The only place to begin this blog is by talking about God’s grace.

I live by the personal knowledge and joy of God’s grace.  I am so thankful for verses of Scripture that remind me that I am saved and being transformed by the grace of God.  When I fall flat on my face (a frequent practice) I am comforted, assured and empowered by these “Go to Promises”:

I John 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.”

I Corinthians 15:10a   “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect…”

Romans 5:20 ‘The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”

 God’s grace is truly superabundant. So much so that He not only saves me by His grace, forgives me by His grace, but also sanctifies by His grace. As someone once wrote:  “God loves me and accepts me the way I am, but He loves me too much to let me stay that way.”  That is my ultimate reason for hope.  God is on my side.  He wants to fill my heart with his love, banish my limitations, and wash away the plague of negative thoughts from my mind.  God’s love carries away my burden of guilt.  His love not only wipes the slate clean, it also throws the slate away.  God has a plan for my life that is better than anything I can imagine.”

AND …Part of His ultimate plan is that I would be like Jesus!

 This certainly is what Scripture promises:

Romans 8:29  “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

Phil 1:6 “…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

II Corinthians 3:18  “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

If  God, by His grace,  is  intent to conform me to the image of Jesus, and if  the Holy Spirit is working in and through me to transform me in the likeness of Jesus, then what’s my part?

1. Do I sit around and wait while God does His part? This seems to be a kind of evolutionary process  (or a wait and see posture) ; “I’ll just wait until The Lord makes me more loving, more joyful and more peaceful”

or

2. Does God do His part and then I do mine? In other words, do I cooperate with God?

In my Christian walk, I probably have adopted both paths with ‘failure more often than not’ as the result.

So how do I become more like Jesus? How do I grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus?

I struggled for years with this question. I would make promises to God, to spend more time in His Word, to become more like Jesus, to be more disciplined, more kind, more loving only to find myself asking God for His forgiveness, and promising that I would become more faithful and I would then begin the cycle again feeling more like a spiritual hamster than a pilgrim on the way to the heavenly city. I finally found my answer in Phil 2:12-13; the apostle Paul  writes, “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.” How is this the answer? Don’t these verses add to the confusion?

Well,  yes and no.

Yes, because at first glance it seems that in my desire to be sanctified, I do my part then God does His.  For a Pelagian, that sort of thinking would work (let’s pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps theology), but for one who believes that one is saved by grace, sanctified by grace and glorified by grace… not so much.

Well as I said I found my answer…with the help of John Murray. Probably one of the best explanations of Phil. 2:12-13 comes from John Murray’s book, “Redemption: Accomplished and Applied”. He writes: “No text sets forth more succinctly and clearly the relation of God’s working to our working. God’s working in us is not suspended because we work, nor our working suspended because God works.

Neither is the relation strictly one of co-operation as if God did his part and we did ours so that the conjunction or co-ordination of both produced the required result. God works in us and we also work. But the relation is that because God works we work. All working out of salvation on our part is the effect of God’s working in us, not the willing to the exclusion of the doing and not the doing to the exclusion of the willing, but both the willing and the doing. And this working of God is directed to the end of enabling us to will and to do that which is well pleasing to him. We have here not only the explanation of all acceptable activity on our part but we have also the incentive to our willing and working.

What the apostle is urging is the necessity of working out our own salvation, and the encouragement he supplies is the assurance that it is God himself who works in us. The more persistently active we are in working, the more persuaded we may be that all the energizing grace and power is of God.”

John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 148-49.

Sanctification according to Phil. 2:12-13 is not an evolutionary process, (I’ll wait while God does His work”), nor is it cooperative, (“God you do your part and I’ll do mine.”)

No.  Sanctification is by grace alone for sure, but it is a  concurrent process. In other words,  as God’s energizing grace and power works through me, I concur with His work.  As  Paul states in Galatian 5:25 “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit”

Energized by His grace,empowered and assured by His Holy Spirit, I press on to become like Jesus (Phil 3:13-14).  Energized by His grace, empowered and assured by His Holy Spirit, I cultivate the fruit of the Spirit, (Galatians 5:22ff).  Energized by His grace, empowered and assured by His Holy Spirit, I put on those virtues that identify me as God’s holy an dearly loved (Colossians 3:12-15).  As Paul proclaims, “…the life I live now I life by the Son of God.”  Galatians 2:20b.

So I can say…

“BEING CONFIDENT OF THIS, that He who began a good work in you will complete it in the day of Christ.”  – Philippians 1:6