Paul illustrates Grace-Empowered Effort in his own life.
Colossians 1:29 - “I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me.”
1 Corinthians 15:10 - “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.“
The Big Idea
Because Jesus humbly obeyed to the point of death to save you, keep humbly following Jesus by joyfully obeying the Father. This is individual and corporate. For you as a person and for us as a family. By God’s grace we, collectively, must keep pursuing growth and maturity where love, unity, and humility is growing in our body.
Our effort to grow to be more like Jesus (sanctification) is undergirded and flowing from God’s work in you and in us! Drink that in please. Feel that in your bones. God is at work in you and in us! It’s in the present tense meaning the Father is continually active in your life. He never ceases from his sanctifying work in us. He is constantly engaged in producing holiness in our lives. It may not always feel like it but we bank on his promise not our perception. God is relentlessly bringing about your spiritual maturity.
He is working in us to will and act. Your activity is only possible by his divine grace.
How Does This Apply?
Now let me nuance this a bit. Positionally you are pleasing to the Father. You stand before him declared righteous because you are in Christ. The same thing the Father said about the Son he says about you, “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Your judicial favor is secured in Christ. That’s positional holiness. Now practical holiness moves us from the courtroom and into the family room—into relational favor—where we seek to please our Father with our lives.
So grace-empowered effort is this: Because I am positionally pleasing to the Father I can by the power of the Spirit work to live pleasing to God. To pursue practical holiness.
Now let me tell you there is a vast difference between self-empowered effort and grace-driven effort. Here are a few points of comparison:
Self-empowered effort: I am the solution. I have a good heart and I can basically change myself. Or I need to change my circumstances.
Grace-empowered effort: I am actually the problem. I have a sinful heart. In Mark 7:21, Jesus teaches out of people’s hearts come “evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.”
This means your kids are not the cause for your anger but the occasion for your anger. Your friends are not the cause for your bitterness but the occasion. They expose what’s in your heart.
Self-empowered effort: I am working for God’s favor. I am trying to change to earn God’s love.
Grace-empowered effort: I am working with God’s favor and with God’s help. Because of Jesus I am fully accepted by God. The Father is unchangeably for me because of Jesus.
God doesn’t audition us, he adopts us. Take that in because insecurity is the enemy of intimacy. If you don’t believe that the Father has lavishly showered you with his love and adopted you then you’ll hold him at a distance, unsure if he is pleased with you or likes you.
Self-empowered effort: employs methods. Employs strategies to stop wrong behavior. If you’re struggling with lust, you bounce your eyes. If you’re struggling with anger count to 10.
Grace-empowered effort: embraces means of grace. Action or resources that draw me near to God. The spiritual disciplines to lay hold of his help and power. To be changed. To facilitate gospel remembrance. The means of grace are ways we connect to God and are changed by God. You feast on Jesus when you read the Word, pray, fast, memorize, live in community, participate in corporate worship, and live a life of repentance. Those are the means stirring our affections to delight in the Trinity!
Employing methods to change behavior is not delighting in God.
Methods can be helpful but they’re secondary not primary. The means of grace are primary. They bring us into a deeper encounter with God. Methods alone lead to cold-religion.
The catalyst for the means of grace are the Word and the Spirit.
And the context for the means of grace is community and suffering.
You can not know if you are being conformed into the image of Jesus if you are not in community. And suffering will expose your entitlement, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency.
Self-empowered effort: leads to pride.
Grace-empowered effort: leads to praise.
Let’s have continuous, sustained, strenuous effort to pursue holiness, all driven by God’s grace not ourselves.
*adapted from an equipping class by JR Vassar