“Be all that you can be!”  That motto, used for many years in U.S. Marine Corps TV commercials, serves as a helpful restatement of the call we find in the pages of the New Testament.  Again and again the apostles call believers to “be all that you can be!”  This call takes many forms: “Discipline yourselves for the purpose of godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7); “Be holy for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:17); “pursue…holiness, without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14), etc.  Once we have come to know the grace of God in justification, as Christians we are commanded to pursue our progressive growth in sanctification (experiential holiness).

This extremely helpful book, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands by Paul Tripp, addresses a critical, and too often overlooked, element in the process of sanctification—the need for open and transparent relationships where we are free to “speak the truth in love” to one another.  God has created every Christian to need others if he is to grow in grace to become all that he can be.  This means that we need to change the way we see ourselves and other believers; we need to change the way we see our relationships.  We must work to develop deeper relationships in our churches and we must learn to offer and receive loving correction in the context of those relationships.  Only then will we be able to reach our true potential in Christ.