How People Change
Book Review • Timothy S. Lane and Paul D. Tripp, How People Change (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2008). Kindle Edition. 272 pp. $10.
Read time: 14 min
A “Gospel Gap”
In How People Change, authors Tim Lane and Paul Tripp describe a common disparity in the lives of many Christians—a “gap” between the gospel they confess and the lives they live. Christianity for many is “more an ideology than a worship-driven relationship, and God’s practical call on their lives [is] more a duty to be performed than a joy to be pursued” (3).
Alternate sources of identity fill the void left by a failure to apply the gospel, confusion over disappointments in life grows, and relationships suffer. The authors appeal to 2 Peter 1:3-9 for answers why so many Christians are “ineffective and unproductive”. Peter’s diagnosis (v.9) is that they are nearsighted and blind, having forgotten that they have been cleansed from their past sins. Lane and Tripp suggest three forms of blindness:
A blindness of identity (forgetting who we are);
A blindness to God’s provision for our well-being (he has given us everything necessary for us to live as he calls us);
A blindness to God’s process (that Christian growth is a life-long journey).
How We Supplant the Gospel with External Substitutes
Formalism leads us to fill our calendars with church and service-oriented activities as the material basis for our faith.
Legalism leans on lists of dos and don’ts as the basis for being righteous and good.
Mysticism looks not so much to Christ in us as to emotional experiences to feel close to God.
Activism sees Christianity as basically about living for a good cause and making a difference in the world.
Biblicism dupes knowledgeable Christians into thinking that their working knowledge of Scripture is the measure of their maturity in Christ.
“Psychology-ism” finds Christian identity in therapy and self-help efforts to become a better person.
“Social-ism” leans almost entirely on social networks with fellow Christians as the heart of one’s faith. In each case, Christ is replaced by something we functionally believe is the basis for our faith, our righteousness, and our purpose in life.
How Can Biblical Counseling Fill this Gap?
The structure the authors offer the reader to bridge this gap is a functional gospel—not a new gospel but the true gospel applied to every area of life. God’s Spirit through the gospel brings life transformation over time.
First, we must grasp the extent and gravity of our sin. We need Christ not only to forgive our sins past, present, and future but to empower us to be conformed to his image (14).
Second, we must grasp the centrality of the heart in our pursuit of victory and transformation. Sin is not simply a matter of external behavior.
Third, we must grasp the present benefits of Christ for daily life. Christ’s indwelling power, not a system of principles, is what sustains true sanctification.
Forth, we must grasp God’s call to growth and change. “His goal is to free us from our slavery to sin, our bondage to self, and our functional idolatry, so that we actually take on his character!” (18).
Fifth, we must grasp the importance of a lifestyle of repentance and faith. As we become more aware of our sin and of God’s goals for us here and now, we can see the need to repent and turn to Christ on a daily, even hourly, basis. This is the lifestyle God uses to shape the image of Christ in us.
A Metaphor & a Model
Lane and Tripp remind us that the Bible is a “big picture” book: “It introduces us to God, defines our identity, lays out the meaning and purpose of life, and shows us where to find help for the one disease that infects us all—sin” (92). When we reduce the Bible to a list of best practices or rules for living it usually leads to Christ-less Christianity. Nonetheless, Scripture is replete with doctrine, poetry, prophecy, and history that multidimensionally point us to Christ and to his wisdom. The authors present a model distilled from Scripture: heat, thorns, cross, and fruit. They see Jer. 17:5–10 as a text depicting two kinds of living—one that results in thorns and one that results in fruitfulness.
“But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream” (Jer 17:7–8).
Heat
The first aspect of the model for change refers to a given situation in one’s daily life. The ‘heat’ of both ease and of challenge, when confronting our lives, reveals what is going on in our hearts. The authors consider James 1:1-15 as a paradigm for believers enduring trials of their faith. “It is incredibly encouraging to realize that the Bible addresses the world as we know it. God makes it very clear that he understands the Heat we face every day” (110). The Bible too is honest about the ways biblical characters responded to both the good and bad times they experience. Most often we think of trials as only difficult times, but trials include prosperity as well. In either case, how we respond reveals the character of our hearts.
Thorns
The second aspect of the model for change refers to a person’s sinful response to a given situation. This includes behavior, the heart behind the behavior, and resulting consequences in one’s life. “The thorn bush represents the fact that, as sinners, we tend to respond sinfully to circumstances of life” (134). Dishonesty, anger, bitterness, shifting blame, manipulation, being harsh and judgmental, escapism via busyness, substances, or material possessions, drawing our identity from other people or our performance, indulging in sinful lust, vengeance, defensiveness, self-justification, resistance to change, envy and gossip, being controlling, giving the silent treatment and shunning are only a few ways we respond to the ‘heat’ (134). These patterns of behavior are sinful and result in more sin, chaos, and disfunction. Unchecked thorns beget more thorns in our lives.
Cross
The third aspect of the model for change focuses on the indwelling and empowering presence of Christ. Because of Christ’s substitutionary work on the cross, a believer can experience God’s comfort, cleansing, and power to change their lives here and now. “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). This means that “You can live in new ways amid the same old situations, because when Christ died physically, you died spiritually” (171). Here are a few examples the authors give: the Christian mom can speak with patience when she once would have spoken in anger, because Christ lives in her. The husband, tired from work, can serve his wife by the power of the indwelling Christ. The friend choses to overlook minor offenses and stay in a friendship she would have once forsaken, intentionally living on the basis of ‘Christ within me faith’ (172). Fundamental to this paradigm are the indwelling presence of Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit through the word, and and realizing one’s new and true identity in Christ and not in performance, abilities, or struggles. Our identity is hidden in Christ to whom we are vitally united.
Fruit
The fourth aspect of the model for change is a person’s new godly response to the situation as a result of God’s enablement in their heart. This includes “behavior, the heart renewed by grace, and the harvest of consequences that follow” (96). God is after our hearts, not mere behavior management, after all. By his design, as he changes our hearts by his indwelling presence, we have new capacities to respond to external stimuli in godly ways, different from how we would have responded in the past. The fruit looks like our growing ability and habits of bringing our sins before the Lord in confession and repentance, the inclination to reach out for help and to express godly emotions, to move toward people we need to forgive or seek forgiveness from, patience dealing with others’ sins and weakness, communication shaped by the gospel, and the tendency to rejoice as God uses painful situations to make us holy (204).
An Evaluation of the Heat-Thorns-Cross-Fruit Model
1. Overly General
This model is very broad. For example, the host of complexities comprising our thoughts, desires, baggage from our past, pride, sin habits, and layers of consequences is summed up in the word ‘thorns.’ In terms of a teachable, memorable, and repeatable paradigm, this model is very helpful. The broadness, however, is so general that each of the four elements, in my estimation, have to be broken down into sub-parts that can be explained and applied. To be sure, the book does this over the course of sixteen chapters—explaining and applying the four aspects of the model in encouraging, helpful, and amply-illustrated ways. But no formal sub-categories are included in the basic, four-part paradigm. Fleshing out this model in practice could (and should) be done by breaking the chapters down into parts and subparts.
2. Categorically Helpful
In my view, there are a couple of reasons this model is so helpful, broad though it is. The idea that situational ‘heat’ reveals our hearts (our character) disarms our reflexive instinct to blame-shift and excuse our sinful actions on account of unfortunate circumstances. The ‘thorns’ are but an outworking of our own hearts, the truthh of the matter is. This, again, is not how we like to think of our sin patterns and the resultant webs of trouble that crop up in our lives. This one realization seems crucial to grasping the hope of the gospel: that Christ was punished for our sins, that God regenerates us, gives us a new disposition that hates sin and welcomes transformation, forgives and adopts us, and unites us to Christ and all of his saving and empowering grace. God is—through the Spirit, the word, community and other means of grace and even the situations and circumstances that formerly would have hardened and embittered us—now working to sanctify us more into the image of Jesus.
3. Omni-Applicable
Finally, the versatility of this model is evident in the final chapter, as Lane and Trip demonstrate how it can and has been transformational not only in individual lives and homes but in local churches. As was pointed out, churches can be a breeding ground for external substitutes that stand in the place of Christ himself in the hearts of God’s people. Biblicism, theological correctness, Christian lingo, facades of righteousness, busy service, and even positions of authority can shroud underlying idols of the heart that slowly sabotage the gospel’s work week in and week out in our lives. But by following this model, the ‘gospel’ we know and love for salvation can become a functional means by the Spirit to bring the hearts and habits of God’s people into conformity to the life of Christ in us on a corporate scale. So in this regard, I think this model is comprehensive enough to expose hearts and point us to the only One who can redeem us from all iniquity and remake us in his image. ❖
