Three winters ago my Bible reading program was reading the NT and marking all the verses I did not like. Ones that were burdensome. Took the fun out of life. Ones that made the Christian life one of hard work but never quite enough. They all seemed contrary to the idea of having “life and having it abundantly.” But I trudged on.

It was easy to put Romans 12:2 on the list, “…be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” I heard it telling me I was responsible for my transformation. More Scripture memory, more Bible study, more books, more church – more, more, more. Time to read a novel? Nope. Go have fun? No way…I need to keep renewing my mind.

And then breakfast with Jerry and a discussion of Romans 12:2. He  gently shared two insights that changed everything.

• First Jerry mentioned that “be transformed” was an imperative. I knew that. That’s what made me work so hard. I had to transform my mind.
• But then he made a second observation – it was a passive imperative. It is something that I was to let happen to me.

The lights went on – and the burden disappeared. The word mind refers to the non-physical aspect of us, just like the word heart. Can I transform that? NO! It is something that God does to me…hence the passive tense.

Do I still work hard at the spiritual disciplines? You bet. But the reason is totally different. No longer do I do them to transform myself into someone that is pleasing to God. Now I practice the disciplines to discover and experience the transformation God has already done in me! When I do these things I am reminded that everything between God and me is permanently fixed. Becoming acceptable to God is no longer dependent upon my hard work. It is by faith alone and by grace alone.

John Stott captured this good news when he wrote this:

“It is our new creation that has given us our new mind; and it is our new mind which understands our new creation and its implications.”

And you know what – the joy that comes in understanding and experiencing the implications of my new creation helps me understand and experience not only newness of life, but life abundant!

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This has been a hard week. I lost a hero and a friend. Jerry Bridges was both to me. There is no way to express the magnitude of his impact on my life. To me it feels like an unnatural silence has come over the Christian world without Jerry’s faithful voice. He was an untiring teacher of the gospel of grace.

Jerry was a friend. We taught conferences together and retreats together. On the Sundays that we were both in town, we would sit near each other in church…if space allowed next to each other in the same pew. Just a few months ago Sue and I sat with Jerry and his wife Jane over dinner telling stories and laughing. It was a special time. Now it not only seems quieter, but emptier and lonelier.

And he taught me. Next week I will share with you my most memorable breakfast with Jerry and the insight he gave me into the grace of God that has been key in laying down my performance driven Christian life. He taught me something I never heard from anyone else.

For now, just a quote from his book Transforming Grace. 

“My observation of Christendom is that most of us tend to base our relationship with God on our performance instead of His grace. If we’ve performed well – whatever ‘well’ is in our opinion – then we expect God to bless us. If we haven’t done so well, our expectations are reduced accordingly. In this sense, we live by works, rather than by grace. We are saved by grace, but we are living by the ‘sweat’ of our own performance.

Moreover, we are always challenging ourselves and one another to ‘try harder’. We seem to believe success in the Christian life (however we define success) is basically up to us: our commitment, our discipline, and our zeal, with some help from God along the way. We give lip service to the attitude of the Apostle Paul, ‘But by the grace of God I am what I am (I Cor 15:10), but our unspoken motto is, ‘God helps those who help themselves.'”

Jerry never gave lip service to the grace of God.

ACTION:  The only appropriate action this week is to pray for Jane and the Bridges family and that God would raise up a new generation of men like Jerry to stand in the gap he has left.

Condemnation is being given an identity based on our performance. Paul looked at his performance and cringed. He had given in. His renewed resolve and good intentions failed. Again. And now he hears his performance yelling out his identity – “wretch” (Romans 7:15-24).

Paul Zahl says it this way in his book Who Will Deliver Us:

“If I do enough of the right things, I will have established my value. Identity is the sum of my achievements…In Christian theology, such a position is called justification by works. It assumes my worth is measured by my performance. Conversely, it conceals a dark and ghastly fear: If I do not perform, I will be judged unworthy.”

We use other words than “wretch” when our performance condemns and pastes an identity on us. Loser. Failure. Fake. Unworthy. Different words but we discover the same dilemma—we can never perform our way out of condemnation. The good news of the gospel is our identity is now based on the performance of Jesus. It is grace alone that changes the wretch into a saint.

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