The sign that God is at work in us is that He is destroying our confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but only a wasted reminder of what God created man to be. We want to cling to our natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us in contact with the life of Jesus Christ— a life that can never be described in terms of natural virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people who are trying to serve God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them. They are depending solely on what they have by virtue of heredity. God does not take our natural virtues and transform them, because our natural virtues could never even come close to what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands. But as we bring every part of our natural bodily life into harmony with the new life God has placed within us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus.
And every virtue we possess
Is His alone.
The Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde remarked that "the Christian life is not an exodus from vice to virtue, but rather from virtue to grace"
Many "Christians" are obsessed with virtue.
Many "Christians" don't believe in the Gospel.
Virtue is good, but it is only valuable inasmuch as it is placed in its proper place in submission to faith.
If you believe Christianity is primarily about cleaning yourself up, you do not yet believe the Gospel of God in Jesus' finished work.
Make the painful, pride-slaying exodus from virtue to grace.
You will find yourself lacking.
You will find Christ fully sufficient.
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