Strive for perfection/Christ-likeness?

After having a serious debate with a pastor friend of mine I have been thinking about an issue I was having trouble with. Its about striving for Christlikeness. I have listened to so much of the "holiness preaching" and did not find any results in my personal life. All I ended up is living in so much condemnation. The day I started to understand grace, I can say that condemnation started to leave me and immediately I sensed a new-found freedom in my walk with the Lord. I won't elaborate much on that for now but it is important to really really understand the unconditional love and favor of God. It is important to understand that when Jesus said that it was finished He really meant it! Once i became more solid in the knowledge of grace and I understood my position of perfection in Christ , I wasn't quite sure on how to address this question: As a Christian, should I or should I not strive for perfection. I mean should i live out of my position of perfection or should or should I strive for to live the perfect life? The answer is both!


What every Christian needs to understand is that he or she is on earth as Christ is in heaven (read 1 john 4:17) . Therefore all of us in Christ are holy. We are in Him perfect. Honestly, a clear understanding of this itself would automatically impact our actions/practice. We strive to do His will not because we have to but because we want to, as a response to His unconditional love and mercy for us! We love Him because He first loved us. However, sometimes people don't quite understand grace and having understood a part of grace they might think in that case i don't have to do anything since i am already perfect in Him. Many critics of the grace message also think grace causes a person to be inactive! Honestly, a clear understanding of grace actually "produces"  good actions/works automatically. 


But for those that feel that whatever they do is okay since their position in Christ is perfect, they are actually in error (or we need to pray for your salvation!). After all possessing a little knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge at all. The fact is sin hardens the heart. (disclaimer: this is not for those who maybe in some type of addiction and you are crying out to God to set you free. what u need to understand is Christ doesn't condemn u no matter how many times u fail) You see grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness. Why?  Because God has already forgiven us and defeated sin on the cross. Why would somebody want to go back into that which they were delivered from?


After reading Philippians 3, I am convinced that while our position is perfect in Christ we also have to strive for perfection/Christ-likeness in our actions.  For example in Ephesians Paul talks about "let there not be a hint of sexual immorality among you". Obviously in God's standard this is not just keeping your zippers up! And yet God wouldn't have mentioned this especially in the New testament if we weren't able to do it. We must strive for personal holiness because in Him we are holy and He who is in us is also holy. The bible clearly says "be holy for I am holy). And the best part is we are not striving without Him. "Christ in us"  helps us and gives us a desire to do His will and obey His standards in our lives (read Philippians 2). And when we strive for Christ-likeness we may mess up as humans. That is when we can rest in the fact that "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). We fail outside because we haven't renewed our minds to the fact that we are the righteousness of God in Christ and we are no more the old creation but a new creation.


So yes we are perfect in Him and therefore in our works we must strive to be perfect. But we do the striving because of 'Christ in us' and His resurrection power working through us leads us to strive while we rest in Him and stay yielded to His grace and its workings in and through us. We don't strive to be perfect so that once we get to a point God would be so pleased with us but rather we strive for perfection because He is already pleased and not angry with us since Christ paid it all for us.   We don't do the striving for perfection in and of ourselves (which by the way this type of thinking is a disastrous result of the holiness preachings). And when we do stumble (due to lack of renewing the mind) and its during those moments we rest in the fact that God has forgiven all our sins and we boldly approach the throne of God for mercy and grace! We don't need to feel guilty and condemned because the cross was outside time and all our sins (past, present and future) were forgiven. So we run to Him because He doesn't condemn us!

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