A Good Question about Sanctification

Friday, November 11, 2011

QUESTION: You seem to make light or down-play the importance of the traditional disciplines of the Faith in stating what we should not do. Or you make the assumption that prior to doing those disciplines (the ten steps in your article) the hypothetical sinner has not done what you desire him to do: see that he has been saved by Grace, and then as a result of that works out his salvation through the traditional disciplines of our Faith.

I guess I’m just trying to understand where you think those disciplines fit into our Christian Life. I’m confused since the majority of the time you mention studying the word, memorizing scripture, prayer, etc. it is in the context of a bad thing: doing those to solely in an attempt make us acceptable to God. Undoubtedly there are those that do, but many more who do them for the right reasons. I know you can’t mean that those disciplines are unimportant since scripture unambiguously teaches us that we are required to do those in order to grow.

I think I understand where you are going, but as a result of your ridiculing (my perception) and painting the traditional disciplines of the church, as well as the evidences of most signs of righteous living and moral behavior, in a negative light whenever you bring them up, you have, rightly opened yourself up to valid criticism with regard to your teaching of sanctification.

-SW MEMBER (name withheld, but the letter was signed)

DEAR SW MEMBER-

I am out of town for a couple of weeks. Ironically, I am writing a book that deals with some of the very same things you’ve asked about. I’m going to give you a VERY INCOMPLETE response, but such a thoughtful question deserves more than, ‘Sorry, I’m out of the office.’

Basic premise: In Galatia the CHRISTIANS, who became such by FAITH ALONE were beginning to subtly REST IN their own acts of obedience for their acceptance before God. For them the PARTICULAR work they rested in was CIRCUMCISION. Remember, these were people who were ALREADY converted, engaging in behavior that was Biblically commanded and the danger was that they were beginning to base their standing with God; his acceptance and his love for them on their BEHAVIORAL OBEDIENCE i.e. circumcision RATHER THAN in Christ Alone.

Transition: Fast forward 2,000 years to Huntsville. In order to make legitimate application of the principles in Galatians to us today we have to ask a parallel question: WHAT THINGS (duties, actions, works of obedience) do people who have ALREADY BEEN CONVERTED tend to rest in/trust in for their day to day standing with God; his acceptance and his love for them and in doing so, LIKE THE GALATIAN CHURCH betray FAITH ALONE in CHRIST ALONE. Obviously, circumcision is out. No one is going home to Hampton Cove thinking, “If I circumcise my children according to the Abrahamic Covenant then we will really be ‘sold out’ for the Lord.” There are some denominations where there are things ‘on the books’ if you will that would lend themselves to very clear application i.e. the view of some churches on on Baptism. That is a slam dunk. They teach baptismal regeneration and as such are a perfect example of Paul’s prohibition.

So here’s the exegetical dilemma: Do I stand in the pulpit and beat up on those churches for their views on Baptism or do I ask deeper questions about our own behavior seeking to find areas where WE, REFORMED EVANGELICALS tend to violate the same PRINCIPLE but perhaps in different ways. That has been my aim. Remember circumcision was not something BAD that they cooked up, it was something GOOD which God gave to Abraham and his children that had ‘taken on a whole new life’ because of the trust and rest that BELIEVERS were placing in it.

Soooooo, where does that leave us? At this point you should have already connected the dots. What GOOD, God-given things do we at Southwood tend to do ‘for God’ but ultimately have a tendency to rest in/find our worth in? The answer is clear. It is the so-called spiritual disciplines and the so-called ‘means of grace.’ We tend to rely on Christ Alone for our ULTIMATE acceptance before God, but on a day to day basis those GOOD things become the ‘field reports’ used to gauge the health/sickness of our relationship. It just isn’t so. All of those things: Prayer, Bible Study, Quiet Times, Accountability groups, Mission trips, etc. can be VERY GOOD THINGS but when we rest in/trust in those things then they become more like CIRCUMCISION than acts of true Christian piety.

I could/should insert here a list of diagnostic questions to help identify motives and root causes for behavior and when those ‘good’ things become bad. (I will do that more in the future) Ultimately it is all going to come down to the heart and WHY we do what we do. It is telling that Paul who argues so vehemently AGAINST circumcision in Galatians and in Acts later on in Acts actually CIRCUMCISES Timothy. That is either the height of hypocrisy or something else. The reason for circumcising Timothy was to avoid being a stumbling block to the Jews where they were going to minister next. That is SO VERY instructive. When CIRCUMCISION was trusted in/rested upon for worth/identity and value then it was from the DEVIL, but when THE SAME EXACT BEHAVIOR was treated as morally neutral behavior THEN it was profitable to the furthering of the Kingdom.

I hope this helps a bit. Understanding that grid you should go back and listen to some of the messages that bothered you the most. I think you will find that what I am saying here is consistent with the application made. With regard to criticism, it is part of the job and I don’t mind it from you or anyone else. It really provides an opportunity to speak more clearly, provide further clarification and to make sure that we are certain about where we are disagreeing without being disagreeable.

P.S. I loved your use of ‘unambiguously teaches’....AMEN! I just happen to think that the Bible UNAMBIGUOUSLY teaches both the value of embracing those things and the danger of resting in them!

Blessings,
Jean

Comments

Anonymous | November 11 2011 at 8:26 am

“The Grace Boys”
by Terry Johnson

Those who (realize that they) are forgiven must love much (Lk 7:47). We can even say that love/gratitude is the highest motivation for Christian living. What we can’t say is that it is the Christian’s only valid motivation. Not by a long shot.

I know a little about God’s grace. I’ve experienced God’s grace in Christ in my own life. I’ve written three books with grace in the title. I’ve preached grace as an ordained minister for 28 years. Yet I am disturbed by certain ministries that only preach grace. They proclaim no other message. They know no other motive for the Christian life. They recognize no other gospel and insist that any formulation of the gospel that differs from their own is no gospel at all.
Essentially what the grace boys preach is this: sanctification by realization. Realize what Christ has done for you; realize His great love; realize His costly sacrifice; realize His gracious gift of salvation; realize your adoption and your security in Christ; realize the ongoing gift of the Spirit of Christ and His power for sanctification; realize all this and you will have all the motive you need to enter and sustain the Christian life.
When we succumb to temptation, or when we indulge our lust, when we bow to the idols of materialism and success, when we act selfishly or fail to love it is a sign that we need more gospel. No, we don’t need to be scolded (what the Bible calls “rebuked”) or warned or reminded of our duty, or threatened. No, no, no. When we indulge carnality and worldliness we don’t need LAW (a very scary word in these circles). We need to hear more, ever more about God’s love, His grace, His gifts, His Christ. These alone will provide the proper incentive to live the Christian life.
Is there a problem with this? Indeed, there is. The grace boys are being one-sided in a realm in which they need to be multi-sided. Undoubtedly they have identified the central motivation for the Christian life. Love mixed with gratitude is a powerful incentive. When we realize what God in Christ has done how can we not want to please, honor, and serve Him in return? Those who (realize that they) are forgiven must love much (Lk 7:47). We can even say that love/gratitude is the highest motivation for Christian living.
What we can’t say is that it is the Christian’s only valid motivation. Not by a long shot. What might be another valid motivation? Fear. “Conduct yourselves with fear,” says the Apostle Peter (1 Pet 1:17). “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” the writer to the Hebrews warns (Heb 10:31). “Terrifying?” Is this a part of the vocabulary of the justified? Apparently so.
Any others? Sure. Threats. God motivates believers by threatening them. He does this in Scripture all the time. In that great Epistle of Justification, Galatians, the Apostle Paul warns the church that those who practice the deeds of the flesh “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:19-21). He threatens the same to the Corinthians (1 Cor 5:9, 10). Threatening believers (it is to them that he is writing) with exclusion from heaven is a powerful incentive to obedience, is it not?
The holiness of God is meant to motivate us. We are to be holy because God is holy (Lev 11:44ff; 1 Pet 1:15, 16). His holiness is an incentive for our own. Yes, the cross is a great motivator for the Christian. So also is the holiness of God. The goodness of God, not just His grace, is also meant to motivate us. Because God causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, we are also meant to be good to all (Mt 5:43-48). Warnings play a significant role in the motivations for obedience throughout the Sermon on the Mount (e.g. Mt 5:21-48; 7:21-23). Both the promise of rewards (Mt 5:3-12; 2 Tim 2:5, 6; 4:8) and the threat of punishments (1 Cor 3:12-15; 4:`18-21) are valid incentives for Christian living.
What about the countless exhortations to do and go and be (not just “realize”), but actually get off our duffs and mortify, even crucify the flesh, die to self, put on the new man, and be filled with Christ’s Spirit (Rom 6:12ff; 8:12ff; Gal 5:24; 2:20; Eph 4:22f; 5:18ff; etc.)? Certainly we are exhorted in light of who Christ is and what Christ has done (e.g. Rom 12ff follow Rom 1:1-11; Eph 3-6 follows Eph 1 & 2). However, the facts of redemption are not endlessly repeated (as though the problem were, oops, I forgot again! Please remind me. What has Jesus done for me?), or worse, used to nullify the threats, warnings, and exhortations of Scripture.
The grace boys seem to recognize none of this. Human beings, even redeemed human beings, are complex. God uses a variety of means to motivate us. He uses carrots. He uses sticks. The richness is lost and the whole counsel of God is buried when the grace formula is imposed on every text of Scripture. In fact, distressing volumes of preaching in our day, even in our ecclesiastical circles, has become predictable, cliché, and boring. All of the Bible’s sharp edges have been blunted, ignored, or explained away in the name of grace preaching.
Simply put, it ain’t so. Oh, we’d love to think that none of the hundreds of warnings, threats, and exhortations applied to us. We’d love to believe that the Apostles never appeal to duty, hard work, sacrifice, and fear. We’d love to think we were beyond rewards and punishments. Yet we aren’t and they do. And we don’t do anyone any favors when we hide these biblical appeals in the name of preaching grace. We’re not sanctified merely by realization, unless we include the realization that we’re about to “get slapped upside the head,” as we used to say, if we don’t shape up. Realization, mortification, vivification, study, prayer, discipline, and consistent attendance at public services are all necessary ingredients in a successful and fruitful approach to the Christian life.
TE Terry Johnson, a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as Senior Pastor of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Ga.

Anonymous | November 11 2011 at 5:23 pm

Sir, would you please explain this question and answer from the shorter catechism? If the gospel is all of grace then why does the catechism refer to the duty God requires from man? I am asking this in all sincerity and this has bothered me now for months.

Q. 39. What is the duty which God requireth of man?
A. The duty which God requireth of man, is obedience to his
revealed will.

As you know, the catechism goes on to explain the duty as being the moral law, summarized in the two greatest commandments and then a detailed explanation of the ten commandments. Please address this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Anonymous | November 11 2011 at 7:48 pm

Grace isn’t opposed to effort, grace is opposed to earning.

Anonymous | November 11 2011 at 10:38 pm

Amen the last comment.

““It is a hard lesson to live above the law, and yet to walk according to the law. But this is the lesson a Christian has to learn, to walk in the law in respect of duty, but to live above it in respect of comfort, neither expecting favour from the law in respect of his obedience nor fearing harsh treatment from the law in respect of his failings. Let the law come in to remind you of sin if you fall into sin, but you are not to suffer it to arrest you and drag you into the court to be tried and judged for your sins. This would be to make void Christ and grace. Indeed Christians too much live as though they were to expect life by works, and not by grace…In a word, let us learn to walk in the law as a rule of sanctification, and yet to live upon Christ and the promises in respect of justification.” – Samuel Bolton

Anonymous | November 12 2011 at 10:43 am

This subject is not limited to the means of grace and spiritual disciplines. It is open to anything in the Christian life to include tithing, preaching, teaching, serving the body, serving our neighbor, etc. If you do any of these things and rest upon them for your standing before the Lord, this too can be grace plus. Just because the things above may not have been mentioned by name in the pulpit does not exempt them from careful consideration. The thing that seems to escape the messages from the pulpit is that one can be involved in one, some, or all the things mentioned in his response (prayer, Bible study, accountability, etc) and not rest on or rely on them for our right standing before the God of the universe.

Pastor Jean, if this is incorrect, then please correct this submission.

Anonymous | November 13 2011 at 2:05 pm

Thank you for the comments, especially Samuel Bolton’s. I wrote the comment regarding the shorter catechism. I think I get it now.

Anonymous | November 14 2011 at 10:58 am

Pastor Johnson’s conclusions about the warnings/exhortations/threats in Scripture lead to interesting questions:

Is the primary goal of these threats to motivate Christians, using “sticks” that are parallel to (and independent of) grace/forgiveness (i.e., one of “a variety of means to motivate us”)?

Or are the threats *primarily* meant to:

1. Point Christians to our abject need for grace alone in Christ alone in very specific areas of our lives - the worship and meditation of which will change our desires and behavior; and

2. Harden those who aren’t chosen (whether licentious or legalist pretenders)?

Regarding the reference from the catechism, we can’t stop at Q 39. It’s not a stand-alone requirements.. Please consider the culmination of gospel “logic” through Q 82-88. I’m especially encouraged by the idea in Q 88 of “means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption”.

The way that God brings holiness in chronically imperfect believers is a mystery. But in any case, we’re exhorted to work this out with fear/trembling, to make our calling/election sure, and to regularly examine ourselves to see if we really are “in the faith”.

David Clark | November 15 2011 at 11:01 am

Jean,

I keep on starting to write you, then end up deleting what I start writing because there is so much to say that I get overwhelmed at the thought of trying to describe it all. But, I realized that I don’t need to describe it all, so I won’t try…but rather just express a few thoughts. I thought that this post, which asks many of the same questions I have asked you in the past would be as good a venue as any to share a little of what the grace of God has been accomplishing in my heart.

God really has been undoing me, which is overwhelming and peaceful at the same time. The overarching shock has come in realizing that I really can, and must take my “weight” off what I do and think, and what people think of me…both the “good” and the “bad”...not because the “good” is not good and the “bad” is not bad…but because it is irrelevant to my position before me Father. This realization, which is a realization that has stirred me deeply and constantly, has begun this really delightful and bewildering process of changing how I look at everything in my life, from making the bed in the morning to reading the bible, to bringing flowers to my wife. I am mostly “doing” all the same things, but the things themselves are fundamentally different in my experience of them. Rather than a striving to push a boulder uphill, it is a sliding down the playground slide in the lap of my Father, knowing that even if I don’t “get it right”, and even if He must discipline and correct, I am still in His lap with his arms around me.

Unbelievable.

But true.

Whereas I have spent hundreds of hours striving to get my understanding of philosophy, theology and sociology right so that I can save myself and my family, I have realized that all those hours have not contributed one particle to saving my family. That being the case, I no longer have to strive, because our salvation (every type of salvation) is dependent on God’s goodness and gift. Now I can read, think and converse for the sheer joy of it, knowing that even if I don’t get it all right, or any of it right, I am still completely dependent on God’s goodness and gift.

The focus for my faith that God has given me has been through this question, which at first, to be honest, often seems irrelevant, but has grown to be quite obviously the most relevant question to ask in any situation I have yet come across, no matter how mundane: “How does the the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascention of Christ impact this situation?” While the answer might not at first be apparent, after meditating on His life and work, the picture starts to become clear…and I realize again that His work has changed everything, including whatever situation I am currently pondering, from being upset about some particular current event, to my one-year-old son throwing his food on the floor.

It is very good.

I am very grateful to God for the work He has accomplished through your ministry and counselling.

With much affection,
Dave

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