Become what you are; become what you are becoming

Douglas Moo commenting on Romans 6:1-14 and the exhortation to “to become what we are” or “become what you are becoming":

Romans 6 is the classic biblical text on the importance of relating the “indicative” of what God has done for us with the “imperative” of what we are to do. Paul stresses that we must actualize in daily experience the freedom from sin’s lordship (cf. v. 14a) that is ours “in Christ Jesus.” State is to become reality; we are “to become what we are”—or, with due recognition of the continuing work of God in our lives, we might say “become what you are becoming.”199 Balance on this point is essential. “Indicative” and “imperative” must be neither divided nor confused. If divided, with “justification” and “sanctification” put into separate compartments, we can forget that true holiness of life comes only as the outworking and realization of the life of Christ in us. This leads to a “moralism” or “legalism” in which the believer “goes it on his own,” thinking that holiness will be attained through sheer effort, or ever more elaborate programs, or ever-increasing numbers of rules. But if indicative and imperative are confused, with “justification” and “sanctification” collapsed together into one, we can neglect the fact that the outworking of the life of Christ in us is made our responsibility. This neglect leads to an unconcern with holiness of life, or to a “God-does-it-all” attitude in which the believer thinks to become holy through a kind of spiritual osmosis. Paul makes it clear, by the sequence in this paragraph, that we can live a holy life only as we appropriate the benefits of our union with Christ. But he also makes it clear, because there is a sequence, that living the holy life is distinct from (but not separate from) what we have attained by our union with Christ and that holiness of life can be stifled if we fail continually to appropriate and put to work the new life God has given us. Jeremiah Bourroughs, a seventeenth-century Puritan, put it like this: “… from him [Christ] as from a fountain, sanctification flows into the souls of the Saints: their sanctification comes not so much from their struggling, and endeavors, and vows, and resolutions, as it comes flowing to them from their union with him.” Or, as Thielicke puts it, we saints must not close our mouths to this fountain of sanctification, but continue to drink from it. [The Epistle to the Romans (The New International Commentary on the New Testament), pages 390-391.]

(HT: Kevin DeYoung)