Growing up in an Adventist home, school, and church, I don’t remember a time that I didn’t know the story of Jesus. Yet I somehow absorbed the idea that “believing” and “doing” the right things were central to being saved. This made sense to my young mind as, in the world around me, nothing was free. But sometime during my teens I began to hear that salvation was by grace, through faith. I found this difficult to reconcile with my earlier understanding.
If salvation was a gift from God, what part did my right “believing” and “doing” play? If I was saved by grace, why did my works matter? This tension between grace and works is evident in both the Old and New Testaments, and can best be understood as central to the grand theme of redemption in Scripture.
God’s Original Plan Marred
When God created humankind in His image, His intent was that we would be holy, just as He is holy (Gen. 1:27; Lev. 20:26). Sadly, when sin and death entered the world, humans could no longer delight in being God’s image (Gen. 3; Rom. 5:12). As Ellen White states, the image of God in humankind was “marred, and well-nigh obliterated,” by sin.1
By His grace, the image of God in humankind was not completely lost. This reality is beautifully portrayed in Jeremiah’s depiction of the potter and the clay: “So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him” (Jer. 18:3, 4).2
When sin entered the world, God’s original plan for humankind was marred but not destroyed; so God, the Potter, did not throw away the marred pot. Rather, God’s original purpose for humankind, that we be holy, just as He is holy, remained the same; and so restoring in humankind the image of our Creator became part of the great “work of redemption.”3
God’s Work of Restoring Humankind
Both the Old and New Testaments portray this work of restoring humankind in His image as the work of God. For example, in Leviticus 20:26 God says, “You shall be holy . . . , that you should be Mine.” And in Leviticus 21:8 God says, “I the Lord am holy—I who make you holy.” Similarly, this theme is echoed in the New Testament. For example, “those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29); and “we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).
These verses make it clear that it is God who is the agent of restoring humankind in His image. This work of God, which is sometimes referred to as God’s sanctifying grace, is a present and ongoing reality; Scripture, however, also tells us that ultimate restoration of God’s image in humankind is in the future: “Now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
Scripture is clear that it is by God’s justifying grace, which is His gift to humankind, that we are saved (see, for example, Eph. 2:8, 9; Titus 3:5; Rom. 3:24). When we truly understand that we can do nothing to save ourselves, and when we are deeply moved by the love that motivated Christ to save us, we open our hearts to His Spirit, and God begins His work of sanctifying grace in our lives, gradually changing our old self and making us increasingly more like Him (Eph. 4:22-24; Gal. 2:20, 21; 2 Cor. 5:17; Phil. 1:6).
The Need of Human Cooperation
While this process of restoration and renewal, also known as sanctification, is the work of God’s sanctifying grace, it does not mean that human cooperation is not needed. On the contrary, disciplined effort is part of the Christian life. As Ellen White wrote: “His [sanctifying] grace is given to work in us to will and to do, but never as a substitute for our effort. Our souls are to be aroused to cooperate.”4 So what does our effort or cooperation with God’s sanctifying grace entail?
Many Christians believe that their effort requires trying to be more Christlike, and so they work hard at trying to be more loving, kind, unselfish, etc. But this approach focuses on our own attitudes and actions, often leading to failure and guilt. In contrast with trying, Scripture encourages us to train for godliness (1 Tim. 4:7).5 How do we do that? Just as Jesus is at the center of justification, it is also Jesus, not our own actions and attitudes, that are at the center of sanctification. Thus, our cooperation or effort is not trying to be like Jesus but a process of training our hearts and minds to abide in Jesus (John 15), that is, to have a deep relationship with Him.
But how do we do this? Over the years of my life I’ve come to understand that, just as with my human relationships, if I desire a relationship with God, I must intentionally arrange my life in a way that prioritises time with Him; and that this requires sustained effort and self-discipline on my part.
While there are many parallels between human relationships and our relationship with God, however, our reality is that the Fall separated us from relating to God face-to-face. Consequently, our desire for human relationships tends to exceed our desire for a relationship with a God we cannot see. The good news is that our reality is not all there is. Just as in the garden it was God who sought to restore the relationship, calling out “Where are you?” to the man and woman who’d hidden from Him, God continues to initiate restoration of our relationship with Him, because His desire for this is greater than ours will ever be. The apostle Paul states it this way: “For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Phil. 2:13).
Growing to Be More Like Christ
By His grace, it is God who initiates the desire for Him in our hearts; and it is God who enables us to respond to this desire by intentionally prioritising time with Him. “But,” you might ask, “are we not saved by grace? Does effort not imply that we’re creating a new benchmark for salvation, exchanging one kind of effort, such as striving to keep the commandments, for effort to be with God?” Our intentional effort is not for the purpose of earning God’s favour. Through His grace, we already have His unmerited favour. Neither is our effort for the purpose of earning adoption into His family. Through His grace, we already are His beloved children. Rather, our effort is so that we might be with and enjoy God. And over time, as we learn to enjoy the presence of God, our ongoing self-discipline and sustained effort become increasingly habitual, so that time with God is something we cannot imagine our lives to be without.
So how does time with God help to restore His image in us? As we put Jesus at the center of our lives and daily reflect on His life, on the way in which He lived in the world and related to people, we increasingly see His beauty and perfection. The more we “gaze on the beauty of the Lord” (Ps. 27:4), the more we come to see the ways in which we are not like Him.6 This, in turn, helps us grow in our desire to be more like Him; to reflect the fruit of the Spirit evident in His life (John 12:32; Gal. 5:22, 23). Over time, through God’s sanctifying grace, those words and deeds in our lives that are out of harmony with God’s ways are progressively changed, so that we increasingly reflect His image (1 Tim. 4:7). This work of spiritual transformation is primarily the work of the Holy Spirit, and our primary role is to be completely dependent on God in this process; nonetheless, we are also accountable for applying Scripture’s call to pursue a godly life.
In my own life I’ve found that when facing a challenging situation, I live out my dependence on God by reminding myself that He is with me, that He is ahead of me, and that He is also with the person or situation that I find challenging. And I live out my accountability by making intentional choices that lead away from sin. This process of restoration (which Ellen White calls “the fruit of faith”)7 “cannot be completed in this life.”8 Because of sin, there will never be a time in this life when we will not need God’s justifying grace. As Ellen White states: “We shall often have to bow down and weep at the feet of Jesus because of our shortcomings and mistakes, but we are not to be discouraged.”9 Instead, we are to remember God’s ultimate plan that, one day, “in the twinkling of an eye . . . we will be changed” (1 Cor. 15:52), God’s image in us will be fully restored, and “we shall be like Him” (1 John 3:2).
The One Great Central Truth
This leaves one last question: If our sanctification is not for the purpose of earning salvation, then what is it for? For one thing, I believe that because our sin harms ourselves and others, one reason God desires our growth in His likeness is that of the many ways in which it benefits everyone. If, for example, I am growing in my ability not to sin in my anger (Eph. 4:26), there are many who benefit. First, I benefit when I can live with less shame about my out-of-control anger. Second, my family and community benefit when they are no longer the recipients of my sinful anger. Third, God benefits when others see the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and glorify God (Matt. 5:16).
God’s original plan for humankind was that we would be holy, just as He is holy. While sin marred God’s original plan, His desire for humankind remained the same. Thus, God’s sanctifying grace became part of His plan of redemption. We all know, however, that even in our most holy moments we fall short of the glory of God’s standard. But because “God so loved the world . . . he gave his one and only Son,” so that, through His justifying grace, “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This is the “one great central truth” of our faith, which allows us to joyfully rest in the accomplishments of Jesus and abide in His love and grace.10
1 Ellen G. White, Education (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1903), p. 15.
2 Unless otherwise noted, Bible quotations are from the New International Version.
3 E. G. White, Education, p. 16.
4 Ellen G. White, God’s Amazing Grace (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1973), p. 111.
5 I first encountered the concept of trying versus training in Bill Hull, The Complete Book of Discipleship: On Being and Making Followers of Christ (Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress, 2006).
6 Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1956), p. 64.
7 Ibid., p. 61.
8 E. G. White, Education, p. 19.
9 E. G. White, Steps to Christ, p. 64.
10 Ellen G. White, The Faith I Live By (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1958), p. 50.
The original version of this article was published in Adventist World.
