Change Inside Out, Not Outside in

    "He's gotten into some trouble but my boy has a good heart deep inside of him." This is what a father told me one time during a conversation. Another parent explained to me one time, "I know that my son stole your son's video game but that's not him because we didn't raise him up this way."

    We have all made this same rationalization in one form or another. It's a way of softening the impact of the sins we do before men and before God. The pattern goes like this : we admit that we're not perfect, that we make mistakes, and we commit sin from time to time but these are mere aberrations because deep down inside, we are basically good and our hearts are in the right place. This view treats sin as committing mistakes, making wrong choices, failing to live up to our potential or engaging in anti-social behavior. If we believe this to be true, then it's possible that we can improve ourselves and attain godly living by learning from our experience. Yet what the Bible says is completely different.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"

-Jeremiah 17: 9 (ESV)

"For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander."

-Matthew 15:19 (ESV)

That is the truth about our hearts. We cannot blame external influences such us our upbringing and culture for our wrongdoing. It proceeds from inside of us, not outside in. If we honestly look inside of us, our deepest thoughts, emotions and desires would be something like this:

"A fountain of pollution is deep within my nature. There are chambers of foul images within my being. I have gone from one odious room to another, walked in no-man's-land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature."

-The Valley of Vision

    Certainly we are capable to do good works and improve our behavior through our own efforts. Men may applaud us for it but God does not. For the righteous deeds from a corrupt heart are nothing but filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). When we deny our sinful condition, we do not see the need for repentance and our minds are blinded from seeing and rethinking our true relationship to God. We also reject the gospel because the gospel says we're not good and consequently we completely miss the grace and mercy of God.

    No human effort, positive thinking, child-rearing techniques, and character building activities can transform the wayward and sinful heart. Many people claim that they have knowledge in how you can become a better you. Bookstores are filled with so many self-improvement books. Ultimately, this kind of "fix" is superficial like polishing up a car but not fixing the broken engine. It looks good on the outside but it's broken inside so it's still dead.

    Only God can change the heart. Godliness proceeds inside out, not outside in.

"But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

-Jeremiah 31:33 (ESV)

"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."

-Ezekiel 36:26-27 (ESV)

  This is how real change happens :

"But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."

-John 1:12-13 (ESV)

"....We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ."

-Ephesians 2:3-5 (ESV)

    He who is spiritually dead can't help himself. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 1:12)." Change comes by believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God who has come to earth to bring the light of the gospel into the hearts of men. Receive Jesus Christ for who he is - Savior and Lord. Nothing is fixed in your life if you believe that Jesus is only a moral teacher, a divine therapist, or an inspirational speaker who came to improve your life. If that is Jesus to you, then you put him on the same plane as the human peddlers of self-improvement. Jesus came to crucify and bury your old life so that you might be raised with him with a new life - a new heart - as a child of God. Change the heart, change the behavior. Regeneration from the inside. This is how radical permanent change happens. This is how real progress happens. Inside out, not outside in.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

 -Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV)



If we are able to change ourselves for the better then this passage would be a lie. When we are saved, we are regenerated into this new life brought about by a new heart and new pattern of thinking. And it is all the work of Christ in whom our life is now hidden. Inside out, not outside in.