God At Work In You

Excerpt from John Piper: God Raised Your Great Shepherd from the Dead A Farewell Sermon 

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5. God is a sanctifying God.

“Now may the God of peace . . . equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ.”

In one sense I view all my preaching as an effort to apply this miracle to your lives. Notice how doing the will of God — doing what pleases him — happens. First God “equips you with everything good that you may do his will.” God does not expect us to make bricks without straw. We are not required to do what there is no provision to do. He gives us what we need to do his will (see 2 Corinthians 9:8; 1 Corinthians 10:13).

But that’s not all. He does more. He moves in: “working in us that which is pleasing in his sight.” Literally it goes like this: May he “equip you with everything good that you may do(poihvsai) his will, doing (poiw◊n) in us that which is pleasing in his sight.” We do it because he is doing it in us (Philippians 2:12–13). No. “Because” is not the right word. We do his will and find that in the doing he is the doer. In our doing, he is doing. His is not first and ours second. His is first, and ours is first, because his is ours.

How many times have I quoted with you 1 Corinthians 15:10, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

This is the mystery of sanctification. God at work in you, so that all your doing of the will of God, all your doing of what is pleasing in his sight is God’s doing in your doing.

Don’t ever leave this mystery. Spend the rest of your life going deep into what it means to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you.

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