Alright, Pastor John, you left us hanging last time because there's a debate happening in the church recently about how much of the Christian life is grace and how much of it is obedience, or how does gospel-centeredness and justification work together in the Christian life? Oh, how I would love for the lovers of sovereign grace to be of one mind about how sovereign grace works in the process of sanctification, how grace relates to obedience, the process of our attitudes and actions becoming more holy by the grace of God.

1 Peter 1:15 says, "As he who called you is holy, be holy in all your conduct." So there are controversies out there about the process of sanctification and the role of obedience and effort in it, the role of grace and Christ's cross and justification in it. And I want to try to come at this in a way that maybe could bring these sides together.

All of us want to exalt grace. Grace is our only hope. None of us deserves heaven. We all deserve hell. Only grace will keep us out of hell, and that grace flows to us from God through Jesus Christ, only through Jesus Christ, who absorbed the curse and the wrath of God and who provided righteousness for us and enabled us to be forgiven so that God could be 100% for us.

All of us have in mind those glorious truths when we think about grace, and we all agree, the people I'm thinking about anyway would. The debate is usually formulated in terms of whether human effort is needed to attain the holiness or the obedience without which we will not see the Lord.

And what I don't see emphasized enough, and I think it would help if we did, what I don't see emphasized enough in the debate, though I could have missed it, is a strong biblical emphasis on future grace. That is the kind of grace that shows up this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

It's new every morning, Lamentations says, and it empowers faith-filled effort that we make in the things that we ought to do. This future grace is blood-bought grace. There's the link with the cross and with justification. The only reason God is gracious to me this afternoon is because Christ died for me in the past.

And so it always, depending on this future grace, always glorifies the Jesus of the cross, the blood-shedding Jesus. So let me illustrate how this works from a few texts. And one text in particular is very, very key, and I'd just love to get everybody in the same room and see how they would handle this text.

The point I'm making here is that living by grace and making effort in the Bible, those two things, living by grace and making effort with my own mind and will, are in the Bible not exclusive categories. Those aren't either-ors. You don't say, "I'll either live by grace or I'll either make an effort." If the effort is what the Bible calls a "work of faith," so watch this happen in 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 11 and 12.

In fact, I'd say this to people, click stop right now on the episode and go get your Bible and open it up and I'll wait for you. Okay, good. Are you back? Good. Here we go. We always pray for you. This is 2 Thessalonians 1, 11. We always pray for you that our God may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power 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.

Now that's a massively important verse on the relationship between my resolving and my working and God's grace and God's power and my faith. So here are the eight pieces, here are the eight steps of sanctification in that verse. I'll just tick them off here. Number one, God. We always pray for you that our God may fulfill in you.

So everything starts with God. Number two, God's grace. The resolve for good, every work of faith are according to the grace of our God. Now that's future grace. So this afternoon, I'm supposed to resolve some good, do some work of faith. There's going to be grace there to help me make it happen.

Number three, God's power. God fulfills every resolve for good, every work of faith by His power. So this grace is experienced as a power from God. Number four, our faith. This God-fulfilled activity is a work of faith. That's the phrase in the Bible, work of faith. So the way God, by His grace and His power, is going to bring about the good work, the obedience, the holiness, is by faith in that grace, which is His power to do it.

Number five, our resolve. May God fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith. This means that there's an inner motion of the soul to embrace the good that's about to be done. The soul moves. It's an act of the will. I'm resolving something. This is a human act.

Human act. But God is the one who, by His grace, by His power, through our faith, is bringing it to pass. Those are the dynamics that keep it from being legalism. Number six, our work. May God fulfill every good resolve, every resolve for good, and work of faith by His power.

So this is our work in the sense that our mind, our will, our hands are the actors of the deed. But the decisive cause is God. God's grace, God's power flowing through our faith and our resolve. So 1 Corinthians 15.10 is just a great illustration of this. "By the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.

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." It's exactly the same as here in 2 Thessalonians 1.11. Number seven, the resolve is fulfilled. That's the seventh piece, fulfilled. The work is done.

May God fulfill every good resolve and work of faith. So when the work is done, we know God has done it. He awakened my resolve. He gave the gift of faith. His grace and His power carried the work. And so when it's done, He fulfilled it, which is what it says in Philippians 2.12.

"Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God, your working, is really God's working. 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. So it's your acting in His decisive doing.

Number eight, this is the last one. Jesus is glorified. 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. So it's all going to glorify Jesus because He's the one who bought all of this grace for us.

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. So that in the end, the work of holiness, the work of holiness is a work of faith and a work of grace.

It is visibly and heartily our doing, and it is ultimately and decisively God's doing. Wonderful. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast, featuring longtime pastor and bestselling author, John Piper. Please visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources all free of charge from him.

For more on grace and obedience in the Christian life, see Pastor John's book, Future Grace. And also check out a little e-book we published, which is titled, "Sanctification in the Everyday." It's one of many e-books you can find at DesiringGod.org, all free of charge. Go to the website and click on the Books tab.

So should Christians watch a television show that features nudity? We'll address that tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.