I’ve been agonizing for a while about where I should begin with the discussion of what following Jesus in the every day means.  Please note that I used the words “in the every day.”  I love theology and think it’s an important discipline.  But discipline without application is delusion, so we’re not going to start there, as important as thinking is.  There are some attitudes which everyone who is serious about following Jesus must learn to practice before the discipline of careful thought about the God of the universe  or the Scriptures in which that God reveals Himself will make sense.

I have decided that there are several of these attitudes, and they will be called the First Things from here on out.  The first of these is what I’m going to call, for lack of a better term, “faking it.”  Please be aware that I am not talking about being inauthentic or some sort of hypocrisy here.  I am not talking about lying or cheating or misleading anyone.

Anyone who has been a Christian for any length of time will tell you that there is internal conflict that goes along with following Jesus.  We are told in the Scriptures that those who are in Christ are a new creation, and that the old things have gone away and the new things have come (2 Corinthians 5:14-17).  We are also told, by the same author, that we struggle against our “oldness”  (Romans 7:7-24).  We know that God is continuing to work in us so that we will be conformed to Christ’s likeness, and that this “oldness” will leave us.  This work of being conformed is ongoing and is a huge part of what following Jesus is about:  as you follow Him, you become like Him.  After we are given right standing with God, the next thing that happens is this process of making the old stuff new and redeeming our “oldness” (Romans 8:1-30).   The fancy theological word for this process is sanctification.  So, let’s recap:

1. You accept Jesus’s sacrifice for you.  By this you are pronounced righteous before God, not because of what you have done, but because of God’s gracious sacrifice for you.  Along with this, you receive God’s Spirit, who takes up residence inside you.
2. When you accept Jesus, you come with your old life.  At the moment you receive God, the Spirit will begin working to do away with the oldness, in favor of being like Jesus.  (Please note that your spiritual state of newness here does not necessarily match your physically old life.)
3. The process described in #2 is not instantaneous.  The length of time this process takes will extend from the time you receive Jesus until the time you give up your earthly body to meet Him face to face.  For most people, this means an extended period of time.

I hope you see the first and most obvious thing about every person on earth who is following Jesus:  no one is there yet.  Churches are not filled with holy people who always do the right thing.  They are filled with sinners saved by a costly grace that none of them (no matter how good their lives may look) could ever afford on their own merits.  Anyone who has ever spent time among “churchy” people will tell you: they are not as holy as they may wish to appear at first glance.  And really, this is what we should expect.  People who could do it on their own and gain eternal life and right standing with God wouldn’t belong in a church–you don’t see healthy people at the doctor, as Jesus says in one place (Luke 5:27-31)

I say all this to make a point.

There isn’t an honest soul in a church anywhere that really believes they can make it to God on their own.  People who do believe that either don’t know God or don’t know themselves.   But we are told to honor God with our bodies, and that is our dilemma.  We know that we aren’t able to live as we should, and yet, the command to honor God with our bodies is right there for all to see (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).  So how do we become people who make every effort to honor God with our daily lives, knowing full well we are going to fall?  It sounds like quite a hopeless business!  The first thing we must remember is that we’re not alone.  God’s Spirit lives in us and gives us everything we need to live holy lives (1 Corinthians 10:1-13).  But how does this work?  How do we do this?

In his work Mere Christianity (which you should try to read if you haven’t), C.S. Lewis has a chapter called “Let’s Pretend.”  After building a case for orthodox Christianity for several chapters, Lewis tries to answer the question about how we should live in light of it.  He gives two examples to start the chapter.  The first is of the story of Beauty and the Beast, where the ‘beauty’ kisses the ‘beast’ and the beast actually becomes a real human.  The second story is that of someone who wears a mask because they have a disfigured face.  After years of wearing the mask, the person takes off the mask only to discover their face has grown to fit the mask and now they are beautiful.  Lewis concludes that the Christian life is something like this:  we spend years playing pretend and in end, it ends up not being pretend anymore–by years of constantly striving to honor Christ, we actually become the people we are pretending to be.  He says…

…and now we begin to see what it is that the New Testament is always talking about.  It talks about Christians ‘being born again’; it talks about them ‘putting on Christ’; about Christ ‘being formed in us’; about our coming to ‘have the mind of Christ’.  Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and carry it out.  They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you.  It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self he has.  At first, only for moments, Then for longer periods.  Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God.

In light of these changes, Lewis suggests that two things begin to happen.  First, we become more aware of the places in ourselves which are not already like Christ, which is the first step towards changing them.  Step one is recognizing there is a problem!  The second thing we realize is the extent to which God is doing most of the heavy lifting in changing us.  Anyone who has ever attempted to change themselves in even a small way will tell you what a gargantuan feat it is.  Changing our sinful selves into “a new little Christ” is totally beyond us.  It would be folly to try.  No one, by sheer strength or duration of effort on their own part, will ever be conformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

But we know what Christ-likeness looks like from our own experience.  All of us (hopefully) have had the experience of witnessing a truly loving, selfless act.  (If you haven’t try this.) We know what those look like.  And so, we must begin somewhere.  Again, Lewis’ idea stands up pretty well:  we must try to think how loving, selfless, Christ-like people would live, and then do whatever such a person would do.  In the beginning, there would be a considerable gap between the deeds of the person and their true self, but if we believe Lewis, as we try to love people who others find difficult to love a strange things happens.  What used to be pretending is not pretending any longer.  God works in us and we become the thing we were pretending to be.

This works in a vast majority of settings.  Want more faith?  Wisdom?  Love?  Patience?  Think of what a person with those qualities would do, and then try to do whatever the person “with it” would do.  Want to work on your patience?  Get in the slow lane on the road on purpose and go whatever speed that lane is moving, and then stifle the impulse to become impatient.  No one builds muscle or knowledge by repeatedly practicing a bad habit.  It will be work.  It will be difficult.  It will be a test.  And sometimes, you will fail at it.  But again, that’s to be expected:  you’re not done being conformed yet.  In those moments, recognize that you’re in progress, try to  receive grace (from God and others), acknowledge your fault(s), ask for forgiveness, and move on.  In the event you have success and no one picks up on your charade, be humble and realize that your momentary success is a gift from God.  Own up to your “oldness” on the inside, and give God credit for his good work both on the outside and on the inside.

By God’s grace, this is one way to help be conformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ.  This attitude will benefit you if you can manage to celebrate God’s good work through you on the days you manage to succeed in the charade and also, just as importantly, receive God’s grace on the days where you slip up.