Gutsy Growth with Grace

This was not a prime gardening year for Edmontonians. Dedicated, experienced gardeners were left with mediocre results due to heavy and persistent rain, infrequent sunshine, and cooler temperatures at the onset of our growing season. Imagine if next year we had gardening packets with precise care instructions, plants suited for each location, and guaranteed perfect weather. What would not grow? Is it a stretch to say that a believer has that kind of perfect situation for growth in Christlikeness?

According to the Bible, humanity is born into the world in unbelief, children of the devil, bent towards sin and against God. After repenting and trusting in Jesus, believers become children of God. They are instantly justified, with sins’ penalty and power removed and replaced by the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who took on human sin once for all and paid the debt fully forever. This righteousness however is not impersonal and theoretical; God calls each of his children to this dedicated, lifelong pursuit of likeness to him: sanctification (1 Tim 4:7-8; 1 Cor 9:27; Eph 4:24; Col 3:12-14).

The righteousness of the believer is not impersonal and theoretical, nor is it eventual. Righteousness is not actualized in a special subset of believers–it is for all. But it is not spoken into an existence disconnected from human involvement. What God declares to be so is, and it is the responsibility of the believer to act in belief. God redeemed believers so they would not live for themselves but for him, considering themselves dead to the sins that had enslaved them (Rom 6:6-11; 2 Cor 5:14-15; Gal 2:20). God gives his children new hearts that desire growth in likeness to him; God gives the grace to obey those commands; the believer must humbly depend on that grace to obey, growing in likeness to God (Phil 2:13). God commands believers to walk in him in the same manner that they received him: by faith (Col 2:1-8). All of this is instantly set in motion at salvation.

Sanctification requires of the believer a gutsy, humble growth; there can be no pretentious entitled reliance on grace to cover willful sin. A proper knowledge of grace humbly recognizes that God’s planned rescue for the believer from sin and its punishment mercifully also rescues from deciding how to live. Because the believer belongs to God and will eventually be with him and be completely like him, he must take steps of obedience to become more like him. The mode for spiritual health is not unlike that for physical health. The person who wants to cultivate and guard physical health needs to mindfully choose to eat the right foods in good measure, to cultivate habits of sleep and exercise, to drink water and practice basic hygiene; but ultimately, God is the giver of health. And the most careful people still get colds and the flu, if not a more crippling sickness; all will eventually die. Similarly, the believer who wants to grow in likeness to Christ needs to prioritize reading and meditating on the Bible, praying, singing, regular time with other believers under faithful preaching, confessing and repenting of sin (Eph 6:11-18; Heb 10:24-25; Col 3:16); and God is the ultimate giver of spiritual growth and health. This is no cause for dismay! The sanctifying of the believer is God’s plan and great desire (1 Thess 4:3). That sanctifying work comes by the power of the Holy Spirit, who raised Christ from the dead and was given to all those who turn to and trust in Christ (Eph 1:16-20). As no individual, however careful, can be free of sickness on this earth, no believer, however careful, will be sin-free until heaven. But we must try, and we must repent when we fail.

The righteousness God declares to be true of the believer at salvation is what the believer is to pursue until he sees Him and is made fully like him (1 Jn 3:2-3; 2 Pt 1:3-9). Any sense of stasis due to spiritual victory is false and deadly. The fight for sanctification is as long as life, and the final leg of the spiritual race, as in a physical race, may well be the hardest. And while believers long for the day when sin will be forever and fully defeated in heaven, denying self and obeying God is one of the prime ways he has given us to prove our love for him. Believers boldly love their Saviour by boldly obeying him! “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12-13).