We struggle morally because we've sidelined what God wants at the center.
| posted 12/17/2008
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As we seek to understand the moral implications of God's call to holiness, we must maintain the priority of our union with Christ. "We love because he first loved us," John tells us (1 John 4:19). The entire biblical narrative of God's covenant making with his people reveals that it is only in loving response to what God has done that we lead holy lives. Indeed, the very possibility of holiness exists only by virtue of God's gracious, saving initiative in human life and history. Our response to God's initiative is grounded and established in the perfect holiness that is already ours in Jesus Christ. Anything short of this understanding will collapse back into the notion that holiness is our doing, rather than God's. But when this priority is maintained, it provides an unshakeable foundation upon which our faltering attempts to lead holy lives may be rooted and established.
Still, as we maintain the priority of our union with God in Christ, we must also acknowledge that we are not yet holy. For our holy relationship with God in Christ requires of us—or better yet, enables in us—a response. "I urge you," says Paul, "to live a life worthy of the calling you have received" (Eph. 4:1); and, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God" (Rom. 12:1); and finally, "Continue to work out your salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Phil. 2:12–13).
Such passages make clear that there is no place for cheap grace in the economy of God. Rather, the purpose of God's saving work in Christ is to free us to live out the holiness we already enjoy in him. The wonder and beauty of the gospel is that God deigned to reveal his love and goodness through creatures created in his image. By virtue of God's gracious initiative and through union with Christ, we participate in God's holiness in a way that transforms our lives and manifests God's grace: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works" (Eph. 2:10).
