THE LAW AND THE ROAD TO SANCTIFICATION

One subject that is almost completely overlooked in theological discussion is what do we do about the sins that are committed after conversion. We wax eloquent about God’s great work in the lives of people who are saved, how their lives changes dramatically and how their sins diminish right before our very eyes. But the truth is that we rarely want to discuss the sins of believers even though we know that people who are saved continue to sin throughout their Christian lives and that their sins are sometimes very intense, and yes, can even exceed in defilement sins committed before conversion. The reason Christians are reticent to speak about the sins of believers are many and I will spare the reader from listing them here. Behind all the reasons stands that one great truth that Christians do sin, and sin often egregiously. One of the reasons we don’t speak much about the sins of Christians is because of our defective view of doctrine of sanctification, which is defined as the process of the Christian being conformed to Christ. The traditional narrative of salvation often goes like this: a person gets saved and is justified completely in the eyes of God. He understands he is forgiven and clothed in the righteousness of Christ. So far so good. Then there comes a subtle mistake in thinking. He believes that because he has been justified that all things in the Christian life will now fall into place with only a few minor sinful bumps in the road. He believes he will now live a holy life. But for anyone who has lived the Christian life and is honest about his life in Christ, the actual narrative is much messier than that. It goes something like this: a man is justified and declared righteous before God and at that very moment he comes face to face with the reality that there is yet in him mountains of sin lying in the deepest recesses of his soul. This augurs the beginning of a great battle that he did not expect nor was he prepared for. Soon he comes to realize that this battle will last until he takes his last breath. What shocks the believer the most is that his post-conversion sins can be quite powerful and entrenched. A cursory reading of the Bible is replete with such examples.

How to address this indwelling sin becomes the big issue of one’s Christian life, though few are taught how to grapple with it. Some are deceived and refuse to believe that sin has such a tenacious hold on their inner man and they glide along in their Christian lives oblivious to the enemy that dwells within. Such Christians end up living lives of total self-deception thinking they have actually conquered this inner beast (Ps 73:22). But the Christian man who is honest before God will realize that his justification upon faith in Christ was just the beginning of a long process of being saved. Often it is necessary to tell new Christians that there is a long fight ahead of them and that the way they are sanctified is the same way they were justified. As they looked to Christ to be justified, so they must appropriate the saving acts of Christ in their sanctification as well. Just as the Christian looked to Christ and looked away from himself at the first in abject weakness, so he must continually look away from his own strength in order to grow in grace. This, of course, is counterintuitive. So whether we speak of the beginning of the Christian journey or its process, the pattern of Christian living rests on one principle, a tenacious clinging to the great redemptive events, that is, the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, the Christian life is lived from beginning to end believing that Jesus is the Messiah and will deliver all He promised to do for sinners, or, as Paul succinctly puts it, ‘from faith to faith’.  

This is all to say that one’s justification marks the beginning point of a Christian’s fight against indwelling sin. This fight often takes believers by surprise. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this way’ they cry!  Unfortunately many are told that when they are justified they will instantly live holy as Christ is holy. Yes, they live holy ‘in Christ’ but not ‘holy as Christ.’ This sets up many Christians for the shocking surprise when they begin to struggle with indwelling as a Christian. Even more shocking is the reality that they often sin more egregiously as believers than when they were unbelievers. They ask, ‘how can this be?  And what can we do about it?’ Unfortunately the inclination of many is to do exactly the opposite of what they did when they were justified. Instead of looking to Christ for strength, they solicit the aid of their will, by pushing themselves to develop habits, disciplines, and godly patterns in order to quell the effects of sin. Very often they are counseled by other believers to do these things. From the pulpit they are implicitly (or explicitly) taught that sanctification is a self-disciplined enterprise. Jesus saved them, now they must finish the job. And because most Christians yearn to validate their justification by good works, it is rather easy for them to fall back to their own resources in order to achieve the elusive goal of holiness.

No strategy could be worse.

So let’s stop for a second and try to understand what ought to be the cycle of sanctification in the saved man. When he comes to Christ he is immediately given an enlightened conscience through which he is more sensitive to sin than ever before. What causes this sensitivity is an enlightened and terrifying view of the law. The law now assaults his redeemed man and begins to do its work in showing him as he has never seen before the depths of his sin. Whereas before conversion he saw sin as an external violation of the commands that gave him a light sense of guilt, he now sees sin as a terminal disease woven into the very fabric of his being. He comes to see that not only his actions, but the totality of his being; his motives, his leanings, his thoughts, his acts, his preferences –are sorely tainted by sin. All this happened because the law was convicting his enlightened nature in ways it never did while in an unconverted state. Surprised by this development he looks for help. And this is where things go south. The Christian is told by many to pull up his bootstraps and fall back on the strength of his will, that is, to fall back to the law and try to obey a little harder. But this only makes matters worse. What now happens to him is exactly what was described by Paul in Romans 7:11. That is, the law deceives him by making him think this was the right way to defeat sin, when in fact it only made sin worse. He is using the law to pacify the guilt of the law. The deception was strengthened in that the law actually produced some temporary victories. Riding high on these temporary victories, the Christian views himself as ‘one now keeping the law’ and for awhile he feels good about himself. All this does is lead him into further sin by causing him to be complacent, smug, and judgmental.  And so he goes on living out his Christian life blinded to the fact that he is actually in worse shape than before. This life of hypocrisy continues on until the day comes when sin, long hidden by his external keeping of the law, comes rampaging back into his life in a way he cannot ignore. What has happened is that sin has now been more acutely active by a fresh application of the law as induced by the Spirit (John 16:8-11). Once this complacent Christian was alive as sin lie dormant in his inner man and the law was neutralized by deception. But now law regains its condemning force and by the Spirit begins to convict him with a vengeance. The Christian now feels defeated and dead. ‘How could this happen to me? I thought I had this Christian life all figured out?’ The result of this is that the man’s faith begins to totter. He feels confused and powerless before the juggernaut of sin. But this is actually a good thing as it begins to drive that Christian to find another means to be holy outside the law.

So one asks, where did that sin come from in the life of the man who thought he was doing fine? The reason is simple and frightening, that sin was always there, yes, even in those sunny days of spiritual victory. The reason the sin comes back is that its root was never actually severed. The very act of faith that saved him at the first was abandoned in his journey of sanctification. Instead of operating by faith, the Christian took to living his Christian life by acts of his will driven by the law. But the law was not the problem. It had only done what it was created to do, that is, to reveal to that man the depth of his sin. No, the problem was not the law but the Christian’s unauthorized use of the law. He tried to use it to fight sin when it was designed to reveal sin. To make an analogy, he tried to put out a fire by using fire.

By God’s mercy that day came when the Spirit revealed to him the error of his ways and he was shown that sanctification could only come by the same energy source that he first experienced in his justification. This began a long, laborious process of learning to live the Christian life all over again. He now realized that he must fight sin by trusting in the work of the Savior on the cross. Slowly but surely he discovered that victory over sin came not from his own willful disciplines but through his trust in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Savior. And so he began to believe the gospel again which he alone found to be the power of God unto salvation. His life then became wonderfully centered on Christ. He marveled at God’s grace in Christ. He believed the love God had for him in Christ. He reveled in his adoption into God’s family because of Christ. And most of all he believed in the power of the Holy Spirit whose mission it was to keep him focused on the things of Christ. In other words the man began to look upon the brazen serpent on Mount Calvary and from there he found divine power flowing to his soul. Without even knowing it holiness was making inroads into his Christian life. And now he had a constant remedy for seasons of declension. Instead of resorting to law he knew that he must listen to the call of Christ; ‘look to me and all I have done for you and be saved and look no longer to self or to the crushing pressure of the law.’ He also began to realize something else, something that was potentially discouraging. This process of being conformed to Christ by faith alone proved to be a slow, tedious process. He saw that at times he would actually fall into seasons of acute dullness and sinfulness. Despite this discouragement he was finding peace in his soul knowing that he was slowly severing the entangled root of sin in the right way for he now possessed the right remedy. Now his sanctification was in the hands of the blessed Spirit who worked through the gospel and by omnipotent power was driving the beasts of sin away. Yes, it was a painful procedure but the Christian knew that it is the only effective way, and he was glad.

So how does the Christian know when this gospel centered way of sanctification is happening in his Christian life? For one, the direction of his eyesight turns toward God from self and all its ingrown idols. Too, he will realize that everything about this process is a paradox. Weakness now replaces strength, desperation replaces self-confidence, defeat replaces victory.  But in his weakness he now gladly turns to a crucified God. And by viewing Calvary he discovers the power to fight sin. Where a Christian looks determines how he is able to fight sin. Every Christian should examine this aspect of his life.

That being said, the question now comes, ‘what actually is happening to the Christian who looks to Christ daily, high and lifted up?’ Before looking to the cross he did things rather externally by the force of his personal discipline. Now he recognizes that everything he had previously thought useful for his sanctification only hindered his spiritual growth. As he began to look to the cross his mind began to grasp the wonders of God’s grace and he esteemed that redemption as the only feasible antidote for his sin. And as he looked to the cross he began to experience affections for the Savior and found himself thinking of Jesus more often. And as the mind and the affections moved toward Christ, his will began to follow behind. Now at last he was actually being holy not because something demanded it of him, but because he desired to obey from the heart. No longer was the law driving him to live under duty, but grace was enabling him to live by holy desire. For the first time in his Christian life he was obeying God from the heart. Does all this mean the law which had kept him down for so long was the problem? Not at all. Paul’s point is forever settled that the law is holy, just and good. No, the problem was that the man tried to use the law to alleviate the very guilt that it had previously created, that is, which only served to produce in him all manner of evil desire (Rom 7:8). But when grace came through looking he experienced freedom and peace.

So what are we saying? Just this. The law, if used rightly, is crucial to the sanctifying process but is not sanctification itself.  It convicts, it drives, it deflates, it kills; but it never cures. Its message is always, ‘don’t look to me for a solution, look to the Christ who died in your place on an old rugged cross. There alone will you defeat sin.’

This is revolutionary to many Christians. But it is exactly what the word of God teaches. Yes, we don’t like to talk about sin in the life of believers. But to ignore this reality is to invite defeat for the great ally of sin is our failure to expose it. Looking to the cross of Christ not only exposes our sin but cures it. Now this new perspective does not eliminate the striving of the will as many will wrongly argue. Rather it weakens the will that has been energized by the law only to raise it up again by the message of the cross. And it is from the cross that the believer finds the strength to fight sin. That is because the cross is the place where the believer is united to Christ. And as Christ’s precious veins intersect with ours by faith, we begin to find His life coursing through our spiritual veins. And this, dear reader, is the life of holiness. Amen.