THE CHRISTIAN: POSITIONALLY perfect IN Christ while PRACTICALLY growing BY Christ....
Once saved, God intends for Christians to grow and become more and more like Christ. Tozer said, "Refuse to be average." But when we resolve to do so, it is good to remember there exists a world of difference between busy activity and meaningful progress. Mere busyness cannot serve as a substitute for productivity.
Alarmingly, today's Church is like a rocking horse with lots of motion but not much genuine progress. 'How to' seminars are prolific, the same ones offered fifty year ago. The ecclesiastical world seems stuck and stale. But, God intends that His people "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18). And let's be clear that what God looks for isn't necessarily 'bigness' and hype (the world would have us think so), but rather, like the mustard seed, that which may be imperceptible but nevertheless significant. Furthermore, God's kind of growth is not just corporately engendered (the local church), but, also personally wrought (daily with God). In fact, the corporate church is far too elevated in Christian experience, as if all we need to do to advance in Christian maturity is to go to church more often. At best, this results in very few hours at services. A personal walk with God can entail hours and hours, if so engaged. The corporate approach (ordered by the Lord and valuable in its own right), as a single means of Christian maturity, is more than refuted by mere observation. Anemic Christians abound, and often they are the ones 'at Church' the most. Christians must be encouraged to "walk and talk" with the Lord continually.
POSITIONALLY, when a sinner believes in Jesus Christ, he is at once perfect "IN Christ Jesus." The Bible clearly states, "But by His doing you are IN Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." God the Father always sees the believer "in Christ Jesus." What we are "in" is what we are surrounded by. If I'm in a pool of water I'm surrounded by that water. If I'm "in Christ" He is my perfect righteousness. Jesus IS 'righteousness' imputed (or charged) to the believer's account, thereby rendering every Christian positionally perfect IN Him. Hereby the thrice-holy God is rendered fully satisfied. God the Father always sees the believer "in Christ." If I look at something through rose-colored glasses, everything comes up rosey. God ever seeing us through Christ, everything comes up perfect.. Theologically, we say, God is thereby propitiated. John says, "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world" (1 John 2:1-2).
Now, PRACTICALLY speaking, the saved person, positionally made perfect IN Jesus, must then day by day grow BY Christ Jesus, by His enabling grace. Like the caterpillar becoming a beautiful butterfly, an arduous process is involved requiring the believer to utilize all the provisions of grace designed for such change. It takes a lifetime of effort, patience and learning the ways of the Lord. Really it takes all the Biblical concepts of wrestling, running the race, fighting the good fight of faith, disciplining self, and even buffeting (beating) self (Ephesians 6; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27) to see it happen. But God is vitally interested in any such determined endeavor and supplies all that is needed to carry it out. We call these "all things" (see below) His means of sanctifying grace. The Apostle Paul reasons, "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32). Are not these "things" that whereby we fight the good fight of faith?
Therefore, let us rejoice being IN Christ Jesus but with a patient spirit proceed to "work out (our) salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in (us), both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13). Paul instructs us: "Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of (seize hold of what you have, hang on to it, prize it, hold it close) the eternal life to which you were called..." (1 Timothy 6:12). In other words, in order to grow into Christ-likeness, get off the rocking horse and climb on the walking/working horse. Or, to press the initial figure, see yourself in a cocoon becoming more and more in the likeness of Jesus. The grace that saves us is completely unmerited. It is all of God, through and through. But, it seems to me that sanctifying grace, or that whereby we grow in Jesus, meshes His enabling grace with our diligent upward desires and efforts. We can't live the Christ-life without Him; He can't do what He wants in us unless we strive by His grace to intently perfect holiness for Him. Of course, at the same time, He is ever at work to bring us to the point(s) of desiring to so strive. And so "we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18). Yes, it takes a life time of endeavor, moment by moment, day by day, year by year. This is Christian living! He is at work; we are at work. Praise God, that at the very moment of the new birth IN Jesus we are rendered justified before God (and positionally sanctified, redeemed, etc.) and fully accepted IN the Beloved (Jesus), and all this by His grace plus nothing of ourselves. But in the daily sense, we are being sanctified BY Christ and by His "freely given" means of grace, namely, the Bible, the Church, the Holy Spirit, the preaching and teaching of the Word and the daily consumption of the Word by reading and meditation. It is right at this juncture that we often fail because we somehow think that all this will somehow add up to a 'Christ-like life' in some kind of an automatic way. We become well-versed in the Bible but fail to put it into practice. This is where the "will" must become involved. The above list of "means" will be merely intellectual unless we take what we've learned and put it into practice. The struggle of which Paul often talks now comes into view.
In dietary matters, if I'm obese and am offered a second piece of strawberry pie, it takes enormous "won't" power to refuse. "I know I should refuse but, oh, how I want it!" Here is where what I know about the dangers of over-eating must be put into practice and the tough decision of saying "no" made. And so the inward battle begins. I say, "I just can't refuse that luscious piece of pie." But if I want to get at a healthier weight, I JUST SIMPLY MUST! I won't die if I don't have that extra pie. It'll be for my greater good if I refuse. And so the process of becoming healthier proves an excruciating process to make the tough choice. It's agony! It IS and Paul says the same when it comes to the Christian life. Listen to him: "Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified." (1 Corinthians 9:24-27). And Peter adds: "Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. (1 Peter 4:1-2). Further, the writer of Hebrews intensifies all this by saying "let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus... You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin..." It is most fashionable these days to extol "unmerited grace" and to apply it to Christian living. God's marvelous "unmerited grace" saves us. It completely saves us from the guilt and penalty of sin. It guarantees eternal life. All this is gloriously true! But when we proceed to think that we engage in daily Christian living merely by pleading the "unmerited grace" that saved us, we set ourselves up to easily confess our daily sins (no big deal), seemingly making everything right with God (after all we're saved all by grace and eternally safe), and then go back to living the same old way. After all, we're saved and safe. In this belief there are no "works" requirement for the daily life of living for Jesus. But Scripture says, yes there are! "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?" The apostle Paul, after extolling a salvation which is by grace alone, plus nothing, proceeds to challenge all of us with these words: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10). We're not saved BY good works but we are saved UNTO them.
I think that the Scriptures teach that the unmerited grace that saves us from sin and hell, and makes us perfect in Christ, continues with us for the battle of the Christian life but is coupled with our efforts to do the wrestling, running, the putting on of the armor and engaging in the fight so clearly presented in many places in the New Testament. In other words, we must distinguish between salvation's unmerited grace and a merited grace, or cooperative grace whereby we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. In a sense, Christian living is one-hundred per cent God, but 100 per cent the Christian. And so, Paul enjoins us with these words: "work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13).
If we do not believe in a merited kind of grace for Christian living and assume that the free and unmerited grace of salvation will somehow carry us through, how will we explain the following passage that predicates God's favors upon our behavior?
"The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all His ordinances were before me, and I did not put away His statutes from me. I was also blameless with Him, and I kept myself from my iniquity. Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in His eyes. With the kind You show Yourself kind; With the blameless You show Yourself blameless; With the pure You show Yourself pure, and with the crooked You show Yourself astute" Psalm 18:20-26).
This seems to say that there is indeed a merited grace God bestows on those who diligently pursue His ways.
And so I think it must be concluded that while initially saved by unmerited grace alone, there exists for Christian living an interplay between His enabling provisions of grace and our obedient responses thereunto. "If you love me, keep my commands." The unmerited grace of salvation is bestowed once for all when a sinner believes in Jesus Christ while the unmerited/merited grace of the daily Christian walk continues until the believer sees Christ. Therefore, the worm waits while the chrysalis with time emerges with exquisite beauty, even that of Christ Himself.
dick d. christen
