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.<\/p>\n
Yet that\u2019s only partially true. There\u2019s 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\u2019t need to look any further than the closest mirror.<\/p>\n
The world can\u2019t hinder our holiness\u2014but we can allow the world to hinder it when we fail to resist its conforming influence through the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s only partially true\u2026See AlsoMarriage Happy, Marriage HolyImpossible, Unrealistic, Sinful, LazyReading Classics \u2013 The Religious Affections (VII)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":113732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[303],"class_list":["post-113721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tim-challies","tag-articles","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/lightstock_355622_medium_tim_challies-1-1.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113721"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113733,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113721\/revisions\/113733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/113732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}