Miracles are awesome, but they aren't the point.

"Jesus took the outlaw out of me...."

Last week I went to Conroe, Texas, to speak at an event for Spirit and Truth. I flew into Houston, and as I was driving out of the city I saw a billboard advertising a church. “MIRACLES, SIGNS, AND WONDERS,” it said. Right on. I like those things.

It seemed odd to me, though, that they would lead with miracles, signs, and wonders. I’m an unapologetic continuationist, which means I believe God continues to give the gifts to the church described in Romans 12:6-8 and 1 Corinthians 12:7-11. I don’t see any compelling biblical evidence to suggest that God wished to remove these gifts from the church at some particular point in history prior to the return of Christ. But even so, miracles, signs, and wonders are not the point of Christian discipleship. They are manifest signs of God’s presence and power, and we should rejoice when we encounter them. The point of the Christian life, however, is holiness.

Maybe I should put this another way: of all the miracles that God works in this world, holiness is the most central to the Christian life. Some people have gifts of prophecy, others wisdom, others healing, but all people who earnestly repent of their sins and seek Christ will receive the gift of holiness. 1 Peter 1:14-16 instructs those who follow Jesus, “Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”

It’s crucial to acknowledge that we cannot become holy on our own. Sin runs too deeply within the human heart. You can “be yourself” until the cows come home, but your unredeemed self is sinful. Yet what God commands, God also empowers us to do. In Romans 6:22 Paul writes, “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.” God changes us.

The Conversion of Saint Paul. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

That change runs deep. It’s not just that our desires and actions change. Rather, we become part of God’s work of renewing all of creation. Just as God has created all things, God is making all things new (Rev 21:5). In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul puts it this way: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.” Warning: the rest of this paragraph is for nerds. The Greek text of this sentence is extremely sparse. It reads something like, “If anyone [is] in Christ, [there is] a new creation!” The “be” verbs are missing, but they aren’t necessary. In Greek one would assume a verb of being if it were missing from a sentence. This is called a “nominal” sentence. We can assume that Paul is talking about a present state of being. If there were any doubt, the next sentence should clear things up: “The old has gone, the new is here! [Gk: the new has come into being.]” The two Greek verbs in this sentence are in the aorist and perfect tense, both indicating completed past action.

In other words, God’s work of replacing the old creation is already underway. The new creation is a present reality, and you and I get to be a part of it.

That is holiness. It is the change that God works within us. For Wesley, one could not speak of salvation without speaking of holiness—a present, inward change of the heart wrought by the work of God. He wrote of salvation, “It is not something at a distance: it is a present thing; a blessing which, through the free mercy of God, ye are now in possession of. Nay, the words may be rendered, and that with equal propriety, ‘Ye have been saved’: so that the salvation which is here spoken of might be extended to the entire work of God, from the first dawning of grace in the soul, till it is consummated in glory” (The Scripture Way of Salvation,” I.1).

Or, as one country-and-western singer put it in 1979,

Jesus took the outlaw out of me, praise God!

He took my hand and led me out of darkness.

All the things I thought I needed, I don’t care about no more

‘Cause Jesus handed me the key that unlocks heaven’s door.

God does it. God changes us. He makes us holy.

Now here’s the thing: the fact that we go to church doesn’t mean we’re holy. It’s a good start, but we can very well have the form of godliness while denying its power (2 Tim 3:5). If we really want God to change us, we have to repent. We must humble ourselves before God and one another and acknowledge that we have fallen short of God’s calling on our lives. We can also acknowledge that, for most of us, sanctification is a journey. It definitely is for me. I am seeking holiness, but I haven’t been made perfect in love.

I’ve shared this quote from Larry Randolph before, but it bears repeating: “We want the power of God without the character of God.” Randolph said this at a large gathering of charismatic Christians. Miracles, signs, and wonders are great. I love to see God move with such manifest power. But let’s not get the cart before the horse. If we want to see revival in the American church, we need to start with repentance. We need to ask God to show us those places where we have sinned against him in thought, word, and deed. We need to ask God to change us individually and corporately. We must avail ourselves of the means of grace through which God works to make us holier people. Maybe when the American church reaches a tipping point where we are more concerned with repentance and holiness than we are with numerical success, institutional preservation, and politics, God will have mercy on us and revive us again.

Lent is coming. Let’s make this a time of deep self-examination and repentance. We have these forty days to rededicate our lives to Christ and grow in grace. And on Easter, we can celebrate that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives within us (Rom 8:11), and he has made us a new creation.