The 8 Steps of Christian Obedience
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00:00:06.000 | Alright, Pastor John, you left us hanging last time because there's a debate happening in the church recently
00:00:12.000 | about how much of the Christian life is grace and how much of it is obedience,
00:00:17.000 | or how does gospel-centeredness and justification work together in the Christian life?
00:00:24.000 | Oh, how I would love for the lovers of sovereign grace to be of one mind
00:00:32.000 | about how sovereign grace works in the process of sanctification,
00:00:39.000 | how grace relates to obedience, the process of our attitudes and actions becoming more holy by the grace of God.
00:00:50.000 | 1 Peter 1:15 says, "As he who called you is holy, be holy in all your conduct."
00:01:00.000 | So there are controversies out there about the process of sanctification
00:01:06.000 | and the role of obedience and effort in it, the role of grace and Christ's cross and justification in it.
00:01:14.000 | And I want to try to come at this in a way that maybe could bring these sides together.
00:01:21.000 | All of us want to exalt grace. Grace is our only hope. None of us deserves heaven. We all deserve hell.
00:01:29.000 | Only grace will keep us out of hell, and that grace flows to us from God through Jesus Christ,
00:01:37.000 | only through Jesus Christ, who absorbed the curse and the wrath of God and who provided righteousness for us
00:01:44.000 | and enabled us to be forgiven so that God could be 100% for us.
00:01:50.000 | All of us have in mind those glorious truths when we think about grace,
00:01:55.000 | and we all agree, the people I'm thinking about anyway would.
00:01:59.000 | The debate is usually formulated in terms of whether human effort is needed to attain the holiness or the obedience
00:02:08.000 | without which we will not see the Lord. And what I don't see emphasized enough,
00:02:13.000 | and I think it would help if we did, what I don't see emphasized enough in the debate,
00:02:19.000 | though I could have missed it, is a strong biblical emphasis on future grace.
00:02:26.000 | That is the kind of grace that shows up this afternoon or tomorrow morning.
00:02:35.000 | It's new every morning, Lamentations says, and it empowers faith-filled effort that we make
00:02:44.000 | in the things that we ought to do. This future grace is blood-bought grace.
00:02:52.000 | There's the link with the cross and with justification. The only reason God is gracious to me this afternoon
00:02:58.000 | is because Christ died for me in the past. And so it always, depending on this future grace,
00:03:05.000 | always glorifies the Jesus of the cross, the blood-shedding Jesus.
00:03:12.000 | So let me illustrate how this works from a few texts.
00:03:15.000 | And one text in particular is very, very key, and I'd just love to get everybody in the same room
00:03:21.000 | and see how they would handle this text. The point I'm making here is that living by grace
00:03:28.000 | and making effort in the Bible, those two things, living by grace and making effort with my own mind
00:03:36.000 | and will, are in the Bible not exclusive categories. Those aren't either-ors.
00:03:41.000 | You don't say, "I'll either live by grace or I'll either make an effort."
00:03:45.000 | If the effort is what the Bible calls a "work of faith," so watch this happen in 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 11 and 12.
00:03:54.000 | In fact, I'd say this to people, click stop right now on the episode and go get your Bible and open it up
00:04:00.000 | and I'll wait for you. Okay, good. Are you back? Good. Here we go.
00:04:03.000 | We always pray for you. This is 2 Thessalonians 1, 11.
00:04:08.000 | We always pray for you that our God may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power
00:04:19.000 | so that the name of Jesus, the Lord Jesus, will be glorified in you according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:04:29.000 | Now that's a massively important verse on the relationship between my resolving and my working
00:04:36.000 | and God's grace and God's power and my faith.
00:04:39.000 | So here are the eight pieces, here are the eight steps of sanctification in that verse.
00:04:44.000 | I'll just tick them off here. Number one, God.
00:04:46.000 | We always pray for you that our God may fulfill in you.
00:04:50.000 | So everything starts with God. Number two, God's grace.
00:04:53.000 | The resolve for good, every work of faith are according to the grace of our God.
00:05:00.000 | Now that's future grace. So this afternoon, I'm supposed to resolve some good, do some work of faith.
00:05:05.000 | There's going to be grace there to help me make it happen.
00:05:08.000 | Number three, God's power. God fulfills every resolve for good, every work of faith by His power.
00:05:15.000 | So this grace is experienced as a power from God.
00:05:19.000 | Number four, our faith. This God-fulfilled activity is a work of faith.
00:05:25.000 | That's the phrase in the Bible, work of faith.
00:05:28.000 | So the way God, by His grace and His power, is going to bring about the good work, the obedience, the holiness,
00:05:37.000 | is by faith in that grace, which is His power to do it.
00:05:43.000 | Number five, our resolve. May God fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith.
00:05:51.000 | This means that there's an inner motion of the soul to embrace the good that's about to be done.
00:05:59.000 | The soul moves. It's an act of the will. I'm resolving something.
00:06:03.000 | This is a human act. Human act.
00:06:08.000 | But God is the one who, by His grace, by His power, through our faith, is bringing it to pass.
00:06:15.000 | Those are the dynamics that keep it from being legalism.
00:06:18.000 | Number six, our work. May God fulfill every good resolve, every resolve for good, and work of faith by His power.
00:06:29.000 | So this is our work in the sense that our mind, our will, our hands are the actors of the deed.
00:06:37.000 | But the decisive cause is God. God's grace, God's power flowing through our faith and our resolve.
00:06:46.000 | So 1 Corinthians 15.10 is just a great illustration of this.
00:06:51.000 | "By the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.
00:06:56.000 | On the contrary, I worked, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that was with me."
00:07:02.000 | It's exactly the same as here in 2 Thessalonians 1.11.
00:07:09.000 | Number seven, the resolve is fulfilled. That's the seventh piece, fulfilled.
00:07:16.000 | The work is done. May God fulfill every good resolve and work of faith.
00:07:21.000 | So when the work is done, we know God has done it.
00:07:24.000 | He awakened my resolve. He gave the gift of faith. His grace and His power carried the work.
00:07:30.000 | And so when it's done, He fulfilled it, which is what it says in Philippians 2.12.
00:07:36.000 | "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God, your working, is really God's working.
00:07:42.000 | He's the one that's bringing it to completion through the resolving and the willing and the working and the faith and the power and the grace.
00:07:49.000 | So it's your acting in His decisive doing.
00:07:53.000 | Number eight, this is the last one. Jesus is glorified.
00:07:57.000 | May God fulfill every resolve for good, every work of faith by His power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ be glorified in you.
00:08:09.000 | So it's all going to glorify Jesus because He's the one who bought all of this grace for us.
00:08:16.000 | So, by His grace and for His glory, and in the middle, human resolve, human work, and the link between this blood-bought power and grace that carries all this human action is my faith, my trust in Him.
00:08:35.000 | So that in the end, the work of holiness, the work of holiness is a work of faith and a work of grace.
00:08:45.000 | It is visibly and heartily our doing, and it is ultimately and decisively God's doing.
00:08:56.000 | Wonderful. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast, featuring longtime pastor and bestselling author, John Piper.
00:09:04.000 | Please visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources all free of charge from him.
00:09:11.000 | For more on grace and obedience in the Christian life, see Pastor John's book, Future Grace.
00:09:16.000 | And also check out a little e-book we published, which is titled, "Sanctification in the Everyday."
00:09:21.000 | It's one of many e-books you can find at DesiringGod.org, all free of charge.
00:09:26.000 | Go to the website and click on the Books tab.
00:09:28.000 | So should Christians watch a television show that features nudity? We'll address that tomorrow.
00:09:34.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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