The Bible tells us grace is free. If grace is free, shouldn’t holiness be free also? Why should I have to exert effort to live a disciplined, righteous life? Why won’t God just give me sinless behavior, with no self-control required?
The problem is passive transformation. There are some things we struggle with that we will never be able to have self-control over. We can only surrender it to God. At least not in this life.
The reason Reality is we were not put on this earth to be passive. The key to overcoming is to rise above the temptation we have no self-control over. Not struggle or resist but to let go and give it to God. Maybe if we’re struggling it is proof that we’re doing something wrong, or we are trying too hard.
We all tend to look for a short cut of a cheat sheet, especially when it comes to doing the hard things. I would love to progress in my life without exerting any effort. Throw up my feet, put on the music, and let the changing begin. “Jesus take the wheel.”
Sadly, this is not how it works. The Bible gives us exhortations to resist temptation, die to sin, deny self, fight the good fight, and strive for godliness. In the Greek translation the meaning of strive is purposeful struggle.
In a Billy Graham sermon in 1957, he likened a believer to a boxer who masters his own body and practices self-restraint. All through the New Testament we can read words that describes what a believer’s life should be like, fight, wrestle, run, work, suffer, endure, resist, agonize, and persevere. This doesn’t sound like being passive to me. They describe a way to live a disciplined life.
So many churches equate spirituality with passivity. But that is not Biblical. Many people will have to reset their expectations. Being a follower of Jesus isn’t a pleasure cruise toward holiness. It takes pushing our bodies and learning that progress can feel like pain.
Our reluctance can be a smokescreen, a way of avoiding the humbling, hard work of seeking to change.
Holiness encompasses both Justification which is legal standing to being declared righteous and sanctification which is practical outward of that righteousness in daily life.
Justification is God’s declaration that believers are righteous through faith in Jesus’s atoning sacrifice. And sanctification is the ongoing process of being transformed into holiness.
Holiness is being set apart for God’s purposes and reflecting His character. It’s important to understand that holiness is not just a one-time event but a lifelong journey of growth and transformation,
We want to say we are saved by grace and not by anything we’ve done. So its easy to want to carry this truth over and apply it to sanctification. When we do that, we assume sanctification should happen like salvation: instantaneously and without effort. But in our attempt to protect one biblical truth, we distort another.
We can end up believing sanctification is passive in which God transforms us unilaterally. And it ends up hampering our spiritual progress. We become stalled out circa simple lack of effort. It becomes something Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” an unbiblical view of the gospel that embraces Jesus’s message but refuses the hard work of following Him. This devalues grace and ends up crippling our spiritual growth. But by striving for holiness, we honor the gift of grace.
From Pity to Praise 