Friday Update (February 23, 2024)
Musings on grace and holiness, plus some stuff I think you’ll like.
Hello friends!
I really need to come up with a more creative name for this weekly missive, but I’m just too tired. Suggestions are welcome, if you’ve got ‘em. Anyway, I’ve got my book review almost ready for you, with high hopes to send it out early next week. I’d wanted to get it done and sent this week, but it just didn’t work out that way.
But I’ve got a two-part message for you today. These are things that were on my heart and that I wrote down a few weeks ago. I shared the first part already on Substack Notes and in my Instagram stories, so some of you might have seen that already. But it and the second part kind of go together, so I’m including it here. I hope it can help bring some clarity and peace to someone who is grappling with the tension between grace and sanctification.
I.
I have a confession: I get pretty sweary sometimes.
I try to present my authentic self online, but I admit it’s a cleaned up version of myself. My online persona is a lot closer to who I try to be offline. But it’s a lot easier to edit yourself online, and to hide your faults.
Of which I have many. Swearing is just the tip of the iceberg. I have a real anger problem. I’ve come a long way, but sometimes I have an explosive temper. I believe it’s not a sin to drink alcohol in moderation, but sometimes I overdo it. I have a problem with gluttony. I’m not a great housekeeper. I can be passive-aggressive. I have to diligently guard my heart against pride. I can get real snarky, and I have a perverse sense of humor, and a mean streak I’m not proud of.
And that’s not counting the much longer list of sinful habits I’ve managed to overcome in the twenty years since I got serious about my faith. Or all the backsliding I did before that.
Why am I sharing this?
Because I think a lot of Christian influencers get the gospel twisted around. They present a gospel of “repent and clean yourself up first and then come to Christ.” Or a gospel that says you have to look and act a certain way, or you can lose your salvation, or you were never really saved in the first place.
That’s not the gospel. The gospel is grace.
Not hyper-grace. Not grace at the expense of sanctification and striving for set-apartness.
But grace to do it imperfectly. To do it slowly. To fail, fall and get back up, over and over and over again, as many times as it takes. Grace that is full of compassion, that understands that we’re fallen and made of dust and the spirit is often willing but the flesh is so weak.
The incomparable, incomprehensible grace of a perfect Father who sees his kids struggling and messing up and instead of admonishing or punishing, uses those failures as teachable moments to help us grow up to be chips off the old block. Whose love is so deep and wide and full and unfathomable that we need the Holy Spirit to enable us to even begin to understand it.
And even then, so many of us don’t understand just how much He loves us, and how gracious and forgiving He is toward us, and as a result so many of us present to the world an angry, unloving, disapproving God who dangles salvation before us and then yanks it out from under us at the slightest transgression. But that’s not who He is.
He is for us. He’s stacked the deck in our favor. He cast our Accuser out of Heaven and replaced him with His own Son who is both our advocate and our judge, who also already paid the penalty for our failures. He gives us everything we need to succeed, and as long as there’s breath in our lungs we never run out of chances. Just as He never runs out of forgiveness.
What does he want from us, then, if he doesn’t want perfect holiness? Actually, he does want us to be perfectly holy, but that’s something He will do, not us, and He, not we, will get all the glory. He’s already done it positionally by covering us with Christ’s perfect holiness. At the resurrection, He’ll finish the job, replacing our fallen, dusty bodies with brand new ones that are completely sanctified.
But what does He desire from us in the meantime?
He wants our complete devotion, and our complete trust, and obedience that is a natural product of those things. Obedience that isn’t perfect but is born from love and a sincere desire to please Him, and trust that He is good and He loves us and knows what’s best for us.
Obedience that’s based on how good He is, not showing everyone how good we are.
None of us are good. But by His grace, we’re forgiven, we’re accepted, and we’re so very loved.
II.
The Lord knows we’re imperfect. He knows we’re fallen, made of dust, that our love and our obedience and our expressions of our desires to please him always fall short. That if we could be perfect, we wouldn’t need a savior.
Our imperfections, and this imperfect, fallen world we’re living in, are supposed to point us to the Perfect. They’re supposed to point us forward to the day when we’ll stand before Him, face to face, not in fearful expectation of his displeasure, but with joyful anticipation of finally being made perfect ourselves. It’s not something we can achieve, but something HE will do. HE will finish us. HE will complete us. That’s the good news -- that one day, because the Perfect came and lived and died for us, we are now covered by His perfect obedience, and one day WE OURSELVES will be made perfect and complete, and live forever in a perfect world in the presence of our perfect Savior and Father.
THIS life, this pilgrimage here on the earth, is helping to perfect us. The suffering we go through here is pruning us and refining us and teaching us wisdom that will help us forever eschew sin and evil once we get to Eternity. This is a long, slow exercise in putting our hand on the hot stove and learning first hand that that shiny, glowy thing burns and, though it may look attractive from a distance and even put out a warmth that draws us in, it will harm us if we get too close.
It was not God’s will that we should fall, or that we should sin. But He knew we would, and he wove it into his plan and purpose. Does that mean that we should sin on purpose, or go on sinning? Like Paul wrote, may it never be! But He uses the results of our sins as object lessons to teach us, discipline us and help us grow up and get over the desire to sin.
Christians are by no means sinless. But as we grow, we should be sinning less. Even so, this is a life-long process, and it happens for different people at different speeds. But none of us will achieve perfection until we graduate from this life, and when that happens, it will happen for all of us, regardless of how far along we were in our race to the finish.
I think some of us -- many of us -- need to get over this idea that we’re disappointing God when we slip or stumble. No, he’s not pleased when we sin, but he also isn’t surprised by it. He expects it from us. He knows we’re going to do it. And He’s already forgiven us for it.
When Adam and Eve sinned, they hid themselves away from God. But He sought them out. He himself made a sacrifice to cover their nakedness, the result of their sin. But not before He promised that a Savior would come to crush the head of the one who enticed them to sin.
Jesus gave his life precisely so that sin would no longer separate us from God. So don’t hide yourself away from God.
This was a busy week (I think we’re heading into a season of busy weeks, thanks to this early spring we’re enjoying), so I didn’t have a lot of time for reading, watching or listening this week. But here are a few things I think are worth your time.
I’m always a little hesitant to listen to another Vicki Joy Anderson interview for fear that it will be repetitive, but I’m always amazed by how knowledgeable she is and how much she has to say. No two interviews are ever alike, and I really got a lot out of this conversation.
I’m still working my way through Derek and Sharon Gilbert’s Unravelling Revelation series (I recommend all of it). This episode from last fall examines how the new Godzilla-verse is programming us for what the rebellious Sons of God hope the end times will be like.
I stumbled across this essay/rant here on Substack, and I found myself nodding a lot. Good stuff.
That’s all for this week. Next week, Lord willing: my review of Earthquake Resurrection!
Until then, may the Lord bless you and keep you and lead you into all the truth!
Love,
Jean
“You have your own space for that, and I respect your space. I ask the same respect for my space and my beliefs.”
Of course ❤️
First off, This is amazing!! I mean it! We agree on far more than it would seem on the surface. I am going to pour through this reply and attempt to formulate a reply that even comes close to the amount of thought you put into this.
But for now, please remember that this account, and this character of Will Dearborn is a work of fiction. A method of exploring these ideas that have no place in our “go to work everyday” world.
“You probably think I'm deceived and brainwashed into my beliefs, but I believe you're gravely deceived by an evil spirit who wants to take you to Hell with it and deprive you of eternal life and fellowship with the true God, so I guess that's fair. I'll be praying for you, Will.”
Not at all, and thank you. Talk soon.
👻❤️👻 -Will