Your Bootstraps Just Broke (reprise from 2014)

When I was a boy, people used the expression "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" -- referring to the loops at the top of some boots that helped get them on your feet. It meant something like "trying to succeed all by yourself, and failing" because physically, it's an impossible stunt! Studying Colossians 1:28-29, it strikes me once more me that being formed in Christ, or following God -- however you want to call it -- doesn't happen because we managed it. No, sirree! As Paul writes to the Colossians, and throughout the word of God, we find that our good intentions get us in trouble, and that in fact, any truly good intentions or ideas we have come from him as a gift.

Paul says in these two verses how hard he has worked for these folks. Just before that, in verse 27, he says "And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory." So when he says in verse 29 "I work and struggle so hard" (meaning, in the Greek, to push himself to the point of agony) he completes that thought with "depending on Christ’s mighty power that works within me." Trying to obey God by ourselves, by our own energy, will break our bootstraps! Only he can make us over in Christ's image (Romans 12:2). Our energy as we "work and struggle" is merely responding to what the Holy Spirit has initiated in us, drawing us to adore and then follow Jesus. 

The "grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 13:14) is both the starting principle and the continuing principle for us, not only for forgiveness, but every day, in every part of life. His grace freely grants us forgiveness of sin, and brings us to the family dinner table with the Father and Holy Spirit. His grace continues, every day, to bring us his plan for us and give us the power to live it.

So yes, let's work and struggle, no question about it! But let's never think that our efforts will show us what to do for God, or how to do it, or actually do it. To quote Paul in another letter, "Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure" (Phil. 2:12-13, The Message).

The love of God for us, expressed in the Holy Spirit's power, is what draws us to love him in return, and to respond to him out of that love. Or would you rather keep trying your bootstraps?