<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="65001"%> Inner Versus Outer Change

INNER VERSUS OUTER CHANGE

By Pastor William R. Cunningham
For September 10, 2006

Scripture Text

Matthew 23:27-28 (NKJV) -- {27} “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. {28} Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Introduction

Are you godly on the inside or outside? Is your godliness evident by your lifestyle or is your godliness seen only on Sundays or during religious gatherings. There are numerous people that are religious and yet do not know God.

Matthew 7:21 (NKJV) -- {21} “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

People become content to follow the religious practices handed down to them by their religious leaders and they never establish a personal and intimate relationship with God. People try to change by merely changing the outside. Here we establish a form of godliness and yet we don’t know God.

What does it take to live a godly life? What can we do so that we are moving towards the godliness that God requires of us? What can we do so that our lives are changed and we live like the new creations that Paul said we are (See 2 Corinthians 5:17)? How should we order all of the “religious” things that exist in our lives such as church attendance, giving, church functions, etc.?

We are going to discuss the act of being transformed on the inside versus being reformed on the outside. There is a difference between doing religious things and being righteous. There is a distinction between acting godly and being godly. Many stress the act, but we should surely strive to be. Let’s discuss these two forms of change in this sermon.

Why Change?

The first question you may have is why bother to change? If God has accepted you the way that you are then why not just continue to be that way and go on with your life?

God has accepted me the way I am—NOT!

Well first of all that is one of the greatest misconceptions in religion. If God accepts us the way that we are then there would be no need for Jesus Christ. God would just accept us in our sinful state. However, we are washed in the blood of Jesus Christ and cleansed from our sins and forgiven. We are not the way we were after being born again. God accepts us the way we are to receive salvation, but by no means does he accept us the way that we are to join with him.

Change is a natural product of being regenerated. We receive a new spirit and therefore we have a new disposition. We will become aware that certain things are not acceptable to God and that certain things are. We will begin to change to match the new spirit that we received from God or at least that is how it should be, namely from the inside out.

Why change? We change because that is the natural thing that happens when we are born again. If you change something in a car engine then that will affect something outside of the engine. If you change the fuel that is put in the automobile then you will notice the difference on the outside such as power or acceleration. Why did the performance change and the car act differently? It did so because you changed what was on the inside. Why should a person change after being born again? The person changes because he or she is born again!

Change is the result of being born again

James 2:18 (NKJV) -- {18} But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

The Mask of Cleanliness

The mistake that many people make is that they try to change from the inside out by using religion. People try to change their lives by incorporating a lot of religious practices. They make church attendance a priority. They ensure that they give a certain amount of money to the church over and above any other financial obligations. We try to work for our acceptance as if we can buy God’s approval. We try to do things so that we could consider ourselves true godly men and women.

The problem with this is that it just does not work. You know that things in your own life do not work that way. Making a change requires much effort and persistence until it becomes a new way that we operate. That is the key. If we want to change something about ourselves then we have to change how we operate and that means a lifestyle change.

However, that is not what many strive to do, but instead they attempt to create an illusion about themselves. We try to make ourselves look good as if God is impressed by how we look on the outside (the things we do). We spend too much time fixing up the outside when inside we are a total mess. I like what Jesus said to the Pharisees.

Cleaning the outside is easy, but cleaning the inside requires much more work and persistence. Another thing that makes cleaning the inside more difficult is that it requires that we abandon some of the things that we have grown to love (bad habits and ungodly ways). This goes directly against what the flesh would like for us to do.

We become deceived into believing that we can cover the undesirable things about ourselves by performing a plethora of religious duties or obligations (those things imposed on us by the church organization). In addition to this we forget something very important about cleaning ourselves.

We Can’t Clean Ourselves

Do you think for one moment that you have the fortitude to cleanse yourself spiritually? Do you think that you can perform a bunch of religious things and be accepted by God? How in the world could we possibly think that after being saved by faith that we can live by works? The bottom line is that we can do nothing without Jesus Christ. We are unable to change for the better without the power of God working for us and in us. To that power we must yield and obey.

The Will

The first thing that we need to do in order to effect real change in our lives is to realize that we cannot change ourselves. Sometimes we fight against our own will in our effort to change. Sometimes we know that we should change and want to change from a perspective of knowledge (I know I should), but we don’t want to change in our hearts (I know I should change, but I don’t really want to).

So what should you do when you don’t even have the will to make a particular change and yet you know you should? Here is where we have to seek God and allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives such that we would be changed. We have to depend on God to effect change in our lives, though this doesn’t mean that we merely continue in our old ways until one morning we wake up changed. There is always something that we need to do even if it is to continue to pray.

Sometimes we will fight against our own will, but it is very important that we continue fighting. There are many things that you lost the will to do, but for one reason or another you continued to go forward. This is also why fellowship is so important because it will help to reinforce the godly way and it will be a motivation for you to continue trying to do right. It’s similar to a person who trains with someone. You may not feel like going to a particular workout, but your partner’s persistence gets you up and out to the gym. The Holy Spirit in addition to other Christians will be with you during those times when you just don’t feel like trying to do right anymore.

The Alternative to True Change

However, a destructive alternative to seeking God for change is to change the morality that corresponds to the needed change or to change the methodology to realize the change. Let me explain.

Changed morality – Here we look to our own man-made morality instead of seeking to reach the morality that is of God. Instead of saying that promiscuity is wrong we would rather say that promiscuity is OK in such and such a condition and of course those conditions will align themselves with the conditions that we have accepted to excuse promiscuity. Therefore, we change morality to meet our own state instead of seeking and striving to get where God wants us to be. This will not lead us to godly living.
Change the methodology – Here we say that we should strive for God’s way, but we change what God’s way is in a matter of speaking and how to obtain it. We say that we can be accepted by God if we go to church every Sunday. We say that promiscuity, for example, is a sin as long as you don’t do such and such or that doing some religious act cancels out the promiscuity or other sin in question. Some will even go as far as to say that promiscuity or some other sin is not really sin at all.

It is better for a person to throw their hands in the air and say, “God I give up! I can’t stop doing this” than to come up with some methodology that condones their sin. This way the person that gives up could really only expressing frustration for the most part and is willing to try again. Even if he can’t find the will to succeed he knows that he can’t do it and has to depend on God for help.

We have to protect ourselves from believing the following.

That God accepts us the way we are. This will lead to condoning sin
That mere religious acts can change us (See Isaiah 64:6)
That we can change the rules in order to become acceptable

We should not abandon God’s righteous ways in an effort to continue doing whatever we want to do.

True Change

OK. How do we experience true change? True change can be realized if you work from the inside out. Working from the outside in will not effect change in your life. Instead that will only produce a mask or illusion of true change. In other words, we should depend on God to change us from our spirit outward to our godly-driven actions and not merely do things thinking that God would be impressed with our many activities.

Work

The first thing you need to do is work. Now I know what you might be thinking. Didn’t I say that you can’t work to effect true inner change? Yes I did. However, that is not what I mean by work in this context. Here I mean just to do the things that are in you to do. Begin to follow the guidance of the new spirit that you received when you were born again. Remember what James said? He said that he would show you his faith by his works (James 2:18). In other words, the faith that he has would be evident by the things that he did. However, the things that he did were because of the faith that he had. Do you see?

The Spirit of God compels us to love so why not begin to do that. Stop spending your time trying to put on a mask to cover up the fact that you don’t love and stop justifying the lack of love that you have for others. Instead, begin to love because it is already in you thanks to the Spirit of God. Do you see? Do what it takes for the Spirit of God in you to manifest himself through your lifestyle.

You already have within you the capacity to do all things, but we need to put that into practice so that those things would be realized.

Philippians 4:13 (NKJV) -- {13} I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

The Struggle With Change

Here is a problem though. Making these changes to reach the desired goals of godly living is not always easy. Consider what Paul said.

Romans 7:17-19 (NKJV) -- {17} But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. {18} For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. {19} For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.

The good that we want to do we find that we don’t do and the evil that we want to avoid we find that we do. That is the war that goes on inside of us. Our heart tells us one thing and our mind (because of the flesh) tells us another. This is why we are incapable of doing this by our own power. We need someone outside of us to guide us and empower us to do the right thing. We need God.

We struggle with moral issues all of the time. We struggle with the things about ourselves that we are trying to change. Think of something like changing what you eat. The doctor says that you should stay away from certain foods, but we continue to “sneak” and eat those foods. We know that we should change what we eat, but we find that we can’t seem to stay away from the very foods that are harming us. Why is that? Why can’t we just stop? We know in our heads the right thing to do, but it hasn’t gotten down within us in such a way that it is real.

If only our heart and mind would agree then we would find that making changes would be so much easier. Paul says to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (See Romans 12:2).

Conformity

I would say that the key to altering our life so that we are living according to God’s way is conformity. We must conform to God’s way in order to truly change. This means that we have to build a personal and intimate relationship with the Lord and that in itself would effect change in your life. You desire to please the Lord and you are more conscious of what he accepts and what he does not accept because of your relationship. You are driven to change your lifestyle bit by bit.

True change requires a personal relationship with God. True change requires a commitment to God’s way and not a religious formulation. True change requires that you live out the fruits of the Spirit that are already inside of you.

The bottom line is that we should strive to conform to what God has already placed in us. The Spirit of God in this sense is like a seed that begins to grow and produce in us the fruit of the Spirit. We don’t have to look to religious practices to gain true spiritual living. We only need to look to God who placed his Spirit in us in the first place and he will equip us to live his way.

Don’t think about how messed up you are. Just keep your eyes on the goal. Just keep striving to please the Lord and live a godly life. Bit by bit, day by day, and year by year you will progress and then one day as you stand before the Lord you will see that you are just like him. Be what God has already placed in you to be. Strive to conform your life to the Spirit that is in you and you will change. It may be a long road, but you would at least be on the path. Amen.