The good news is that God makes His resurrection power available to us to walk in victory over sin. The Christian life is not a choice between loving and trusting Jesus, and making an effort to avoid temptation and sin. It is not either/or—it is both/and. 

Scripture says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter 1:3). So what do we need to live righteously that He has not given us in Christ? Nothing.

The source of strength we call upon is not our own, which is insufficient, but God’s, which is infinitely powerful. God says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). You bring the weakness, He brings the power.

Does any of this imply that it doesn’t take a lot of effort to live the Christian life? Of course not. But notice the intertwining of effort in this partnership with God—“To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:29). We must make every effort to be righteous, to obey Him. Yet all the while we must do this appealing to His strength, not our own.

One caution is important here. Some people approach the concept of “allowing God to work through me” as if it were some passive condition whereby God invades you and takes over, automatically causing you to live righteously, bypassing your own will. Not true. The spiritual life is warfare. To win the fight you must take on the armor of God and wield the sword of God’s Word, which requires diligence and hard work (Eph. 6:10-18). As J. I. Packer says in his book Keep in Step with the Spirit, “The Christian’s motto should not be ‘Let go and let God’ but ‘Trust God and get going!’”

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