Be the Part: God's Goal of Total Life Transformation
Reflecting on the ways people cultivate an appearance of religious devotion to God but actually deny the power of God to make them holy fully
Have you heard of the popular saying, “fake it till you make it”?
This phrase can have varying meanings but one way it can be understood is that you can get away with not having the requisite expertise and knowledge, if you just remain optimistic and sound confident. You would maintain this veneer either until the situation at hand has passed or until you can get to a place where you address the gap in your knowledge and skills.
However, to apply this saying to our spiritual lives would be disastrous.
In the Bible, we have the letter of 2 Timothy. This was written by the Apostle Paul, an early renowned Christian missionary and teacher, to Timothy, a young Christian leader. This is the last letter he would write before he would later be executed by the Roman Empire for his faith in Jesus. Paul takes time in this letter to warn Timothy about the challenges that he and the early communities of Jesus followers would face in the times to come.
Paul mentions there would be a surge of people who “have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof.” (2 Timothy 3:5).
Or to say it a different way: there would be a number of people who would “look” Christian but who in reality have denied the power that could make them truly godly.
God desires for us to not just look the part but to “be” the part: to become the complete image of God we were created to be.
We will see this demonstrated in a few different passages from the Bible.
What is better than sacrifice?
Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
— 1 Samuel 15:22
In this Old Testament passage, you have the prophet Samuel rebuking Saul, the King of Israel, for his disobedience. Saul at this point in his Kingship had begun to see God as more of a power to be wielded for his agenda than as the sovereign Lord he needed to submit to. Samuel challenges Saul for not obeying the Lord’s command concerning the destruction of the idolatrous Amalekites. Saul and his army plunder their possessions. They sought to keep things that God had already told them to set aside for destruction. Saul tries to justify his lack of obedience by claiming that the plunder they took from the Amalekites would be offered to God and that he was afraid of how his solidiers would react if they did not plunder their possessions.
The prophet Samuel then challenges Saul on his understanding of who God actually is. Yahweh, the God of the Bible, was different than the gods that nations like the Amalekites worshipped. Those gods did not care much about their adherent’s lives as long as they fulfilled the ritual obligations.
Not so with Yahweh!
All the various sacrifices and offerings God had instructed Saul and the whole nation of Israel to give at various times were all part of a life of obedience to God, in heart and mind. It was always about more than the sacrifice, but the greater reality it pointed to. Saul missed the point. And we easily miss the point too.
God is committed to the work of holistic transformation, not simply outward renovation. God is seeking to form and shape us into new kinds of people—obedient and faithful people— from the inside out.
The Tearing of the Heart
“Even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”Tear your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.Joel 2:12-13
The Prophet Joel in this passage is calling Israel to repent from their idolatry and injustice. Now the Jewish people had an ancient tradition of tearing their clothes to show grief and lament. The people demonstrated sorrow over the pain that God’s judgement on their sin had brought upon them but the tearing of their clothes in mourning was the extent of their response.
God through the prophet Joel was calling the people to stop their cycle of ritual grief that had not led to any real change in their behaviors. What needed to be torn was not another cloak, but actually the hard hearts of the people. They needed to turn back to God. We can often find ourselves doing everything but the one thing God actually wants us to do.
The Kind of Fasting God has Chosen
On the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You can’t fast like this, and expect your voice to be heard on high….Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter —
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?— Isaiah 58:3–7
There were prescribed periods of fasting God had ordained for the people of Israel on various occasions. In fasting, you abstain from food and drink with the desired purpose of being able to connect with God in a way that wasn’t possible in normal circumstances. This practice was meant to remind the people of the real source of their life and security. The prophet Isaiah challenged the people of God that their act of fasting was not “true fasting” if it did not result in a life aligned with God’s priorities. God is grieved when our devotion and worship does not lead to us doing right by our neighbors.
What God truly requires of us
With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.Micah 6:6-8
The prophet Micah through literary allusion takes us back to the book of Genesis. In Genesis chapter 1 and 2, God first defined what is “good” for the first human beings: Adam and Eve. God through the Prophet Micah now reminds another human community set apart by God about what it would look like for them to be aligned with God’s will and do what is “good”.
The people in this passage express confusion and angst about what God really wants from them. In this passage, their questions get progressively more intense.
The culminating question shows how far the people’s hearts are from God:
“Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
This is talking about an ancient practice of child-sacrifice, which is something that God never commanded Israel to do. This was something the various pagan gods of Israel’s neighbors would ask for. What God desired was a holistic response from his people: doing justice, loving mercy, and walk humbly with God. God does not desire for us to offer “ ten thousands rivers of olive oil” but rather for there to be rivers of justice, mercy, and humble devotion streaming out of us.