The gospel has me reconsidering the typical way we think about Christian growth. It has me rethinking spiritual measurements and maturity; what it means to change, develop, grow; what the pursuit of holiness and the practice of godliness really entails.

In his 2008 movie The Happening, writer, producer, and director M. Night Shyamalan unfolds a freaky plot about a mysterious, invisible toxin that causes anyone exposed to it to commit suicide. One of the first signs that the unaware victim has breathed in this self-destructing toxin is that they begin walking backwards—signaling that every natural instinct to go on living and to fight for survival has been reversed. The victim's default survival mechanism is turned upside down.

This, in a sense, is what needs to happen to us when it comes to the way we think about progress in the Christian life. When breathed in, the radical, unconditional, free grace of God reverses every natural instinct regarding what it means to spiritually grow. Only the "toxin" of God's grace can reverse the way we typically think about Christian development.

Martin Luther defined sin as "mankind turned inward." And sadly, the way many of us think about sanctification is terribly self-absorbed. I'm realizing that the sin I need removed daily is precisely my narcissistic understanding of spiritual progress. I think too much about how I'm doing, if I'm growing, whether I'm doing it right or not. I spend too much time pondering my failure, brooding over my spiritual successes, and wondering why, when it's all said and done, I don't seem to be getting that much better. In short, I spend way too much time thinking about me and what I need to do and far too little time thinking about Jesus and what he's already done. And what I've discovered, ironically, is that the more I focus on my need to get better the worse I actually get. I become neurotic and self-absorbed. Preoccupation with my performance over Christ's performance for me makes me increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective. This is the opposite of how the Bible describes what it means to be sanctified. Sanctification is forgetting about yourself. After all, Peter only began to sink when he took his eyes off Jesus and focused on "how he was doing."

The gospel tells us the determining factor in my relationship with God is Jesus' work for us, not our work for him; his performance for us, not our performance for him; his obedience for us, not our obedience. The Gospel is the good news that God doesn't relate to us based on our feats for Jesus but Jesus feats for us. The gospel tells us that God's acceptance of us is not gained by our successes or forfeited by our failures—because it's not about us!

Gerhard Forde insightfully (and transparently) calls into question the ways in which we typically think about sanctification and spiritual progress when he writes:

Am I making progress? If I am really honest, it seems to me that the question is odd, even a little ridiculous. As I get older and death draws nearer, I don't seem to be getting better. I get a little more impatient, a little more anxious about having perhaps missed what this life has to offer, a little more set in my ways and a little more self-righteous with those whose ways are different than mine. Am I making progress? Well, maybe it seems as though I sin less, but that may only be because I'm getting tired! It's just too hard to keep indulging the lusts of youth. Is that sanctification? I wouldn't think so! One should not, I expect, mistake encroaching senility for sanctification! But can it be, perhaps, that it is precisely the unconditional gift of grace that helps me to see and admit all that? I hope so. The grace of God should lead us to see the truth about ourselves, and to gain a certain lucidity, a certain humor, a certain down-to-earthness.