Sanctification: The Selfless Motivation of Godly Obedience

Wind back your memory clock to spring 2020. Listen as cheers fade. View blank certificates and awards in a dusty pile.  See trophy-earning opportunities evaporate. Witness fans sitting on their hands. Only the joy of the game remains now (and perhaps a desire to please the coach for players) in all things sports-related. Motives matter. And, in the pursuit of holiness, they make all the difference. Likewise, when it comes to sanctification, the selfless motivation of godly obedience matters most. It’s the only path worth traversing in any authentic pursuit of holiness.

Getting Over Ourselves

Let’s take a moment to really dissect selflessness. Because how easily can we carve ourselves out of anything?

That process is anything but simple. Sin nature corrupts us. We look out for number one.

You might even wonder what it means to be truly selfless. By definition, selfless people are concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with their own. As sons and daughters of the King, God remains the only one we aim to please. Selflessness involves more than just giving the last life saver to your friend. Jesus said it like this in John 15:13: “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

That’s a tall, God-sized order all right.

But we are born to live and please an audience of one, namely, our Lord and Savior. We aren’t here to please ourselves, even when it comes to our motive for pleasing God. In fact, pleasing God is a consequential end to the pure means of aspiring to live an obedient life. And if we are rooted in Christ, our primary objective is to be reflections of God and His character out of our love and devotion for Him. But the quest for holiness isn’t about personal achievement. And that’s the trap we must strive to avoid.

Taking a Hard Look At The Why

I love how Jerry Bridges describes the heart motive problem in “The Pursuit of Holiness.” He says, “Our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We are more concerned about our own ‘victory’ over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success-oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.”

Ouch.

Can anyone related to that pathetic, egocentric scenario?

Because I know I can. Bridges goes on to say that “God wants us to walk in obedience, not victory.” Because “obedience is oriented toward God; victory is oriented towards self.” Even in the quest to do the right thing, we unknowingly intermingle wrong things. We must guard against trying to be holy as if we were trying to earn a gold citizenship sticker from the teacher. Of course, we know God is pleased when we “walk in His will and delight in His ways,” as we are told in Proverbs 23:26.

But our best motivation for doing God’s will is to eagerly desire to reflect His divine character. In doing that, we embrace the goodness of, well, executing good. As simplistic as that sounds, the continual act of removing performance out of the equation – far easier said than done. Now that I’m more aware of it in my life, I am finding this endeavor ultra-challenging, to say the least!

Rags to Riches

Aspirations to holiness ideally spring from our need for sanctification. And our sin nature acts as a barrier to our holiness.  We see in Isaiah 64:4 that “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.”  Fortunately, God forgives our misdeeds. He cleanses us of our unrighteousness. This process makes us “white as snow,” as recorded in Isaiah 1:18. Talk about a transformational makeover! Who needs new stylish clothes and expensive makeup when Jesus Christ can transform anyone from filthy to fabulous when we repent and embrace His good and perfect love?

A Pouring out of Self

The Bible provides a great example of this kind of motive-free love. It involves Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, pouring out precious oil onto the feet of Jesus. In John 12, Mary employs a pint of costly nard, a kind of perfume. She poured it on Jesus’ feet and dried it with her long hair. That amount of nard cost her about a year’s wages. So sadly, Judas and others misinterpreted Mary’s selfless act of love.  Because they chastised her gesture and labeled it extravagant, some who read this miss the true point Jesus made in His defense of her.

Why we do something good matters as much and maybe sometimes more than the act itself. Mary sacrificed for Jesus knowing she might well be criticized. Jesus knew Mary acted out of love. Judas invented a lie about helping the poor because he continually dipped into the coffers for himself. Judas’s point: valid. His motive: entirely self-centered. We read in 1 Samuel 16:7 that, “Man looks at the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Men may fool one another but they never fool God. And therein lies the rub. Precisely because our selfish motives litter our agenda.  We play little games when it comes to what we do. We fool even ourselves into thinking we do something good for the right reasons. However, wrong reasons creep into our seemingly noble ventures.  Before we know it, we slip into an abyss of sinful behavior.

Eyes on the Target

As long as we keep our eyes on the prize of our salvation, we will win the race. I remember holding my bow and arrow in archery in junior high school, all the while staring at the bullseye. I remember thinking about how frustrating it was to be able to clearly see it from my vantage point knowing I had so little control over the arrow once it left the bow. Aim remains crucial. Concentration helped but guaranteed nothing. Life is like archery. Sometimes we hit the bullseye, sometimes our arrows land on the ground. But one thing remains certain: God is our bullseye in this life. When we keep our eyes on Him, the “author and perfecter of our faith” as Hebrews 12:2 reminds us, our faithfulness will result in “a crown of life” (Rev. 2:10.)

May our pursuit of holiness continually stem from our desire to reflect God’s character out of pure, unadulterated reverence for goodness and not from “pleaser” overdrive.