Why Trying Harder Won't Make You Holy

You have tried to make yourself holy. You have fought your sin with white-knuckled determination. You have resolved, journaled, and wept over the same failures. And still, the same sins cling to you like a garment you cannot remove. What if the problem is not that you are trying too hard, but that you are trying the wrong way entirely?

Most Christians believe they are justified by a righteousness Christ accomplished for them. They will say so gladly. They will sing it on Sunday morning. But then they go home and try to be sanctified by a holiness they must produce in themselves. They treat forgiveness as God's work and obedience as theirs. That contradiction, as Walter Marshall argues in The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, is the root of much spiritual misery.

What It Means to "Receive" Holiness from Christ

The way to obtain the holy qualities we need for obedience to God's law is to receive them out of the fullness of Christ by fellowship with Him. We can only have this fellowship if we are in Christ and Christ is in us through a real, spiritual union.

Holiness is not something we manufacture from within. It is something already prepared and completed in Christ for us. We are not working together with Christ in producing a holy frame inside ourselves. We are taking it to ourselves and using it, as made ready to our hands.

Consider the parallel. Just as we are justified by a righteousness Christ worked out and God credits to our account, so we are sanctified by a holiness first worked out in Christ and then given to us. And just as our sinful nature was produced in Adam and passed down to us, so our new nature is produced in Christ and passed down to us by His Spirit.

Most Christians have no trouble accepting the first half of that parallel. They know they cannot earn their forgiveness. They believe, rightly, that their justification depends entirely on what Christ did for them. But when it comes to holiness, they quietly change the rules. They assume sanctification is the part where they finally get to prove themselves. It is not. Both justification and sanctification come from Christ. Both are received by union with Him. Both depend on His fullness, not on our effort.

Why So Many Sincere Christians Struggle

This teaching is not aimed at careless people. It is aimed at the seriously devout. Think of the believer who takes great pains to mortify corrupt desires, who strives earnestly to master sinful habits, who presses hard upon his own heart with every motive for godliness. That kind of effort is like trying to squeeze oil out of a flint.

The mistake is not a lack of effort. It is a wrong method. These believers assume that while justification comes from outside of them, through Christ's work, sanctification must come from inside of them, through their own striving. If they understood that the true way of mortifying sin is by receiving a new nature out of the fullness of Christ, they might save themselves many a bitter agony and a great deal of misspent labor.

This does not mean the Christian is passive. We do not produce our new nature any more than we produced our original corruption, but we do actively receive it. The distinction matters. A branch does not manufacture its own sap. But a branch does bear fruit. The life comes from the vine. The fruit shows in the branch.

The Mystery of Union with Christ

Scripture calls this a mystery, and rightly so. Paul himself called it "a great mystery" (Eph. 5:32). But it is not a figure of speech.

Christ is in believers and they are in Him (John 6:56; 14:20). They are one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17). They are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones (Eph. 5:30–31). Scripture is not using poetic language for a shared set of ideas. It is describing a real, spiritual bond.

The Holy Spirit makes this union possible. He dwells in Christ and in us, binding us to Him. Christ may be in heaven and we on earth, but the Spirit bridges that distance. To have the Spirit of Christ in us is, according to Scripture, to have Christ Himself in us (Rom. 8:9–10).

Two Pictures That Make This Union Real

Scripture uses many illustrations to explain how our new life and holy nature are first in Christ and then in us. Two of them are worth staying with, because they touch what we do every day: eating and growing.

The Vine and the Branch

Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

A branch does not bear fruit by trying harder. It bears fruit by staying connected to the vine. Cut it off, and it withers. No amount of willpower can make a severed branch produce grapes. The life is in the vine. The branch's only job is to remain attached.

This is not a call to passivity. Abiding is an active word. It means to remain, to stay, to hold fast. But the activity of abiding is different from the activity of self-production. The branch that abides is not generating its own sap. It is drawing on a source outside itself. The energy, the nutrients, the life-giving power all flow from the vine into the branch. The fruit that appears on the branch is real fruit, genuinely borne by the branch, but it is the vine's life that produced it.

This is how sanctification works. The holiness that shows up in your life is real holiness. You really do love God more than you used to. You really are growing in patience, in self-control, in compassion. But the source of that growth is not your effort. It is Christ's life flowing into you through the Spirit. You bear the fruit. He supplies the life.

The Bread and the Wine

Jesus also said, "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever" (John 6:51). And again, "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me" (John 6:56–57).

This picture carries a different emphasis. It speaks of nourishment, of taking something outside of you and making it part of you. When you eat bread, the bread becomes your strength, your energy, your life. You did not create the grain. You did not grow the wheat. But when you eat it, its nourishment becomes yours.

So it is with Christ. His holiness, His obedience, His perfect human nature become ours by faith. We feed on Him. We take what He has prepared and receive it as our own. The Lord's Supper seals this picture to us every time we partake. The bread and the cup remind us that Christ's life sustains us, not as an idea we admire from a distance, but as nourishment we take into ourselves.

Both pictures point in the same direction. The life originates in Christ. It flows to us through union with Him. We do not generate it. We receive it.

How Christ Prepared Our Holiness

Christ prepared our holiness through three great events.

By His incarnation, Christ created a new humanity in a holy frame far more excellent than Adam's original state. In Christ, human nature was joined to God in the closest possible union. The purpose was that He might share this holy frame with all who would be born of Him by His Spirit, just as Adam shared his fallen frame with all who were born of him by nature. Christ came down from heaven as living bread so that those who eat Him may live by Him (John 6:51, 56).

By His death, Christ freed Himself from the guilt of our sins that had been laid on Him and from the weakness of human nature He had carried for our sake. In doing so, He prepared freedom for us from our whole corrupt condition. Paul tells us that our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be destroyed (Rom. 6:6). This destruction happens not by wounds we give to sin ourselves, but by our sharing in the freedom from sin that Christ already accomplished through His death.

By His resurrection, Christ took possession of spiritual life for us. His resurrection was our resurrection to the life of holiness, just as Adam's fall was our fall into spiritual death. Paul says we were made alive together with Christ and raised up with Him, even while we were still on earth (Eph. 2:5–6). The new life existed in Christ first. It flows to us by union with Him.

What This Means for Your Heart

Union with Christ changes something real inside the believer. The Spirit of Christ dwells in us and gives us a genuine bent and inclination toward holiness (Rom. 8:1, 4–5; Gal. 5:17). The old nature pulled toward sin as naturally as water flows downhill. The new nature, received from Christ through His Spirit, pulls toward obedience. The struggle is real, but the direction has changed. A branch connected to the vine does not have to force itself to bear fruit. It bears fruit because life is flowing into it from the vine.

This union also brings with it every other saving privilege: justification, adoption, assurance, and the hope of future glory (Rom. 8:15, 17, 35, 37, 39). But none of these can be separated from sanctification. You cannot have Christ for forgiveness while refusing Christ for holiness. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). The same union that secures our pardon secures our transformation.

What This Looks Like on Monday Morning

Sound doctrine that does not change how you live on an ordinary Tuesday is not yet believed. It is only admired. So we must ask: what does it look like to stop squeezing oil from a flint and start abiding in the vine?

It looks like this. You wake up, and before your feet hit the floor, you are already aware of yesterday's failure. The sharp word you spoke to your spouse. The impatience with your children. The jealousy you nursed through the afternoon. And the old habit rises immediately: I need to try harder today. I need to be more disciplined. I need to do better.

Stop. That instinct, sincere as it is, is the wrong method.

Instead, begin with Christ. Open the Scriptures and feed on Him. Not as a religious duty to check off, but as a starving person eats bread. Read what He has done. Read who He is. Let the truth of your union with Him settle into your mind before you attempt a single act of obedience. Pray not as someone trying to earn God's favor, but as a branch drawing life from the vine. Ask the Spirit to produce in you what you cannot produce in yourself.

Then go about your day. You will still struggle. The old nature does not disappear this side of glory. But the direction of your effort has changed. You are no longer trying to manufacture holiness from raw materials you do not possess. You are drawing on a life that is already yours in Christ.

When temptation comes, the question is not "Am I strong enough to resist this?" The answer to that question is always no. The right question is "Is Christ's life in me sufficient for this moment?" The answer to that question is always yes.

When you fail, and you will, the question is not "How do I make up for this?" You cannot make up for sin any more than you could make up for the sin that first condemned you. The right response is the same response you made when you first came to Christ: you return to Him. You confess. You receive His forgiveness. And you abide again.

This is not a formula. It is a relationship. Formulas can be mastered; relationships must be maintained. The branch does not connect to the vine once and then live independently. It remains. It abides. It draws life continually from the source.

The Life Is in the Son

God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. (1 John 5:11–12)

All spiritual life and holiness are fixed in Christ so inseparably that we cannot have them unless we are joined to Him. If you have been trying to produce your own holiness, you now know why the effort has left you exhausted and unchanged. You have been trying to bear fruit while cut off from the vine.

Look to Christ. Feed on Him by faith. Abide in Him as a branch abides in the vine. He has already prepared everything you need for a holy life. Your part is not to produce it. Your part is to receive it.

About Walter Marshall

Walter Marshall (1628–1680) was an English Puritan minister educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. Ejected from his parish in 1662 for refusing to conform to the Act of Uniformity, he became minister of an Independent congregation at Gosport, Hampshire, where he served until his death.

Marshall personally struggled with spiritual depression and the pursuit of holiness before a conversation with Thomas Goodwin helped him see that his greatest sin was failing to trust Christ for righteousness and sanctification. This breakthrough shaped his ministry and his most significant work, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, which became a beloved classic — James Hervey famously said he would take it to a desert island alongside his Bible.

Marshall died in 1680, confident in the doctrines he had preached. His colleague Samuel Tomlyns eulogized him as one who "wooed for Christ in his preaching, and allured you to Christ by his walking."^[1]

Bibliography

• Beeke, Joel R., and Randall J. Pederson. Meet the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006.
• Marshall, Walter. The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2013. First published 1692.