House Rule #7: Grace And Grit Are Best Friends

Grace isn’t opposed to effort; grace is opposed to earning. This means, in the Christian life, grace and grit—strenuous, never-giving-up effort—are best friends. In fact, God’s grace empowers our grit. Because of God’s grace, we grind and labor in our day-by-day sanctification. While grit may seem like an odd way to describe our posture toward growth, grit captures the biblical reality that spiritual growth requires hard labor. When Scripture calls us to “work out our salvation”—God is talking about spiritual manual labor. He’s calling us to discipline, to watch our lives, to sweat, to grit and grind toward growth. And yet, our grind is fueled by grace: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13). Because God is graciously at work in us, we are empowered by grace to grind toward growth.

The Apostle Paul, in describing his life’s ministry, once more highlights the inseparable friendship between grace and grit well: “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor 15:10–11). Grace empowers our grit. Christian growth is about grace-fueled grit because growth requires diligent work. Yet, the power to change and grow is empowered by the grace of God. It’s O.K. to not be O.K., but we we don’t want to stay that way. So under the banner of the Gospel and empowered by the Spirit, we grind by grace.

I think a gospel culture radiates grace. It should be a place where we get excited about the gospel and the transforming work God wants to do in us, but where there is no pressure, no deadline, no feeling like a failure when you mess up, only grace.

—Lindsay, Member of Redeemer

Rom 6:6ff; Rom 8:12-14; Titus 2:11-14