Photo: Mabel Amber / Pexels

I wonder if you feel stuck in your Christian life. You’re a Christian, trusting in Jesus, seeking to grow; and yet it feels as though you’re not growing. You’ve tried lots of different things, and they don’t seem to be making any difference. How do we grow as Christians? And specifically, what is the role of the Holy Spirit in transforming us?

The new birth – heart, mind and will

In the previous post we considered the role of the Spirit in the new birth. We saw that at the new birth the Holy Spirit comes into a person, to live in them. The Spirit becomes to us

a principle of new nature, or a divine supernatural spring of life and action.

Jonathan Edwards

We saw that the Spirit gives us a ‘new spiritual sense’ – a sense of the beauty and loveliness of God so that we desire God more than the things of the world. And we saw that as a result our desires – our hearts – and our minds are changed.

What about the will? Jonathan Edwards argued that the will is simply an extension of the heart – “what we desire, we choose.” We saw in the last post that our desires drive everything else:

What the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies.

Thomas Cranmer

If I desire God, I will choose God; if I desire money I will choose a path in life that leads to more money; if I desire reputation I will seek to build my reputation.

In this post we move beyond the new birth to our lives as Christians. How does the Spirit continue to transform us?

1, What are we being transformed into?

As with any project of change, as we set out in this process of transformation we need to know what the end goal is. It seems to me the New Testament gives at least two answers:

The likeness of Christ

Christ is the most holy, most happy, most joyful, most loving person who has ever lived. Why wouldn’t we want to become like him? And the apostle Paul writes:

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:18

As we contemplate the Lord Jesus so we become like him, and it’s the Holy Spirit who brings this change about.

Prepared for heaven

The Holy Spirit is transforming us so that we’re ready to be with God forever:

But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

2 Peter 3:13

Heaven is a place of beauty, loveliness, holiness and love; and only those who exhibit those qualities will be there. We will never attain to that perfect ideal until God finally changes us on the final day; but we should still aspire to it.

Sometimes the Bible combines these two goals – becoming like Christ and being prepared for heaven. See for example 1 John 3:2-3 or Colossians 3:1-4.  

As we wait to be with Christ we should set our hearts – our desires – on things above for that is where Christ is. So this is how the Spirit is changing us – he’s making us more like Christ, and he’s preparing us for heaven.

2, How does the Spirit transform us?

As we have seen, as those who have been born again, we have a new principle within us – the principle of the Holy Spirit. Think of a spring, or a fountain coming from within us, as Jesus alludes to in John 7:

“Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”  By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

John 7:38-39

But there’s also another principle – or spring – that remains in us for the time being:

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.

Galatians 5:16-17

Paul refers to the principle of the Spirit, and the principle of the flesh. The Spirit and the flesh are in conflict with each other, such that there is a war going on within the Christian.

What does Paul mean by ‘the flesh’? Sometimes in his writings he uses the word in a neutral way to simply mean the body, or human. But more commonly he uses it in a negative way – which is clearly what is in view here: Consider the list of acts of the flesh in verses 19-21. John Stott writes that the flesh is “what we are by nature and inheritance – our fallen condition.”

Even though we’ve been born again, our sinful nature remains within us. And that means there is a battle within us. We love God, we want to serve and obey him. But we also have sinful desires which we are tempted to follow. And “They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.”

Paul writes about this struggle in more detail in Romans 7:

Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.

Romans 7:21-23

Can you identify with that? I certainly can. I want to do something but I find myself unable to do it; I don’t want to do something else, and yet I can’t resist. If you’ll forgive a Lord of the Rings analogy, we can be like Gollum in The Two Towers: He wants to serve Frodo, but he also desperately wants the ring. Which will he choose? The whole film shows the working out of this battle within.

As those with the Spirit, we need to engage in the conflict:

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Galatians 5:24-25

We engage in two ways:

i, Keep the flesh nailed to the cross (verse 24)

If we have been born again and so belong to Christ we have already crucified the flesh. At the point of repenting and believing for the first time we nailed our sinful nature to the cross. We said “this is where it belongs – it needs to die. I’m done with my sinful nature.” And every day, until the day we die or Jesus returns, we are to continue to crucify the flesh – to ensure it remains nailed to the cross. John Stott writes:

Like crucifixion, a Christian’s rejection of his old nature is to be:

1, Pitiless. Crucifixion was a terrible punishment reserved for the worst criminals. It was a shameful thing for Jesus to be crucified. If we are to crucify the flesh it is plain that it is not something to be treated with deference and courtesy, but so evil that it deserves no better fate than to be crucified.

2, Painful. Crucifixion was attended with intense pain. And we also know the acute pain of inner conflict when the ‘fleeting pleasures of sin’ are renounced.

3, Decisive. Crucifixion was a slow death, but it was decisive – no-one survived it. “Crucifixion produced death not suddenly but gradually. True Christians do not completely succeed in destroying the flesh while here below; but they have fixed it to the cross and they are determined to keep it there till it expires.” (Brown). Christians have taken the decisive decision at the moment of conversion to crucify the flesh. And so now we must leave it on the cross to die – we must everyday renew this attitude towards sin of ruthless and uncompromising rejection.

John Stott, Galatians, BST

Or as John Owen wrote: “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

ii, Keep in step with the Spirit

Those who have been born again have the principle of the Holy Spirit within us – and we’re to live accordingly. If we didn’t have the Spirit we wouldn’t be able to fight – we would simply be slaves to our sinful desires. But because we have the Spirit, we’re able to live by the Spirit and so to engage in the fight.  

It’s worth pausing at this point to recognise that we need to choose to do this. Some research was recently published by CCX, a church planting organisation. The research considered “what had caused Christians aged 18-35 to grow spiritually?” One of the key factors was “Choosing to grow.” The people who were growing spiritually had made a conscious decision to grow. And if you want to grow you will be crucifying the flesh; and you will be keeping in step with the Spirit.

3, How do we keep in step with the Spirit?

We keep in step with the Spirit through the means of grace – things like prayer, bible reading, silence and solitude, meeting with God’s people, and so on. In a previous post we’ve compared this to a river of grace flowing before us; and we’ve seen that we get into the river through the means of grace. Through prayer, bible reading, silence and solitude, community we open ourselves up to the possibility of growing. Bishop JC Ryle put it like this:

The “means of grace” are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshipping God in Church, wherein one hears the Word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper. I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification. I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul and strengthens the work which He has begun in the inward man. . . . Our God is a God who works by means, and He will never bless the soul of that person who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them.

JC Ryle

Let’s think specifically about how to engage our hearts, and minds, and wills for spiritual growth and transformation. 

Engaging our hearts / desires

We start with the heart:

What the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies.

Thomas Cranmer

So the key thing is for the heart to be continually transformed by the Holy Spirit – our desires need to change. And that means we need to engage our imaginations. We use our imagination all the time, imagining what we desire (or what we fear or are anxious about.) And the Spirit changes our heart through our imagination. The Bible is full of teaching which engages our imaginations – and therefore our hearts. It tells of comfort and joy and heaven and hell and love, of God as our Father, Christ as our Bridegroom, the feast of following Christ and so on.

But we can also engage the imagination as we think about the conflict going on within us – the choice between living by the flesh or keeping in step with the Spirit.

Two rivers

Imagine a river moving gently, peacefully, steadily towards a wide and vast and beautiful ocean. Imagine basking in that river on a small boat, drifting with the current towards a beautiful future. Then imagine that on one side of this river is a bank rising up slightly, and beyond that is another river, moving in the opposite direction. This river is fast moving, in some ways exciting, filled with rocks and debris, and it leads to a terrible and desolate swamp. The rivers are close together; it’s easy to cross from one to the other. Which would you choose to be in? Which side of the bank would you position yourself?

The two rivers represent the two principles – the Spirit and the flesh. One flowing slowly, peacefully, joyfully, towards heaven and all that is good and beautiful and loving; its waters are waters of grace and love and peace and the fruits of the Spirit. The other river, fast flowing, enticing, full of rocks and rapids – this is the river of the flesh. Its waters are full of self – self-fulfilment, self-indulgence, self-promotion, self-justifying – and it flows quickly towards the putrid swamp of hell and misery and separation from all that is good and beautiful and loving. Each day we are faced with the choice – which river will I get into and remain in? The imagination helps us to choose the right river.

Two paths

Or think of two paths. One leading down – easy, comfortable, but into a dark, gnarled old forest with swamps and brambles and confusing paths where you can easily lose your way; this is the path of the flesh. The other leading up, up into bright, green, fresh uplands. This is the path of the Spirit. Which path will you choose? The Psalmist writes:

You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Psalm 16:11

Jonathan Edwards writes:

We may have our inheritance wherever we choose it, and may obtain heaven if we will but seek it by patient continuance in well-doing. We are all of us, as it were, set here in this world as in a vast wilderness, with diverse countries about it, and with several ways or paths leading to these different countries, and we are left to our choice what course we will take. If we heartily choose heaven, and set our hearts entirely on that blessed Canaan — that land of love, and if we choose and love the path that leads to it, we may walk in that path; and if we continue to walk in it, it will lead us to heaven at last.

Jonathan Edwards, Heaven a world of love

Engaging our minds

I spoke about the heart first because “what the heart loves the will chooses and the mind justifies.” But in practice we get to the heart through the mind. The images we’ve just considered were engaging the heart through the mind. So the mind is vital. Paul writes:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2

Or as Jonathan Edwards writes:

There is no other way by which any means of grace whatsoever can be of any benefit, but by knowledge. All teaching is in vain, without learning. Therefore the preaching of the gospel would be wholly to no purpose, if it conveyed no knowledge to the mind.

Jonathan Edwards, Importance and advantage of a thorough knowledge of divine truth

It is essential to engage the mind, which is why Bible reading is so important, along with reading Christian books and listening to sermons. The mind is engaged, and through the mind the heart and imagination can also be engaged. 

Engaging our wills

The will responds to the heart. What the heart desires the will chooses.

Having said that, habits are of great value. If we have formed habits of prayer, bible reading, going to church then the will can ‘shepherd’ the heart. For example, it may be that on a particular Sunday you don’t feel like going to church, or on a Tuesday you wake up feeling tired and you don’t feel like reading the bible and praying. If you have a habit of doing those things then you’ll do it anyway, and as you do your heart will be engaged through your mind, and you’ll be glad you did it.

And finally…

What if I don’t feel like I’m being transformed?

Perhaps for some time you’ve been seeking to grow through engaging the heart, mind and will, and engaging in the conflict with the flesh. Perhaps you may feel like you’re not making any progress.

Let me encourage you that if you are crucifying the flesh and keeping in step with the Spirit through the means of grace, God is changing you. You may not be aware of it, it’s slow and takes time, but he is. And don’t look back a month or six months; look back 5 years – and see the progress you’ve made. Remember Paul tells us that progress is what really matters (1 Timothy 4:15).

What if I fail?

The reality is we all continue to fail from time to time. The sinful nature is still in us, the battle is real. So be grateful that there is a battle – because that shows you have the Spirit. And run back to your heavenly Father who loves you, and live in his love. Remember he doesn’t love you because of your performance; he loves you because you are in Christ, and Christ took all your sin, past present and future, on himself at the cross, so that what he says to Christ he can say to you – “This is my beloved son / daughter – in whom I am well pleased.”

What if I’m going backwards?

It may be that you feel you’re going backwards. If so – praise God that you’ve made it this far in the article – that in itself is a sign God’s at work in you! And your loving Father is calling you to re-commit to grow as a Christian; to engage in the conflict within; to commit to the means of grace. Make it a priority to come to church, to read your bible, to pray each day, to listen to Christian worship music, to meet with Christian friends – and you will be transformed, in the power of the Holy Spirit who is working in you.