Ripping Away the Old Man

Do you want God’s refining? Or would you rather just clean yourself up?

In Malachi 3, God speaks of the “messenger of the covenant”, the coming Messiah:

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. (Malachi 3:2-3)

Fire burns. It hurts. It may seem to be destroying. But the fire wielded by God for His purposes in His people cleanses and transforms, so that they might become what He intends them to be: those who offer themselves back to Him, those who delight in Him, those who display His glory to all of creation.

C.S. Lewis gives a marvelous picture of this refining process in the third book of the Narnian Chronicles, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The central character is “a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” He is transported magically to the land of Narnia together with his cousins, Lucy and Edmund. There they join Prince Caspian on a journey by ship to the End of the World.

After a storm leaves the ship battered and broken, the travelers drop anchor near a mountainous island. To avoid having to work, Eustace escapes inland, climbing over a ridge. He gets lost in the fog, however, and then, as the fog turns to rain, has to take refuge in a cave.  There he finds jewels and treasure of untold value – the hoard of a deceased dragon. He puts a particularly precious bracelet on his arm, and goes to sleep, imagining all the power he will have with this wealth. When he awakes, however, something has happened: “Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”

It takes Aslan, the Great Lion, the Son of the Emperor over the Sea, to change him back into a boy. Here is how Eustace tells the story to Edmund:

I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me. . . . It came nearer and nearer.  I was terribly afraid of it.  You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough.  But it wasn’t that kind of fear.  I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it – if you can understand. Well, it came closer up to me and looked straight into my eyes.  And I shut my eyes tight.  But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it. . . .
”At last we came to the top of a mountain. . . . There was a garden – trees and fruit and everything.  In the middle of it there was a well.

I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells – like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it.  The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg [where the bracelet was now squeezing his transformed arm].  But the lion told me I must undress first. . . .

I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. . . . So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place.  And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana.  In a minute or two I just stepped out of it.  I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty.  It was a most lovely feeling.  So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

”But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before.  Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too.  So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

Well, exactly the same thing happened again.  And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off?  For I was longing to bathe my leg.  So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it.  But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

”Then the lion said. . . You will have to let me undress you.  I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now.  So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

”The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.  And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt.  The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. . . .

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.  Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on- and threw me into the water.  It smarted like anything but only for a moment.  After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm.  And then I saw why.  I’d turn into a boy again.” . . .

Neither [Edmund nor Eustace] said anything for a while. The last bright star had vanished and though they could not see the sunrise because of the mountains on their right they knew it was going on because the sky above them and the bay before them turned the colour of roses.

[C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” (Collier Books, 1952), 88-92.]

This is not the end of Eustace’s problems. He still may have dragonish thoughts at times. He may still appear hard and knobbly. There will be more refining. But the decisive moment has come. He is no longer a dragon. The skin is gone. Aslan has transformed him.

This is what Paul commands in Ephesians:

Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God – truly righteous and holy. (Ephesians 4:21-24 NLT)

Where are you in this process? Have you been trying to clean yourself, peeling off layers of ugly behavior, correcting faults, disciplining yourself – but not dealing with the fundamental issue of a wayward heart? Do you fundamentally love the world rather than God? Have Christ’s claws never ripped deep into you, making that fundamental change? Then turn to Him. Repent. And be made new.

Or has the fundamental change taken place in your life – you are no longer a dragon! – but lately have you been breathing fire and acting dragonish once again? This is the situation Paul addresses in Ephesians 4. Put off that old man! Put on the new man! Become what you are! This, too, is a refining; this, too, is painful; this, too, requires some ripping away by our Lord and by His Spirit.

So don’t settle for some version of a self-help gospel. God created you to display what He is like, as a purified priest. Be purified – whatever the cost.

[This is a lightly edited version of a devotion first written ten years ago while preaching through Malachi. You can listen to the sermon that prompted this devotion here.]

Billy Graham and Celebrity Christianity

“No one ever spoke the Gospel like Billy Graham!”

So said a guest on WBT Wednesday, as the radio station devoted the entire day to remembrances of the Charlotte-born evangelist.

Praise God for the way He worked through Billy Graham. Praise God that many came to faith through his preaching. Praise God that he built an effective parachurch ministry that continues to spread the Gospel.

But: No one spoke the Gospel like Graham? Ever? How many preachers of the Gospel had that guest heard? How many Christians had he heard tell their story and Jesus’ story? Was Billy Graham better at speaking the Gospel than any of these others? Even if that were the case – how would the guest have known?

Now, let’s give the guest a pass – he exaggerated while rightly honoring a man whom God had used to influence his own life.

But this radio broadcast highlights a danger Christians face today, in the US and around the world: The danger of exalting a person, a speaker, a public figure, and thinking because of crowds or web page hits or books or overall prominence that this person is the One, that this person is the Person my friends and family members need to hear. If only they will listen to this celebrity, they will come to faith.

Churches exhibit the same mindset when they attempt to get to the “next level,” to achieve more prominence in their city or in their country, by hiring a well-known author, a celebrity in their theological circle, as their preacher.

We gravitate to celebrities because of several confusions: Confusing results with faithfulness; confusing prominence with the Holy Spirit’s power; and confusing public ministry with personal ministry.

We serve a sovereign God who orchestrates all that happens for the glory of His Name. He raises up kings and presidents, countries and corporations, pastors and preachers, and brings them down. He may use a weak man with few natural gifts to save thousands, while cutting off the life of a woman of deep faith and incredible potential in her teens. He can do anything with anyone: the One who can turn stones into bread – and even into children of Abraham! (Matthew 4:3) – can use anyone who speaks the Gospel to bring others to faith. Our responsibility is not to bring about results; our responsibility is to be faithful to Him – to live our lives to His glory, offering all we are as a sacrifice to Him, speaking the Gospel and living out the Gospel in our families, neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. He will bring about the results.

Furthermore, there is no link between prominence and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Every believer in Jesus is indwelt by the Holy Spirit; every believer has a ministry granted by the Holy Spirit; every believer remains in this world to be as Jesus is (1 John 4:17). Remember, the Apostle Paul prays that we all would know “the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe” – indeed, the same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead (Ephesians 1:19-20). That power is yours if you are in Christ – just as much as that power was in Billy Graham.

Finally, our celebrity focus downplays private ministry while exalting public ministry. Now, I praise God for preaching! Our Lord has helped me time and again through the public proclamation of His Word, and I hope that He has used my preaching in many of your lives to good effect. But the responsibility of pastors and teachers is to equip all of God’s people for the work of ministry, for the building up of the Body of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-12); the entire Body grows when each part works properly, enabling the entire Body to grow up in love (Ephesians 4:16). That proper working includes much more private ministry than public ministry. The private ministry is just as vital as the public.

So, yes, let us thank God for the life of Billy Graham.

And let us thank God for those pastors and teachers and parents and fellow believers whom God has put in our lives personally, who taught us and loved us and wept with us and counseled us and prayed for us.

And let us thank God for thousands of unknown pastors, teachers, missionaries, and church planters who go out to rough neighborhoods and to despised peoples and to villages with no witness to Jesus – and day after day preach and live out the Gospel.

And let us be faithful to the personal ministries God has given us, as we step out in the power of the Holy Spirit, as we speak the Gospel, as we comfort and counsel, as we offer ourselves to Him as a living, holy, well-pleasing sacrifice.

We are the Body of Christ. Every joint, every capillary is vitally important. May we delight to do His will – and may we thank Him for all the others who also do His will.