In response to a writer who voices concern about the lack of emphasis on personal holiness and radical obedience, Dane shows how there are two ways to address it...
"One way is to balance gospel grace with exhortations to holiness, as if both need equal air time lest we fall into legalism on one side (neglecting grace) or antinomianism on the other (neglecting holiness). The other way, which I believe is the right and biblical way, is to so startle this restraint-free culture with the gospel of free justification that the functional justifications of human approval, moral performance, sexual indulgence, or big bank accounts begin to lose their vice-like grip on human hearts, and their emptiness is exposed in all its fraudulence. It sounds backward, but the path to holiness is through (not beyond) the grace of the gospel, because only undeserved grace can truly melt and transform the heart. The solution to restraint-free immorality is not morality. The solution to immorality is the free grace of God--grace so free that it will be (mis)heard by some as a license to sin with impunity. The route by which the New Testament exhorts radical obedience is not by tempering grace but by driving it home all the more deeply. Let's pursue holiness. And let's pursue it centrally through enjoying the gospel, the same gospel that got us in and the same gospel that liberates us afresh each day (1 Cor. 15:1-2; Gal. 2:14; Col. 1:23; 2:6). As G.C. Berkouwer wisely remarked, "the heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification."
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