The Christian culture has become so heavily geared towards self-improvement: become wiser, love harder, serve more, pray more, give more, have more faith, depend on Christ more, etc. …How overwhelming!! What an unsatisfying fate it would be to die of exhaustion on the never-ending hamster wheel of self-improvement. Did God give us his commandments to show us the path to improvement, or was it to show us things like the hopelessness of our condition and our need for grace?
Is it God's plan to discipline our sinful nature, improving it until it finally becomes acceptable, or is it his plan to completely remove our hearts of stone and replace them with entirely new ones? Is self-improvement something that Christ wants us to strive for? Or is his desire for us something more like self-abandonment?
Should we strive for improvement? What role does improvement play in the process of sanctification? Didn't Christ come for those who are sick and poor while he criticized the church leaders who were so improved that they kept all the commandments?
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A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you (Ezekiel 36:26)
