Thinking in Christ — Issue 21: Trained by Grace

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we would live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. (Titus 2:11-12)

The age has a counsel for the mind that will not quit, and it sounds like wisdom. Build your grit. Train your will. Set clear goals, manage your time, break the task into steps, embrace discomfort, reflect, seek feedback, bounce back. Perseverance and self-discipline, on this telling, are qualities you manufacture in yourself, by yourself, through technique. The disciplined mind is the self-made mind.

Therefore this issue must turn that counsel inside out. Grace is not the reward for discipline. Grace is the trainer. The same grace that brings salvation instructs, and the same grace that instructs produces the sober, righteous, godly life. Discipline does not purchase grace. Grace disciplines. The mind that perseveres is not the mind that has finally learned to govern itself. It is the mind being governed by Another, trained by a grace it did not earn and cannot manufacture.

Consider first what perseverance actually is in Scripture. It is not a personality trait polished by effort. It is endurance produced by testing. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4) Notice the order. The testing comes first, and it comes from outside the thinker's control: he falls into trials he did not choose. Endurance is what the testing produces, not what the thinker summons before the testing begins. And endurance has a work of its own, a perfect work, whose end is completeness. The disciplined mind is not the mind that avoids the trial by better planning. It is the mind that remains in the trial until the trial has finished its work.

Because of this, the language of self-discipline misleads at its root. Scripture does speak of discipline, but it speaks of it as a Father's work, not a self's achievement. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn't discipline? (Hebrews 12:7) The child does not discipline himself into sonship. The Father disciplines the son He has already received. The discipline proves the relationship; it does not create it. And the fruit follows the same order. All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11) Mark the passive voice. Those who have been trained by it. The training is received before it is exercised. The peaceful fruit is yielded afterward, not seized in advance. A mind that claims to have disciplined itself has reversed the sentence: it has made the child the father.

Yet this reversal of the source does not make the believer passive, and grace-trained discipline is not the death of effort. It is effort under a different master. The race is still run, and it is run with perseverance. Therefore let's also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let's run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2) Three things govern the run. First, the race is set before us, not chosen by us. The course is appointed; the runner does not design it. Second, the running is perseverance, not speed: the laying aside of weights, the steady continuance, the refusal to stop. Third, the eyes are on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith. He authored the faith the runner runs in, and He perfects it. The runner's perseverance is therefore not self-sustained. It is sustained by looking. The moment the eyes leave the Author, the run falters, because the strength was never the runner's own.

This is why the world's techniques, taken on their own terms, always fail at the same place. A schedule can organize hours, and a system can break a problem into steps, and feedback can correct an error. None of these is evil in itself. But none of them can govern the heart that uses them. The heart is deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9), and a deceitful heart armed with better techniques is only a more efficient deceiver of itself. It will set goals that flatter it, manage time toward ends it has not examined, reflect on its progress by a standard it chose, and call the whole performance discipline. No mind is neutral (Romans 12:2). The mind is either being renewed by the Word or conformed to the pattern of a world apart from God, and the techniques serve whichever master already owns the mind. Technique does not choose the master. The master chooses the use of the technique.

For this reason, self-control in Scripture is not a skill acquired by practice. It is fruit. The Spirit's fruit includes self-control (Galatians 5:22-23), and fruit is borne, not built. A branch does not manufacture its fruit by straining; it bears fruit by abiding. The believer who would be self-controlled therefore does not begin with himself. He begins with the Vine, and the control that appears in his life is evidence of a life he did not generate. The same holds for the whole catalogue of disciplines: the pressing on toward the goal, forgetting what lies behind (Philippians 3:13-14), is not the athlete's self-invention. It is the runner who has already been laid hold of pressing on to lay hold of that for which he was laid hold of. The grip precedes the pressing. Christ's grip precedes the runner's stride.

At the same time, the grace that trains does not train toward comfort. It trains toward godliness in this present world (Titus 2:12), and this present world is the place of the trial, the chastening, and the cross. The believer is not promised that discipline will make life manageable. He is promised that the Father's discipline is for his profit, that he may be a partaker of His holiness (Hebrews 12:10). Holiness is the aim, not efficiency. The mind trained by grace may therefore look undisciplined by the world's measures: slower, less productive, more willing to stop, more willing to suffer a setback without frantic repair. But the measure is not output. The measure is the peaceful fruit of righteousness, and that fruit ripens on the Father's timetable, not the schedule's.

Consider, then, the contrast that runs through the whole matter. Apart from Christ, perseverance is the self holding itself together, and self-discipline is the self governing the self. Both end where the self ends: at the limit of its own strength, its own wisdom, its own will. In Christ, perseverance is endurance received through testing, and discipline is training received from a Father, under a grace that appeared and now instructs. The difference is not the amount of effort. The difference is the source of it, and the source decides the end. The self-made mind perseveres until it breaks. The grace-trained mind perseveres because it is held.

Evidence, too, finds its place under this rule. A life of steady endurance may corroborate that grace is at work. It never founds faith. God's testimony about His Son stands first (1 John 5:9-10). The believer does not conclude that grace is real because he endured, nor that grace has failed because he stumbled. He knows grace is real because it has appeared, bringing salvation, and he reads his endurance — and his failures — in that light. A mind founded on its own track record will fall with the next failure. A mind founded on the appearing of grace will stand in the failure, because the foundation is not the record. The foundation is the grace that trains even through the failure.

So let the final word be the reversal of the age's counsel. Do not build your discipline and hope grace notices. Receive the grace that disciplines. Do not train yourself into a mind that can stand. Stand in the training of the Father who has already received you as a child, run the race that is set before you with your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, and let endurance have its perfect work.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we would live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. (Titus 2:11-12) The Instructor has come. The training is His. The fruit will be His. And the mind that is trained by grace is not a lesser mind, striving less. It is the only mind that perseveres to the end, because it is the only mind held by the One who authored its faith and will perfect it.