You Can Change #24 (Chapter 3)

In You Can Change, chapter 3, in the section called "What the Law Can and Can't Do," Chester says:

We become Christians by faith in Jesus, we stay Christians by faith in Jesus, and we grow as Christians by faith in Jesus. [...] It's not just that trying to live by laws and disciplines is useless-- it's a backward step. It's a step back into slavery, which ends up undermining grace and hope. (43-44)

Once again, we might be confused by his comments here. Spiritual disciplines are a "backward step... into slavery"--really?

Let's be clear: obedience to God is never optional. See Romans 6 if you wonder whether grace allows Christians to "go on sinning." As we saw a couple of posts ago (#22), we have been freed from slavery to sin to become slaves to God. Obedience is necessary, it is required, but obeying God's commands is not what makes us more holy.

Spiritual disciplines can be that wrong kind of slavery, if we do them in our own effort rather than in faith. This should be easy enough to recognize. Just think back over your own experience with spiritual disciplines. Have you every been frustrated that, even if you began well, you ended up in an empty routine? Did you get to the point where you were just gritting your teeth and grinding it out?

When that's been true for me, I think I settled into the disciplines for their own sake, as a "good deed" or mark of personal performance, rather than a means for fellowship with God. Yes, we need to be regular and consistent in our worship, giving, and serving, but they should be something we do because God calls us to do them, and by faith trusting God to make us holy and righteous.

It seems that a passage that goes along with our last and next sermon (Gen 4, 5) fits here as well:

Hebrews 11:4-6

⁴ By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. ⁵ By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. ⁶ And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

By faith-- not by law.

What characterizes a law-based approach to the Christian life?

What are some of the signs that you're doing your Bible reading, prayer, church attendance as law rather than by faith?

Why is this ultimately ineffective?