For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a good boy, a good man.

And for as long as I can remember, I’ve failed. 

Over the years of following Jesus, the gap between my actual self and ideal self grew. Or at least my awareness of the gap grew. 

I spent a great deal of energy focusing on this gap, making various attempts to mend and patch my defects of character. But like a bag with a broken zipper, I’d get things together in one spot only to find another busting wide open.

Over time, I developed a keen awareness of the flesh, to use old biblical language — of lust and lying and jealousy and judgement. Attempting to follow the Apostle Paul’s command to put the flesh to death, I merely succeeded in beating myself up.

I became an expert at what someone called the practice of the presence of the old self, believing the path to goodness was paved with stones etched with words to remind me how bad I am.

Going through life with my head hung down, focused on my brokenness, I ended up more bruised from running smack into brick walls of self-effort and shame.

Now, most days, thank God I can see that navel-gazing is a game with no winners. Focusing on how bad you are doesn’t lead to being good. We need something else. 

In his letter to the Romans, Paul says what we’ve all said: 

“I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (7:20). 

Some Christians close the book here and say amen brother and surely if the great Apostle struggled like that, we will too, ​‘til we all get to heaven. 

To that I say, keep reading, my friend.

“Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” 

Paul doesn’t leave us hanging.

Jesus Christ, that’s who. Praises!

But wait, how exactly does Jesus rescue us from this war within, from doing things we don’t want to do?

Because it’s pretty clear the process isn’t automatic. Lots of people made a genuine profession of faith in Christ twenty years ago and never stopped believing, and now their character is as bitter as the day before they became a Christian. What’s missing? What’s our part in not resisting the rescue?

Paul says our part isn’t to keep rules or manage sin. Christ did all that — nailed the rules in life, nailed the sin in death.

Our part is active, participatory surrender to God.

And how do we surrender? 

We admit we are powerless and our lives are unmanageable.

We believe a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.

We turn our will and lives over to the care of God. 

We make a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves. 

We admit to God, ourselves, and others the exact nature of our wrongs. 

We become entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 

We humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.

You may have noticed I’ve started listing AA’s Twelve Steps. ​“Any successful plan for spiritual formation,” Dallas Willard once commented, ​“will in fact be significantly similar to the Alcoholics Anonymous program.”

AA and similar recovery communities aren’t societies of self-loathing. They are instead communities of active surrender that offer literal steps for taking off the old self with its practices and putting on the new self (Col. 3). 

It’s probably time for me to join a proper 12-step group. But even from working versions of different steps with counselors and groups, I’ve experienced genuine progress toward becoming a good man. Not that that’s even the goal. Christ is the goal. Life with God is the goal—

a life in which, to paraphrase steps 11 and 12… 

we continually seek to improve conscious contact with God, 
praying only for the knowledge of God’s will for us 
and the power to carry that out,
then carry the message to others.