The quality of our walk with Jesus is not predicated on anything we do, for the only thing we bring to our salvation is the sin that makes it necessary.
What doesn’t kill you might actually be a cheapened law that leaves wiggle room and space in the door for your old man to stick his foot in and get in on the work of Christ.
Is this Christianity? Is this what the Bible describes as the gospel? Is the Christian life? A partnership with God where we fix up our old man? The simple answer is no.
The gospel is the good news that in Christ we have been given the very righteousness of Christ himself. This means that everything God commands of us is given to us in Christ as a gift.
When we talk about bettering ourselves, we need to realize that a theology of the cross does not militate against this endeavor but that it places it squarely in the horizontal realm.
In a world where science tells us that everything is deteriorating and we’re all one day closer to our physical death it’s nice to think that there might be something we are getting better at.
As sinful humans, we are adept at taking what God gives as gift and making it into a work. Nowhere is this made more evident than in the universally misunderstood doctrine of sanctification.