Monthly Archives: April 2014

Sanctification and the New Testament

Lots of confusion swirling about our American Christian culture about sanctification recently. Which is undoubtedly a good thing, as it makes us go back to Scripture and look at how sanctification is actually addressed, in context, in God’s Word.

What that biblical examination reveals is that artificial divisions, such as ‘progressive’ and ‘positional,’ are just that — artificial. The Bible talks much of sanctification, and is fairly relentless in its insistence that it is a work of God alone.

You have passages such as the beginning of Romans 12, where we are called to present ourselves a living, holy, blameless sacrifice. We are quick to note that only Jesus makes us alive, it is not our work… but then we want to take the other two adjectives and make them (at least partially) our work. We shouldn’t. We should realize that Jesus has made us alive, holy, and blameless, through his work on the cross, and our job is to respond to that in laying down our lives as a sacrifice in loving other people. Our love doesn’t make us holy. Rather our love is a response to Jesus’ finished work making us holy.

So why do we focus on our effort in personal morality as attaining sanctification? On the one hand, it is simply how we have been raised. Traditionally, the Puritans and those following them are credited with much of the push towards our effort in sanctification. On their heels, for example, J.C. Ryle believed that a person might “climb from one step to another in holiness, and be far more sanctified at one period of his life than another” (Holiness, 20). For many evangelicals, this sort of view is simply what was in the water growing up — that Christians improve in moral behavior in a sort of step-wise fashion.

On the other hand, our confusion is because we miss the context. We can certainly find verses in the Bible that talk about effort. For example, 2 Corinthians 7:1 refers to “bringing holiness to completion in the fear of the Lord.” Look! Effort toward personal holiness! Yet a fuller look at context presents a different picture: namely, a corporate one where holiness is a gift resulting from God’s redemptive activity (“since we have these promises”). The church needs to work out the implications of this already-given gift. So… yes, effort, but as a result of and not as a movement toward sanctification.

Our action in moral effort is a response to what has been done to us, not a ‘both-and’ approach to holiness. So we can eagerly embrace “being holy in all your behavior” (1 Peter 1:15) as a call to reflect who we are (sanctified by the Spirit, 1 Peter 1:2), instead of a command to attain what we are not (get holy or else). Our sanctification cannot be based on whether we sin or not — because we do, we fail — but must be based on what Jesus has done. Or more precisely, what Jesus has done, alone.

What this does is free us from a focus on ourselves, individually. In a progressive-type sanctification model, we perceive living the Christian life as an airplane with two wings: what Jesus has done, and what we (helped by God) must do. In order to fly, we need both wings. It seems to push towards an over-realized eschatology, in that we strain for what glorification brings (which is not promised in this earthly existence). Those who teach this are quick to say that we are never perfect, yet the emphasis for these teachers is that our effort in personal, progressive sanctification and our ability to be personally holy as a distinct work from Jesus’ work on the cross is one of the central, key components of the Christian life.

But a more biblical model sees our efforts at holy living to be far downstream of flying. Scripture says Jesus has done it all. His justifying and sanctifying and regeneration is a gift. In order to fly, we get on the plane — union with him. And when we look out the window, amazed that we are flying, what is birthed in us is a radical joy that is infectious, a love that is a response to what has been done for us. So we serve a cup of cold water to the thirsty kid in the next seat. Or we just can’t stop talking about how we’re flying, in Christ.

The sanctifying action is done by Jesus. Our actions are downstream of his substitutionary atonement and are subsequent to it. Renewal and change flow from abiding in Jesus, who he is and what he has done. In him, our fruitfulness is assured. There’s rest in that, not anxiety. There’s a settled identity in Christ, not an uncertain, effort-dependent one.

It has been refreshing to see this talked about more and discussed more. I’ve recently been particularly refreshed by a reformed treatment that walks through Scripture in an honest way. Refreshing because often proponents of a two-tiered sanctification process appeal to the reformed tradition, and especially the Westminster Confession, as proof of such a division. This interesting book is part of the New Studies in Biblical Theology, edited by D.A. Carson, written by David Peterson, called Possessed by God. Consider this, from his final summary in the book (p.136):

The popular view that sanctification is a process of moral renewal and change, following justification, is not the emphasis of the New Testament. Rather, sanctification is primarily another way of describing what it means to be converted or brought to God in Christ and kept in that relationship. It would be more accurate to say that renewal and change flow from the regeneration and sanctification that God has already accomplished in our lives… Sanctification is thus primarily the work of Christ on the cross and of the Holy Spirit through the word of the gospel…”

And further, in that same summary:

The call to ‘be holy’ can so easily degenerate into a moralistic and perfectionist programme for believers to pursue. In New Testament terms, we are to live as those who have been brought from death to life, discharged from the law to belong to Christ, led by the Spirit in a continuing struggle with the flesh. We are to live with a confidence in what God has already done for us and trust in him to continue his transforming work in us until we see him face to face.

Can’t wait! May you too live in confidence in what God has already done for us and may you  grow more and more in your dependence on and trust in Jesus… that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Worthy of Communion?

“You will lose one childhood memory with every fact you push into your brain.” That was the  unsubstantiated but scary claim of one of my medical school professors, even as thousands of such facts were assigned to be memorized.

And I have found that my grade-school memories of living in Hawaii have grown shrouded in uncertainty over the years. They aren’t gone… just faded into the background of a busy life.

Which brings me to communion. I’ve grown to really like the word, with its flavor of intimacy and shared fellowship.  More than “The Lord’s Supper,” communion captures the longing that Jesus had, the “earnest desire that he desired” to share that time with his disciples, on that evening he was betrayed. We remember a moment long anticipated, yearned for even, on the part of the Son of God.

But mostly… I’m amazed at what Jesus set up to help us remember. I’m one of the ones Jesus died for. This ordinance is for me. I am in constant danger of thinking like the world and having the world rob me of right thinking about the death of Jesus and its ongoing daily meaning for my life. And thus… this ordinance, this remembrance, this special acted-out teaching gets replayed with frequency in my life. So that I might, along with the rest of our body, remember Jesus.

There is no heavy self-examination for worthiness involved. We are all unworthy. There is no making sure that I’ve cleaned up first, no clearing the slate so that I have done something to deserve taking. Nothing like that can be found in scripture, for all that people try to bring in Matthew 5 or John 6 out of context.  They shouldn’t. Neither of those passages have anything directly to do with what Jesus established in communion.

There is not even a special badness for the unbeliever who partakes. Not that eating crackers and drinking grape juice will help them. I mean, Judas was there in Luke 22, and he didn’t get zapped… nor did he change his course.

In communion there is only a gift from Jesus. He will pay for our sins alone. He will die alone, betrayed. He is eager to have us remember that everything – everything – is a gift. In Christ alone, grace alone.

And so I don’t care who takes the elements. Or rather… I do care that all are invited. Right? Because no one has standing over another. That’s the problem Paul has in 1 Corinthians 11. He is saddened that some churchgoers are coming early and pigging out on the communion elements. That sets up a hierarchy, that prevents some people from partaking based on when they come, that says something about who deserves it. And no one deserves it. We all receive.

That’s why it is important for new believers and old, for weak, barely-awake believers and mature, for anyone who calls on the name of Jesus to have this incredible tool to ward off the world… because that’s what is needed. For us again to marvel at the amazing sacrifice of Jesus Christ for each of us. Together.

So bring your kids. Bring your angry friend who needs a reminder. Bring your busy executive. Bring your frazzled housewife. Come to the cross. Find there grace, in the body given for you, in the blood poured out for you. Realize you are part of a new covenant, one in which all is fulfilled.

“It is finished” is Jesus’ last word on this. And it is. We believe it. And communion once again places that incredible act of Jesus at the burning center of my life. Where it needs to be. Because our only hope is in him.