Thoroughly Converted: Enslaving the Inner Man for the Glory of Christ

Walter Hooper, the literary advisor of C.S. Lewis’s vast estate after his death and—more importantly—a close friend of his, once described Lewis as “the most thoroughly converted man [he] ever met.” He expands upon this reflection by saying that Lewis’s “whole vision of life was such that the natural and the supernatural seemed inseparably combined.”

Through & Through

Now, what might Hooper have meant by the phrase thoroughly converted? Surely he did not mean by the word ‘converted’ that Lewis was—in contrast to other religious folks—completely united to Christ whereas others were only partly united to Him; as though salvation were a matter of degrees, operating upon a spectrum of thoroughly converted on one side, partly converted in the middle, and utterly lost on the far side. God forbid! 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” (Ephesians 2:8-9). You are either united to Christ through faith, having had all your sins atoned for and forgiven, or you are outside of Christ, still under the wrath of God and in need of salvation.

What Hooper means here by thoroughly converted has nothing to do with justification (our being declared just and holy by God because of our union with Christ) and everything to do with sanctification (the process by which we are made more and more like Christ). After being reconciled to God through the work of His Son, it is then the work of every believer to, just like Lewis, begin the lifelong process of binding together the seen with the unseen. To live in such a way that there no longer exists a contradiction between your view of the world and the Bible’s. Indeed, to have such a living, breathing faith in God’s word that “the natural and the supernatural seemed inseparably combined.”

Sanctification begins in the mind of the believer only after they have been given new spiritual life by God the Holy Spirit. In Romans 12, Paul describes our work in sanctification, ever in step with the Spirit, in this way: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (verse 2). When an individual comes to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, they undergo an initial change of mind (repentance) that is characterized by a turning away from sin and a turning to the Lord. Sanctification as a lifelong process, then, should be seen as the Christian’s daily habit of continual repentance until they see the Lord face to face in glory.

This initial change of mind and turning from sin must define the believer’s walk with Christ going forward as they put in the hard work of untangling their formerly ungodly affections from their new God-given affections. This is not unlike digging up of rotten roots and weeds in a garden in order to cultivate healthy growth; indeed, digging up the rottenness of sin and unbelief that have so infiltrated the unbeliever’s inner life up until their appointment with God Himself.

In this way, I think Hooper’s estimation of what it means to be “thoroughly converted” is helpful, but let us go deeper, shall we? Let us consider, alongside the Apostle Paul, what it means to “be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

Just Like Jesus

As followers of Christ, a deep and abiding desire to be like Him should characterize our every waking moment. That is, however imperfectly, we should strive to love those things that He loves, hate those things that He hates, and do those things that He delights in. That in everything, in word and deed and thought, we would be as mini-Christs in the world. In this way, we demonstrate that we love Him—no matter how weak and paltry our attempts may be. Christian living then is nothing short of aiming to imitate our Creator as He gives us ability to do so: “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:9-10). At it’s most basic, to be thoroughly converted is to be thoroughly Christ-like.

And so, if we are to love the Lord Jesus Christ by being like Him and obeying Him, we should probably have a sense for what that love ought to look like. In John 14:15, the Lord said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” While this command extends to the entirety of God’s word, perhaps we can summarize what Jesus meant when He said “my commandments” by considering what He declared to be the sum and substance of the Law and the Prophets, the Greatest Commandment: “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31). What the Lord Jesus Christ is calling for in this passage is the total and absolute submission of one’s will and affections. The entire person is in view here: heart, soul, mind, strength, including the submission of every resource and every relationship. Love God absolutely, love others sincerely—do both, and do both thoroughly.

In this passage and others, Christ makes it abundantly clear that our love for God and others must first flow from a burning affection for God Himself. Not a love for that which God will give us, but a love for the very Person of God Himself. The height and depth and sheer breadth of the Lord’s command that we love Him above all is found in no place better or more clearly than in Matthew 10:37 when Jesus says these words: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Christ’s sovereign claim upon our hearts is absolute, unwavering, unapologetic, and utterly thorough.

We must love the Lord above all because He is above all. He is the loveliest of all, the kindest of all, the most beautiful of all, and to love Him above all is our highest good. As the Puritan Thomas Doolittle so succinctly put it, “If Jesus is not loved above all, He is not sincerely loved at all.”

Letting Loose the Lion

It is upon this point that our witness to the world hinges, overflowing from our hearts upwards and outwards to those around us. In 1 Peter 3:13-17, the Apostle lays out one of the New Testament’s most powerful recipes for evangelism. However, before Peter ever makes mention of our sharing Christ with those around us, he first commands his readers to separate Christ as holy in their hearts: “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy” (verse 15). In other translations, the word honor is translated as revere, worship, and sanctify. The primary thrust of Peter’s command is the weighty summons that the Lord be set apart in our affections. It is as though Peter is telling his readers to once and for all settle in their hearts the matter of Christ’s lordship and then, upon being settled, to go and impress the lordship of Christ upon the watching world around them through the preaching of the Gospel.

But once again, this zeal for the honor of Christ must first characterize every iota of our inner man before we can effectively preach Christ as all-surpassingly glorious to the world around us. A powerful companion passage to Peter’s summons in 1 Peter 3:15 is found in 2 Corinthians 10. Writing on the nature of the demonic cosmic battle roaring around us and the importance of faith in our sovereign Lord, Paul says:

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

To be a slave to Christ means we must also make a slave of every thought that would oppose Him—to hold these thoughts captive, and then swiftly slay them. If we are to be thoroughly converted, every thought, doubt, and ideology contrary to Christ and His word must be slain right in its very infancy before it has opportunity to spread further and fester. Even as the shadow of the thought creases your mind, turn from it, slay it, and replace the void left by it with some truth from God’s word.

If we are to love the Lord above all, then every fabric of our thinking and believing and doing must be brought into closest possible alignment with God’s revealed will in the Bible. Let every other worldly notion and philosophy fall by the wayside: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8). Alongside J.C. Ryle, let us endeavor to “receive nothing, believe nothing, follow nothing which is not in the Bible, nor can be proved by the Bible.”

Charles Spurgeon once famously said, “The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.” Indeed, for so it is. However, let us not have our eyes so bent outwards that we fail to allow the Lion to do His work inside each one of us.

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Photo by Mr. Great Heart, Unsplash

Author’s Note: This post was originally written for The Gospel Coalition Canada and published on October 21st, 2025. You can access the original publication by visiting the link below:

The Gospel Coalition Canada