Dynamics of Spiritual Life
DYNAMICS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE:
An Evangelical Theology of Renewal
By
Richard F. Lovelace
The goal toward which many Christians in both the Catholic and Protestant communions are striving today is ecclesia reformata simper reformanda, a reformed church always reforming. The Puritans and Pietists rediscovered a truth which is clear in the Augustinian tradition: the pre-condition of perpetual reformation is the spiritual revitalization of the church. (p. 13)
If our hearts and minds are not properly transformed, we are like musicians playing unturned instruments, or engineers working with broken and ill-programmed computers. (p. 16)
Some popular and fruitful Protestant models of spirituality have made little effort to include bridges between interior spiritual development and responsible engagement with society and culture. (I am thinking here of some components in the Keswick stream and Watchman Nee.) (p. 17)
Individual and corporate spiritual vitality are coinherent; it is impossible to grow to full stature as an individual while separated from smaller and larger groups in the church, nor can the body grow without the renewing of its members. (p. 19)
True spirituality is not a superhuman religiosity; it is simply true humanity released from bondage to sin and renewed by the Holy Spirit. (p. 19)
Most church historians, however, have preferred to speak only of two major evangelical awakenings after the Reformation. The first of these is usually designated the “Great Awakening” in its American phase, and the “Evangelical Revival” in the English context, while the remarkable revival of continental Pietism under Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf during the same period is often neglected except for its effect on John Wesley.(p. 35)
As the Holy Spirit opened the eyes of their hearts and illuminated theological concepts, the opaque orthodoxy of the laity suddenly became a transparent medium for vision through which they saw the glory of God. The gravity of covetousness which had drawn their hearts to earthly concerns was reversed, and merchants began to neglect their business to talk about God and their souls. The Word of God suddenly had free course in congregational worship since the laity were now in touch with the regions described in the minister’s sermons. Hymns were now a delight rather than a habit and a duty. The lay people’s passivity in witness gave way to a new concern for others. (p. 38)
Rather it is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit which restores the people of God to normal spiritual life after a period of corporate declension. Periods of spiritual decline occur in history because the gravity of indwelling sin keeps pulling believers first into formal religion and then into open apostasy.(p. 40)
The devil, who is losing ground as the revival progresses, fights back in a number of ways. His main strategies are those of accusation and infiltration. (p. 41)
High emotional experiences, effusive religious talk, and even praising God and experiencing love for God and man can be self-centered and self-motivated. In contrast to this, experiences of renewal which are genuinely from the Holy Spirit are God-centered in character, based on worship, an appreciation of God’s worth and grandeur divorced from self-interest. Such experiences create humility in the convert rather than pride and issue in the creation of a new spirit of meekness, gentleness, forgiveness, and mercy. (p. 42)
Protestant foreign missions, which had been pioneered by Puritans and Pietists in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, flowered extraordinarily in the ministry of Herrnhut, and Edwards’s vision of the prevailing of the church among the nations prepared the foundation for nineteenth-century missionary expansion. (p. 45)
Meanwhile a different kind of secularism was infecting the laity. While guarding themselves against “worldliness” in the form of external taboos, they had gradually moved into the kind of worldliness which Edwards had attacked: a covetous immersion in affluence. The dynamic of prayerful concern for God’s kingdom which had characterized the earlier evangelicals was replaced by religious forms and legalistic moral-feathering of their own nests rather than for the enjoyment of God and the advancement of his glory. (p 50)
But perhaps the root cause of the decay of evangelicalism in America was the replacement of the old comprehensive concept of revival with the post-Finneyan machinery of revivalism. (p. 51)
Much also depends on the openness to repentance within the institutional church, for no leadership can revive that which is not called forth and supported by its own inquiring prayer. (p. 59)
This is not to say, however, that the ultimate causative factor in the cycles of revival is spontaneous human initiative. Left to itself, sinful human nature would run downward forever, even among the elect of god, because of the disease of indwelling sin. (p. 67)
We have seen that most of the major awakenings have involved among their central catalysts a balanced proclamation of justification by faith and the necessity of progressive sanctification. (p. 74)
Believers are therefore covered by the perfect righteousness of Christ reckoned to them in justification; strengthened by the power of Christ’s life in sanctification; given immediate access to the mind and heart of Christ by the indwelling of the Spirit; and equipped with the authority of Christ in resisting, exposing and expelling the forces of darkness. (p. 77)
These four benefits of redemption – justification, sanctification, the indwelling of the Spirit and authority in spiritual conflict – are normally encompassed in theological treatments of the atonement, and they might be called primary elements in the dynamic of spiritual life. (p. 77)
Acceptance of Christ and appropriation of every element in redemption is conditional on awareness of God’s holiness and conviction of the depth of our sin. (p. 81)
Many American congregations were in effect paying their ministers to protect them from the real God. (p. 84)
The apprehension of God’s presence is the ultimate core of genuine Christian experience, and the touchstone of its authenticity is the believer’s vision of the character of God. Edwards felt that every experience of God could be counterfeited except those which involved an insight into his holiness. (p. 85)
Although most human beings give the appearance at times of being confused seekers for truth with a naïve respect for God, says Edwards, the reality is that unless they are moved by the Spirit they have a natural distaste for the real God, an uncontrollable desire to break his laws and a constant tendency to sit in judgment on him when they notice him at all. (p. 86)
One of the consequences of this remarkable shift is that in the twentieth century pastors have often been reduced to the status of legalistic moralists, while the deeper aspects of the cure of souls are generally relegated to psycho-therapy, even among Evangelical Christians. (p. 88)
In its biblical definition, sin cannot be limited to isolated instances or patterns of wrongdoing; it is something much more akin to the psychological term complex: an organic network of compulsive attitudes, beliefs, and behavior deeply rooted in our alienation from God. (p. 88)
Sinless behavior requires perfect control and direction by the Holy Spirit, and this implies an enlightening and enlivening work of the Spirit which is never complete in this existence, for none of us walks completely in the light. (p. 91)
It is too much to say that the church’s life is utterly absent or destroyed where the substitutionary penal view of the atonement is not taught. (p. 97)
In reality, however, they are quite distinct: justification is the perfect righteousness of Christ reckoned to us, covering the remaining imperfections in our lives like a robe of stainless holiness; sanctification is the process of removing those imperfections as we are enabled more and more to put off the bondages of sin and put on new life in Christ. (p. 98)
The fully enlightened conscience cannot be pacified by any amount of grace inherent in our lives, since that grace always falls short of the perfection demanded by God’s law for our justification [Gal. 3: 10; Jas. 2: 10].Such a conscience is forced to draw back into the relative darkness of self-deception. Either it manufactures a fictitious righteousness in heroic works of ascetic piety, or it redefines sin in shallow terms so that it can lose the consciousness of its presence. (p. 99)
These three aberrations form the biblical teaching on justification – cheap grace, legalism, and moralism – still dominate the church today. (p. 100)
On several occasions the New Testament makes clear that cheap grace, the attempt to be justified through faith n Christ without commitment to sanctification, is illegitimate and impossible. (p. 102)
An unrepentant faith is a theoretical belief which originates outside the sphere of the Spirit’s illumination in a heart which is still in darkness concerning its own need and the grace and grandeur of God. (p. 103)
Our task as evangelists is therefore that of midwives, and not that of parents. (p. 108)
The full development of metanoia in the process of sanctification involves the breaking up of every area of conformity to the world’s patterns of corporate flesh and he increasing transformation of our lives by the Holy Spirit’s renewing work in our minds (Rom.12:2). (p. 109)
A church with a weak understanding of sin will thus inevitably be a church in which the flesh is alive and spiritual vitality is dampened. (p. 111)
Faith in Christ cures unbelief, anxiety and insecurity, and in so doing it cuts the roots of envy, jealousy and a host of related egocentric fleshly patterns. (p. 115)
Much of our growth in grace is quietly effected by events and conditions God brings into our lives to perfect his work in us. (p. 117)
The principal work of the Spirit in applying redemption lies in making us holy, and being filled with the Spirit simply means having all our faculties under his control rather than under the control of sin. (p. 125)
The problem with parish Christianity during its long existence is not that it has failed to be organized strategically, but that it has seldom risen above conformity to the world in its goals, methods, and achievements. (p. 148)
One cannot help but wonder what the result would be if this mass of lay people could be spiritually released from their servitude in the American success system and reoriented to channel their major energies toward building the kingdom of God. (p. 151)
In much of the church’s life in the twentieth century, however, both in Evangelical and non-Evangelical circles, the place of prayer has become limited and almost vestigial. …. Critically important committee meetings are begun and ended with formulary prayers, which are ritual obligations and not genuine expressions of dependence – when problems and arguments ensure, they are seldom resolved by further prayer but are wrangled out on the battlefield of human discourse. (p. 153)
The Lord’s Prayer is instructive. It is no accident that it begins first with worship of God himself, moves on to involve the doing of his will on earth and the coming of his kingdom, and only then turns to the immediate personal concerns of supply, forgiveness, and spiritual deliverance. (p. 159)
The latter passage makes it quite clear that full spiritual vitality cannot be present in the church until its macrocommunities and microcommunities consist of fully developed networks of Christians who are exercising their gifts and contributing to one another, so that “the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.” (Eph.4: 16). (p. 167)
The spiritual gifts of the laity have atrophied, while the responsibilities of ministers and administrators have hypertrophied. (p. 171)
Evidently the process of theological integration is short-circuited and the vitality of the Holy Spirit’s working in the mind of the church diminished either when the words of men are received as if they were the Word of God without biblical testing or when the Word of God is received as if it were only the words of men. (p. 177)
Some Evangelicals have been genuinely obscurantist, addicted to experience and dismissing doctrine and any informed use of the mind as irrelevant to spiritual maturity. In our quest for the fullness of the Spirit, we have sometimes forgotten that a Spirit-filled intelligence is one of the powerful weapons for pulling down satanic strongholds. On the other hand, we have often assumed that the theological task was simply a matter of digging out biblical building blocks and building up logically from them by the exercise of our own inherent brain power, forgetting that only the Holy Spirit can effectively guide us in wielding the sword of the Spirit. (p. 183)
But now some sectors of the church are in danger of being destroyed by conformity to the movement of gay liberation, as they consider accepting the ordination of homosexuals and the introduction of an antinomian sexual lifestyle based on man-centered situation ethics. (p. 197)
And the large continent of still-enculturated Fundamentalists in America and the great mass of the Middle-American laity are not going to be wakened from their deathly sleep in the cradle of a training code except by the preaching of the cross in its fullest dimensions. (p. 200)
It becomes tacitly understood that the laity will give pastors places of special honor in the exercise of their gifts, if the pastors will agree to leave their congregations’ pre-Christian lifestyles undisturbed and do not call for the mobilization of lay gifts for the work of the kingdom. (p. 207)
Unless new converts are persuaded to stop leaning on their culture and the law and to lean fully on Jesus Christ in every phase of their lifestyle, their spiritual lives and the mission of the church will inevitably be short-circuited by the process of enculturation. (p. 208)
So we must first make real to them the grace of God in accepting them daily, not because of their spirituality or their achievements in Christian service, but because God has accounted to them the perfect righteousness of Christ. …. We all automatically gravitate toward the assumption that we are justified by our level of sanctification, and when this posture is adopted it inevitably focuses our attention not on Christ but on the adequacy of our own obedience. (p. 211)
Where justification is preached without an equal stress on sanctification, the good news is always perceived as “too good to be true.” (p. 213)
Moralism, whether it takes the form of denunciation or pep talks, can ultimately only create awareness of sin and guilt or manufactured virtues built on will power. (p. 214)
The model of the counselor as an omnipotent spiritual director whose insights and commands virtually become the voice of God for the counselee must be avoided at all costs. If counseling is not theonomous, grounded in the counselee’s perception of the Word and Spirit of God, it does not bring spiritual renewal but a condition of bondage and dependence on other human beings. (p. 223)
There seemed to be a sanctification gap among Evangelicals, a peculiar conspiracy somehow to mislay the Protestant tradition of spiritual growth and to concentrate instead on frantic witnessing activity, sermons on John 3: 16 and theological arguments over eschatological subtleties. (p. 232)
The etymology of the word enthusiasm points to a delusive confidence in certain believers that they “have” or contain God’s Spirit to such an extent that their thoughts and actions are inspired and free from the sin and error of ordinary believers. (p. 240)
Pride drastically hinders revival because it padlocks the spirit, shutting the soul off in its own darkness and blocking it from dealing not only with pride itself (for “those that are spiritually proud, have a high conceit of these two things, viz. their light, and their humility”) but with every other area of the flesh. (p. 245)
Edwards notes further: Spiritual pride commonly occasions a certain stiffness and inflexibility in persons, in their own judgment and their own way; whereas the eminently humble person, though he be inflexible in his duty, and in those things wherein God’s honour is concerned … yet in other things he is of a pliable disposition… ready to pay deference to others’ opinions, loves to comply with their inclinations, and has a heart that is tender and flexible, like a little child. … Edwards goes on to say of the humble person: And though he will not be a companion with one that is visibly Christ’s enemy … yet he does not love the appearance of an open separation from visible Christians … and will as much as possible shun all appearances of a superiority, or distinguishing himself as better than others. (p. 247)
Later evangelicalism lost his vision of the heart and disintegrated the unity of the faculties to form three different false pieties: one based on emotional tastes divorced from works and theological depth, another based on will power and works, and a third consisting of notional orthodoxy. (p. 250)
It is hard to generalize about a whole nation as large and complex as our own, but it might not be far wrong to say that the characteristic flesh of America is compounded of covetousness, gluttony, egocentric libertarianism and pride, all of which have been selectively bred into our culture because of the types of sinful people we have attracted and the behavior which our political and economic system has stressed and rewarded. (p. 253)
To relinquish the guiding and superintending function of the intellect in our experience seems pious at first, but in the end this course dehumanizes us by turning us into either dependent robots waiting to be programmed by the Spirit’s guidance or whimsical enthusiasts blown aobut by our hunches and emotions. (p. 265)
We are not likely to arrive at a mean between deadness and fanaticism unless we give to the Holy Spirit exactly that place which the Scripture gives him as the architect of the kingdom of God. (p. 269)
The form of orthodoxy against which Edwards contended divided the human personality into three independent compartments – mind, will and emotions – and assumed that these could be rectified separately in redemption. The mind could be filled with correct information; the will could be directed toward good works; and – somewhat as an afterthought – “devotion” could be cultivated as an emotional frosting on the cake, if one cared for that sort of thing. (p. 277)
But it would appear that the New Testament strategy for combating error and delinquency within the church relies much more on vigorous and continued use of the weapons of truth thatn on either legal coercion or separation (2 Cor. 10: 3-5). (p. 305)
The theses I intend to prove are these: that authentic spiritual renewal inevitably results in social and cultural transformation; that no deep and lasting social change can be effected by Christians without a general spiritual awakening of the church; and that Evangelicals must stress more than evangelism and church growth if they are to duplicate the social triumphs of earlier period in their own tradition. (p. 358)
Mather developed a revised Calvinist strategy for the reformation of society which would abandon the Puritan theocratic effort to force Christian ideals on the culture from the top down and would seek instead to transform society by the leaven of the gospel through the noncoercive witness of individuals and groups. (p. 363)
The shape of the warfare to establish the kingdom of God is such a subtle and invisible thing, and subject to such change from day to day, that it can only be discerned by continuous identification with the mind of Christ in prayer. (p. 393)