The Christian Appeal (July 2000)

When I was 5 years old, I lived in Oklahoma. One of the boys in my neighborhood lived just across the street. We called him “Brother.” I’m not sure why except that he was the bully in the neighborhood, and I guess at sometime or another he told us to call him that. I didn’t like being bullied by Brother, but he was bigger and stronger than me and I thought there wasn’t much I could do about it. 

One day I was watching my favorite cartoon, Popeye. Suddenly it hit me. Popeye had a bully too—Brutus. And when things got too tough for Popeye, he just pulled out a can of spinach, squeezed it until the contents shot up into the air and back down into his mouth. After eating that spinach, Popeye’s muscles started to bulge out and then he would go looking for that mean ol’ Brutus. That was my solution!

I went into the kitchen to search for a can of spinach. There was none. I opened up the refrigerator. All I found was a bowl of mustard greens. They would have to do. I took the cold, day-old bowl of mustard greens, and with the determination that can only be found in a 5-year-old, I ate it all.

Then I immediately marched out of the house, strode across the street, and knocked on Brother’s door. His mother opened it.

“I need to talk to your son, ma’am.”

“Okay.”

A little later Brother came to the door. I could feel the power of the spinach taking effect. I had a courage and an inspiration I had never known before.

“Brother, I want you to come outside. We’re going to have a fight. I’m tired of you pushing me around and we’re going to settle it once and for all.”

“Sure,” he said.

Brother came out and proceeded to give me one of the worst beatings I had ever had in my 5 years. Broken, beaten, and deeply disillusioned, I went back home. I recovered, but my faith in Popeye had been irreparably destroyed.

Sadly, some religion is of the variety that I like to call “Popeye religion.” It’s the idea that once you become a Christian, if you are really a committed Christian, your problems go away. All the things that used to tempt you no longer tempt you. Suddenly, your spiritual muscles bulge out and you have the power to immediately overcome that bully we call Satan. But my experience, and, more importantly, my understanding of the Scriptures, teaches me that things don’t work quite that way. God has promised to transform us all into spiritually mighty men and women, but the process doesn’t happen over night. It is a lifelong task and, according to Paul, it happens in degrees:

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

Though all Christians are made holy, cleansed and justified, by God’s grace,  in another sense, once  we become Christians, we begin the pursuit of holiness. We begin the process of becoming what we already are. This is what is sometimes called “sanctifying” grace. To be sanctified is to be set apart, to be made holy.

“Sanctify” comes from the same Greek work from which we get the word “saint.” When we become Christians, the Holy Spirit begins in our lives the work of sanctification, making us holy, making us just like Jesus. That is God’s promise to us.

“How great is the love  the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. And that  is what we are! Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him for we shall   see him as he is” (1 John 3:1-2).

When we are first saved the Bible calls that “justification” (see Romans 5:1-2). Justification means that we are forgiven from our past sins and God treats us just-as-if we had never sinned. But the salvation process does not, indeed it must not, stop there. God wants to do more than forgive us, he wants to restore us to what he intended when he first created man. God wants us to become like God.

A few weeks ago I went to visit an old family friend. He took me out into his garage to show me his prized possession, a 1936 Ford station wagon. It was called a “Woody” because the frame was made out of wood. I remembered when I was a young boy, over 30 years ago, seeing that old car in L. K.’s garage. It was old, beaten up, and hardly worth the space it occupied. Most of its parts were missing, and the parts that remained weren’t very impressive.

However, when I walked into L. K.’s garage and saw the finished product, I was stunned! Is this the same old jalopy you were working on 30 years ago!?

It was. But now it was gorgeous. Fully restored. 

L. K. had worked long and hard to find every  missing part. He had spent hours and hours cleaning, shining, sanding, painting,  and rebuilding until he had finally restored the car. Once it was little more than a pile of junk. Now it is a classic.

L. K.’s labor of love had lasted nearly his lifetime, but it has been worth it. What a thrill it is to drive around in that car and show it off!

That is what God’s sanctification is all about. Restoring us to our classic beauty. Through his Spirit in us, God cleans and shines, sands and paints, restores and rebuilds us until finally one day, one glorious day, Jesus returns and finds that we are like him in all his glory.

But how does such a wonderful thing happen? 

To begin to get some idea of how this takes place, I think it is important that we learn to discern in this wonderful process what God does and what we must do. Jerry Bridges, author of The Pursuit of Holiness, writes: “We cannot do what God must do; but God will not do what we must do.” 

So, what is God’s part? The hard part! The impossible part. God always has to do that. He has made it possible for us to be pardoned. We can’t do that. 

Suppose I decide I want to take your car out on a joy ride, and I wreck it. Then I bring it back and say something like this: “I’m really sorry I wrecked your car, but that’s okay, I forgive me.”

Now I have a feeling that wouldn’t wash. We can’t forgive ourselves. We have taken the life that belongs to God and we have wrecked it. We can’t look up to God and say, “Well, I’m sorry but that’s okay. I forgive me.”

No, that’s God’s department and the good news is that he has forgiven us, at great cost to himself! “God made him who had no sin   to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

God not only is the only one who can give us a pardon; he is also the only one who can give us a purpose in life. Frank Sinatra used to sing, “I did it my way.” It made a popular song, but it makes a terrible religion. God created us. God designed us. The player doesn’t tell the coach, “Here’s where I think I should play.” The student doesn’t tell the teacher, “Here’s what I think I should learn.” The creation doesn’t tell the creator, “Here’s what I think I’m created for.” God himself has engineered us for his own purpose and that purpose is to glorify and praise God.

My father used to go hunting a lot when he was  a boy growing up on the farm. He had an old hound dog that spent most of his days just lying around doing nothing. But whenever Dad came out with his shotgun, that dog jumped up and started running around like crazy. He knew he was going hunting, and that’s what he was made for. He was a hunting dog, created to hunt.

We’re no different.

God created us for a reason—to glorify and praise the Creator. If we’re not doing that, then however important we might think what we’re doing is, in God’s eyes we’re just lying around. Paul writes, “I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God— this is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1). For this we were made and in this is our joy.

The third thing that only God can do is provide the power. God has placed within us his power to change us. Now he exhorts us to use it. The apostle writes, “Work out your own salvation with fear and  trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:12-13).

At one time that passage scared me. I had the idea that I was supposed to save myself. That would indeed cause fear and trembling. But that’s not the idea in this Scripture. The phrase “work out” is an artist’s phrase. It is like working  an image out of a lump of clay. What Paul is saying is that we should be in awe of what has happened in our salvation. God has entered us. He is inside us. Now  we must work that presence which is inside us to the outside so that all can see his glory. 

I’m not a farmer, but I know one thing. The real miracle of farming is all wrapped up in that tiny little seed. If you have bad seed, it doesn’t matter how much you water and fertilize—nothing will grow. Your work will be in vain. The life is in the seed. 

It is the same with man. Salvation is the act of God placing within us the seed of life (see 1 Peter 1:23 and 1 John 3:9).

God’s seed is in us. It has the power to produce new life. With God in us, our work is not in vain. Our efforts to become more like Christ can be fruitful because there is good seed in us—the seed of the Spirit of God. 

Finally, the fourth thing that only God can do is give us peace. My experience is that peace is pretty hard to come by in this world. So many people I meet are angry at someone. Every day the newspaper is filled with   stories about angry people. This is an election year   and in it we are reminded  of how much anger is in  our country. The political scene is not peaceful. Even families are not at peace with each other. And there is a reason. We can’t give ourselves peace. Paul tells us in Ephesians 2 that Christ is our peace. “He has made the two one and has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility.” Paul was speaking of the hostility between Jews and Gen‑tiles, but the principle surely applies to all dividing walls. And here is the secret. Horizontal peace is not possible without vertical peace. When a man is at peace with God, then he can make peace with his fellow man. A man at peace with God doesn’t have to prove anything. A man at peace with God understands the grace and mercy he has received from God and is able to extend that grace and mercy to his fellow man.

Pardon, purpose, power, and peace. That’s quite a quartet! That’s the part God must do, for we simply cannot do it. 

But sanctifying grace also involves something we must do that God will not do. 

Grace does not mean we do nothing and God does everything. Paul teaches that the grace of God teaches us to say “no” to ungodliness (see Titus 2:12). The apostle Peter goes into more detail: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:34).

The key word is “participate.” We cannot save ourselves alone. God does not intend to save us alone either. He intends us to participate with him in the divine nature. He wants us to trust in his promises, submit to his Word, and cooperate with his plan. 

Imagine that you have inherited a wonderful piece of property and you want very much to build a home, but you have no funds. Then one day a line of trucks begins to arrive filled with everything you need to build your house. God does not say, “I will build this house for you; sit back and watch.” No, God says, “I have provided everything you need to build. I have provided everything you cannot provide for yourself. I have made it possible. Now get to work!” 

“For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep  you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:5-8).

“Make every effort to add to your faith . . . .” 

“If you possess these qualities in increasing measure . . . .”

 I would suggest you add to “participate” the word “progress.” God wants us to grow, to progress, to become more and more like Jesus. He is our model. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” As we continue to grow in him, our lives increasingly reflect his glory. We become like him. We live his way and we become his hands of service in this world. We learn his truth and our heads become filled with the knowledge of his word. We love his life and our hearts burst with his compassion and goodness toward others. One of my favorite authors describes the church of Jesus as “the Second Incarnation.” The church is Jesus Christ in the world again, in the flesh again, but this time he is in our flesh and our blood. The Spirit of God’s work is to transform us into the image of Jesus in this world.

Let me close with one more “P.” Perseverance. As Christians we are surrounded by brothers and sisters in our church family who are committed to encouraging and supporting us. In addition to these are the saints of every age who look down upon us from heaven above, cheering us on. And so for that reason, the writer of Hebrews says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Sanctifying grace is the work of God through his Spirit to gradually transform us into the image of Jesus Christ. That does not happen quickly. That does not happen easily. And it will not happen at all if we give up. 

But if we persevere, if we go the distance, God will finish the work he has begun in us. God has promised to us, “I will change you. Work with me!” 

Our promise to him must be, “I will let you Lord. I won’t quit the race. I will persevere.”

Copyright © 2001 The Christian Appeal