Countless sermons have fed me and kept me alive spiritually. Many sermons have shaped my life to one degree or another. But one particular message comes to mind as a sermon that changed my (everyday) life — because I listened to it over and over and because its effects on me have been so tangible. Almost 25 years later, I still live in its truths every day.
In the winter of 2000–2001, I was a sophomore in college and still getting my bearings as a new Calvinist. As a freshman, I had joined up with a ministry called Campus Outreach. Its theology was “Reformed.” I didn’t grow up with this label, so I didn’t know what this was at first.
In my teens, I heard Christian talk about God being “sovereign,” but I had never wrestled with the extent of his sovereignty — that he was sovereign over all, over good and evil, over angels and demons, over sunny days and natural disasters, over my good deeds and my sin, and (most uncomfortably) over my own will and very real choices. But once I saw the verses, dozens of them (if not hundreds), I couldn’t deny that the Bible taught that God’s sovereignty was absolute, exhaustive, no exceptions.
But what I also knew from two decades of human life, and from dozens (if not hundreds) of verses, is that God held me accountable. I had thoughts and feelings. I had a will and made real decisions that mattered and had consequences.
How could I reconcile these two — not just my experience versus what the Bible says, but what the Bible says versus what the Bible says?
Lights On Everywhere
That January in 2001, I went with Campus Outreach to Atlanta for a “Christmas Conference.” The keynote speaker was a pastor from Minnesota named John Piper. Soon after the event, I visited desiringGod.org in search of more messages.
It must have been then that I first listened to a sermon he had preached that Christmas Eve. And this one message put together — so clearly and memorably — how these major theological truths of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility come together in everyday Christian life and experience.
The sermon was on sanctification from the end of Romans 6 (verses 22–23), and at a key moment, Piper flipped over to Philippians 2:12–13 and 3:12 to explain the real-life dynamics of how we obey and choose and act when God is sovereign and his Spirit is at work in us, empowering us to obey and choose and act. As he did so, lights went on for me one after another. And I listened to the message several times in the following weeks and months.
God Gives, I Act
First, Piper emphasized that our holiness is a gift from God, not just a human duty to pursue. This was new to me. I had assumed that if I was involved, if I was acting and desiring and choosing, then it must not be a gift. How could my own willing and working be a gift from God? But Romans 6:23 says that “the free gift of God is eternal life,” and the previous verse says that holiness is the path to eternal life. Which means that if eternal life is a gift, then our holiness too must be a gift.
Clearly, our holiness is something we do, something we choose. How, then, could it also be a free gift? Piper answered like this:
Your doing is the gift of God. Your choosing is the gift of God. Your preferring God over sin is the gift of God. Let’s be careful how we think about this. What if someone says, “Since sanctification is the gift of God, I don’t need to do anything”? Well, that would be like saying, “Since my doing something is the gift of God, I don’t need to do something.” God’s gift of sanctification is not instead of your doing and choosing and preferring God. God’s gift is your doing and choosing and preferring God.
Both Gift and Duty
Romans 6 established the point, but Piper then drew in help from two texts in Philippians to illustrate it. He called them “two classic places in the New Testament outside Romans 6 that capture this truth: that we act and we choose, and this acting and choosing is the gift of God. It is really our act, and it is really his gift. It is really our choice, and it is really his gift.”
First, he went to Philippians 2:12–13 to show how “working out” (not “working for”) our salvation is grounded in the stunning reality that in Christ, God the Spirit “works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” We are commanded to obey, yet “beneath our doing and our willing is God giving the willing and giving the doing. . . . It is really our work and really his gift.”
Then he moved forward a chapter to Philippians 3:12, where Paul says, “I press on . . . because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” To this, Piper commented, “Christ’s laying hold of us does not replace our laying hold of him. It inspires and enables our laying hold of him.”
So, how could I reconcile Scripture’s testimony about God’s total sovereignty and my real thoughts, desires, and actions? This sermon held the liberating key: The Christian life is both gift and duty. Fighting sin is both a gift from God and a duty we act. Increasing in holiness is both gift and duty. It is a gift of grace we receive from Jesus, and the way we receive a grace that involves our own thoughts and desires and actions is by having the thoughts and desires and doing the actions. We live out the gift. We work out our salvation (which is a gift) through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit (who also is a gift).
Act the Miracle
Perhaps you think, That’s all well and good theoretically. How does it work practically? Another story from my senior year of college illustrates how.
Jump forward to the fall of 2002, and I’m trying to figure out what to do after graduation. I am full of anxiety. I don’t remember being so anxious before in my life, and I’m not sure I’ve been as anxious since.
I needed deliverance from anxiety. I needed rescue — salvation. What do I do? Just wait? How do you seek to be free from oppressive anxiety when God is sovereign and you are responsible? As one who is justified by faith in Jesus, how do I work out my salvation from anxiety? First, I need truth to work with. I need a specific word from God to believe. So, I went hunting and quickly found three precious biblical promises about anxiety:
Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:34)
Humble yourselves . . . under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6–7)
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7)
I printed these out, posted them next to my bed, and reviewed them every morning when I woke up and every night when I went to sleep. Soon I had memorized them cold and could keep them warm by meditation and prayer throughout the day. And, with Christ before me and his Spirit in me, I worked out the grace of my deliverance from anxiety. God gave me the gift of deliverance from the tyranny of worry in that season. And that doesn’t mean I don’t still fight anxiety as it comes in new ways in new times and seasons of life. But I was learning how to fight: Recognize it, address it with promises of reward, pray for help, and act.
Whether it’s sinful anxiety, selfish ambition and conceit, grumbling and disputing, or sinful anger or lust or greed, work out the deliverance Christ has worked for you. Don’t presume that God will defeat your sins while you’re passive. And don’t presume to fight sin on your own. Look to the sovereign Christ, trust his promises, pray for his help, and act the miracle you seek from him.
