People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
I love how this quote from Carson captures our tendency to rationalize our sin & abuse our freedom in Christ. Also, the phrase “grace-driven effort” is a pointed reminder that although our transformation into Jesus-likeness begins & ends with God, we *must* be active investors as well.