By Jonathan Leeman <\/p>\n
A proper doctrine of conversion will give you pastoral power.<\/p>\n
PERSONAL ILLUSTRATION<\/p>\n
Let me jump right in with an illustration. I once confessed a wrongful desire to a friend of mine, and I explained that, frustratingly, my theology knew it was wrong, but part of me was tempted to justify it because it felt \u201cwoven into the very fabric of my person\u201d and \u201cpart of the very wiring of my soul.\u201d Those were the words I used to explain how much the desire felt like me.<\/p>\n
My friend, sweetly, simply quoted Ephesians 4 to me: \u201cput off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires.\u201d And he emphasized \u201cyour old self\u201d like that. Yes, it\u2019s true that such desires may be woven or wired into my very person. You\u2019re old self is corrupt. What did you expect, Jonathan? Those desires, in one sense, are me.<\/p>\n
Ah, but there was good news just around the corner. My friend finished the passage: but \u201cbe renewed in the spirit of your minds\u2026and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.\u201d Wait a second, I have a new self, don\u2019t I? There is an old me, sure, but there is also a new me. And this new me is being created\u2026hold on, get this\u2026after the likeness of God.<\/p>\n
In short, my friend reminded me of my conversion with a few choice words from Scripture. And where my mood had been melancholic that day, fueled by the frustration of wanting something I couldn\u2019t have, his reminder restored my joy. It gave me hope.<\/p>\n
TWO PLACES OF PASTORAL POWER<\/p>\n
Do you see how there\u2019s pastoral power in a proper understanding of conversion? In the realities and promises of a new creation life?<\/p>\n
1.It gives you the ability to encourage and enliven your brothers and sisters in Christ who are gripped by sin. Maybe it\u2019s an addiction. Maybe it\u2019s a feeling of hatred toward another brother or sister in the church. Maybe it\u2019s an untraceable sense of despair. Whatever. In many such cases, the sin\u2013liar that it is\u2013pretends to be inevitable. It dons the mask of \u201creal\u201d or \u201cauthentic\u201d or \u201cjust how I feel\u201d or \u201cnatural\u201d or even \u201cjust.\u201d But a right doctrine of conversion exposes the lie in all such posturing. \u201cYes, your feelings might be natural, but no, you are bound by it, because Christianity is supernatural. You are free.\u201d<\/p>\n
People feel determined by their sin; the Christian doctrine of conversion helps Christians to know that they are not. Even when the fight is long, and every two steps forward seems to be followed by one step backward (or more!), the power of change comes from the recognition of what Christ has done in making a person new.<\/p>\n
2. It gives you the ability to assure Christians of their new and different kind of life. Christianity gives the life of the Son, in whose image we are being remade. It\u2019s a life of holiness, love, and unity with God\u2019s people. It\u2019s a life of suffering, but of knowing the hope and power of the resurrection amidst such suffering.<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s the amazing thing. Such assurances belong not only to the so-called imperatives of the New Testament: \u201cGo and be holy and united with each other.\u201d They belong to the indicatives: \u201cThis is what you are.\u201d There is a new self, and that new self is one with the saints and is holy like the Son.<\/p>\n
THE CULTURAL BACKDROP<\/p>\n
Now, there is a cultural backdrop to all of this that\u2019s worth recognizing. Our romanticized culture favors the real, the natural, the authentic. Self-discovery and self-expression are our greatest moral acts. And these attitudes have seeped into churches and refashioned our ideas about conversion, membership, and our new identities in Christ. We\u2019re all just seekers, pastors will say. We\u2019re all on our journey. That means you take one step, and then another, and then another.<\/p>\n
But what\u2019s missing from the logic of these popular pastoral metaphors is the idea of a decisive break with the past\u2013a rescuing from the domain of darkness; a death and resurrection. A journey of discovery is a vastly differently kind of thing than a burial and a resurrection, an old self and a new self.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, journeys do change us. We evolve through journeys. And, truth be told, spiritual growth can feel less like caterpillars and butterflies and more like an evolutionary progression chart. My point is not to say that such language has no points of spiritual connectivity. But we must not forget what the New Testament teaches about the power of the eschaton breaking into history now. New creation now. That\u2019s conversion.<\/p>\n
SITTING ACROSS FROM THE ALCOHOLIC<\/p>\n
So there you are, sitting across from the alcoholic, the victim of marital infidelity, the ornery deacon who is causing a church split, the young couple who cannot stand singing hymns. What is your task? It\u2019s reminding them that they are Christians.<\/p>\n
Perhaps you help them go back to their baptism, like Paul does in Romans 6. They\u2019ve been buried and raised\u2013wow! Do they really want to go on sinning, or look for freedom, or look for the power to forgive, or keep insisting on their own way, just like the world does? How can they? They\u2019ve died to sin, and been raised in newness of life with Christ.<\/p>\n
Your pastoral task, one way or another, is to find the words and ask the questions that enable the still-sinful saint to understand what it means to be\u2026now get this\u2026a born again Christian.<\/p>\n
Bottom line: preach, teach, sing, praise God in prayer, and counsel a proper doctrine of conversion. There\u2019s underestimated power there. The more your people understand it, the more pastoral power you will have to shepherd them. Not only that, they will possess such power for persuading and equipping one another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Jonathan Leeman A proper doctrine of conversion will give you pastoral power. PERSONAL ILLUSTRATION Let me jump right in with an illustration. I once confessed a wrongful desire to a friend of mine, and I explained that, frustratingly, my theology knew it was wrong, but part of me was tempted to justify it because…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}