The Hard Work of the Christian Faith
Photo by afiq fatah on Unsplash
I've been preaching, teaching, and writing since the early 2000s. If my ministry has a particular leaning, it's a default to encouraging people to take seriously the stewardship of the life Jesus purchased for them. Jesus gives us life. How are we doing, in the words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 1:27, at "conduct[ing] ourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel"? Are we sold out to following Jesus with all we are in order to advance His Kingdom on this earth?
In the past few years, I have experienced something that has become so common that I feel compelled to make space to examine it. I don't know if it's a new phenomenon that reflects changing cultural norms or a tendency that's always been present, but I am just now noticing. Maybe it's a little of both.
If I preach a sermon, write an article, or post on social media any challenge to strive, work, or exert great effort to pursue Jesus, someone inevitably pops up and scolds me.
"Striving is legalism."
"We don't gain anything by effort, only by faith."
"Works-based faith much?"
Every. Single. Time. I know that there will be people who respond the same way to this article.
Now, the Word of God could be no clearer: Salvation cannot be achieved by our efforts or exerting our will. No one could ever knuckle down and work so hard as to save themselves from the effects of their sin. Ephesians 2:8–9 might be the most succinct expression of this truth: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." It's amazing grace indeed that offers salvation to sinners by faith in the person and works of Jesus.
It's also important to acknowledge that our hard work and striving can never make God love or want us more. Ours is not a performance-based value. God sees us as worthy and valuable only because He sees us through the lens of Jesus' atoning death on the cross, which eternally ensures our worthiness (Col. 1:21-22).
Once we acknowledge these two truths, that our salvation and our acceptance by God are accomplished independent of any hard work on our part, we are free to stare in the face how the Bible, particularly the New Testament, talks about how we are to approach our faith. And take my word for it; it's unequivocal.
The picture that the Bible paints is one of Christ-followers exerting great effort to follow after God. We must strive. We must work and work hard. The pursuit of God that the biblical authors would recognize is all-encompassing, exhaustive, and single-minded. It is a faith-fueled by work and effort.
We cannot strive to earn our salvation. But we must strive in our pursuit of sanctification.
Want receipts? There is a near endless amount.
Let's start with Jesus' definition of discipleship in Matthew 16:24: "Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." The Greek word Jesus uses for "take up" is transcribed "aparnesastho." It signifies "obedience to the will of God declared by Jesus and a readiness for self-denial and martyrdom in following Jesus." That sounds like hard work to me.
God didn't tell us through the prophet Jeremiah that we would find Him when we looked for Him half-heartedly. No, God said, "You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13). Solomon echoes this same sentiment when he says that we find the wisdom of God only by searching diligently (Prov. 8:13).
Peter urges the Christian not to try just a little but to make "every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love" so that Believers would be effective and fruitful for God (2 Pet. 1:5-8).
1 Timothy 6:11–12 is a powerful example of this line of reasoning. Paul is writing to his protege Timothy and says, "But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." This appeal is LOADED with words and phrases that speak to the hard work of our faith.
Paul tells Timothy to "pursue" righteousness. The Greek word for pursue is transcribed as "dioke," and in this case, and everywhere else in the New Testament where it's similarly used, "it always denotes the striving of Christians."
Paul says, "Fight the good fight of faith," a phrase he repeats in 1 Timothy 1:18. The definition of this Greek word, "agonizomai," is "to struggle; to fight; to strain." Jesus uses the same word in Luke 13:24, saying, "Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able." It's also the same word Paul uses in Colossians 1:29, where he says, "For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me."
Paul urges Timothy to "take hold" of the life to which he had been called. The Greek word transcribed "epilabou" means "to act, to seize, to grasp for oneself, and to lay firm hold of."
Philippians 3:13–16 might be Paul's most powerful example of the tremendous effort it takes to pursue Christ's demands of us. Here Paul says,
"Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained."
Paul says in verse 13 that he "strains forward" to what lies ahead, namely, a growing knowledge of Christ. The Greek phrase for "straining forward' is not used anywhere else in the New Testament, and it is a phrase that imagines the exact moment a runner is breaking the tape. Every fiber in the body is given to this moment. Every muscle is taught. This is the culmination of all of the runner's efforts.
Paul says, straining forward, he "presses on." Now, the phrase "press on" in Greek was often used to describe a hunter stalking his prey. Paul is giving us insight into how seriously he pursued Jesus. Paul's pursuit of Christ was like an athlete straining to win the race with the single-minded focus of a hunter. That's some Chuck Norris faith! But this is how Paul describes the intensity, commitment, and complete effort he puts into pursuing Jesus.
We must strive. We must effort. We must pursue. In a word, we must work for it.
Work for what? What is the goal? Paul gives us the answer in Philippians 3:14. We strive for a prize, and Paul described the prize he valued above all else as "the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." The upward call of God. This isn't just a calling to a task. This is God's eternal, life-changing, salvific call on the individual Believer. As one author put it, "This is a call from heaven, to heaven."
Paul gave everything he had to pursuing the call of God on His life. That was his prize. Simply put, God and everything that comes with Him was Paul's goal. John Chrysostom, the 4th Century Archbishop of Constantinople, put it this way. He said,
"What was Paul's prize? . . . The kingdom of heaven, everlasting rest, glory together with Christ, the inheritance [of heaven], brotherhood, ten thousand good things, which it is impossible to name. It is impossible to describe the beauty of that prize; he who has it, alone knows the value of it . . . It is not of gold, it is not set with jewels, it is far more precious."
What Paul has described for us in Philippians and elsewhere, what Jesus lays out for us, and what Peter and even the Old Testament writers urge us to is a single-minded, deeply rooted, all-consuming commitment to surrendering everything in our lives to becoming like Jesus in order to be used by Him to advance His Kingdom. Rather than being an unattainable ideal, something exceptional for super-Christians, it is the model. It is the expectation.
I don't know what to make of the pushback I receive when I preach or write on this aspect of our faith.
My hunch is that some people are so adamant in confronting a works-based view of salvation that they, with good intentions, throw the baby out with the bath water. For them, any discussion of hard work raises red flags. I suspect that others resist the urging of Scripture's call to strive greatly out of what Bonhoeffer referred to as a cheapening of God's grace, the misguided notion that God's grace is so sufficient that it relieves us of any obligation to strive for holiness through obedience to God's commands. I suspect, however, that most of the pushback I receive is the outer expression of an inner recoiling, born of our sin nature, against the difficulty of pursuing Christ as fallen people in a fallen world. The profound words of G.K. Chesterton, familiar to so many of us, ring as true today as they ever have:
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."
Following Jesus is difficult.
That should come as no surprise to any of us. And yet, the greatest irony of it all is that God gives us His Spirit for this very reason. We are called to the hard work of faithfully bending our wills to seek God. And precisely because God Himself knows that this will be difficult for us, He gives us, in the words of Paul from Romans 8:11, the same power that raised Christ from the dead. We have the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit to strengthen us as we follow God. And still, so many Christians are defined by a faith that is weak, untried, and unserious.
I grieve over what is missed by those who will not surrender themselves to a strenuous pursuit of Christ, to a costly faith. Because what they cannot know is that there is a beautiful paradox at work regarding the hard work that Christ commands. Unlike worldly work, toiling for Christ is not tiresome, burdensome, or joyless. It is freeing. It is life-giving. The more you pour yourself out in the service of the Lord, the more you have to give. How tragic that those who will not invest the effort of following Jesus out of fear of the cost will never know the bliss of the reward.
This article originally appeared in Volume 20 of my free newsletter, Good For You.
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