Every Christian is a work in progress. Every Christian is striving for holiness, laboring to put off the old man and put on the new. Though none of us is as holy as we will be in heaven, I trust that each of us is holier now than when we first came to Christ. And none of us is as holy as we want to be.
Yet that’s only partially true. There’s another sense in which each of us is exactly as holy as we want to be. How is that the case? Because there is no one who can force us to sin and nothing that can force us to fail to do whatever is righteous in any given moment. There is no one who can keep us from deriving spiritual growth and benefit from any of the circumstances of our lives. No one, that is, except ourselves. If we ever wonder who is hindering our holiness, we don’t need to look any further than the closest mirror.
The world can’t hinder our holiness—but we can allow the world to hinder it when we fail to resist its conforming influence through the power of the Spirit. The flesh can’t hinder our holiness—but we can allow the flesh to hinder it when we succumb to our fleshly desires in defiance of the gospel. The devil can’t hinder our holiness—but we can allow the devil to hinder it when we refuse to flee the temptations he dangles before us and cling instead to the promises of Christ. Each of these deadly enemies has the power to tempt, draw, or allure, but not the power to force, cause, or demand. None has the ability to penetrate the will unless we grant permission.
The same is true of circumstances—even the hardest and most troubling circumstances cannot force us to sin or in any way force us to act in a way that is unholy. This is true of people—even the most trying and difficult people cannot cause us to sin, even if they provide rich opportunities to do so. It’s true of pain, it’s true of sorrow, it’s true of persecution, it’s true of unrequited longings, it’s true of everything.
Even the most trying and difficult people cannot cause us to sin, even if they provide rich opportunities to do so.
How do we know? Because Christ took on flesh and lived in the world and was tempted by the devil, and emerged from it all unscathed. He endured the most troubling of circumstances, the most heartbreaking of betrayals, the most excruciating of sufferings, and never once did he sin, never once did he fail to do what was righteous, never once did he fail to honor God with his whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. And in our salvation we have been so united to him that all that is his is ours—the same Spirit, the same strength, the same power to hate sin and flee it, to love holiness and pursue it.
You and I sin only when we grant permission to our temptations, only when our will bows low before our evil desires. We sin only when we fail to embrace the enabling power of the Holy Spirit who is present in every temptation to provide a way of escape. We sin only when our desire to sin is stronger than our desire to not sin.
This means it is both true and untrue that none of us is as holy as we want to be. It is true in the sense that we long to be holier than we are now; it’s untrue in the sense that anything but ourselves has held us back. In that way, you and I are exactly as holy as we want to be. We are exactly as holy as we’ve determined we will be through every opportunity to act righteously or sinfully, to move forward or fall back, to be more like Christ or to forsake him altogether.
