We observed yesterday from Ezra 4 that a good start doesn’t always guarantee a good or prompt finish. At the time I was reading Ezra 3 and 4, I was reading my friend Mike Metzger’s blog on “justification,” A Lesson from Lego. You may or may not be able to read the whole article, but here’s the gist:

Jesus said: “He who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt.10:22). What? We must endure to the end to be saved? I thought salvation is by faith alone. I was taught that salvation, or what is called justification, is only remission of sins.

We are saved by faith alone. But as the Book of James notes, “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (2:17). We’re saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone. It requires endurance, a point on which most Christian traditions, if not all, agree.

Most traditions also agree on how, at the beginning of the Christian life, God forgives our sins and gives us the gift of righteousness. But he’s not done with us. He wants us to grow in righteousness over the course of the Christian life. If we cooperate with his grace, we will.

In some traditions, the process of growth in righteousness is called sanctification. Justification in those traditions is the first step. But in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, justification is not just the first step. It’s the whole process of salvation. It isn’t something that happens just at the beginning of the Christian life. It happens over the course of the Christian life. – Mike Metzger, emphases his

It’s a weighty discussion, often hotly debated among theologians, and we won’t take on that debate here. But there’s something compelling about a “one-step” approach rather than, as is common in my tradition, a “two-step” approach. We say, “OK, now that you’re saved (justified), you need to think about discipleship, or “sanctification.” To which the response is sometimes, “Why? I prayed the prayer, and I attend church fairly regularly. What more do you want?”

So we get a good start, but we don’t always get a good finish – that’s the connection to Ezra 3 and 4. In fact, we celebrate good starts as they did in Ezra 3. “Got ’em saved; got ’em baptized. Whoopee!” But we have no mechanism that I’ve seen for celebrating even progress, much less a finish.

Something worth pondering. The Apostle Paul’s goal was way more than a good start:

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1.9 – 11, ESV)

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. (Philippians 1.27, ESV)

For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2.11, 12, ESV)