Reeves, Sibbes and Luther on Growing as a Christian

"Richard Sibbes knew that outward acts of sin are merely the manifestations of the actual state of my heart...

If I simply try to alter my behaviour without my heart benig changed, is that I just have like a behavioural cloak that covering up the cold viciousness of my heart... which actually becomes intensely dangerous because I'm thinking that I am growing in holiness and changing, when my heart's not changing at all.

And Sibbes [also] knew that if ministers tried to build their ministry on just changing the behaviour of their people, without changing their hearts, that such a ministry would just be cruel, it would be browbeating: "Come on… do better!", "You need to try harder",  "Your behaviour needs to be better".

When we are drawn to duties with wrong motivations and not from a new nature, that’s not from the Spirit. That performance is not from the true liberty of the Spirit, for the true liberty of the Spirit is when such actions come off naturally, without any other motivation. A child needs no such motivations to respond in love to his loving father.

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Fundamentally I LOVE me. If you tell me "Go and be a good Christian"; what will happen is I will go and do lots of Christian-looking things, but it will all be out of love for me. I will read the bible and say prayers, but all to impress you and impress God, because I want you to love me. 

Naturally we do not WANT God, we WANT sin. You can try to be holy,  but if your desires have not been changed then you are just digging yourself into self-dependence and self-deification. 

The only solution is for God to change our hearts and our desires."

Martin Luther said in his preface to Romans:

"How can a man prepare himself for good by means of works, if he does good works only with aversion and uwillingness in his heart. How shall a work please god if it proceeds from a reluctant and resistant heart? To fulfil the law... is to do its works with pleasure and love, and to live a godly and good life of one's own accord, without the compulsion of the law. This pleasure and love for the law is put into the heart by the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is only given with and by faith in Jesus Christ; and faith only comes by God's Word or Gospel, which preaches Christ."