God wants us to obey Him and apply His Word to our lives. Yet, if that’s our primary focus, we’ll tend to be left with external conformity and mere religious activity. God, however, wants to change us from the inside out that enables us to be in a relationship with Him. So, it becomes clear we need to be grace-based, not merely performance-based.
Grace Comes Before Performance
Start with salvation: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” Then comes performance: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph. 2:8-10)
But even after we’re saved by grace, we do those good works by His grace as well. — “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ …” (Titus 2:11-13)
Grace Changes Character Which Leads to Effectiveness and Productivity
Because of God’s grace, “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Pet. 1:3). We then find a list of qualities in verses 5-6 that are to build within us — faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, and love.
Then we read, “For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:8). If we don’t have the needed qualities, it’s because “whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins” (2 Pet. 1:9). — We have forgotten about grace wherein God does for us what we can’t do for ourselves.
Grace Needed for Character Development
God’s grace enables us to be who we should be which leads to us doing what we should do. Click on the links below for how character development is then …
all to God’s glory,
with Him as our Standard,
and His power and grace as the means to change.
If we don’t depend on God’s grace, character development will be performance based which can become …
- mere external conformity which can change with a different set of circumstance
- mere religious activity which can lead to simply going through the motions
- mere self-improvement which is reliant on enough will-power and stamina to keep at it
— This basis often leads to pride or endless guilt. And, it can confuse the issue of salvation by grace.
Grace-based character development, on the other hand, that grows out of a relationship with God wherein one is divinely empowered leads to . . .
- change from the inside out that leads to a desire to be more like the Lord
- transformation, not merely building on our strengths and fixing what is wrong
— This basis leads to humility and hope.