I played Little League baseball many years ago. I wasn’t good but I liked playing ball. I pitched, played infield and batted poorly. They must have been short of talent because one year I made the Little League All-Star Team. I was playing third-base when a kid named Farron hit a bouncing ground-ball toward me. I was going to scoop it up and throw him out at first but the ball took a bad hop and hit me square in the mouth. There was a quite a bit of blood and I had a fat lip for a long time. Being on a team and wearing a uniform illustrates a theological concept known as “progressive sanctification.” Being on a baseball team and wearing a uniform doesn’t make a person a good ball-player. My place on the team was secure but my skills were in need of improvement. The same is true in Christ. Because of His work on the cross and my faith in Him, my place in Him is secure. In that sense, I have been perfected. However, I have room for improvement when it comes to playing my position in the way He would play it. We refer to progressive sanctification with a number of different terms, sometimes it is referred to as spiritual formation, sometimes it is simply called holiness and, at the most basic level, we refer to spiritual growth as discipleship. It is one part of the Christian life that we can do something about—and we should. We’ll learn more about it on Sunday.