I was in the midst of a session with my trainer as part of my rehabilitation from knee-replacement surgery last spring. As he was showing me how to do an exercise, I noticed a man in the mirror watching me closely. Moments later he walked up to my trainer and began whispering. It was obvious I was the subject of their discussion as the man kept pointing at my lower body. Finally, he spoke to me, identified himself as a chiropractor, and said he had noticed during my squats that I was moving to my right. He said this was due to my abductor muscle on my left side not firing correctly. As I explained that I had knee problems since I was in my early teens, he said my leaning to the left was due to lack of muscle memory. My right side was so used to compensating for my left that the muscles on the left side were unaccustomed to working normally. Now that I had a normally functioning left knee, he said, my challenge would be to re-train my weak muscles on that side to work correctly.
As I was working on a message to conclude a teaching series on our identity in Christ, this encounter got me to thinking about recovery from spiritual injury. If sin leads to death (Romans 6:23), then acts of sin are injurious to us. Repeated injuries, like those to my knee, lead to compensation to cope with the results. For years I noticed how the soles of my shoes wore differently—the right one always showed more wear because my body was compensating for the injured left knee.
As sinners, we learn to compensate for the injuries we have caused, mainly in two ways. We may use shame to make ourselves feel better about who we are. After sinning, we beat ourselves up, confess, and carry around a “woe is me” attitude for a while. We do it again, and then repeat the same process. But it gives us some comfort because we feel bad about it, so we’re not that bad, are we?
Or we may, after repeated sin, just accept that’s who we are and it’s what we do. We can’t stop, so why try and why feel guilty about it? And we’re saved by grace, right?
Imagine, just as we have physical muscles, such as the abductors, we have spiritual muscles. And imagine the two main muscles in this category are the grace muscle and the confession/repentance muscle. Now imagine we are spiritually injured by sin and, as a result, these muscles have atrophied from lack of use as a result of how we have compensated for our injury. Now, through Jesus, our injury has been healed (II Corinthians 5:17) and we are in the midst of our rehabilitation (i.e., following Jesus in this life). The challenge we face is to stop compensating as we once did and begin to get these atrophied muscles working properly again.
Just as the muscles on both sides of our bodies are to work together to help keep us in proper balance and our spine properly aligned, so, too, do our two main spiritual muscles work together to keep us spiritually balanced and in proper alignment with the Lord. Yet, as I have discovered in rehabbing my body after having my knee “healed,” the muscles are a little slow in coming around to the new reality. They still naturally act as though I am still injured and need to compensate for it. As the doctor said, I have to re-train them to act normally again, as they were designed to function.
During our years of sin, we learned to compensate with guilt and shame, with denial and hard-heartedness. Those ways are not easily eliminated. Re-training must be done and it will not be easy, as I have found both in the physical and spiritual realms. But re-train we must if we want to live healthier, more enjoyable lives.
And the place we start is with the Word of God. It is our training manual. It teaches us what is normal and abnormal in living our lives and it instructs us on how to train our grace muscle and our confession/repentance muscles to get them in proper shape. In a nutshell, sin is never to be taken lightly, never dismissed as something normative in our lives that should not concern us because we live under grace. Sin has to be addressed—confessed and recognized as a step in the wrong direction. Like a cancer, it should never be ignored because the consequences are so dire. On the other hand, we do live under grace and no sin is unforgivable if we are willing to confess and repent of it, even if we have to do it countless times during our lives. These are the muscles working properly in tandem and the Word shows us how to get them to that point and keep them there.
Today, recognize the likelihood that your spiritual muscles are not functioning properly due to years of repeated injuries and your attempts to compensate for them. They are in need of re-training and the manual is within easy reach. The difficult part is picking it up and following its instructions. But if you do, you will be amazed at the results and how good you feel!
© Jim Musser 2015
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