This summer my family stopped in Salt Lake City, and we wandered around downtown. I was walking with my two younger daughters when I looked back and saw my wife and my 14-year-old walking together. I did a double-take. My 14-year-old looked 24.

Part of me wanted a magic button to freeze time.

But the whole point of being a parent is to raise kids who grow up. You might say you want your babies to stay babies, but you don’t. You want them to grow up emotionally and spiritually, with integrity, wisdom and grit.

Your Heavenly Father feels the same way about you.

The goal of the Christian life isn’t to squeak into heaven by the skin of our teeth. Nobody wants to stand before Jesus and hear, “Wow, you just barely made it.” If you’re asking, “What’s the bare minimum I need to be saved?”, you’re missing the point. The point of following Jesus is to become like Jesus: to have his joy, his peace, his relationship with the Father, and his love for people. The church’s word for this is sanctification, which just means growing up in Christ.

Here’s the good news. God does this in you.

“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)

You don’t sanctify yourself. He is faithful, and he will do it. That doesn’t mean you sit back and watch, though.

Peter wrote 2 Peter near the end of his life, and he spends the whole letter pushing believers toward maturity. He closes by telling them to “make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him” and to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:14, 18).

Then he opens with this:

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” (2 Peter 1:3)

Maybe you’re new to faith and feel hopelessly behind. Maybe you’ve been a Christian for years and still feel like you’re starting over. You may have decided you’re just not good at this. You’re right, you aren’t. Good thing it was never about your power or your track record. Jesus has already given you forgiveness and a fresh start, his Spirit, his Word, and a church to carry you.

He has also given you promises, and Peter says those promises let us “participate in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Eastern Orthodox Christians love this verse and call it theosis. We would put it differently. We don’t become God. He’s the Creator and we stay creatures. But his Spirit lives in you, and you share in something of his holiness, his love, and his power to say no to sin.

Now comes the part that makes some of us squirm. Peter says, “For this very reason, make every effort” (2 Peter 1:5).

If you grew up around the Reformation’s emphasis on grace alone, effort can sound dangerous. It should make us careful. “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Our salvation is a gift.

But grace isn’t opposed to effort. Grace is opposed to earning. Earning says, “If I do enough, God owes me.” Effort says, “God has already given me everything, so I’m going to live like it.”

My middle daughter wanted a drum kit for her birthday. I grew up with one in the house, drove my parents nuts, and loved every minute. So my wife and I saved up, did the research, ordered it, and set it up. She needed to receive it with thanks. But if she said thank you and never picked up the sticks, that wouldn’t be much of a thank you. The right response was to bang on the drums, break some sticks, and be loud.

God gave you everything. It was all grace. Now get to work, and honour that grace with your effort.

If you keep growing, there’s a day coming when you won’t hear “you just barely made it.” Peter says you’ll “receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:11).