God’s people have always struggled, and often failed, to keep external and internal spirituality in right relationship. The history of the Christian faith has been characterized by pendulum swings between suffocating legalism and defiling license. Jesus again and again confronted the Pharisee’s failure to keep both the inside and outside clean:
But the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness. You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But give that which is within as charity, and then all things are clean.” Luke 11:39—41 NASB
In the American church there have been times and traditions that have emphasized looking holy more than being holy. When preaching on the prodigal son who squandered his inheritance on sin and whores, we have often failed to see that the heart of the elder brother was just as wandering and just as defiled by his jealousy and resentment.
Much of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is a plea for people to be holy through and through. Jesus tells us not committing adultery is not enough; we must not even lust in our hearts. Not murdering is not enough; we must not even harbor the hatred from which murder springs. Jesus is not saying the external obedience is unimportant, it simply is not enough.
Jesus confronted the extreme legalism of the Pharisees that ignored the heart and asked only for external conformity to God’s law. However, it is easy to overlook that Jesus did not condemn the external holiness of the Pharisees. In the Sermon on the Mount he tells his disciples to enter the kingdom of God, their righteousness must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees (Mat. 5:20). After listing how the Pharisees tithed on every herb, Jesus rebukes them for ignoring justice and love of God. He then says, “But these are the things [justice and loving God] you should have done without neglecting the other.” In other words, Jesus is telling the Pharisees that it is not a choice between the inside of the cup being clean or the outside. It is both/and.
We now live in a culture where the pendulum has swung the other way. The life styles, habits, language, and appearance of believers are often not discernibly different from most unbelievers. The emphasis, especially among evangelicals, is now on God changing us from the inside out. But polls about the behavior of evangelicals suggest that too much of the change is never making it to the outside. The epistles of Paul and John often battled a gnostic gospel’s claim that holiness of the spirit was all that mattered and that sins of the flesh were inconsequential. Although Gnosticism is seldom preached openly today, many claiming to be Christians are living out a gnostic lifestyle that leaves their moral decisions unaffected by their faith.
One result of this emphasis on only our internal experience is the tendency of some Christians to live from experience to experience, Sunday to Sunday, or conference to conference. Instead of integrating the spiritual disciplines into their daily lives, they wait for the next “good” service, prophetic word, or anointed message. We should indeed treasure all these experiences, but how much more lasting fruit might such experiences bear if received by believers who were growing daily?
Evangelicals have (rightly I think) emphasized the transforming born-again crisis experience, but have often failed to balance this with an emphasis on the spiritual disciplines that deepen holiness and give external expression to our faith. By doing this the Church often fails pastorally to provide the help new Christians need. Yes, we usually exhort new believers to pray, read the Bible, and attend church. But beyond that, or in the actual details of that, we offer little. We often fear empty ritualism so much that we swing to an extreme individualism where each believer is on his or her own to progress as the Spirit leads. But we can have both.
For example, I often raise my hands in worship as a spiritual discipline. In other traditions and liturgies worshipers may stand or kneel. Yes, sometimes I might be led by the Holy Spirit to lift my hands in worship and at other times my uplifted hands may express my emotional response to God, but often I lift my hands to God because he is worthy to receive my praise and it helps me lift my heart. I need not wait until moved by the Holy Spirit—God is worthy! In a similar way, I sometimes kneel because God has humbled my heart in reverence, but I also kneel as a way to humble my heart. I sometimes pray because God has moved me, and sometimes pray because I need God to move me. God is changing me from the inside/out and from the outside/in.
The danger today is the paralyzing passivity that comes from only emphasizing change from the inside. When everything depends on God sovereignly visiting us, we often fail to embrace spiritual disciplines that help us press into God. For example, regarding the discipline of giving or generosity, we may find ourselves giving not because God has moved on our heart to be generous but rather to help rid our heart of covetousness and keep our heart free from the love of money. I have a tendency to be a loner. As a spiritual discipline, I often ignore my inclination, choose to fellowship, and am then blessed by the fellowship. I would have missed this blessing had I waited for God to give me a deep love for fellowship. Cultivating the external habits of obedience is gradually changing the habits of my heart.
We risk missing much God has for us when we passively, rather than actively, wait upon the Lord. If the woman who pressed through the crowd and touched the hem of Jesus’ garment in faith had waited for Jesus to come to her, she may have never been healed. Spiritual disciplines of solitude, silence, and prayer are often just ways of pressing through the crowd of noise, busyness, and worries that keep us from touching Jesus. External disciplines can also preserve and nourish what we receive from God in times of grace. By analogy, we know that setting out buckets does not make God send rain. God is sovereign and is not manipulated by our prayers or actions, but God does respond to acts of faith, cries for help, and our decisions to trust in him. It may seem more pious to say, “Rain will only come by God’s sovereign grace; I can do nothing so there is no need for buckets.” It is so much wiser to do all faith can do, humbly ask for rain, and capture that rain so that it can give life to others for weeks to come. Many of the spiritual disciplines are simply buckets set out to receive the free gift of God’s grace—sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it pours. But it would be silly to polish buckets, re-design buckets, argue about the arrangement of buckets and forget that buckets aren’t rain. We must always be asking for the rain.
In these examples we can see that internal and external expressions of holiness have a dynamic relationship. Because my heart feebly desires God, and I have made a commitment to follow Jesus, I will turn off the TV, get in a quiet place, and begin to pray. Often my mind will wander and I will get drowsy, so I will read my Bible until I again begin to nod. To focus my attention I will pray some of Psalms and Paul’s blessings aloud. I may do this while walking. Sometimes, but not always, this will result in a moving of God’s Spirit that empowers me to intercede passionately for the Church or individuals. My externals actions were a result of internal convictions, but also resulted in an internal work of the Holy Spirit.
We need both internal and external godliness in our relationships with others as well. In our zeal to avoid all hypocrisy, believers can often wound or neglect others. If I did or said loving things only out of the overflow of love in my heart, I am afraid I wouldn’t do much. I desire the overflow of love, but I do much and overlook much not because I feel like it, but because that is what love does. I often discover, however, that after I decide to do the loving thing, real love springs up in my heart. To avoid hypocrisy, should I have waited until moved by powerful feelings of love? Like the man who said to Jesus, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” I often choose to do the loving thing while praying, “I do love; Lord, crucify my selfish heart.”
We need external actions that open the way for God to work in our hearts and we need transforming experiences of regeneration that change us from the inside/out. We need crisis experiences of the heart and gradual growth in holiness through the spiritual disciplines. We need spontaneous expressions of love that spring from the abundance of God’s love in our hearts and we need those hard daily acts of self-denial that make us love God and one another faithfully. We need God working from the inside/out and outside/in making us like Jesus through and through.
