How do human responsibility and divine enablement work together in sanctification — and what is wrong with “Let go and let God”?
Question 10109
How does a believer grow in holiness? The question sounds simple and turns out to be one of the most contested in Christian thought. On one side stands the quietist: “Let go and let God” — spiritual growth is entirely His work, and the believer’s task is to get out of the way. On the other stands the activist: spiritual growth requires disciplined effort, rigorous habit, and the constant application of willpower. Both positions contain something true and both, taken to their logical conclusions, produce Christians who are either passively stuck or exhaustedly striving. Scripture navigates between them with a precision that neither extreme reflects.
The Problem With Passivity
The quietist slogan “Let go and let God” has an intuitive appeal. It seems to honour grace, avoid pride, and direct trust toward God rather than self. But it rests on a misreading of how Scripture describes the Spirit’s work in the believer. Paul does not write to the Philippians “Let God work His purposes in you and stay out of the way.” He writes: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). The two halves of that sentence are held together deliberately. God’s working in the believer is precisely the ground for the believer’s active working out — it is not an alternative to it.
Passivity in the Christian life tends to produce stagnation dressed up in spiritual language. When growth does not occur, it is explained as God not yet having done His work. When sin persists, it is attributed to insufficient divine intervention rather than insufficient cooperation with what the Spirit is already doing. This framework has no real accountability — there is always an explanation for why the expected transformation has not happened that places no responsibility on the person. But that is not the New Testament’s picture. The New Testament is saturated with imperatives — commands to do, to put off, to put on, to walk, to run, to fight, to resist. None of that language is consistent with a passive model.
The Problem With Activism
The opposite error is equally dangerous, though it is less often recognised in the churches that value serious discipleship. The activist model locates the driving energy of sanctification in the believer’s own effort — in spiritual disciplines pursued with sufficient rigour, in habits of mind cultivated by sheer persistence, in the accumulation of good decisions made by an increasingly competent moral will. It may use the language of the Spirit but its functional logic is human effort.
Paul addresses this directly in Galatians 3:3: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” The context is the Galatian Christians’ temptation to supplement grace with law-keeping, but the principle extends to all forms of sanctification pursued by human strength alone. It is not just that effort-based sanctification is morally insufficient — it is theologically confused. You began in the Spirit. The continuation is also in the Spirit. Trying to complete by the flesh what was started by the Spirit is not a serious upgrade; it is a regression. And it produces the fruit that legalistic effort always produces — either pride in success or despair in failure.
The Biblical Balance: Synergy Without Equality
Paul’s formulation in Philippians 2 is the best expression of the balance. God works; therefore the believer works. These are not equal contributions to a shared project, as though grace covers forty percent and human effort supplies the rest. The relationship is asymmetrical — it is God who supplies both the will and the ability to do what pleases Him. But the activity is genuine on both sides. The Spirit enables; the believer acts in the power that the Spirit supplies. The mortification of sin is the believer’s responsibility — “by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13) — but the Spirit is the means by which it is accomplished. It is not done for the believer; it is done by the believer, in the Spirit’s power.
This has a very practical implication. When a believer finds that a pattern of sin is persisting, the answer is neither to try harder in the same way (activism) nor to wait more patiently for God to sort it out (passivity). It is to take the matter to the Spirit in genuine dependence — confessing the sin, renouncing the habit, and actively engaging in the spiritual practices through which the Spirit does His transforming work. Bible engagement, prayer, community, honest accountability — these are not means by which the believer generates holiness by self-effort; they are the means through which the Spirit accomplishes His work in those who use them in faith.
So, now what?
The test of which error you are prone to is often clearer in failure than in success. When you sin — or when growth stalls — what is your instinctive response? If it is to try harder, add another discipline, and double down on effort, you may be closer to the activist error. If it is to wait more passively and feel guilty for not feeling more transformed, you may be closer to the quietist error. The biblical response is neither. It is to bring the failure honestly before God, to engage the Spirit in renewed dependence, and to act on what the Spirit prompts — actively, but in borrowed strength rather than your own.
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:12-13
