I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel as if I’m spinning my wheels in my faith. It’s those times when I realize that I’m trying to do too much on my own effort and not trust in God’s saving grace to sanctify me.
I think it’s human nature to want to work for what we get, and that includes our salvation and sanctification. But even on our best days, our efforts can’t do a thing to draw us closer to God.
The Apostle Paul makes it crystal clear that salvation is based on God’s grace, and not on the works we do:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 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.
Ephesians 2:4-9 (ESV)
“Because humans are dead in their sin (2:1), there is a need for outside assistance to be restored,” explains the Lexham Context Commentary. “This help cannot be based on good works because humanity is incapable of such goodness. Thus salvation is only possible through God’s grace, which is not earned but freely given. Paul explains in this verse that salvation is based on grace and that people are only saved through faith.”
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Our sanctification isn’t by our works, either, as Paul also explains:
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
Galatians 3:2-3 (ESV)
Dr. Neil C. Stewart compares trying to achieve sanctification on our own to a kid pretending to drive a car:
When I was a young child, my mother would leave me in the car while she would nip quickly into a shop on an errand. While she was away, I would climb into the front seat and pretend to drive the car. I would turn the wheel, stomp on the brake pedal, and even change the gears. Occasionally, I would mash the gas pedal, but this tended to flood the engine, and Mom never seemed to appreciate that when she returned! Of course, all my efforts at driving came to naught because I didn’t have the key and could not start the engine. In a stationary car, you can turn the steering wheel until the cows come home, but you won’t change direction until there is forward momentum.
He continues:
In many ways, it’s just like that with the Christian and his efforts toward sanctification. Our fleshly works (turning the wheel in our illustration) amount to nothing by themselves. But when God gives us the key of faith and the Holy Spirit fills the engine of our souls with gospel energy, then we are off to the races. Then when we turn the steering wheel of our hearts in an effort to make a spiritual U-turn (repentance), something useful actually happens—not, in the first instance, because we have turned the wheel, but because the Holy Spirit is moving us forward, the Spirit whom we received by faith alone.
Stewart adds that our futile efforts to achieve sanctification by works “have more in common with a CrossFit gym or a twelve-step program than they do with the truth Paul preached.” Paul explains how this worked in his own life in his epistle to the Romans:
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
It’s God who sanctifies us through faith. Stewart points out that “when God gives us the key of faith and the Holy Spirit fills the engine of our souls with gospel energy, then we are off to the races. Then when we turn the steering wheel of our hearts in an effort to make a spiritual U-turn (repentance), something useful actually happens — not, in the first instance, because we have turned the wheel, but because the Holy Spirit is moving us forward, the Spirit whom we received by faith alone.”
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“This should completely change the way we respond to temptation,” he adds. “Rather than simply trying to white-knuckle our way through the darkness, we should instead reach up for the Holy Spirit by faith. We get the Holy Spirit, remember, not because we have done something, but because Christ has done everything, even paying for this incredible gift with His very blood.”
It's liberating to know that we don't have to be responsible for our sanctification. Instead of spinning your wheels, turn to God to help you with temptations and frustrations. He cared enough to send His Son, and He cares about us in our everyday lives.
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