Chapter Nine: Dependent Responsibility

We find this principle in the Old Testament in Psalm 127:1: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” Two activities are mentioned: building and watching. In a general sense, these two activities describe our role in transformation. We should always be proactively “building” Christian character in our lives. At the same time, we should be “watching” over our lives to guard against temptation.

As we examine this verse, note first of all what the psalmist did not say. He did not speak of the Lord helping the builder or the watchman. Rather, he spoke of God actually building the house and watching over the city. At the same time, the builder is still laboring and the watchman is still watching.

There is no question that they must fulfill their respective responsibilities. They cannot “just turn it over to the Lord” and let Him build or watch. No, they must do their work. But all of their building and watching activities are in vain unless the Lord builds and watches. So what is the psalmist teaching us? He is teaching us that we are both fully responsible and fully dependent.

The apostle Paul expressed this principle of dependent responsibility in both his life and his ministry. Concerning his life, he said, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). In context, “all things” refers to his personal life. But in Colossians 1:29, he spoke of his ministry. There he said, “For this [that is, his ministry] I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” The word toil implies working to the point of exhaustion. The word struggling is from the Greek word from which we get our word agonize. Toil refers to Paul’s activities of proclaiming, warning, and teaching (see verse 28). His struggling apparently refers to his prayer life because he used the same word when he wrote of Epaphras struggling in prayer (see Colossians 4:12). Both toil and struggling are strong, vigorous words indicating the intensity with which Paul engaged in his ministry as he both preached and prayed. But he did it in full dependence on Christ’s energy, which worked so powerfully within him.

Paul recognized he was responsible, so he labored to the point of physical exhaustion. But he also recognized he was fully dependent on the power of Christ to make his work effective, so he struggled (agonized) in prayer that Christ would work in him and through him.

The age of the English Puritans in the seventeenth century was undoubtedly the most influential era of English evangelicalism. Their books and sermons, even with their difficult-to-read prose, are still being reprinted, read, and profited from today in all the English-speaking nations. The Puritans understood the concept of dependent responsibility. They used to say (and this is not an exact quote but captures their attitude), “Work as if it all depends on you, yet pray as if it all depends on God.” They labored diligently to become more like Christ, but they also prayed diligently because they knew they were dependent on the Holy Spirit to make their labor effective. This is the way we apply the principle of dependent responsibility.

The first characteristic Solomon said is necessary is a teachable spirit (see verse 1). The person with this attitude receives his Father’s words and treasures up His commandments in his heart. He is not only open to instruction, he treasures it.

In short, a teachable spirit is descriptive of a person who knows he or she needs to change and grow and is eager to do so. This person approaches the Bible not simply to acquire knowledge but to apply that knowledge to his life. In our modern English translation of the Bible, the word knowledge is often used for two different Greek words, ginosko and epiginosko. The first word is used for acquiring bare knowledge or truth. The second word obviously builds on the first but suggests a fuller perception and application of the knowledge.

We see the difference in the two words in Paul’s use of them in 1 Corinthians 8:1 and Colossians 1:9. In the former passage, Paul used the Greek word ginosko, which our Bible translates as “knowledge.” The Corinthians “knew” that “‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one’” (1 Corinthians 8:4). Paul did not dispute the correctness of their knowledge. Their problem was not a lack of knowledge; it was in the misapplication of that knowledge in the area of Christian liberty and Christian love.

By contrast, in Colossians 1:9, where Paul said he prayed “that you might be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (emphasis added), he used the word epiginosko. He wants them to participate in this knowledge by applying it to their lives.

Paul also used epiginosko in Titus 1:1, where he spoke of “[our] knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness,” or, as other translations render it, “knowledge of the truth, which leads to godliness.” Which direction is our knowledge of Scripture taking us? Is it taking us in the direction of pride, in which we know so much yet fail to apply it to our lives or even misapply it? Or is our knowledge of Scripture taking us in the direction of not only knowing but doing His will in a way that leads to growth in godliness?

These questions are pertinent to the spirit of teachability and consequently to our transformation. We are not truly teachable unless our desire to learn more of the Bible is motivated by a sincere desire to grow in Christlikeness, not by a satisfaction that we know so much of Bible facts and doctrine. We can easily fool ourselves with our intellectual knowledge (our ginosko) while failing to enter into a genuine experience and application of that knowledge (epigonosko).

A related word in the Greek language is translated in 2 Timothy 2:15 as “Do your best.” In Hebrews 4:11, it is translated as “Strive to enter [God’s] rest.” “Do your best” and “strive” — these are strong, vigorous words. Do they describe your pursuit of holiness, or have you reached a certain level of acceptable Christian conduct and plateaued in your spiritual growth? Are you more loving, more patient, more compassionate, more generous with your money, more ready to forgive wrongs against you than you were a year ago?

What is it then that will stimulate us and motivate us to pursue holiness with all the vigor implied in such phrases as “make every effort,” “be diligent,” “do your best,” “strive,” “seek as for silver,” or “search as for hidden treasures”? To this we go back to chapter 6, “The Motivation of the Gospel.” A pursuit of holiness that is not based on gospel motivation will soon become a duty rather than a delight. And it may well lead to religious pride because we gauge our holiness by respectable religious conduct, or it may lead to discouragement and even despair because we are not living up to our own expectations, let alone what we assume to be God’s expectations.

Paul had this same zeal he had as a Pharisee, but now it was directed toward becoming all God intended him to be in Christ Jesus. In verse 13, Paul used a different picture — that of a runner straining with all his energy to cross the finish line first. As you visualize such a race from the vantage point of the finish line, you can see the look of intensity and sometimes agony on the faces of the runners. This was Paul in his own personal pursuit of holiness. Remember that Paul wrote these words from a position of house arrest in Rome. In the letter to Philemon, he referred to himself as an old man (see Philemon 9), yet in Philippians 3, he displayed the same zeal and intensity as a young man running a race in the Grecian games of that day.

What kept this zeal burning in Paul’s heart? It was the daily appropriation of the gospel. When in verse 9 he spoke of having a righteousness of his own that comes not from [obedience to] the law but rather through faith in Christ, he was not speaking of a past event of being saved but of a daily reality of appropriating by faith the infinitely perfect righteousness of Christ. And daily realizing that he was righteous in Christ spurred him on to seek to be in his daily experience what he was in his standing in Christ. A daily appropriation of the gospel, in which we see that our sins are forgiven and that we stand before God clothed in the spotless righteousness of Christ, is the key to the diligent pursuit of holiness.

It is often difficult to keep in a right relationship the principles of diligence and dependence. Too frequently, we emphasize one to the relative neglect of the other. In fact, some well-meaning Bible teachers and preachers will deliberately subvert one or the other because of their belief that diligence and dependence are intrinsically incompatible.

The great Puritan pastor and theologian John Owen addressed this misconception in his masterful treatise on the Holy Spirit. Writing of God’s promises of grace (in this context, His enabling power), he wrote,

But in verses 33-37, he expressed his dependence:

But Edwards recognized his dependence on God. Therefore, he prefaced his resolutions with this sentence: “Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him, by his grace, to enable me to keep the Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake.”

Yet remarkably, in later years he spoke of too much dependence on his own diligence. Biographer Iain Murray wrote,

There is a lesson here for all of us today. We can read John 15:4-5 and say, “Yes, that’s right. Without Him I can do nothing.” We agree with it because it is in the Bible. Jesus said it, so it is true. That’s well and good. That’s knowledge; that’s ginosko. But to actually learn to depend on Christ, our theoretical knowledge has to become experiential knowledge. It has to grow from ginosko to epiginosko. This is characteristic of genuine Christian growth.

I believe this is one reason we so often struggle with our sin. The Holy Spirit withholds His power from us to allow us to experience firsthand the extreme feebleness and impotence Edwards felt. He does this, of course, to draw out from us a sense of desperation so that we, to use the words of Proverbs 2:3, “call out for [help] and raise [our] voice for [His enabling power].”

And when we do fail — and fail we will — in our struggles with our sin, we must go back to the gospel and see Jesus bearing that very sin in His own body on the cross and at the same time clothing us with His righteousness. This unmerited love for us on His part is what gives us the courage and the motivation to press on in the pursuit of holiness, even in the midst of our failure.