Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. | Romans 5:1–5
This Sunday, we looked at when Jesus proclaimed: I am the good shepherd. He is the one who calls His people home, protects them along the way, and gives security to lives filled with fear and worry. One of the great benefits of knowing the shepherd is the ability to lay down the many burdens that would otherwise overwhelm our lives. To have a shepherd takes away the need to lead ourselves, to fight every battle on our own, and to rely on our own righteousness as the measure of our value. To have a shepherd is to be able to let go and to rest. To be in the flock of the great shepherd means that we can do this confidently, knowing that the shepherd WILL always do what is best for us.
There is no question that Jesus will be a good shepherd, the question is: what kind of sheep are you? Are you one who continually tests how much you can get away with? Are you one who refuses to follow until the shepherd is forced to use His staff? Are you one who is unwilling to give up your own will to follow? The more you fight the leadership of the good shepherd, the more difficult it will be for you. He will get you where you need to go; the number of falls and bruises you have at the end is going to be directly related to your willingness to follow.
I don’t believe that following God means that everything will always go your way and that life will be easy. Far from it. What it will be is GOOD. You will be going in the right direction; you can be sure that He who has started this great work in you will bring it to completion. You can truly have peace, knowing that what is occurring is not some random set of consequences but part of the process of sanctification. Being made into the person you were created to be. As Romans 5 above reminds us, this hard work of bring changed is accompanied by hope, as God’s love now accompanies this process of change.
In order to get this benefit, you have to be willing to change. We have a saying in our home: don’t be sorry, be better. Before you judge me as some sort of graceless, abusive father, let me explain what that means. Our kids, like many kids, do the same cruel things over and over. Growing up in a Christian home with an understanding of the grace of God, they know that confession and remorse are the first steps after being caught. I don’t want them to stop there. I don’t want kids who have been trained to do whatever they want, apologize, and assume that all of the consequences of their sin magically disappear; I don’t want my kids to think that it is okay to hurt someone else as long as they say that they are sorry afterward. Instead, I want kids who actually ARE sorry. The conviction of the Spirit is meant to lead us to change. Part of repentance is turning away from the sin that you claim to abhor; it is how God uses conviction to sanctify us.
I don’t think that is something that only my kids struggle with. I meet many adults who want to argue about who is at fault and how to rid themselves of shame. Sometimes the answer is: you and stop doing shameful things. Stop fighting the leadership of the shepherd. Stop trying to produce meaning and value apart from Him and submit to His work in obedience. Stop believing that you know better than God. Be better.
You may bristle at this and wonder: isn’t this legalism? No. Legalism is thinking that you belong because of the goodness of your own works. What I am talking about is living to conform your life to the character of the one who has saved you. Following His law is a gift we have been given to keep us from the destructive results of our sinful idea of what is best. God will get you to where He wants you to go. The question is, how much discipline is He going to need to exercise along the way?