The Shaping Virtues - Godliness
Justification means that God has declared guilty sinners to be righteous through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This justification is “by his grace as a gift” (Romans 3:24) and, once given, can’t be lost or taken away because it rests on Jesus’ finished work and not our ongoing performance. Thus, those who are freely saved through the gospel are also called, empowered, and motivated to please the one who saved them.
Justified believers are called to “let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel” (Philippians 1:27), to “strive for…the holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14), and to “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1). All these passages refer to the call to progressive sanctification: a process in which one's moral condition is increasingly brought into conformity with one's justified status before God.
Like justification, sanctification is a work of grace. Many make the mistake of thinking that we are saved by grace, but that we then become holy by our own efforts. This is simply not true. We are justified by grace and we are sanctified by grace as well. The difference, however, is that in justification God alone works, but in sanctification we are active participants with the Holy Spirit in receiving and responding to God's grace to us.
The problem for many Christians comes when we confuse these two aspects of God’s work in our lives. This confusion can lead either to license—believing it doesn’t matter how we live since we are justified—or legalism, which is living as if relating to God is on the basis of our performance rather than by faith in the performance of Christ.
Philippians 2:12-13 is key to understanding God’s role and ours in our growth. Paul writes, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” We work out our salvation by putting sin to death and by putting on godly virtues. God the Holy Spirit works by enabling us to “will” (the desire for godliness) and to “work” (efforts toward godliness) in the process of becoming moralize Christ. It is the Spirit who empowers our battles against temptation and sin, and produces spiritual fruit in our lives (Galatians 5:17, 22-23).
Motivated by a desire to please and honor the Lord, Christians are to strive after holiness (Hebrews 12:14) and be doers of the word (James 1:22). We put sin to death (Colossians 3:5) and we live in all things for God (Colossians 3:17). In so doing, our lives testify to the goodness of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the reality of the gospel. We pursue godliness in the confidence of knowing that God will sanctify us completely at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23). “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24).
Cultivating these Virtues
Humility, joy, gratitude, encouragement, generosity, servanthood, and godliness. These are the shaping virtues that the gospel creates and that God calls us to continually pursue. They are qualities we have valued throughout our history in Sovereign Grace, and ones that ought to increasingly mark our life together in our churches as we press on to maturity.
What steps can we take to cultivate these virtues? Ask yourself, “Am I shaped by these virtues? Where do I need to grow?” Pastors should assess whether the culture of the church they serve is shaped by these virtues, and how to grow through teaching and example. By God’s grace, let’s continue to pray for, prioritize, and pursue these shaping virtues in Sovereign Grace churches, for the glory of Christ and the advance of the gospel.
