Physical Fitness vs. Spiritual Fitness

We all know the old saying "no pain, no gain." In the fitness world it means we all have to work harder, longer and more intensely than our bodies want us to work if we want to see progress. We have to earn our results. If we shed pounds, gain inches, run farther, or lift more weight, it is because we have put the time in to make it happen ourselves. There are no shortcuts and there is not an "easy" way to do it. It is hard work repeated consistently. We progress in fitness because we follow the "law" of physical fitness: exercise + diet + consistency = progress.

It is a mistake, however, to apply this same thinking to spiritual training. Romans 3:20 says "For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin." If we are relying on our efforts to draw us closer to God, or to make us righteous we are in for a huge disappointment. The truth is that we cannot, on our own power, be righteous at all. The "law" of spiritual growth is this: our effort (even if we are trying to be righteous) + our sin nature = greater sin. It is a continuing loop of defeat and sin that will never end.

The Apostle Paul wrote about this struggle in his own life in Romans 3:15-18 "For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out."

By the end of this description Paul cries out "Wretched man am I! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

Paul answers his own question in Romans 8:1-4 "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,c he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."

The key to spiritual training is to look to the one who started, finished, and perfected the training for you: Jesus Christ. His life, death, and resurrection provide a righteousness from God that we cannot ever produce through our efforts. It is the finished work of Christ on the Cross that provides everything we need for life and Godliness. To grow Spiritually is not a matter of trying harder, doing more, and performing better, but a matter of moving more and more deeply into the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His Grace has already made you perfect. What we have to do is to come to know the truth about ourselves (we are utterly sinful and every effort to produce righteousness is doomed to failure) and the truth about God (He has provided righteousness through the Gospel of His Son Jesus Christ.)

We are to keep our eyes focused on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. To grow spiritually is to learn to rely on His Perfect life, His sacrificial death and His powerful resurrection in all things. The pain, then, is not the pain of effort and performance (which wear you out but provide nothing), but he pain of dying to self. It is the pain of realizing the truth, as Paul did, that "no good thing lives in my flesh" but that the finished work of Christ has already made you Holy in God's sight. So, no pain, no gain stands, but not in the area of effort, but rather, in the area of denying self.

How are you denying self today and relying on the Grace of God through Jesus Christ? Do you beat yourself up for not "doing more" or do you feel you have to "try harder" all the time? All these behaviors are based in the assumption that we can be righteous. Listen to the truth of the Gospel, because the Truth will set you free.

Little Christs?

What is a Christian? It is surprising how many people who claim to be a Christian have a hard time answering this question. Is it a difficult question?

How a person answers this question reveals more about their true believe than many realize. Some talk more about the community of faith, or serving others, helping people, political causes, or making the world a better place than they do about the bedrock foundation of Christianity: Jesus Christ himself.

The word "Christian" was originally a derogatory term used against those who followed the Messiah that was crucified and was said to have risen from the dead in the 1st century. The term "Christian" literally meant "little Christ."

So, rather than being identified by a set of beliefs, a political stance, a community, a creed or a station within society, the first Christian believers were known by their identification with the man Jesus Christ. Sure, they were a close knit group that loved each other ferociously, but that was not their identity. Who there were was evident to all. They identified themselves with Jesus and Jesus alone.

So let me ask you? Are you a "little Christ?" Would someone look at you and say that ultimately your very identity is so connected to this ONE MAN that people would deride you for making his identity your own? Because that is what happened to the earliest believers.

In his book "Dissident Discipleship" David Augsburger defines a Christian as someone who is Radically Attached to Jesus.

I Like that.


A lot.


A radical attachment to the man Jesus and EVERYTHING that He taught. Augsburger put it this way:


Attachment to Jesus, we must first clarify, is neither admiration (though Jesus fully deserves admiration) nor adulation (although that may result from attachment), nor assimilation into a culture and lifestyle (although that is inevitable). Attachment is actual encounter with the Jesus of the Gospels and engagement with his utterly radical claims on us and on creation. To state this in concise propositions: 

• To be a Christian is to be absolutely convinced that Jesus is the Christ and that Christ is the Lord of creation. 
• To acknowledge that Christ is Lord is to admit that human life can be understood only in terms of Christ's intentions for creation. 
• To understand human life in terms of Christ's intentions for creation is to perceive that Jesus's activity for the world is totally pervaded by nonviolent agape love and by renunciation of power, of justice for oneself, and of purpose-driven effectiveness. 
• To participate in Christ's activity is to shoulder the weight of restoring love toward offenders, of forgiving the guilty, of responding nonresistantly when attacked, of acting on behalf of justice for others in loving, nonviolent ways. 
• To follow Jesus is to willingly accept his way of unlimited love (agape), to accept the call to self-renunciation (the cross), to accept self-relinquishment through giving up sin and its defenses (the way of discipleship), and to accept inner self-transformation in repentance and a new life (resurrection) 

David Augsburger. Dissident Discipleship: A Spirituality of Self-Surrender, Love of God, and Love of Neighbor (p. 50). Kindle Edition. 

To be a Christian means Jesus tells us who we are and that by radically attaching ourselves to him we are renouncing who we think we are for His definition of who we are. The early Church believers did this and were ridiculed for it by being called "Little Christs." Today, many have chosen the title "Christ follower" instead of Christian, but I am not sure Christ follower is enough. There were many who followed Christ, but it was only those who allowed themselves to be fully transformed and overtaken by Christ himself that were considered a part of His Kingdom.

Those who accepted this total abandonment of self found themselves in ways never imagined. Strength where weakness once resided. Dignity in humiliation. Love in the midst of hate, and hope in despair. This is what Jesus meant when he said that we must die to ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow him. To follow him is to abandon ourselves to Him. Everything we think we are is gone.

"If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Behold, the old has gone, ALL THINGS have been made new." (2 Corinthians 5:17)

If your commitment to Christ is merely one part of your life, then you are not radically attached to Jesus and cannot be described as a "little Christ." Jesus must be your life.

Jesus is your life.

Dependent Choices

"So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise." John 5:19

In these verses Jesus tells us something remarkable: He did not make decisions for himself independently. He did only what the Father told him to do.

Again in John 12:49-50 Jesus said "For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”

Because Jesus was fully God and fully Man, we can say that Jesus is the only pure human to ever live. What I mean by this is that Jesus knew better than anyone what it meant to be a man, or to be human at every level. And what was it that made him different? He did not attempt to exist for his own benefit. He did not live an independent life and He certainly didn't come to earth to live His "Best Life Now." He came doing and saying only what the Father told him to do and to say. He was completely and utterly dependent upon the Father for everything in his life.

This is why Jesus could truthfully and faithfully quote Deuteronomy 8:3 when he was being tempted by Satan in the wilderness when he said "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." Jesus actually defined his life purely by what God the Father told him to do and to say, he made no decision for himself.

This is what it means to be completely human.

Completely dependent in every way upon God.

You see, man was never meant to make moral decisions for himself. This is why God forbade him from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Man was intended to be completely dependent upon God in this area of his life so that he would never even know that there was a difference between good and evil and that he could choose between them. His very existence was to be so linked to God that where he saw God he saw good things and where God was not, he did not want to be. God was his life.

We know how the story turned out. Adam chose for himself. To choose for yourself means you are rebelling against God because it assumes that we know better than God himself when God is the choice. It means we think we have found some source of life other than God, and then we die.

This isn't some stupid set of rules. It is about being connected to our life giving and life sustaining God. To make an independent choice is to reject God from the outset which will then affect everything following it.

Jesus would have none of this. He refused to choose when to eat even though he was desperately hungry. He refused to choose for himself even though people literally hated him to his core. He refused to choose for himself even though he knew the cross was waiting for him. He remained dependent upon the Father in every way for every thing.

Today, we have twisted this into an unrecognizable tragedy. We teach men and women that they only have value if they are independent, self-made, individuals. Jesus tells us to love one another and obey just as he obeyed. We are not called to independence. We are called to be completely dependent upon God for everything in every way.

The mark of true humanity is that we glorify God. It is our purpose. Romans 3:23 - all have sinned and fallen short of the GLORY OF GOD. Our purpose in life is Glorify Him. How can we do that if we are making decisions and living independently of Him?

Following Christ isn't about deciding to follow his "will for your life." It is seeing him as your life. It isn't about choice A or B and God is behind A and Satan is behind B. It is about giving up your perceived right to a choice and letting God choose for you. It is only in this that you become truly human and rise Above Reality.

The Incarnation

Lets imagine for a moment that we have never heard of Christmas.  We've never seen Linus explain the Christmas story to Charlie Brown. We've never opened a gift or talked to Santa. For the moment, pretend that December 25 is just another day on the calendar.

Now that you have, for the moment, let go of everything you think about Christmas consider these passages of scripture.

Isaiah 7:14 - "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."

God Himself will show mankind a sign that he is present. A Virgin will give birth to a son and he will be called "God with Us."

In case you have become jaded and lost your grip on the fantastic, this claim is absolutely amazing. The Prophet Isaiah is saying that God himself is going to break the laws of nature, step out of Heaven and come to us as a child by birth. Do not lose sight of how amazing and far-fetched this claim is. It has never, NEVER happened in the history of mankind before this and will NEVER happen again. This is why God points us to it in such a direct way. What better proof could there be that God, the creator of the natural and supernatural was involved than for the impossible to happen one time.

Now consider these verses in Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:  “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. (ESV)

Here, a 1st century writer noticed that something amazing was taking place in his day and connected the dots to a prophesy made centuries earlier. (Again, pretend you haven't heard all of this.) He writes about one man's peculiar birth and makes the claim that he was indeed born from a virgin mother and even feels the need to explain that the man who was to be her husband found the story of a miraculous "spiritual" pregnancy was just too fantastic to believe until God himself spoke to him in a dream. 

Now, you read these two accounts and decide to do some research and you find that yes, there was a man named Jesus who lived in the first century and that yes, his birth did in fact match not only the Isaiah prophesy, but many, many more. You start to realize that something amazing, mind-blowing, and wonderful had occurred. God had come to visit earth exactly the way he said he would. 

 Matthew and Luke give you the historical versions in their respective Gospel accounts. But John gives us the supernatural account. Read what he says in John 1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (Verses 1-5)



The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (Verses 9-14)

As you read these verses you realize that God visited His creation for a purpose. He brought something with Him: The Right to become Children of God. His visit wasn't just to show he could do it, but that he came for those who are trapped in darkness. Some received Him. Some rejected Him. 

For those who received Him, this would be the greatest story ever told. It would be the centerpoint of all of History. It would define entire groups of people and separate Humanity into two groups: those who receive Him and those who reject Him. 

For those who reject Him, the story may be too fantastic. How could a virgin give birth to a child? Why would God come to earth? How could people not recognize him? 

Christmas, the birth of Jesus, becomes the starting point for what will be an eternal separation of people. Some will believe and become Children of God. Some will reject Him and miss the greatest gift ever given. 

This, my friends, would be all the information you needed to celebrate the greatest and most wonderful gift that has ever been given to mankind: God Himself.

And it is still all that you need to celebrate Christmas. Let us join together in singing one of the great Christmas hymns:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

God came to Earth, born of a virgin to give the gift of life to all who believe in Him. Merry Christmas indeed! For this is Above Reality.