The Essence of the Christian Life

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

–2 Corinthians 5:17

Over the years, I’ve heard my share of stories about preachers who have fallen into sin. But this one takes the cake: A prominent church was looking for a new pastor. After an exhaustive, three-year search, the pulpit committee thought they had found the right man. The church was excited about the new pastor. Crowds came out to hear him preach. But one month into his tenure, a local newspaper uncovered the truth: The degrees on his résumé were bogus. He had embezzled nearly $200,000 from a previous church. And the Internal Revenue Service had been after him. When the pulpit committee was confronted about their recommendation to hire this man, one member said, “We were swayed by his unusual ability to communicate the gospel.”

What gospel was he communicating? The gospel that says once you have your “Get out of hell free” card, you can live however you want? The gospel that says you can be forgiven by Jesus without ever following Jesus?

Unfortunately, stories like these aren’t rare. How do you explain not only pastors but lay Christians who fall into the same sins as unbelievers? Perhaps Dallas Willard had the answer: “A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the grace of God, foresee, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying ‘Why?’ . . . The greatest need you and I have–the greatest need of collective humanity–is renovation of our heart. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed.”

The essence of the Christian life is a changed life that comes from a changed heart. That’s what Christianity is all about. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul put it this way: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

Too many of us come to the cross of Jesus Christ just as we are and leave just as we were. We think it’s possible to receive God’s gift of salvation without any change in our lives. As a result, many Christians live the same way as unbelievers. What it takes to please God is not belief in a set of facts; it’s a changed life that comes from a changed heart.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “What God Desires from You” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.

Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (NavPress, 2002), 14; emphasis in original.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.