The Discipline of Grace: God's Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness

Our worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace.

Preach the gospel to yourself every day.

All pain we experience is intended to move us closer to the goal of being holy as He is holy.

Sometimes the end God has in mind is to exercise our faith, so He brings us into straitened circumstances so that we might look up to Him and see His deliverance.

In times of adversity Satan will seek to plant the thought in our minds that God is angry with us and is disciplining us out of wrath. Here is another instance when we need to preach the gospel to ourselves. It is the gospel that will reassure that the penalty for our sins has been paid, that God's justice has been fully satisfied. It is the gospel that supplies a good part of the armor of God with which we are to stand against the accusing attacks of the Devil (see Ephesians 6:13-17).

Faith itself has no merit; in fact, by its nature it is self-emptying. It involves our complete renunciation of any confidence in our own righteousness and a relying entirely on the perfect righteousness and death of Christ.

Run, John, run. The law commands But gives neither feet nor hands. Better news the gospel brings; It bids me fly and gives me wings.

The pursuit of holiness requires sustained and vigorous effort. It allows for no indolence, no lethargy, no halfhearted commitment, and no laissez faire attitude toward even the smallest sins. In short, it demands the highest priority in the life of a Christian, because to be holy is to be like Christ — God’s goal for every Christian.

Nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary, nothing so motivates us to deal with sin in our lives as does the understanding and application of the two truth that our sins are forgiven and the dominion of sin is broken because of our union with Christ.

If we are going to persevere as committed disciples of Jesus Christ over the course of our lives, we must always keep the gospel of God’s forgiveness through Christ before us.

Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.

The problem with self-righteousness is that it seems almost impossible to recognize in ourselves. We will own up to almost any other sin, but not the sin of self-righteousness. When we have this attitude, though, we deprive ourselves of the joy of living in the grace of God. Because, you see, grace is only for sinners.

The point of this good-day-bad-day comparison is this: Regardless of our performance, we are always dependent on God’s grace, His undeserved favor to those who deserve His wrath. Some days we may be more acutely conscious of our sinfulness and hence more aware of our need of His grace, but there is never a day when we can stand before Him on our own two feet of performance, when we are worthy enough to deserve His blessing.

To the degree that we feel we are on a legal or performance relationship with God, to that degree our progress in sanctification is impeded. A legal mode of thinking gives indwelling sin an advantage, because nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary, nothing so motivates us to deal with sin in our lives as does the understanding and application of the two truths that our sins are forgiven and the dominion of sin is broken because of our union with Christ.

Just as the airplane must have both wings to fly, so we must exercise both discipline and dependence in the pursuit of holiness. Just as it is impossible for an airplane to fly with only one wing, so it is impossible for us to successfully pursue holiness with only dependence or discipline. We absolutely must have both.

To the degree that we live with an abiding sense of His love for us in Christ, to that degree will we love God with all our heart and soul and mind.

As to the first group—those who may be struggling with their sin and failure—the last thing they need is to have more guilt laid upon them. Few things cut the nerve of desire and earnest effort to change like a sense of guilt. On the contrary, freedom from guilt through the realization of forgiveness in Christ usually strengthens a person’s desire to lead a more disciplined and holy life. And it is this deepened desire that will lead to earnest prayer for the Spirit’s aid and a more diligent effort to pursue discipline and holiness. Years ago I heard a godly minister say, “Discipline without desire is drudgery.” What is it, then, that sparks the desire in our hearts to lead a disciplined, godly life? It is the joy of knowing that our sins are forgiven, that no matter how much we’ve stumbled and fallen today, God does not count our sins against us (Romans 4:8).

The main thing is our attitude. We can pray earnestly to God for relief and still be submissive to Him regarding the outcome.

lot of Christians seem to think that the grace of God and the vigorous pursuit of holiness are antithetical — that is, in direct and unequivocal opposition to one another. To some, the pursuit of holiness sounds like legalism and man-made rules. To others, an emphasis on grace seems to open the door to irresponsible, sinful behavior based on the notion that God’s unconditional love means we are free to sin as we please. Some years ago I wrote a book titled The Pursuit of Holiness1 in which I strongly emphasized our responsibility for holiness as opposed to the concept of just turning it all over to God. Thirteen years later I wrote another book, Transforming Grace,2 in which I urged believers to learn to live by grace, not by performance. After Transforming Grace was published, many people asked me how it related to The P

We believers do need to be challenged to a life of committed discipleship, but that challenge needs to be based on the gospel, not on duty or guilt. Duty or guilt may motivate us for awhile, but only a sense of Christ’s love for us will motivate us for a lifetime.

We need to continue to hear the gospel every day of our Christian lives. Only a continuous reminder of the gospel of God’s grace through Christ will keep us from falling into good-day--bad-day thinking,

I’ve asked people why they think God would probably not use them to share the gospel with someone on a “bad” day. A typical reply is, “I wouldn’t be worthy,” or “I wouldn’t be good enough.” Such a reply reveals an all-too-common misconception of the Christian life: the thinking that, although we are saved by grace, we earn or forfeit God’s blessings in our daily lives by our performance.

Every day of our Christian experience should be a day of relating to God on the basis of His grace alone. We are not only saved by grace, but we also live by grace every day

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus paid for all our sins on the cross and that we are thereby forgiven. As we continually reflect upon that gospel, the Holy Spirit floods our hearts with a sense of God’s love to us in Christ. And that sense of His love motivates us in a compelling way to live for Him.

The word faith is a noun and has no verbal form in

George Smeaton wrote, “[The apostle Paul] exhibits the two great counterparts of sin and righteousness as equal realities — the one as the world’s ruin, the other as its restoration. The one is a completed fact as well as the

John Owen said, “When [indwelling sin] is least felt, it is in fact most powerful.”[2]

Christ has already borne the curses for our disobedience and earned for us the blessings of obedience. As a result we are now to look to Christ alone -- not Christ plus our performance — for God’s blessings in our lives. We are saved by grace and we are to live by grace alone.

Our motive for obedience is just as important, probably more so, to God than the level of our performance. A person who struggles with some persistent sin but does so out of love for God is more pleasing to Him than the person who has no such struggle but is proud of his or her self-control. Of course, the person who obeys from a motive of love will be concerned about his or her performance. There will be a sincere desire and an earnest effort to please God in every area of life.

Discipline without desire is drudgery.” What is it, then, that sparks the desire in our hearts to lead a disciplined, godly life? It is the joy of knowing that our sins are forgiven, that no matter how much we’ve stumbled and fallen today, God does not count our sins against us (Romans 4:8).