A few months ago my uncle had a knee replacement. When I saw him last week, I was shocked to see the difference in his gait. Before he walked a little lopsided, shifting weight off of his bad knee to his good knee. With the surgery, proper care, therapy, and working towards his recovery, he looks like he’s never had a problem.
As I've thought about the difference his knee replacement made, I was reminded of when we accept Jesus into our lives.
We may not receive a total knee replacement or a physical change from the start; however, we do receive a new heart. Ezekiel 36:26 reads, “I [The Lord] will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” When we submit to God, acknowledging our inability to live a righteous and worthy life on our own, we allow Him to work in our lives. When we accept Jesus as the only One who can truly save us from ourselves and our sinful nature, we can then connect with Our Father in Heaven. In that transformation, God begins to soften our hearts of stone. Paul described this by writing, “...anyone in Christ is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). However, we're human, so this isn’t an immediate shift; it’s more of a subtle change.
There are three phases of a Christian’s walk:
Justification (Accepting Jesus into our lives)
Sanctification (God shaping us to be more like Jesus)
Glorification (The completion of our salvation).
When we accept Jesus, the replacement has been done for us: Christ died. Peter painted this into a beautiful picture when we wrote:
“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all,
the righteous for the unrighteous,
that He might bring you to God,
after being put to death in the fleshly realm
but made alive in the spiritual realm” (1 Peter 3:18).
After that, it’s up to us to dive in and participate in the sanctification process with God. My uncle didn’t just have a surgery and walk the next day. He took time to rest from his normal lifestyle to let the process work. He took action. He did therapies and exercises to help promote the full restoration of his knee. In the same way, we too must participate in the restoration of our hearts. We aren’t able to just accept Christ and be changed immediately. We must work at the changes in our lives. James 1:4 likens some of this process to endurance. It reads “...endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing." In order to truly walk with Christ, we must be able to have endurance and endurance comes from practice and time.
In the same, just because we can’t immediately see the changes of a person in Christ, doesn’t mean they aren’t saved. God even told Samuel, “...Do not look at his [or her] appearance or his stature... Man does not see what the Lord sees, for man sees what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
What we know of a person and their past or present, tells us nothing of their future when Christ is involved. Additionally, God doesn't start something He doesn't finish. Paul believed this with confidence. He wrote, “I am sure of this, that He [God] who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
Even though we may look at a person or maybe even ourselves and see past mistakes or present circumstances, we can’t see the true transformation that’s taking place inside of the heart. As a Christian and a human, it’s not our mission or place to judge a person’s heart. However, it is our mission to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind… [and] to love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).
My friends, Jesus came in love, walked in love, lived in love, and died in love. We, too, should adopt this mentality. We will never judge someone into believing that God is for them. However, we can love them as Jesus does and pray that through our love God would do a work in them. If you’re walking all lopsided, spiritually, there’s still time and room for you to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. He’s waiting. Being justified is just the first step in a long journey of love and transformation. It's not easy, but it is so totally worth it. I’d be happy to talk more about this. If you have questions, please reach out. I'm praying for a heart transformation for all of us.
As we end this Good Friday, remembering the sacrifice that took our place on the cross, let’s focus on the love that has been poured out into our lives. In turn, let us offer that gift to those in our lives, not only this weekend but throughout our entire life. Happy Easter, my friends! He is risen!