Ordination Paper Two
Eric M. White
Imagine a church of a dozen Christs. How quickly would that church multiply, and how profound an impact would that church have on God’s kingdom? As a pastor whose personal vision is to see people transformed by the Gospel into people who transform with the Gospel, sanctification is a vital concept for disciples to grasp in knowledge and practice. Sanctification is the device by which God’s people are transformed. The fully sanctified person would be entirely set apart unto God, the person of Christ alive within. The work of sanctification belongs to Christ as sanctifier.
Understanding Sanctification
At its most basic, sanctification means the act or process of setting apart or making holy. Something sanctified is entirely set apart unto God. Christ as Savior represents the originating work of Christianity. The sinner, recognizing his own sin and inability to solve it by works or any other method, turns to Christ. Acknowledging that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, and professing the same, invites the justifying work of Christ who paid the price of our sins by dying on the cross. In Romans 5:1, the apostle Paul says we have been justified through faith and now have peace with God. Jesus’ work of salvation is immediate and potent, justifying the believer in the eyes of God such that he no longer sees our sin. In salvation, the righteousness of Christ becomes our own (2 Cor. 5:21).
In the saving work of Christ, we are positionally sanctified before God. He sees us with all the holiness of Christ (Col. 1:22). Though any believer who has spent more than a few moments following Jesus can attest that our sinful nature continues to work against the righteousness of God in us. Paul expresses this great problem of faith in Romans 7, saying that although he has been redeemed by Jesus, he continues to sin. Paul continues to do the things he shouldn’t do and doesn’t do the things he should do. He is clearly experiencing a crisis where his redeemed spirit is waging war against his sinful flesh, trying to bury his sinful nature. Despite his great effort, Paul is unsuccessful, for he says, “So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me,” (Rom. 7:21-23).
Though Paul has clearly experienced the salvation of Jesus, the old man, that is, his sinful flesh, continues to wage war against his redeemed spirit. He asserts as much in Galatians 5:15-16, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.” So this is the law at work in believers: we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus and made alive spiritually, positionally sanctified before God, yet we continue to sin as the old sinful flesh lives on. In position with God, we are sanctified, in practicality of life, we continue to sin. This dilemma is answered by Paul’s exhortation in Romans 8, that we would live by the spirit, putting to death the sinful flesh.
After meeting Jesus, though he has dealt with our sin in an ultimate sense, the repentant sinner sets out to combat his own present sinfulness. This effort is futile. The Christian may, through strength of will and sheer determination, see some aspects of his sin temporarily put off, but sin inevitably returns to reign over the flesh. As we repeatedly rail against and fail to defeat present sin, God develops a righteous disgust for our sinfulness that leads to the crisis of sanctification. The crisis comes amidst the agony of our powerlessness to combat sin, when we, like Paul in Romans 7, realize we’re doomed to continue in sinfulness unless something—or more effectively, someone—intervenes. Without this crisis of sanctification, the progress of holiness throughout the life of a Christian is painstakingly slow, arduous, full of setbacks, and not fully representative of the victorious life in Christ. For the result of the sanctification crisis is the realization that Christ is not only Savior, but Sanctifier, and subsequent surrender to the same. This allows every believer to, like Paul in Romans 7:25, declare that Jesus and Jesus only delivers us from both the ultimate reality and the present entrapment of our sin.
Abiding in Jesus
I enjoy gardening. There are hints of the creativity and power of God in toiling over a plot of dirt, planting a small, seemingly lifeless seed, watching it spring out of the ground and grow into a full plant, hopefully soon producing fruit that tastes delicious and nourishes the body. I happened to get my soil mix perfect this year, and my 15 tomato plants thrived, producing more plump, red, juicy tomatoes than we know what to do with. I planted beans early in the year, and they started strong, but the warren of rabbits who’ve taken residence in my back yard soon devoured them all. Through the temptation of good beans the rabbits developed the habit of pouncing through my garden without regard for the plants they don’t enjoy eating. Several of my healthy tomato branches, formerly attached to the hardy stalk, were knocked to the ground. Separated from the vine, the branch that would have produced next week’s dinner only produced next year’s compost, as they were no longer capable of feeding fruit. Any fruit that was off the branch was left to rot on the ground.
Jesus is the vine; we are the branches. Just as there is a plan of salvation, Jesus lays out the plan of sanctification in John 15. Addressing his disciples, Jesus explains that God is the great gardener who prunes the vine, trimming off the branches that bear no or bad fruit. The branches of a vine take their every nourishment and sustenance from the vine itself. The quality and quantity of fruit Jesus’ disciples produce for the Kingdom of God is solely contingent on the connectedness of Jesus’ disciples to Jesus himself. Separate the branch but a little, and the fruit suffers, lessening in quality, quantity, or both. The farther removed from the vine, the more bad fruit (sin) the branch produces.
The grace of God through Christ has not only a saving effect, but also a sanctifying effect. The saving effect is instantaneous (Heb. 10:10), whereas the sanctifying effect is gradual and progressive (1 Thess. 5:23). But they both require of a believer the admission of powerlessness to combat sin and a surrender to Christ. The apostle Paul, along with Timothy, expresses similar understanding in Colossians 2:20, saying, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” We must chose to grow in grace and obedience to Christ by choosing to remain rooted in him. Christ is often mistakenly viewed as the key that unlocks the door to the path of sanctification. Paul writes as if to suggest that Christ is not just the key, but the door and path as well. Christ does not merely show us how to become sanctified or open our access to sanctification through salvation; Jesus is our sanctification. The saving effect of Christ is instantaneous (Heb. 10:10), whereas the sanctifying effect is gradual and progressive (1 Thess. 5:23).
If there is a great secret to the sanctified life, it is this: we may only ever be sanctified to the degree that Christ lives in us. The woe of many a Christian, stuck in a sinful modality despite the saving work of Christ, is best put off by neither grit nor determination of will, but by full surrender to the person of Christ. Christ can only fully live in us when we are fully dead to self (Gal. 2:19-20). Perhaps no Scripture exposits this so thoroughly and compellingly as Romans 6.
Throughout Romans, Paul asks several times if Christians ought to keep on sinning, since we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Each time the answer is a forceful “no.” Paul’s rationale is simple. He asks, if “we are those who died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” He explains that just Christ died to pay the just penalty of our sins, we were baptized into death with Christ. This is the death of our sins. Peter, the close companion and disciple of Jesus explains the same concept. He says, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,” (1 Pet. 3:18).
In this death of our sin with Christ, we are also resurrected unto new life with Jesus (Rom. 6:4b). Paul explains through the remainder of Romans 6 that our death with Christ should result in us living free from sin in Christ, though this is not always the case as we’ve already discussed. Thus Paul gives us several admonitions. In verses 6-7, he says we should no longer be slaves to sin since we’ve been set free from sin in Christ. In verse 11, he says we should “count (ourselves) dead to sin but alive in Christ Jesus.” In verse 12 he says to not let sin reign in us so that we don’t give in to its “evil desires.” In verse 13, he says we should not offer any part of ourselves to sin. These imperatives seem daunting, and frankly, impossible by our own might. Yet Paul has already answered this great problem with the greater solution: living in Christ. He concludes the section by giving it again. We are to offer ourselves to God by giving him every part, recognizing that we are not under the law, but under the grace of Jesus Christ.
The Fruit that Follows
The sanctified life is a life of good fruit, but the fruit is not our own. The good fruit of the sanctified life is produced by the work of the Holy Spirit in the life surrendered to him. When Jesus concluded his earthly ministry, he commissioned his disciples to be his witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. But he also warned them not to tend to this task until the messenger, the Holy Spirit, came. In Acts 2, as the early church was gathered in prayer and worship, the Holy Spirit did indeed come in powerful fashion.
This divine presence of God, so raw and potent, ignited a revival in the city that saw 3000 added to the number of believers that very day. At the end of the chapter, we see the church, rich in newly crowned children of King Jesus committed to the practice of spiritual disciplines: prayer, worship, fellowship, and study of the Word. It is not long after they first meet the risen Lord Jesus as Savior that the Holy Spirit of God is quick about the work of sanctifying the new believers.
Perhaps the Acts incarnation of the Holy Spirit in the early church was exceedingly intense as a response to God’s will that the Gospel should quickly begin spreading throughout the world. Or perhaps the apostles, having walked and talked with Jesus during the years of his public ministry; having seen the glorious begotten son suffer the agony of death on the cross; having observed the wounded side and hands of the resurrected Lord; and having personally received his great commission, had already experienced the great crisis of faith resulting in a rich surrender to the risen son and potent presence of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps it was both. Whatever the reason, as we examine the early chapters of Acts we see the rich fruit of the Holy Spirit of God springing to life in Jerusalem, producing the original revival and propelling His people in sanctification.
Whereas Acts 2 and 4 tell the beautiful narrative, Romans 8 could be the battle hymn of the early church. How much more for a modern church in so deep a need of the sanctified life? The Holy Spirit is neither a power nor a concept, he is a divine person of the triune God. When the Pauline diatribe of Romans 8 compels the reader toward life according to the Spirit and not the flesh, he is saying we should live in the presence of the divine person of God. Through the redeeming work of Jesus, the believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). The question for every believer is how fully we allow the Spirit to dwell within and how fully we surrender control to him. Inasmuch as we surrender to the Holy Spirit, we live according to the Spirit, empowered to resist the sinful call of the flesh which has been crucified with Christ.
The presence of the Holy Spirit produces fruit in the life of a surrendered believer. The primary fruits of the Spirit impact personal character. Galatians 5:22 lists these fruits as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. Notably, these are each aspects of character exemplified perfectly by Christ. It follows logically that these characteristics would be brought to life by the Holy Spirit in the life of one in whom the risen Lord resides. Love, of course, is the greatest of these fruits of the Spirit (1 Cor. 13). Without love, all our efforts, gifts, callings, and miraculous works are void.
Beyond these fruits of divine character, the Holy Spirit works in the sanctified believer to glorify God through other gifts. Whereas the fruits of the Spirit are available to all, he delivers various gifts to various believers at his own discretion. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.”
Reasons for Caution
As powerful as the ministry of signs and wonders can be, it can yield a couple temptations against which the church must be on guard. Many have undertaken to fabricate the work of the Holy Spirit, spreading discredit on his authentic work by offering a facade of false signs and wonders. Artificial healing ministries, in reality no more than magician’s parlor tricks or deceptive psychological control, have contributed to a generation crying foul whenever word of genuine healing spreads. Sects of charismatism have presented such gifts as speaking in tongues as the necessary evidence of fullness of Spirit. This causes many to fabricate the tongues experience, and many others to feel they’ve not received the Holy Spirit because they’ve not spoken in tongues. The early church was no stranger to this extreme view, as Paul admonishes those who have taken the gifts of the Spirit to unproductive places (1 Cor. 14).
The fruits, gifts, signs, and wonders of the Holy Spirit played a critical role in the early church and remain vital for the church today. The church would do well to remember that these manifestations of the divine, though wonderful, ought not to be our chief desire. The church hungry after the presence of God, rather than the power that comes from that presence, would be a church that fulfills Jesus’ command to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness (Matt. 6:33). In seeking the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit may indeed be gained, and all his fruits, gifts, and wonders with him. The giver is the source of the gifts, but the giver is greater than all the gifts.
My Story
Through my high school years, I was the poster child for Romans 7. I was referred to as “the Christian kid” by classmates, and while I knew Jesus as my Savior, was active in church leadership and youth group, led my secular school’s only Christian club and weekly Bible study, I continually did the things I didn’t want to do, wrestling against my sinful flesh. My chief sin was sexual immorality, expressed through a deep addiction to pornography during my first three years of high school.
On the surface, I seemed to have it all together. Inside, I was fighting a quiet but devastating war I couldn’t hope to win. I hated my sin. I knew it wasn’t what God wanted for me. There were seasons when I seemed to gain ground simply through my determination, but I always crashed back down to the same low point, and my sinfulness was perpetual. I spoke with strong believers for wise counsel, consulted the Word, and prayed earnestly, yet found ways to justify my behavior. God used my entrapment to this chief sin to develop my righteous hatred for my sin as I encountered its powerful grip.
I wouldn’t know freedom from this issue of sin until I attended the Life 2004 conference in Phoenix, Arizona. A keynote speaker (I’ve no memory of who) spoke on the struggle of the flesh against sin. Through the Holy Spirit, the speaker was speaking directly to me, highlighting the exact war I was waging. Admittedly, I expected the preacher to turn his message into another motivational sermon on trying harder, being better, or praying more, all things I’d done repeatedly for three years with no apparent effect. In fact, the harder I’d tried the more powerless I felt to deal with my own sin. Behavior modification wasn’t working and I was wary of another message on it. The speaker surprised me, and so did Jesus.
Instead of the all-too-familiar “try harder” approach, the speaker spoke of giving up, of surrendering. In this humble act of surrender, we acknowledge our strong desire to be victorious over sin but also our powerlessness to do so. The speaker then explained the Holy Spirit’s role in sanctification, without actually using the word as it would have likely been lost on most of his teenaged audience. Once we surrender control to the Spirit of God, the risen Jesus is able to be our sanctifier. This was my crisis moment. I gave up. I surrendered. I immediately felt the chains of my sin lift. I went home and never struggled with my addiction to pornography again. Just as sure as my salvation in Christ, that issue of sin had been utterly defeated as I died to my flesh and began abiding in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I continue growing in my sanctification journey, but it’s not the same struggle it once was. I’ve realized the relation of utter surrender to personal holiness. There is a direct correlation to my willingness to surrender and the evidence of God’s presence in my life. The particular issue in which I learned this first great lesson of sanctification has a powerful impact in my marriage. I often consider how I could love my wife with the love Christ has for the church if I were still addicted to sexual sin (Eph. 5:25). As I surrender to Jesus, his perfect love takes the place of my own love, imperfect and marred by sin. This is, perhaps, the quintessential understanding of sanctification: it is not ours, but Christ’s. We have no righteousness of our own, but Jesus offers his. We’ve no goodness, perfect love, kindness, gentleness, etc. of our own, but Jesus offers all these in abundant supply. We are only darkness, but he is perfect light to shine in us (1 John 1:5-10).
The bookends of the first section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount illustrate this principle clearly. He defines the end product in Matthew 5:48, that we would be perfect as God is perfect. We read this and easily conclude the task is impossible. But Jesus provides the solution in the first beatitude. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:3). Acknowledging a spiritual bankruptcy before God, rather than relying on our false sense of spiritual richness, allows the work of Jesus in us.
Faulty Theology
The Holiness Movement birthed greater discourse on sanctification in the church. Not all the tenets emerging from the movement are doctrinally sound. Eradication, for example, teaches that a second conversion-type experience, subsequent to salvation, fills the believer with the Holy Spirit and permanently eradicates the sinful nature. This understanding is beset by several key passages of Scripture. If, having received the Holy Spirit, our sinful nature is eradicated, why then does Paul compel us in Galatians 5:16 to walk by the Holy Spirit? If the Holy Spirit has filled the believer and eradicated the sinful nature, how could we not walk by the Spirit? If the Spirit has not yet filled the believer, then what is the point in compelling us to walk by a Spirit we’ve not yet encountered?
As discussed, Romans 7 portrays the struggle of the human flesh against sin. Paul is a Spirit-filled Christian writing to Spirit-filled Christians of the church at Rome. If the baptism of the Holy Spirit eradicates the sin nature, why then does Paul compel Spirit-filled people to live by the Spirit, and why does he illustrate the struggle of the same against sin? These are questions eradication theology needs to answer if it is to be considered reasonable.
With similar error, suppression theology suggests that having been reborn in Christ, we can and ought to suppress our sinful nature so that we do not sin. The simplest refutation here is that there is no Biblical basis for it. Perhaps it spawns from the sinful Christian’s urge to try harder in the battle against sin, having some success, and thinking he’s solved the problem. In reality, the problem persists and creeps in again to waylay the believer.
In a similar but more extreme vein as suppression, asceticism is the subdual of the flesh by deprivation and self-imposed suffering. By depriving and damaging the literal human flesh, the ascetic hopes to violently suppress the sinful nature. Again, this view has no Biblical support. If asceticism or suppression were valid approaches to sanctification, what need would anyone have of the Holy Spirit or Jesus? The Bible repeatedly compels believers to live by the Spirit and surrender to Christ as sanctifier. There is no righteousness by works, but by faith alone.
Final Thoughts
In the back of the sanctuary of the church where I serve as pastor is a four-paneled window. As a young teenager, new to the church, the former pastor had to explain to me what the four symbols on the windows meant. There is a cross representing Jesus as savior. I knew Jesus then, and understood the message of the cross. A pitcher represents Jesus as Healer. I experienced healing early in my faith, and had spent some time seeing what Scripture had to say about it, so the pitcher’s meaning made sense. I wasn’t too familiar with eschatology, but I knew Jesus was coming back. The crown was reasonable. I had no idea what a laver was.
I would come to understand its meaning in time as Jesus performed a sanctifying work in my life. Though I’ve yet a ways to go, I now see the vital nature of the full Gospel. Christians cannot experience the full life and joy of Christ if we limit the role of Christ to savior alone. As much as I desire to see believers transformed by the Gospel into people who transform with the Gospel, I recognize the work as Christ’s. I’m blessed to partner with him in the work only he can do. God’s people need sanctification. Jesus is the Sanctifier.
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