People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
You will not grow in the Christian life through stasis. You must move.
But move where? Move how?
What is "grace-driven effort" and how is it different from some other kind of religious or spiritual effort?
I think grace-driven effort springs from parking ourselves at the gospel and beholding. People who behold (super)naturally move into mission. They can't not runteldat.
Here is one of my favorite passages from Paul. He is talking about pressing on and moving forward, upward, Godward, but notice how he begins and ends this thought on Spiritual effort:
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
-- Philippians 3:12-16
The beginning of this passage affirms that what has been attained was not by Paul's causal effort but Jesus' causal effort. And the passage ends with Paul saying "Let's hold to what we've already got."
"Not that I have already made it my own; Jesus made me his own."
"Only let us hold true to what we have attained."
We don't graduate from the gospel. We hold true to it. And it alone propels us out and empowers us to press on.
Grace-driven effort is effort that flows from the joys and wonders of worship that flows from beholding the amazing gospel of God's grace.
4 comments:
Jared, all I can say is thank you. I am in a home group, and we are struggling with understanding our part in sanctification. Grace driven effort, I am going to share this with my home group family. That was a wonderful pastoral entry, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I have always known that Jesus loves me but it wasn't until I was driven to my knees by so much stress that I turned to Him completely. First I immersed myself in Bible study. Then when stricken with fibromyalgia I turned to praying without ceasing. It is amazing how many things we can put aside with the help of the Lord and seek to know Him more and more.
I gotta say this topic is great for me to hear during the last week or so I've had in life. Thanks I really needed it. Needed to hear once again to move Godward. Ive been trying to keep up since I saw you at Band Of Bloggers. Thanks for reminded all of the Gospel.
Sometimes we forget that salvation isn't just fire insurance. Grace driven effort, to me, is that working out of salvation. It's something I have to work at every day! Thanks so much for this article! www.daily-manna.com
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