Thankfulness is next to Godliness

"Thankfulness is the joyful and humble response of a heart that has been transformed by grace. Does gratitude characterize your thoughts of God? Thankfulness is a good test of your faith. Its absence demonstrates that your faith is more lip service than experiential knowledge." -- Joe Thorn

I received this quote via text from my pastor at Christ Fellowship Church and it got me thinking about the connection between the pursuit of holiness and thankfulness.


Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.

It seems as we grow in our christian walk, the less and less thankful we become. This is what David was crying out during his repentance of adultery and murder in Psalm 51:12: "Restore to me the joy of your salvation." As the years were added to his life, he lost sight of the gospel that brought him so much joy at the point of his salvation. He lost sight of God's grace; lost sight of his thankfulness; and he lost sight of the pursuit of holiness. The same could be said of us. The glory of God shines in our heart and joy overflows. As we continue in our faith things don't move as quickly as we want them too. Holiness is a lot harder than we thought and we wonder why we are still struggling with a lot of the same habitual sins that we hate. The joy that once was so abundant in our christian lives is now desert dry.

As we grow in our walk with the Lord, we have a tendency to move on from the gospel and leave what makes us most thankful. The gospel encourages us in our pursuit of holiness by making us thankful. Why are we thankful? Because in our sin, we have rebelled against the perfect holiness of God. Now, because God is perfectly just, all we deserve is his wrath and punishment, but through Jesus life, death, and resurrection all we get is grace. It is impossible to look at what Jesus has done for us, and thankfulness not occur. It's also impossible to look at what Jesus has done for us, and not want to fight the sin that sent him to the cross. So thankfulness leads to fighting sin. Thankfulness leads to pursuing holiness. Thankfulness leads to an awakening of the gospel in our lives and the lives of others.This is not a thankfulness for only what God does, but also for who he is. We are a thankful people because we have Jesus. He is the gift, not just the giver.

Grace & Gratitude

The theologian John Stott gives us some insight into this when he states, "It is not by accident that in Greek one and the same noun (Charis) does duty for both 'grace' and 'gratitude.'' Grace and gratitude are inseparable from each other. You can't have one without the other. Grace should always bring gratitude and gratitude should always bring about holiness. As we become more and more thankful for Christ and what he's done, we want to look to, submit, and ultimately become more and more like him.  The proper response to God's grace to us shown in his Son is always going to be thankfulness and progressive sanctification. I'm not claiming perfection here. I am claiming a serious pursuit for the things of God (Romans 6, Colossians 3:1-17, Hebrews 12:1-2).

This is Paul's advice to the church at Ephesus on pursuing holiness in light of what Christ has done:

"And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among the saints. Let there be no filthiness no foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving." (Ephesians 5:2-4, emphasis added)

The remedy Paul gives the church for their sinfulness is thanksgiving. I love how he doesn't just leave them with questions of what to be thankful for. As Christians, we should have thanksgiving oozing out of us, because "Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." If we want to take holiness seriously, we need to take the grace given to us through Christ's perfect sacrifice seriously. May that grace always lead to a life of gratitude and may God always restore us to the joy of his salvation.