead and helpless, unable to contribute anything to our rescue but the sin that requires it.

Christian salvation is not enhancing, it is resurrecting.

So Ortland is saying the Christian entry and the Christian path is a bringing of your nothingness.

Open hands.

I need help.

So our way forward is a continued collapse in confession.

Now next week we're going to talk more about spiritual practices and disciplines.

But just for today, confession and collapse, and then implication number two, become your own Jesus preacher.

So maybe I'm your preacher, maybe somebody else is your preacher, but you need to be your own preacher.

Grace guru and seminary professor Jack Miller, he used to say this: preach the gospel to yourself every day.

We need to do this every day because every day we forget.

Every day to some degree we revert into guilt or shame into performance, pretending some merit.

We need to preach to ourselves that we actually are fully forgiven already in Jesus, actually fully loved and fully secure and fully beloved and fully worthy and fully validated, and all of this is in Jesus.

We have to preach to ourselves.

So don't go to a church.

You don't have to come to church here.

Maybe go to church somewhere else.

But you need to go to a church that is a Jesus plus nothing equals everything church.

That's not mixing Jesus and moralism together.

That sort of Christian moralism will just exhaust you.

You need a church that is setting the gospel up against moralism so you can discern the difference.

That you understand what your role is inside of God's grace.

That earning is over.

Now there's effort inside of God's grace, but the earning is completely over.

To grow in this sort of gospel.

I have two book recommendations just to get you started if you need them.

The first is a short book by Tim Keller, The Prodigal God.

This is a short book, very easy to read, and really will help you grow in Jesus.

It's the prodigal son's story.

The second is a year-long devotion, New Morning Mercies by Paul Tripp.

And in time, you'll be able to grow and discern the difference between Christian moralism, where it's like me, a lot of me and a little bit of Jesus.

But then you keep feeling like really prideful and then really in despair, like really excited and then really exhausted.

Right?

Because it's the charts, the first chart.

A lot of pretending and performing with Jesus.

But then to be able to discern, be able to preach to yourself gospel that Jesus is big enough for this gap.

Last week one of you sweet church folks came up to me and gave me a bag from your garden of tomatoes.

I love a homegrown tomato.

I mean, white bread.

Not, I don't want your, I don't want your brown bread with nuts in it.

I mean, that's not, that will not work.

White, like cake, okay?

That's what we're talking about.

Nutritious as cake.

And then you just smother Duke mayonnaise on it.

Right?

Just dupe.

I don't want to hear about anything else.

Just Duke mayonnaise.

Slice that sweet tomato up.

You put it on there, your juice is just running down, right?

You eat it over the sink.

You don't even put it on a plate.

You eat it over the sink.

Right?

That's summertime in the South.

Southerners, amen.

Northerners, I don't know if y'all have tomatoes.

I'm not sure.

Pretty sure you don't.

You don't have tomato, like not like us.

We have real tomatoes.

Now, this tomato, I've I've never grown a tomato in my life.

I am no farmer.

Here's what I hear about it: that there's roots under the soil.

And out of those roots come a vine.

And that vine comes up, and then it comes straight in the top of this fruit, right?

Where the fruit vegetable debate, y'all can debate later, but it comes straight into the fruit.

Straight into there.

And as soon as this fruit is taken off of the vine, it starts to die.

Right?

And the lesson there is that the tomato has no hope without the vine.

All the nutrition is coming through the vine.

I mean, if Jesus was a southerner, he wouldn't have been talking about wine all the time.

Right?

He would have been talking about tomatoes.

And the lesson is our Christian growth is not our effort with a little help from Jesus.

As soon as we believe that, we are on a path of exhaustion and condemnation.

Our Christian growth is growing deeper into the justification by Christ alone.

Our sanctification is ever deepening into our justification.

Now, if you just want to be normal, you say it this way.

Our Christian growth is growing deeper into the loveliness and the enoughness of Jesus.

We're not earning a thing.

We're growing in the lavish acceptance and approval Jesus already has for us.

So are we seeing that Jesus is bigger?

He's lovelier more than enough, or are we just busy and distracted?

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you through Jesus is enough for us.

You are all the forgiveness we have ever needed, all of our sin put upon the cross and all of your righteousness given to us.

We have all the righteousness we ever need in Jesus.

We are fully your beloved, secure forever.

We are free.

In our freedom, would you inspire and empower a growth and grace that our lives, that you would train us to say no to ungodliness, to say yes to godliness, to confess our mistakes and our mess ups, to collapse even more, to become our own Jesus preachers, that we might grow in your grace, grow in this freedom.

That our hearts would burn, that our hearts would long for the greatness, the goodness, the loveliness, the enoughness of Jesus for us.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.