Some who are enamored with Jesus’ Sermon-on-the-Mount-Life and who reach the moment in their lives when they wish to genuinely start living that life find themselves paralyzed by an inability to differentiate effort from earning. It dawns on them that a transition from the run-of-the-mill life they are living to the over-the-top life Jesus offers will require intense effort. They grasp that climbing from passion to purity, from fury to forgiveness, and from greed to generosity necessitates nearly super hero levels of strength. Yet, they’ve drunk so deeply of Scripture’s teaching about grace and unmerited favor that “effort” sounds very much like “earn.” And they are not about to return to the demanding and discouraging life of somehow trying to earn their way into God’s way of life. Thus they are caught between a dream to experience the mountain top life of Jesus and a dread that any work toward that mountain top will just lead them back to legalism.
Paul’s crystal clear awareness of this issue leads him to write, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. Paul’s transformation from intolerance to inclusiveness and from hatred to hospitality, and the effort associated with it, wasn’t even a distant cousin twice-removed to “a righteousness…that comes from the law.” There was no relationship at all between the two. When Paul encountered the risen Jesus on his way to the city of Damascus, he was forced to drop everything—especially the baggage of legalism and works righteousness which formed the core of this spirituality at that time. Paul no longer believed it possible or necessary to earn God’s favor or win God’s righteousness. He leaves no doubt on this issue. His own spiritual renovation had absolutely nothing to do with earning or winning. Paul wants us to know that we’ve all been freely given a right standing with God, and no amount of spiritual renovation is going to make God love us more.
But while God is opposed to earning, as Dallas Willard writes, he is not opposed to effort. Twice in the testimony above Paul writes about how he “presses on” and once he describes how he is “straining forward.” This is the language of effort. Intense effort. Sweat-dropping-from-your-head effort. And effort is not the same as earning.
Here is how Dallas Willard explains it:[i] “While it is true that we are saved by grace, that God alone is the author of our salvation, and it is impossible to change our wayward hearts on our own, it is also true that we have important responsibilities in this journey of discipleship. We must understand the critical truth that God is not opposed to people making an effort, but that God is opposed to using our effort to earn salvation. So God is not opposed to effort but to earning. While God’s grace birthed us into the kingdom, our continued cooperation with that grace grows us in the life of the kingdom.” God is opposed to earning—that posture which proposes “I can save myself.” But God is not opposed to effort—the actions we undertake to become more and more spiritually healthy. And if we want to experience more than superficial improvements in our piety, people, and possessions, it will require intense effort.
But this effort done in partnership with God. John Ortberg uses a raft, a rowboat, and a sailboat to illustrate.[ii] Imagine that the shoreline on the opposite side of a lake represents where you dream of living. That shore is you experiencing Matthew 5-7 every single day. How do you get to that shore? You could jump onto a raft and assume that God’s going to do all the work for you. But you’d just end up drifting aimlessly. Alternatively, you could jump into a rowboat and assume that you along must do all the work. So you row and row, but eventually you burn out. What you need is a sailboat. Sailing is not easy. It still requires intense effort. But ultimately, the wind carries you to the other shore. You and the wind co-labor. In the same way, you and God will co-labor to achieve true life-change.
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[i] Dallas Willard, Jan Johnson, Keith Matthews, Dallas Willard’s Guide to The Divine Conspiracy (Harper Collins, 2001), 107.
[ii] John Ortberg, “True (and False) Transformation,” Leadership (Summer 2002), 104.
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