The Heart of the Matter: Transformation

The Hebrew Scriptures describe God as a God of steadfast, faithful love (Exodus 34:6-7). The Johannine community of the New Testament described God as a God of self-giving, other-centered love (1 John 4:7-10). Jesus and the apostle Paul knew God to be a God who lives out of a servant spirit. What would a God of self-giving, other-centered love desire for us? What would a God who lives out of a servant spirit seek to produce in our lives?

How we answer these questions shapes our understanding of the spiritual life as well as how we approach our spiritual journey.

The most common understanding—that proclaimed from the vast majority of pulpits on any given Sunday—focuses on our eternal destiny, i.e., heaven and hell. It is about escaping the condemnation and judgment we deserve because of our sins. In this understanding, God sent Jesus to die on the cross, taking on the punishment we deserve. Jesus’s death appeased God’s wrath, freeing God to forgive our sins.

While popular, this common understanding is not in harmony with the character of God or the teachings of scripture. Its fundamental flaw is its misunderstanding of the character of God. It views God as a God of wrath that must be appeased rather than the God of love Jesus proclaimed. This misunderstanding produces a second significant flaw: it is based upon merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking. It fails to understand that grace and forgiveness are how God—as a God of love—relates to us. This understanding centers God’s work solely on Jesus’s death on the cross, thereby ignoring his teachings and the significance of his resurrection. It is a Good Friday theology, not an Easter theology. At its core, it is me-oriented. It reflects a self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit that leaves us essentially unchanged. Perhaps that fact is a part of its popularity and appeal.

Another popular understanding is called the prosperity gospel. In this theology, God works to make us successful as the world defines success—in terms of material wealth. According to this teaching, God—who wants us to be financially successful—blesses us with material wealth when we meet the right conditions. This theology mirrors the theology known as divine retribution that is found in portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. This theology teaches God rewards righteousness with health, wealth, long life, and a large family. In this thinking, poverty and sickness, early death and family problems are indicators of sin in one’s life. They are God’s judgment for the failure to live righteously. This thinking is also merit-based, deserving-oriented. It is transactional thinking—the kind of thinking found in the world—“if I will . . . then God will . . .” The book of Job in the Hebrew Scriptures was written to refute this way of thinking.

The scripture bears witness to God’s desire for us and what God seeks for us.

God wants us to know God and the ways of God. God sent the Son into the world that we might know what God is like—that is, the character of God and the ways of God (John 1:18; 14:9).

God wants us to live in relationship with God as beloved children. “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

God wants us to participate in God’s kind of life, possessing the divine character as our own (Romans 8:29), knowing the joy of living God’s ways (John 15:11).

God wants us to live as the followers of Jesus, learning and living the ways of God Jesus taught.

God wants us to grow spiritually into the likeness of Christ—“to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ”—(Ephesians 4:13; 2 Peter 3:18).

God is at work through the Spirit to set us free from the self-life that enslaves us, robbing us of life and wholeness—what Paul called “slavery to sin” (Romans 7:14-20; Galatians 5:16-25).

God is at work through the Spirit to transform our hearts and minds (2 Corinthians 3:18; Romans 12:2), engraining the character of God in the core of our being so that the self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me sin nature is rooted out.

Through the Spirit’s transforming work in our lives, we live as God’s partner in the Godhead’s eternal, redemptive purpose of restoring oneness to all of creation (Ephesians 1:3-14; 3:10; 4:1-7).

Any religious teaching or position or belief that does not center on the transformation of our hearts and minds into the likeness of Christ misses the essence of what God was doing in sending Jesus the Son into the world—i.e., salvation.