In his treatise, A Remedy for Wandering Thoughts in Worship, Richard Steele writes:
It is far from the quality of grace to sit down content in any defect or sin, or to vouch the mercy of God to secure the soul in any transgression; who, when he is dressed in his garments of mercy, 'yet will not by any means clear the guilty.' - Exod. xxiv.7. ... After the Apostle has told us, 'The good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do,' Rom. vii.19, he lies not down, and resolves to let it run, but fights, and strives, and cries, 'O wretched man that I am!' verse 24. If thou once sit down, be content, and say, I will strive no more, thou givest the field, the Spirit withdraws in grief, and Satan approaches thee with triumph.
I have heard in the past from well-meaning Christian brothers and sisters 'ease up on your striving, it's not your works that save you,' when the subject of striving after a holy and righteous walk. It has become a common attitude, I think, to say that striving after holiness is legalism... yet the apostles with unified voice call us to a holy walk, as did the prophets before them. It seems today that ANY striving after holiness, what the Puritans called 'mortification of sin', is seen as a practice that is damaging to true faith. How can people say this, in light of Scripture witness? Are we so lazy that we just want to lie down and let time pass by? Is not the Christian life to be a life of putting off the old man and putting on the new? Is it not a continual process of relinquishing self-claims in favor of God-claims on our lives? I just don't get where people who come with the 'relax' message are coming from... but such advice seems clearly to me not to be founded on the whole counsel of God.