House Rule #2: Everyone is a Work In Progress

Today we continue our mini-series highlighting one house rule at a time. This week, we want to focus on this: Everyone is a work in progress.

To believe that everyone is a work in progress is to embrace a particular posture toward, well, everyone—your friends, kids, pastors, spouse, parents, the list goes on. Everyone is a work in progress because, as Scripture makes super clear, everyone—including Christians—are sinful. Because of Christ, Christians are new creations, freed from the power of sin but still struggling with the presence of sin in us, until Christ returns. Until then, everyone is a work in progress and when we grasp this, our posture toward people begins to reflect a gospel culture.

When I believe everyone is a work in progress, I am removing the planks in my eye before removing the splinter in someone else’s. When I believe everyone is a work in progress, I recognize that it is just as hard for that person—my kid, my co-worker, my spouse—to repent of their sin as it is for me it. Patterns and habits are indeed difficult to change. This sort of honest self-understanding leads to compassion and patience with ourselves and others because everyone is a work in progress.

1 Cor 13:4; Gal. 6:2; Col. 3:13; 1 Thess. 5:14