The Cost of Spiritual Transformation
We like to talk about salvation being “free.” If we are thinking about the grace of God as a purely monetary transaction, that’s true. You do not have to give God a single dollar for the grace he offers you through Jesus. But money is not involved and receiving God’s grace in our hearts comes at a great cost to our old ways of living. When Jesus is calling disciples, he does not walk around with a sign saying: “Free salvation!” “Get it here!” “Zero Denarii!” He says: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:24). He says: “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel” (Mk. 1:15). Jesus is clear about what following him will cost. All these actions He tells us to do entail giving up our old ways of living and surrendering our whole selves to the Lord. Because of this, we must turn aside from the sinful habits still cherished in our hearts and allow the Holy Spirit to kill them once and for all.
There is great spiritual danger when we are slow to kill sin. The author of Hebrews mentions this in a warning to his readers: “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion” (Heb. 3:7-13). This is why real repentance is not casual. It’s not easy. It’s an ultimatum from God that the sin we tolerate in our lives needs to be dealt with. The longer we tarry in responding to God’s call, the more difficult dealing with that sin will be.
Thinking about this, I was reminded of a book by C.S. Lewis titled The Great Divorce. The book is a commentary on the growing divide between morality and its influence in the western social order. But it’s not explicitly about that. It’s about the eternal divorce between heaven and hell and how radically different the way people live in heaven will be from the way people live in hell. He tries to give us an imaginary glimpse of this chasm by narrating the stories of different people from hell who take bus trips up to the outskirts of heaven.
One such trip to heaven involves a ghost (people from hell are called ghosts in the book because their substance is very weak) who has a little pet lizard on his shoulder. And the pet lizard is symbolic of a sin in his life he gives special treatment to. When he arrives, he is different from many other ghosts that visit. You see, most ghosts don’t want to stay in heaven because the substance of the environment and inhabitants of heaven are so real. To a ghost, the blades of grass in heaven feel like iron blades. The sun's rays burn them. The moving river feels like an avalanche of ice. Even though heaven is unwelcoming to him, this ghost wants to stay. Yes, the rocks were too hard; the grass too sharp; the mountains too far away. But they didn’t have rocks, rivers and mountains in Hell. Then all of a sudden, an angelic spirit of the Lord beaming with the glorious light and fire of the Holy Spirit comes to speak with him. He offers the ghost the chance to stay in heaven on the condition that the ghost allows the Holy Spirit to kill the lizard on his shoulder. ‘May I kill it?!’ the Spirit says. ‘I need your will to let me kill it.’ The ghost responds with a bunch of excuses: ‘If I stay, I’ll deal with it gradually.’ ‘I’ll keep it quiet up here.’ ‘I’m not well enough to take care of it now.’ After listing every possible excuse, the Spirit says again, ‘Do I have your permission to kill it?’ After some time passes, in a great and agonizing cry, the ghost allows the Holy Spirit to kill the lizard.
When he finally gives in to the Holy Spirit, something bizarre happens. It looks like the ghost is dead. He and the executed lizard are lying on the ground in a pool of blood. But all of a sudden, the body of the ghost begins to radiate with the same glory and holiness of the Spirit. The grass was softer on his feat. The color of the sky filled itself in now. The dead lizard on the ground next to him transforms into a great white stallion and comes to him. The ghost who transforms into a spirit gets up on the stallion and rides it all the way up to the mountain of Zion where the grandeur of the Lord’s glory radiated. The transformation happens when the ghost finally gives up the sin he was holding onto.
Maybe you’re reading this saying: “You're talking about rejecting sin in our lives but I don’t really struggle with many sins. By and large, I am pretty good at refusing most of those detestable things. I don’t drink or do drugs excessively; I don’t sleep around; I am respectful of my parents and family.” As long as we are in these bodies of flesh in this broken world, you will always be wrestling with sin. We all have a lizard on our shoulder. The Lord commands you to kill it. True spiritual transformation will happen in your life when you allow the Holy Spirit to help you kill the pet sins you cover up. It does not happen by just continuing to not do things you already were not doing. In fact, if we focus our energy killing sin we do not struggle with, it may be a way the true lizard (the devil) is distracting us from finally dealing with ones that really handicap our spiritual lives. It will happen when you fight the sins you DO wrestle with. This ghost story is a challenge to uncover hidden sin before the Lord and the community of faith without delay.
Maybe you are reading this post and are in a similar situation to this man. There is a sin you are struggling with right now. It has an unsettling hold on your life. When you come to church, you don’t let it show or talk about it. You keep it quiet and hidden. Whenever it rears its ugly head, you tell yourself. ‘It’s alright. I’ve got it under control’ or ‘I will just kill it tomorrow. It’s not a problem for me today.’ But my brothers and sisters, listen to me today. True spiritual transformation happens in our lives when we surrender our whole lives to the Lord; when we realize we are not able to control our sins and we embrace the call of the Holy Spirit to kill them. Do not resist the call of the Holy Spirit to rule over every part of you. Do not wait any longer. As the scripture says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
