The Dynamic Tension of the Christian Life
If you are a Christian, you have been given a new life, brought into a new realm, and given a new standing before God in Christ. Yet, like Israel, your life still has remnants of the old enemy…We must daily battle the old habits and the old ways. Making peace with sin is unthinkable.
- John Snyder, Living with the True God: Lessons from Judges
Clyde Cranford was a worship leader from West Memphis, Arkansas. Cranford was also the founder of Life to Life ministries, a mentoring and discipleship program for young men, where he discipled many young men including John Snyder and Jordan Thomas.
Cranford was the author of Because We Love Him, a book on personal holiness.
We are depraved, yet He called us to be like Him, and He is holy.
Absolute sinlessness will not be realized until we are at home with the Lord. Still, the goal toward which each believer must strive, toward which the Holy Spirit enlivens us, is perfect holiness. This humbles us because it so keenly magnifies our sin, yet it propels us forward because its embodiment is our beloved Lord Himself (see Philippians 3:10–14). Hence, we see the dynamic tension that marks the life of every believer. We are depraved, yet He called us to be like Him, and He is holy.
The fact that we will not reach a state of sinless perfection in our earthly lives does not exempt us from striving after it with our whole hearts.
Those who comfort themselves with the cliché, “Oh nobody’s perfect,” should recall the admonition of Christ: “Therefore you are to be holy, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The fact that we will not reach a state of sinless perfection in our earthly lives does not exempt us from striving after it with our whole hearts. Paul told the Corinthians: “Therefore having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).
“He is therefore said to be like God who aspires to His likeness, however distant from it he may as yet be.” - John Calvin
Each of us is embroiled in an intense conflict between the Holy Spirit within us and own flesh. Paul told the Galatians: “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these things are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please” (Galatians 5:17). J.I. Packer says of this verse: “These words alert us to the reality of tension, the necessity of effort, and the incompleteness of achievement that mark the life of holiness in this world.” However, Packer goes on the say: “The born-again believer who is in good spiritual health aims each day at perfect obedience, perfect righteousness, perfect pleasing of his heavenly Father.”
In the words of John Calvin: “He is therefore said to be like God who aspires to His likeness, however distant from it he may as yet be.”