This Is Not That: Transformation
The Weight of Change
Spiritual growth. Few phrases carry more pressure.
For most of us, it means striving to become something we’re not yet—stronger, holier, more disciplined. We’ve been told personal change (i.e., sanctification) is what validates our faith.
Why? Because underneath the language of “growth” lies the oldest addiction in the human story: control.
So we don’t question it when transformation gets recast as our project and “sin” gets reduced to something manageable—behaviors we can fix, standards we can measure, progress we can point to.
It’s the same water Augustine poured into the well, and the same water Dallas Willard drank from. Willard believed God’s grace provides the power, and our practices (spiritual disciplines) provide the pathway.
He made it explicit:
“You cannot be transformed by grace alone.” — The Allure of Gentleness
“God is not going to pick you up and magically turn you into Christ.” — Renovation of the Heart
And when people pushed back, he doubled down with the now-famous line: “Grace is opposed to earning, not effort.” — The Great Omission
It sounds humble, but it places the burden of transformation squarely on us: Jesus did His part—and now He’s waiting for you to do yours.
The Apostle Paul couldn’t have disagreed more. He’d heard this grace + effort message before from the Judaizers—and he calls it “worthless.”
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6).
To understand what he means, we start with the end: “faith working through love.” These aren’t achievements of the flesh; they’re the fruit of the God who lives in us. That’s why this “counts,” and why our religious efforts—“circumcision”—don’t.
Knowing this, Paul lays out the journey in the verse just before it: “We eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Gal. 5:5). “Hope” isn’t about managing outcomes; it’s trusting the One who holds them. And so we “wait.”
I didn’t understand that word until the day my brother’s unit returned from Iraq. At Fort Stewart, families stood shoulder to shoulder under a field of lights. Across from me, a young mom paced the floor, baby in her arms.
Every announcement made her heart jump. Every pause in the crowd made her eyes dart toward the gate. She wasn’t bringing her husband home from war—she was longing for his return.
That’s what Paul means by “eagerly wait”—apekdechometha: to expectantly await something already guaranteed. It’s a posture of trust, not toil. And it sits in the same paragraph where he warns that if we try to be more by what we do—we’re the ones who have “fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4).
Paul says the same thing to the Romans: “If we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Rom. 8:25).
This is how true spiritual growth happens: in His time, the Spirit bears the fruit of His life in us—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal. 5:22–23).
Those aren’t achievements to display; they’re realities that surface when striving stops. Which is why grace does its best work where no one’s clapping.
The Freedom of “Work Out”
How could Paul be so casual about the lack of visible change in someone’s life? Maybe because he understood the mystery of “Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).
So when we say we need to become more righteous or holy, we’re really saying Jesus does too—as if the One who already is our righteousness and holiness somehow needs improvement.
Or perhaps it’s because Paul has been where we are—struggling with what he called “a thorn in my flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7). He begged for the thorn to be gone, and God said no—but not out of cruelty. He said, “My grace is sufficient for you” (v. 9).
In other words: stop chasing strength; start trusting sufficiency—“for my power is made perfect in weakness” (v. 9).
It’s why there’s no contradiction when, a decade later, Paul writes to the Philippians: “Work out your salvation”—the life you already have in Jesus—“with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12).
The Greek word for “work” is katergazesthe—which means to bring to full expression, not to manufacture. In short, Paul is saying, Let what’s already in you—Jesus’ righteousness—come to the surface in your everyday life.
And the “fear and trembling” Paul mentioned isn’t panic in the face of divine threat; it’s the knee-buckling wonder that hits when grace finally lands.
It’s not Oh no, I might blow it.
It’s Oh wow, He really did it.
That’s the tremor of grace: the shock that holiness isn’t what we find when we overcome religion’s—or Plato’s—imagined separation between us and a holy God; it’s about reveling in the union we already have with Him.
And to be sure his point is not lost, the very next line undercuts any thought that our effort is needed: “For it is God who works (energeō) in you both to will and to act according to His good pleasure” (Phil 2:13).
Even your “will” is shown as a gift in this passage. Our participation is simply letting Him be Himself in us. “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion” (Phil. 1:6). That’s not a challenge—it’s a comfort.
In Colossians, Paul grounds the whole journey in trust, not toil: “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him” (Col. 2:6).
How did we receive Him? By faith. So how do we walk? The same way.
That’s the great reversal.
Life isn’t about you striving to become something more for God’s glory; it’s God working in you for your good. You’re not the engine that makes change happen—you’re the instrument that gets to experience it.
And this is why the so-called “spiritual disciplines” were never meant to be a pathway to becoming a better version of yourself. Jesus didn’t pray, confess, fast, or step into solitude to improve His spiritual résumé. He did those things as natural human responses to fear, pain, temptation, exhaustion, and joy—moments where He trusted the Father instead of managing Himself.
They weren’t strategies for transformation;
they were expressions of dependence.
The Awe That Trembles
By now you may feel the relief faith was always meant to bring. But if you’re human, you also feel the tension it creates. Unlike religion, faith doesn’t give you control. And that’s why our minds drift to Abraham—wondering if real faith still demands action, sacrifice, or proof.
But the climax of Abraham’s story wasn’t when he raised the knife over his son Isaac. It was when God stopped him.
The God Jesus reveals doesn’t welcome child sacrifice like the pagan gods of Abraham’s world. So the test on the mountain wasn’t God demanding proof; it was God setting a stage to expose Abraham’s false picture of Him.
And here’s the part people forget: Abraham trusted God long before this moment (Gen. 15:6). His righteousness was already settled. The mountain didn’t reveal Abraham’s devotion; it revealed God’s character.
God’s interruption—His “Stop!”—was the gospel in miniature. The ram in the thicket wasn’t a last-minute bailout; it was God’s planned revelation of His true nature—gracious toward us since "before the beginning of time” (2 Tim 1:9).
This is exactly what James means when he says, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:17). He’s not contradicting Jesus or Paul, insisting faith must be proven through effort. He’s describing what faith looks like when it lives.
The Greek phrase pistis chōris ergōn nekra estin means “faith without expression is lifeless.” Not false—just irrelevant to the guy on your doorstep who’s hungry.
And James even quotes the same verse Paul does: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). Which happened decades before the mountain scene with Issac.
In other words, Abraham’s efforts didn’t make his faith real; it made it visible. A branch bears fruit; it doesn’t produce it (John 15). And fruit shows up in seasons, not every moment.
So when people say, “Faith without works is dead,” as if to warn you back into striving, just smile. Because faith without works isn’t fake—it’s just forgotten what it’s free to do.
What Does This Look Like?
It looks like a life of trusting the One who is your “righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). And in that trust: wait on the Spirit, watch for where He is at work, and walk in what He’s doing in you.
In a culture obsessed with “be better,” that’s no small task—especially when those around you have not seen, or won’t admit, that our faith is “not on what is seen”—our circumstances, “but on what is unseen”—Jesus (2 Cor. 4:18).
This is where the Adam Alarm comes in handy.
Here’s how it works: when you hear someone speak, read a book, gather with friends, or scroll through your feed, ask yourself:
Does this draw me into dependence on Jesus—or on me trying harder?
Does this invite honesty and relief—or performance and pressure?
Does this strip away my illusion of control—or reinforce it?
If the answer leans toward the second side, hit the Adam Alarm. Because whatever’s being offered is a way to help the “old self” survive—the one Paul says has already been “crucified” with Christ (Rom. 6:6).
Adam doesn’t need coaching; he needs burial.
This is what He meant by “take up your cross” (Matt. 16:24). Not a call to get better—but a call to give up. To let the myth of self-made holiness die, and to wake up to the life that’s already yours in Him.
It’s on that note that Paul’s words at the end of Galatians ring true: “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation” (6:15).
This “new creation” isn’t a goal—it’s a gift (2 Cor. 5:17).
You’re standing in it.
So breathe.