If you think about it, modern culture puts tremendous effort towards improving efficiency and convenience in everything we do. Less effort brings satisfaction, a sense of triumph over the world, and even joy. We want “easy!” You might say that we of the modern age are addicted to “easy” if we can achieve it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The appeal of easy is easy to embrace…pun intended. I love buying things on Amazon with a few computer mouse clicks and, soon after, having bounty appear at my front door. I love the incredible power of the internet for access to information and streamlined research. I marvel at how I can connect in real-time to beloved family living far away and see grandkids grow and change on my phone. I enjoy a truck that is smarter than I am. Even my workout gym processes and staff go out of their way to make my experience almost effortless beyond pushing my own weights.  

The office supply retailer Staples perfectly captured the culture’s pervasive passion for ease with its “Easy Button” ad campaign. If there is a way to “easy button” something, people will find it and use it!

But is “easy” always good? Such a question rings foolish for anyone familiar with the Bible. We rightly abhor the idea that a person can video record their foolish, frivolous, sinful life, post it to an easily obtained YouTube or TikTok channel, and make much money if enough people click on it. Our young people should not aspire to be “Influencers,” yet far too many do, which is probably related to why small businesses everywhere can’t find workers.

As Christians, we know that easy is not always good. Indeed, a principle in Scripture repeatedly asserts that the most important matters in life and growth in Christ come through struggle against powerful resistance. Fundamentally, no “Easy Button” approach is available in our sanctification, and God has perfectly designed it that way.

Sanctification is a biblical and theological word that, as author and Pastor Steve Lawson nicely defines it, means “the divine act of making the believer increasingly holy on a practical level.” This pursuit of holiness represents the lifelong process of making a person’s moral condition come into conformity with their legal status before God of being “justified.”

Exhorting the church at Phillipi regarding their sanctification, the Apostle Paul highlights the timeless truth that our sanctification is purposefully hard! In the second chapter of his letter to the church, Paul says to the believers:

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Phil 2:12-13)

Speaking to believers, “My beloved,” he affirms their obedient daily choices as they walk on the narrow road of sanctification. As believers, they have been justified in the faith that the sovereign God of the universe has first given to them. And now, by grace alone, they are both sealed by the Holy Spirit and filled with the same Spirit to go forward as regenerate Christians who can now choose not to sin.

Obedience is choosing not to sin, even as every believer faces bitter and relentless opposition from the world, the flesh, and the devil. The Gospel alone is what makes choosing not to sin possible! Before God graced the Philippians with saving faith, they lived as doomed unbelievers. Adam’s sin had removed him and, hence, all mankind from his original state in Eden and plunged him into a state of sin and misery. Thus, fallen humans are unable to choose God. The unrenewed human will is enslaved to evil and disabled from turning to God, or any true spiritual good. 17th-century Puritan David Clarkson said it this way: We are “both unable, and unwilling to be able, and unable to be willing.”

However, God intervened and gave Paul’s Philippian church plant saving faith, just as He does for every believer, past, present, and future. God gave them faith to believe in Christ’s perfect birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection, which affords them a renewed but imperfect ability to choose God—to obey!

Saving faith is the transition from slavery to freedom. Yet, this freedom is under a new Master, as Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley assert in their excellent work Reformed Systematic Theology Vol 2. The redeemed are no longer “both unable and unwilling to be able, and unable to be willing.” Our free will is no longer a shadow but a living, vibrant reality. Thus, Paul urges these authentic Philippian believers to choose God for the right, selfless reasons. Moreover, God will faithfully complete the sanctification work He has begun. There will be perfect sanctification for every believer, which is the promise of glory!

But such promises are not intended to be TikTok easy. Though thrilling and hope-filled, we are also instructed that our sanctification will be the opposite of TikTok easy, forged in blood, sweat, and tears. There is work for the believer, even as God does His sanctifying work. The believer’s work is to be pursued in “fear and trembling,” which means we are to work hard against our sin, the world’s siren lies, and the attacks of the devil, not cowering from God but with great awe of the God who saved us and we now serve. We are to revere God as we labor to choose rightly, and He works in us “for His good pleasure.”

James 1:2-4 says it this way:

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Romans 5:3-5 complements James:

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

But our gracious and always good God is always with us, even in the worst of it as Paul reminds us in Romans 8:37-39:

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”

Romans 8:28 confirms a positive end to every crisis, even if it is not favorable in worldly terms:

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”

As we think about our transition from summer to fall—and this beginning of the school year—let’s remember to wisely reject frivolous easy and not succumb to foolishness by thinking unbiblically. Let’s also choose the “hard” button in what matters most in life. Finally, let’s remember that we are also obligated to help others deal with “hard” as God would have them do. As Christians, we are in this hard life together doing “hard,” and that is as it should be.