Mere Christianity – Book 4, Chap. 9

Counting the Cost

In the previous chap. (“Is Christianity Hard or Easy?”), Lewis made the point that it is both.  Christianity is “hard” in the sense that Christ doesn’t call only part of us to be His disciple.  He calls all of us, everything, to die and to be reborn – to “deny our lives, take up our cross and follow Him.”

It is “easy” in the sense that what we cannot do, Christ has done for us.  Therefore, His “yoke is easy and His burden is light.”  When we are received by Him, we loose our life – all of it.  He wants all of us.  We don’t submit to His lordship in piecemeal.  What is needed is complete resurrection/rebirth.  And only Christ can accomplish this for us and He has – that is the gospel.

Now, it was in explaining that Christianity is “hard” that Lewis emphasized Jesus’ words, “Be ye perfect,” which has called some confusion among Lewis’ listeners/readers.  It is to this confusion that Lewis now turns.

Some people wonder what Jesus meant by, “Be ye perfect.”  Could he mean?:

Unless you are perfect, I will not help you; and as we cannot be perfect, then, if He meant that, our position is helpless.

But Lewis thinks Jesus meant something more like:

The only help I will give is help to become perfect.  You may want something less:  but I will give you nothing less.

Lewis illustrates what he means.  When he was a child and had a toothache he waited as long as possible before going to his mother.  Why?  Because he knew that she would give him something immediately to take away the pain, which he would have been glad to have.  But he also knew that she would do far more.  She would take him to the dentist so that the dentist could fix the tooth permanently.  But the dentist wouldn’t stop there, he would begin to meddle with his other teeth, which hadn’t even begun to ache.  “They would not let sleeping dogs lie, if you gave them an inch they took an ell.”

God is like that dentist.  While many go to him for help with a particular, specific problem they have, he intends to do far more.  He will certainly take care of that specific problem, but he won’t stop there.  You may have asked for help in only this small area, but once you called on him, “he will give you the full treatment.”

This is why He warned people to “count the cost” before becoming Christians.  “Make no mistake,” He says, “if you let me, I will make you perfect.  The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for.  Nothing less, or other, than that.  You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away.  But is you do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see this job through.  Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect – until my Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with me.  This I can do and will do.  But I will not do anything less.”

But God does not expect all of this in the first moment.  While he will settle for nothing less than perfection, he is equally delighted in the first baby steps you take. 

Every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk:  no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son.  In the same way, he said, “God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.”

In practice, this ought to be a great comfort for you.  As you attempt to walk, if you fall, don’t worry, God will pick you up again and again.  God knows you will fall and that by yourself you will never be able to walk perfectly.

However, we must equally remember that the goal is always perfection.  And we must be careful not to only go so far and think we are now good enough now that we have put away a few sins here and there.  We often think:

“I never expected to be a saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.”  And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble.

But it doesn’t matter what we think what we should become.  We are the machine, God is the inventor.  “He is the painter, we are only the picture.”  God has made us and He alone can determine what He wants us to be.

And you are already something very different from what you once were.  At one time in your mother’s body, you were like a vegetable, and then like a fish, and then a human baby.  Throughout each various stage, we would have been well content with remaining what we were and not be changed into something more (that is, if we were conscious at each moment).  But God always intended you to be much more.  And he is now working on you for something even higher.  To shrink back from what God is doing is laziness and cowardice, not humility.  “To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience.”

Surely we can’t do this ourselves.  God must sustain us.  But the goal is always absolute perfection and while we will not attain it in this life, God means to get us as far along as possible before we die.

That’s why we shouldn’t be surprised “if we are in for a rough time.”  Young Christians who begin to see some real improvement in their walk begin to soon think that their life should begin to smooth out and see less trouble.  But when the troubles come (illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptations) he is soon discouraged.  These sorts of trials made sense when he needed to make some big changes, but why now? 

Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level:  putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before.  It seems to us all unnecessary:  but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us.

Lewis provides another illustration.  Imagine you are living in a house that God comes in to rebuild.  At first he begins to make only minor modifications that you readily agree with.  But then he begins to make major changes:  knocking out walls, building new rooms, planting new yards, etc.  What is he up to?  You only wanted a few minor changes in your small house, but God is building you a new palace – a palace that He Himself intends to come into and live with you.

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas.  Nor is it a command to do the impossible.  He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.  He said (in the Bible) that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words.  If we let Him – for we can prevent Him, if we choose – He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.  The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for.  Nothing less.  He meant what He said.

We must comment on a couple of Lewis’ thoughts here.  First, we would certainly disagree with Lewis that we can thwart God’s plan by our own free will.  God is the one sovereign, not us.  When our will is confronted by God’s, His will always accomplishes His purposes.

Second, remember that Lewis holds to a “transformationist” view of salvation, as opposed to a “imputational” view.  In order for us to stand in God’s holy presence, we must be actually holy in ourselves.  Our salvation is no legal “fiction.”  God is working in us to transform us into new creatures that can live in God’s presence.  If God is not finished with us in this life, he will continue to work on us in purgatory until he gets full control of our wills so that he can complete our perfection.  Until then, he is willing to endure our ups and downs until he finally gets us to “let” him finish what he has started.

However, the imputational view of salvation looks outside of us for the perfection God requires.  We are already “declared” perfect because of what Christ has done for us.  He is our perfection that allows us to stand in God’s presence.  It is true that God is now working in us to transform us into perfection, but that is not the basis of our being able to stand in His presence.  And that transformation will be completed instantly when we see Jesus when he returns for us.