Moe Bergeron

As a pastor for over 33 years I’ve recognized this tension that every faithful pastor and teacher must hold with both hands. Lean too far toward grace and the hearer whispers, “Shall we go on sinning?” Lean too far toward holiness and the hearer sighs, “I can never do enough.” The gospel refuses to choose between the two, because grace and holiness are not rivals—they are companions on the same road, and that road leads to Christ.

Titus 2:11–14 (Romans 6:1–4; 1 John 3:1–3)

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, eager to do good works.

The question of how to balance grace and holiness assumes that the two sit on opposite ends of a scale—that more of one means less of the other. But the apostle Paul will have none of this. In Titus 2:11–12, he makes a statement that reshapes the entire conversation: grace instructs. Grace is not a blank check that permits recklessness; it is a teacher that trains the soul in righteousness. The same grace that pardons the sinner also purifies the heart. To separate what God has joined is to distort the gospel at its very center. The challenge for the teacher is not to balance two competing truths but to show that they are one truth seen from two angles: the believer is both justified and renewed, and neither can exist without the other.

1. Begin with Identity, Not Behavior The most common mistake in discipleship is to start with the command and work backward to the motive. “You should stop doing this; you should start doing that.” This approach, however well-intentioned, reinforces the very pattern the gospel comes to break—the idea that our standing before God depends on our conduct. The New Testament writers consistently reverse the order. They begin with who the believer is and then draw out what the believer should do. Paul’s letters follow this pattern almost without exception: three chapters of indicatives (what is true of us in Christ) followed by three chapters of imperatives (how we are to live in light of that truth). Identity is the root; behavior is the fruit. When a new believer understands that they are already accepted, already loved, already sealed by the Spirit, the question shifts from “How much can I get away with?” to “How can I live in a way that reflects who I already am?” This is the difference between license and liberty. License says, “I am free to sin.” Liberty says, “I am free from sin.”

2. Teach That Grace Does Not Merely Forgive—It Transforms The error of license begins with a truncated view of grace. If grace is only pardon, then the logical conclusion is that sin no longer matters—God will forgive it anyway. But Paul addresses this head-on in Romans 6:1–2: “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” His argument is not moralistic but ontological. He does not say, “You should not sin because it is wrong.” He says, “You cannot continue in sin because you have died to it.” Union with Christ means that the believer’s old self was crucified with Him (Romans 6:6). Sin is no longer the believer’s master because the believer no longer belongs to the realm where sin reigns. Grace does not simply wipe the slate clean and leave the sinner unchanged; it transfers the sinner from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). A fish out of water does not need a rulebook to tell it not to breathe the air—it gasps because it was made for the sea. So the believer, made new in Christ, finds that sin increasingly feels foreign, not because a law forbids it, but because a new nature resists it.

3. Show That Love, Not Fear, Is the Guardian Against License The person who drifts into license has usually lost sight of the cost of their forgiveness. They treat grace as cheap because they have forgotten that it was purchased with blood. Peter warns against this when he writes of those who “deny the Master who bought them” (2 Peter 2:1), and Jude speaks of those who “pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality” (Jude 4). The antidote is not to threaten the believer with loss of salvation—that would drive them back into the spirit of slavery. The antidote is to hold the cross before their eyes until the heart is broken by the love that bled for them. When a believer truly sees what Christ endured to secure their pardon, the thought of using that pardon as permission to sin becomes repugnant. Love constrains where law cannot. A wife does not remain faithful to her husband because she fears he will divorce her; she remains faithful because she loves him and would not wound his heart for the world. So it is with the believer and Christ. The security of grace does not produce carelessness; it produces gratitude, and gratitude is the soil in which holiness grows.

4. Make Room for the Father’s Discipline There is a neglected truth that protects both grace and holiness: the discipline of the Father. Hebrews 12:5–6 reminds us, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastens everyone He accepts as His son.” Discipline is not punishment—it is the proof of belonging. The father who does not correct his child does not love him; he has abandoned him. When a new believer falls into a pattern of sin, the Father does not cast them out, but He does not leave them there either. He will prune, He will chasten, He will allow the consequences of sin to be felt, and He will use every means to draw His child back. This discipline is not a threat to the believer’s security but a confirmation of it. Teaching new believers to recognize the Father’s hand in their struggles—rather than interpreting hardship as abandonment—helps them see that grace is not passive indulgence but active, loving formation.

5. Connect Holiness to Hope John provides perhaps the most overlooked motive for holy living in 1 John 3:2–3: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. All who have this hope in Him purify themselves, just as He is pure.” Holiness is not primarily about avoiding sin; it is about preparing for a Person. The bride does not prepare herself for the wedding day out of fear that the groom will reject her; she prepares because she longs to be beautiful for the one she loves. The believer who fixes their eyes on the appearing of Christ will naturally purify their life—not to earn a place at the wedding feast, but because they already have one and want to be ready when the Bridegroom comes. Hope does not weaken holiness; it is the very engine that drives it.

Practical Reflection

The new believer who asks, “Can I keep sinning since I am forgiven?” has not yet understood the gospel. They have heard the first movement of the symphony—justification—but they have not yet heard the second—transformation. The teacher’s task is not to shout the law louder but to play the whole song. Show them the cross, where grace and holiness meet in a single Person: the Lamb who was slain, whose blood both covers our sin and conquers its power. Show them the empty tomb, where the risen Christ proves that the new creation has begun and that the old way of life is passing away. Show them the Spirit within, who is not a passive guest but an active presence, working out in daily life what the Father has worked in by sovereign grace. And when they stumble—as they will, as we all do—do not point them to their failure but to their Advocate, who intercedes for them at the right hand of the Father (1 John 2:1). The path between license and legalism is narrow, but it is not hard to find. It is the path of walking with Jesus, who is both the author and the finisher of our faith. In Him, grace and holiness are never at war. They are the two hands of the same Savior, pulling us ever closer to the day when we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.