Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus
For The Christian Weary in Sanctification
Holiness. Sanctification. Progress. Growth.
What comes to your mind when you read these words? What emotions do they invoke deep down inside you?
Do you feel excitement and confidence? Or do you feel a sense of burden, shame, and guilt? Do you sense a weight on your shoulders that seems too heavy to bear?
Are you tired and worn down in your pursuit of holiness?
If the very thought of holiness wears you out, there’s a good chance that you’re weary because you’ve been working in a way that God never intended. Maybe it feels like you’re trying to lift a 50 lb. bag of sand using only your pinky fingers. You may be awkwardly picking up the burden of holiness in such a way that your spiritual muscles are over-taxed and under-utilized at the same time.
So here’s the million dollar question:
How do we progress in holiness?
Faithful Christians readily admit that in justification, we receive the objective righteousness of Christ. Through his gift of righteousness, we can boldly stand before God forgiven and accepted. We are saved by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ. In short, we’re saved by looking to Jesus.
We (hopefully) recognize that we cannot save ourselves. We cannot conjure up the strength to earn God’s righteousness or approval. We can’t rack enough tickets by our own good deeds to buy God’s favor like a prize at the arcade. That’s not how it works.
But this doesn’t mean that our actual righteousness or good deeds do not matter. To put it positively, God demands that we practice righteousness. This is one of the dominant themes of the Bible. Our righteousness is not the way we are saved, but it is a sign that we have been saved. It’s the fruit, not the root of our relationship with God.
1 John 2:28-29 puts it this way:
28 And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. 29 If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.
Our righteousness is a sign that we’re in the family of God. If you saw my dad and my uncles, you would know that we’re related. You can see it in our hair and our eyes. I also blame them for blowing my shot of ever winning the NBA dunk contest. The same is true for those who are born of God. Christians bear the outward marks of the family of God. Like God, Christians (imperfectly) live holy lives. We inherit certain attributes from God.
If you’ve grown up in Christian circles, this kind of call for holiness is nothing new. Many of us know this and feel the burden to pursue righteousness and growth. But this is where things often get out of whack. We know that we can’t earn or work for our justification, but we often act like sanctification is all on us. It’s like God pays our way through college, but the studying, the papers, and the tests are on our shoulders. Or God buys a gym membership, but we have to show up every day and grind it out in our own strength.
We can easily slip into the trap of trying to pursue righteousness in our own strength. In a good ole’ fashioned “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” effort, we seek to will our way into holiness. And where does that leave us? Tired. Weary. Burdened. Ashamed. Guilt-ridden. More than that, it doesn’t actually lead us any closer to the holiness that God requires. So how do we progress in holiness?
Right after the section above in 1 John, John continues in 3:1-3, saying,
1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
After reminding us of the importance of practicing righteousness, the first words we read are not ones of guilt or shame, but of love. We are God’s children, not because of our prospects for righteousness, but because of God’s sheer love for us. One chief motivation for our own pursuit of holiness, then, is the objective reality of God’s love. We progress in holiness as we dive deeper into the love of God. We move forward in sanctification as we grow in our understanding of and faith in the generosity, kindness, and goodness of God. But John gets even more specific.
He tells us that that while we are already God’s children now, this isn’t the final chapter. There’s more to come. Whatever level of holiness and grace we have right now is not complete. So what are we waiting for? Jesus.
When we appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
When Jesus returns, we, as his people, will be changed. We will see him in his beauty, goodness, greatness, glory, and holiness. And when we do, we’ll be like him. Now, this doesn’t mean we’ll be divine beings or equal in glory and power, but it does mean that our journey towards holiness will be complete. Our sanctification will be finished when we see Jesus face to face.
It’s this hope in our future purity that fuels our current efforts at purity. Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. We don’t grow by looking at ourselves in the mirror everyday to see any hint of holiness. We don’t grow by comparing ourselves with other Christians around us. We don’t grow by simply trying harder.
We grow by looking to Jesus.
We are justified by looking to Jesus, not ourselves. We will be glorified finally, when we look at Jesus. And we grow in holiness day-by-day by looking to Jesus.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne said, “For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.” We grow by looking to Christ in prayers for help, faith, forgiveness, and hope. We grow by looking to Christ in his Word to find joy, life, wisdom, and grace. We grow by looking to Christ as we gather regularly with the people of Christ for worship, prayer, confession, praise, and communion. Each means of grace that we take up in our pursuit of holiness is a different cord that keeps us tethered to Christ.
This doesn’t mean that pursuing holiness is easy or that it requires no effort on our part. Far from it. But it does mean that in this journey, we are not alone. We are not left to our own resources. We can’t do anything in our own strength. But Jesus, who is at the heart of every aspect of our salvation is with us. We draw strength and resolve, not by looking within, but by looking to Jesus. As we do so, our efforts in righteousness will grow less burdensome and tiring, because they will point us to Jesus, not ourselves. They will point us to the one who invited us to find rest in him. They will point us to the one who is the very fount of holiness and righteousness. They will point us to the one who lived a life of perfect holiness, so that our acceptance does not rise and fall on our own efforts.
The good news of the gospel does not take a break at our conversion and come back at glorification. Instead, this good news keeps us afloat with every single effort at holiness. We make strides in pursuing purity, not by hoping in ourselves, but by looking to Jesus, who is the Author, (the Sustainer), and the Finisher of our faith.