It’s hard to defeat vice and attain virtue. As Charles Taylor observed, “High standards need strong sources.” If we believe it’s right to love others and sacrifice for them, we must admit that high ideals “exact a high cost.” If we commit to love others sacrificially, we will lose freedom to do whatever we please to satisfy our desires.¹ To care for an aging relative is to forgo vacations in distant lands; why do people make such sacrifices? To sustain a commitment to virtues such as service, when they bring no obvious reward, we need the right motives and sound methods. The first motive is a commitment to realism.

Realism Reveals the Need for Virtue

Years ago, several dozen people witnessed my lack of virtue. At the time, I was the solo pastor of a small new church that had just enough young athletes to field a team in a credible basketball league. I was twenty- eight and just 6’1”, but my vertical leap let me block shots on good days, so that I often guarded the other team’s tallest player. In one game, I had five clean blocks on a taller man in thirty minutes. Sadly, the principal referee was the indolent sort who cannot sustain concentration. When events required him to make a call, he seemed to rely on guesses about probabilities. With each blocked shot, he apparently thought: “Not real tall or especially athletic. Probably a foul.” After each block, his whistle blew. My teammates groaned. My opponent even whispered an apology: “That block was clean . . . [pause] but I will take the foul shots.” After five clean blocks and five bad calls, I had fouled out of the game. (I committed fouls on two other plays, but the ref missed them, too.)

Tramping off the court, I meant to object quietly, but what emerged was a bellow in the referee’s general direction: “You know, it would be nice if you would try watching the game. Then you might see what actually happens, instead of guessing and tooting your whistle at random.” I slumped onto the bench, dejected. Minutes later, the game ended in defeat, and a deacon sat down to rebuke me:

“You can’t shout at the ref like that.”
I protested: “That ref is awful. Every block was clean.”
He replied, “We know that, but you’re our pastor.”
I fumed, “When I’m on the court, I’m a basketball player, not a pastor.”

The deacon corrected me again: “Yes, on the court, you are a basketball player. But you are always our pastor.” At once, I knew that our deacon was right. I realized how peevish, how unmoored, I had sounded. Everyone at the gym had witnessed my pride, wrath, and folly. The deacon’s firm but calm rebuke was a gift. So was the sudden grasp of the way I sounded to people who (surprisingly) looked up to me. Seeing my folly motivated me to grow.

The Motives for Virtue

Let’s remember: to gain virtue, we must discern and practice what is good, even under duress. A truly patient woman remains serene despite preposterous accusations and sleep deprivation. A realistic self-appraisal is essential to growth in virtue. If we are too negative, we despair; if too positive, we see no need to grow.

Unfortunately, our sins and vices are often invisible to us. When gluttons drink until they’re inebriated, do they know that they embarrass themselves? Sloths, always late and unprepared, keep producing excuses; do they know that no one believes them? The proud blather on as though everyone will agree with them if they keep talking. The envious disparage their imagined competition, as if that will elevate them, and the lustful drool over luxuries they do not need and women they do not know. Do they realize how foolish they look? If their conscience corrects them, they may repent.

Most people admire the classic virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and self- control. Many also praise distinctively Christian virtues such as love, joy, peace, faithfulness, and gratitude, but we need motives that are sufficient for the toil. It’s easy to see that moral virtue may bring benefits. Moral virtue brings honor rather than dishonor and friendships instead of isolation. After all, who listens to known liars? And who trusts promise- breakers? Industry leads to prosperity, and contentment fosters internal peace. John Stuart Mill would say that people seek virtue because it brings pleasures such as honor, wealth, power, peace, and friends. According to Mill, people seek virtue because it brings them a form of pleasure.

Scripture sees our motivation differently. It declares that our ultimate goal is the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). It says that the ultimate source of virtue is a good heart, one that loves God and neighbor (Matt. 12:34–35; 22:36–39). Scripture also acknowledges secondary motivations. We can be moved by duty (Luke 17:10), by a desire to be like God (Rom. 8:29), or by fear of God (Prov. 1:7).

Motivation is multifaceted. Imagine a student whose doctoral work has stalled. He might try to invigorate himself by remembering his sense of call. He might recall that he wanted to add to human knowledge and serve humanity through his research. If these noble motivations fail, he could try guilt. He could calculate the resources he consumed, the people he would disappoint. He might even call himself a thief for wasting time and resources if he doesn’t complete his degree. He could revive himself with anger, even revenge: “My allies failed me, and my foes thwarted me, but I’ll show them!” But these are not the best motives.

At the moment, Western culture vilifies shame, but according to Scripture, we should be ashamed of sin. Jeremiah lamented that Israel refused “to be ashamed” of her infidelity (Jer. 3:3). According to Zephaniah, injustice is shameful (Zeph. 3:5). And Paul shamed disciples in Corinth for dragging each other into Roman courts. Surely they could resolve their disagreements without airing them before pagans (1 Cor. 6:5–8)! Can we agree that it would help if scammers were ashamed of their schemes to defraud the weak? Yes, shame is often misguided. We should not feel ashamed if our hair looks bad or if we wear the wrong clothes to a party. But a sense that sin is repulsive can move us to seek virtue.

Guilt, shame, vanity, and revenge might prompt change for a while, but we want (1) motives that endure and (2) motives that please God. Atheists cannot access every motive. For example, atheists cannot readily break with greed. They think they must care for themselves, so a wealth-as-source-of-safety mindset always tempts them. Gluttony and lust are similar. If there is no God, people inevitably live to eat, drink, be merry. Unbelief also fuels pride. Unbelievers don’t think God created them with intrinsic worth, so they have to create their own identity, and that fosters pride.²

The Means to Virtue—Secular Views

That said, there are brilliant secular ethicists who both contemplate virtue and pursue it as individuals and for their societies. Aristotle proposed that good practices or habits are the path to virtue: “Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us. . . . [They] are made perfect by habit.” Just as “men become builders by building,” so, too, they “become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts.”³Aristotle might say that we overcome sloth by setting an alarm, getting up, and going to work daily until a habit of diligence develops. Likewise, we defeat greed by giving to others regularly and generously. Aristotle is right—good habits are beneficial. But it’s hard to break old habits that offer great pleasure. Besides, improved habits don’t always stick. People return to vices such as gambling even if they hate them.

Immanuel Kant noted that virtue starts with a desire to fulfill one’s duties. In a good “ethical commonwealth,” we exercise our freedom in ways that protect the freedom of others.⁴ But above all, Kant proposed a universal law that fueled every duty: “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.”⁵ This law makes it everyone’s duty to respect property, tell the truth, and refrain from murder, for society would collapse if everyone stole, lied, and murdered. Who would toil and save if theft were rampant? And who could live in society if anyone could kill?

Kant and Aristotle both made good points. It is wise to fulfill our duties, and good habits are helpful. Habits may be especially helpful for vices of addiction. If gluttony leads to alcohol abuse, we should ask friends to support our new habits. Still, it’s difficult to break with ingrained vices. Not many people can say, “I’m going to start doing the right thing” and simply do it. We need assistance. We call that assistance the means of grace. The means of grace have two aspects: (1) the God- given sources of strength and (2) the disciplines of grace.

The Sources of Grace That Foster Virtue

The chief source of virtue is the Spirit’s gift of regeneration, repentance, and faith. The Spirit indwelt Jesus and equipped him for ministry. Luke tells us that the Spirit begets Jesus, baptizes him, enters him, leads him to the wilderness to be tested, sends him with power into Galilee, and comes upon him when he preaches (Luke 1:35; 3:16, 22; 4:1, 14, 18). If the Spirit empowers Jesus, how much more do we need his strength.

By the Spirit, we become healthy trees that bear good fruit (Matt. 7:17). The Lord saves us by grace and alsoprepares us for good works (Eph. 2:10). Romans 6 states that we died and rose with Christ. As a result, we have “died to sin” and now “walk in newness of life.” We are “no longer . . . enslaved to sin,” and therefore sin no longer reigns in us. Our union with Christ changes everything, and Paul can command, “Present yourselves . . . as instruments [or “weapons”] for righteousness” (Rom. 6:2–13).⁶ We still sin, but it is aberrant behavior. We might not love our neighbors perfectly, but we do love them, and we typically act like it, even if we fail at times.

Romans teaches that while no one is saved by works, neither is anyone saved without works. Works are not necessary before salvation, but they are necessary afterward. To use an analogy, a baby receives life from her parents. She does not gain life by breathing beforehand, yet she will not stay alive without breathing afterward. Breathing is necessary for life even if it doesn’t cause life. Similarly, growth in obedience and virtue is essential to the believer’s life, even though they do not give us life.⁷ If we are alive to God, it must show. The Lord does empower believers to lead a morally beautiful life (1 Tim. 2:9–10; Titus 2:10; 1 Peter 3:5).

In some circles, believers hesitate to act as if they have moral confidence. They emphasize their struggles and brokenness, and the difficulty of overcoming sin. This is commendable in several ways. First, a false accent on the victories of believers presents an impossible ideal that leaves people feeling defeated. Second, raw optimism can silence people who fear that their struggles are shameful aberrations. Third, Scripture encourages realism. Psalms 32, 38, and 51 feature extended pleas for forgiveness of sin. Biblical history confirms the need for realism whenever it recounts the sins of heroes of the faith from Abraham to Paul. Discipleship is arduous.

Still, the emphasis on struggle misses essential biblical teaching. God expects his people to be holy, and he says so: “Be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44–45; 19:2; see also 1 Peter 1:15). The psalmists took this seriously so that they could say, “Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness” (Ps. 7:8; see also 15:1–6). They expected God to hear the cry of the righteous and deliver them (34:15, 17). They even asked God to reward them according to their work (62:12). In Psalm 32, David confesses his sin (32:1–5), but he also comments that those who trust the Lord are fundamentally “upright in heart” (vv. 10–11).

In other words, the believer’s life features movement from sin to godliness. We can and should “cast off the works of darkness” (Rom. 13:12) and “put off [the] old self” with its “deceitful desires” (Eph. 4:22). Take Paul’s surprising comment on Abraham, “No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith” (Rom. 4:20). We think: “Abraham did waver! He took Hagar as a concubine in order to father a child on his terms.” Paul knew this, but he looked at the arc of Abraham’s life in declaring that “he grew strong in his faith.” That is the norm — growth in obedience and in virtue. As Hebrews 11 and 12 make clear, a cloud of witnesses testifies that we can run the race of life with endurance, to the end, because Jesus is “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:1–2).

Taking our sin, the work of Jesus, and the presence of the Spirit together, we should have a mood of sober optimism or guarded confidence. For years, Western culture promoted a culture of victimhood, and that produced a bias against progress in Christian circles. If we privilege victims, people become reluctant to “admit” that they are happy, to say that they enjoyed a strong family or education, or to profess that they are improving morally.

Test yourself for a bias against growth by assessing this: “Since the day I shouted at that basketball referee, I never yelled at an official again. A decade later, I also stopped shouting at opponents.” Does this sound unlikely? Braggadocious? If so, you may be biased against growth. It should seem believable, even normal, since God both expects and empowers us to grow in grace through our union with Christ (Eph. 4:11–15; 2 Peter 3:18).

Growth in virtue is a spontaneous result of a new heart and new affections, but it is not entirely spontaneous. From the beginning, the church has promoted what it calls ordinary means of grace. A believer’s growth can be sudden, even mystical. People say, “I woke up one day, and the desire to drink [or curse] was gone.” And it happens. Yet the Lord also grants us ordinary, gradual means of growth. The church is a family, an organism, and an institution. As a family, we resemble each other morally, especially as we spend time together. As an organism, we grow together. Proverbs 13:20 exhorts us, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” As an institution, the church creates structures that make it easier to grow into maturity together. We call these structures the means or disciplines of grace. The phrase means of graceseems like an oxymoron; if grace is unmerited favor, how can there be regular means to receive grace? But there is no contradiction. God’s grace is not strictly predictable, and yet there are common pathways for growth.

In general, Reformed churches accent the supernatural, gospel-driven source of grace. By contrast, the holiness tradition, which has roots in the early church and in the heirs of John Wesley, is more likely to explore the disciplines of grace.

---

Footnotes

1. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 516, 518.
2. Hit Man, a bizarre but successful film, lets its leading man spell out its lesson in the final moment: “Seize the identity you want.”
3. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics,” in The Basic Works of Aristotle, trans. W. D. Ross (New York: Random House, 1941), 953 (2.1).
4. Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore Meyer Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 88–90.
5. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), 89 (chap. 2, para. 52).
6. The Greek term for “instruments” is hopla, which normally means “weapons.” Thus, we should think of ourselves as sharp weapons in God’s arsenal.
7. Dane C. Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 139–40.