One of my cutest parishoners is named Jack and he’s four years old. He’s what you might call an old soul.

His grandmother lives in another town and no longer attends our church. She called me to tell me that Jack asked her if she had ever been to Harmony Grove Church. She said, yes, she grew up in that church. He was clearly distressed. When she asked him why he was upset he told her. “Mimi,  Pastor Sharon said that we were to go home and find someone who had never been to our church and to invite them. Now who am I going to invite?” Grandmother also told me that Jack’s mom is more motivated than ever to keep all three of her kids in church. They hear more than you would think.

A few weeks ago something I said something in a service that Jack’s mom could really relate to and she told me after the service. It had to do with the stress of the Sunday morning ‘getting to church’ routine. I had told the congregation how pretty they were and what a blessing it was to be with them that morning. I told them that I hoped they would get a blessing during worship—something like that during the welcome  prelimenaries.

After church Jack’s mom said that she had felt the hard feelings and stares of her children that she had yelled at that morning getting them dressed for church. She said that she sat through the service asking God to help her to deserve her children. That she would behave better.

When she told me that I just couldn’t help myself and I had to confess the time that I felt most condemned and when I vowed to do better.

We had just joined the big downtown church in Baton Rouge. I had three kids that attended school in different parts of the city and I had picked up the oldest two one afternoon. The little one was in daycare at the church. I remember running into one of the older more sedate associate pastors who was kind enough to stop me in the hallway with my tired, hungry squirming three year old to tell me about some of the Bible study opportunities that I could participate in. I thanked him and finally made it out to the car that the big kids were actually climbing on top of and I just lost it.

I told them to get their #%^’s back in that car to buckle the @#ll up and to get ready to go home and go straight to bed!

Somehow, I had lost track of Sedate, Older Associate Pastor who had walked out behind me and heard every word.

Somehow, at the time, I was more embarrassed about the preacher seeing me act like that than I was my kids.

Sanctification is not an over night process.

I’m counting how many times I sin. It’s revolutionizing my Christian life. How did I ever miss this?

Justin Taylor shares the link for the free pdf of Piper’s new book on the Demands of Jesus.

Phillip Winn: I really need to talk to you on AIM. Please email me when you can give me a few minutes.

Okay, Jack. Thanks. No JN.

JS: Easy, tiger. Lemme buy you a drink…

Sorry, but I just can’t get over my astonishment that “Christian’s should sin less” is a controversial statement. Let’s talk 1 John for a bit, m’kay?

1 John 1:8: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Excellent. Everyone here agrees with this. No one, especially not me, is claiming to not be a sinner.

1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Heck yeah. I need this lots.

1 John 1:10: If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Absolutely. Again, if you hear me saying that I have never sinned or have stopped sinning altogether, please smack me.

1 John 2:1: My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

OMG WORKZ RIGHTEOUSNESS LOL!!!!!1!!

Four consecutive verses. All I’m saying is, the first three verses do not negate the fourth. If your theology has fits over the idea of someone writing or preaching “so that you may not sin,” your theology has the problem.

Jack, I’m glad to know that moral exhortation always leads to “works of man, moralism and hypocrisy”. Could you shoot a message off to Jesus and Paul while you’re at it? I think they’d like to hear the news. Kthx.

JS: I’m glad you think you sin less, perhaps you are right. As for me, I don’t need a Saviour because of what I do, I need a Saviour because of what I am. Phillip said it well:

There is serious danger in believing that sanctification is something observable and measurable by someone else. This is the puritan mistake, and leads to moralism and hypocrisy.

When our focus moves from adoring the works of Christ to critiquing the works of man, moralism and hypocrisy are close behind. I gar-ron-tee it.

Phillip: This may have been the finest, most succinct thing I’ve ever read read on sanctification. I might want to add a phrase or two about constantly going back to the ordinary means of grace but that’s all. Very well done,  sir.

Phillip, well done…I look forward to having small children to explain things to as I think it the best way to learn teaching skills, in the meantime my clients will need to suffice. I liked your mountain metaphor and would even try to throw on another layer or two in order to squeeze a couple more teaching points; the first would be the idea of downclimbing the ‘mountain of self’, the second would be that as we ‘mature’ we move from the ‘mountaintop’ to the ‘valley’. As a post-charismatic this picture is significant and corrective.

My only tweak I would offer would be to view the sin on the way down as not so much ‘bigger’, as more ‘foundational’; which works quite well with the image of a mountain. Another teaching point I’d make would be the fact that I learned years ago in mountaineering school; that downclimbing is much more dangerous and in many ways more physically taxing than climbing upward. As we climb down (seems oxymoronic – nice paradox) we are not contracting muscles; we are actually slowly and in a controlled fashion releasing muscles…we are letting go...

Never let it be said that I can’t milk a metaphor for all it’s worth.

Greg, my goal in asking the question ‘what is the doctrine of sanctification’ to which you replied ‘Do I really need to do this?’ was well-met by our Fellows. What to many of us would seem a simple term and a simple concept must be always be understood in the fact that our internal understanding and usage quite likely differs from that of our brothers. Even if we have a concept of ‘santification’ that we’ve integrated from many sources as you described; it likely does not match up with the concepts of others.

So, to reply to your question ‘Do I really need to do this?’ I’d say: Yes, it’s how we learn what you mean when you use the term in question.

All, Laurie (my wife) was looking at photographs from my pre-believing days and said to me: “Your countenance has changed (better), but so has your waistline (bigger).” That’s how I view sanctification.

You guys are using the same word to describe different things, which is why you’re talking past each other. It’s amusing, only not.

God via Paul commands us to be sanctified by the renewing of our minds. Is that command there to demonstrate to us our inability to actually accomplish it? No, it is there to be followed.

Can we follow it on our own, with no help, of ourselves? No, we do nothing except that God does it for us. I’m a firmly-committed monergist, so I believe that the commands of Scripture are meant for us to follow, but that we do so only by God’s grace first, last, and completely.

So solely by God’s grace we must be sanctified by the renewing of our minds. But what does that mean? It’ll tell you one thing it doesn’t mean, and that is that I’m a morally superior person at the end of it. The funny thing is that practically speaking, I may be observably no better off, and perhaps observably quite worse off, than the atheist next door. When I’m really upset because the second hard disk just died within a month, and my kid walks in at just that moment to ask me a stupid question, I’m just as likely to yell at that kid as my neighbor, or not, but that seems to be based less on my spiritual growth as on my personality.

There is serious danger in believing that sanctification is something observable and measurable by someone else. This is the puritan mistake, and leads to moralism and hypocrisy. Better, as some here have suggested, to recognize our intense need for a savior, and grow in that understanding. The more my mind is renewed by the washing of the Word, the more I realize how sinful and desperately wicked I am.

At the same time, I’m not the man I used to be. My wife will be the first to affirm that I have matured at varying rates over time, but that I have matured. I don’t commit some of the same sins that I used to, and I don’t have some of the same failures. This is what we might naturally expect of a believer—to grow in the fruit of the Spirit—and it’s some of what we might naturally expect of a mature adult. That makes it easy for us to wrongly believe it is our own effort or maturity causing it, when in fact it is the Spirit of God working in our lives.

If you’re committing all the same sins and making all the same mistakes at 40 you were at 14, you’re missing something important about Christianity. But if you don’t believe that you are just as sinful at 40 as you were at 14, you’re also missing something important about Christianity.

I used to think of it as climbing a mountain: as God moved me past the big huge issues at the base of the mountain, He led me to the slightly smaller issues higher up.

I now think of it as climbing down the mountain: as God moves me past the tiny issues at the peak (which seemed huge to me at the time), He leads me to the slightly bigger issues lower down (the enormity of which I couldn’t even comprehend at the time).

God through Paul never instructs us to measure the progress of sanctification in the lives of others, only in our own. Since sanctification has everything to do with renewing our mind, this makes perfect sense. Who else can know the status of our mind besides God, me, and probably my spouse? My pastors and “accountability partners” and friends know what I tell them and what they can see, and no more.

I thank God that He who began a good work in me is faithful to complete it, and I look forward to eternity when it will finally be complete. In the meantime, I rest solely on the work of Christ by the grace of God, and am sanctified by the Spirit.

That’s what I believe.

It is both possible and desirable to progress in sanctification, which means to sin less, to resemble Christ more, etc. Furthermore, actual practical exhortation of the “Christians should do X” sort plays a major role in doing this, or at least defining the goals. Anyone that’s trying to deny this has a whole lot of New Testament to explain away.

OTOH, the best way to do this is to be constantly broken over your own sin and to constantly repent. The holiest people in Christendom have always been the most conscious of their own sin. A saint never recognizes himself as a saint.

That’s all I’m going to say about this.

Oh, and theosis is teh awesome.

I don’t think that it’s about what we do at all. All that we are in Christ comes from the initiative of God in Christ.

If prevenient grace is what God does for us in getting us ready to accept his justifying grace, the sanctifying grace is about the work that God continues to do on our behalf. Our response to that grace springs forth in behavior that reflects our joy at the work of God.

Turn on JN: I actually tell my congregation that they should be more saved today than they were yesterday. Of course, I really mean to get them jacked up and ticked off.

Now, you can turn it off.

As far as my own experience goes, sanctification consists mainly of becoming progressively more aware of the depth, width and breadth of my need for repentance, which gives more opportunities for God to show me how much I need Him.

Re: Sanctification

Maybe we should discuss something simpler like baptism.  I heard a helpful analogy to describe the Reformed attitude toward the relationship between obedience and sanctification.  It’s like we are at the hospital and have just had our leg fixed.  Our obedience to God’s commands is like physical therapy, teaching us to walk using our leg which has been healed.  That’s the way I’m leaning.  We already have everything through Christ’s finished work, but through our obedience we see that fruit in our experience.

Josh: Don’t forget Moses. Or Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. 2 Cor. 3:18 (actually, I think that is the best verse on transformation by far).

Michael:  I agree that “The way sanctification works is Romans 7 to Romans 8.”  In the context of what you wrote I see what you mean by “better”.  I also know that there is sin in my life and I hate it.  But I do it over and over.  It is the battle of Romans 7.  The examples you cite (Paul, Psalm 51, etc.) are all pictures of this.  But still, to be in the battle of Romans 8 is evidence of sanctification, IMO.  You’re comment that “God is gracious, but the reason that I am a “better” husband is that I know what a wretched husband I am.” is right on.  Becoming more aware of your sin is a huge part of sanctification, IMO.  I also think that, as a follower of Jesus that is sick of my sin (some days more than others) that I would be shocked and appalled even more if I could suddenly see myself as I was a few years ago.  I really believe that as we become more and more aware of our sin, it is sometimes hard to realize that we are slowly becoming more and more Christ-like.  Well, that is enough.  It is late and this is just a disorganized rambling post at this point.  No need to make it a really long, disorganized, rambling post.

RE: sanctification

There are those that say that believing in “eternal security” (or perserverance of the saints) think that all we have to do is “pray the sinner’s prayer” and that’s it!  No growth expected.

Two alternatives are

1. growth (the external evidence is behavior – realizing that we are all sinners and we are all going to sin)


2. simply recognizing that we’re sinners and we’re no better now than we were without God, except we’re redeemed.

Kent: The doctrine of sanctification? Well, let’s see. Do I really need to do this? To be sanctified is to be set apart – something commanded of us in the Old & New Testament. One passage that I think sums up sanctification well is Ephesians 4:17-24. Verse 24 says “-StartFragment-> put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” So the scripture tells us that we are created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (countless times – Jesus, Paul, James, Peter, John – they all tell us that). The Orthodox call this theosis, or deification. Some use the term “ingodded”. Evangelicals might be more comfortable with “the transformation of the inner man”.

In Eph. 4, Paul goes on to tell the believer everything that he should do as his part of “putting on the new self”. I’m always amazed at folks who seem to think our obedience is somehow irrelavant to how we turn out. If so, why is the NT full of exhortations concerning our behaivor. Jack, in response to your question as to who is responsible for my sanctification, the answer is both. It is all God’s grace, but I must cooperate with His grace (this is faith lived out). Do you think Paul or Mother Theresa or Billy Graham were/are more like God than you and I are? I sure do. Why is that? Did they have anything to do with it? Of course they did!

Respectfully, Sharon…I was making a point about what Resurgence believes.

Respectfully Ellen, I didn’t mean anything sarcastically. You made a point about men in leadership and I made a point about one woman, me, in church leadership.

Sharon: You forgot the JN

Brian: I think is a tricky subject. It’s had several major outing on the BHT and I’ve taken it all around the blogosphere for saying that I am worse than ________________ (name any lost person.) The way sanctification works is Romans 7 to Romans 8. I just don’t see where the place is that the Prodigal says, “I’m a better son.” He’s a saved son. Whether or not it made him “better” is a discussion of law, not Gospel. “This is my son who was dead, and is now alive.” The older son was better than others, and what a piece of work he was. Psalm 51. Paul as the chief of sinners. Every sin I now commit I do with the blood of Jesus on me.

There is no way for me to sing “I’m better now.” God is gracious, but the reason that I am a “better” husband is that I know what a wretched husband I am.

It’s not an arguement as much as an approach.

Bar: I have a new IM pic up. It will thrill my fan club.

(and it’s ok to do all the things that go along with being Godly men – like lead)

Thank you Ellen.

Well, tonight I got in my car and led the way to a homeless shelter where our handbell choir gave a little concert. I led the way to the table where we had dinner with about twenty children and a family that is still displaced from Katrina. I led the group in prayer and I led the male pastor of the shelter to the bell table where I put a bell in his hand, put my hand over his and held it while he learned to ring the note. Together we went to his office and considered ways my congregation could be of help to his ministry. He led me and my son out to our car and thanked us for coming.

My son is learning to lead from me and his father in different ways. My daughter is learning to lead from me and her father in different ways.

Tomorrow night I will lead our finance committee as we set the budget for 2007. This church is climbing out of a hole that was dug over the past ten years during the tenure of some Godly men in leadership.

Would you all pray for me? I suspect that I have parishoners who would rather have a man in my position but no one is complaining as they watch our church do a slow but sure turn around.

Maybe I am missing something here on the comments that have been posted regarding sanctification and so on.  I can understand opposing a lot of the silly “deliverance” and “victory” teaching that is out there that paints unrealistic pictures of the believer’s life.  But to say that thinking followers of Jesus look different in their lives as parents (or as whatever) is wrong.  I don’t understand this.  One reason I am having so much trouble is the passage from Luke 6 where Jesus teaches about loving.  He says:

32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Three times he says even sinners.  This is a comparison, there’s no way around it.  I have no trouble saying that any area of my life that does become more Christ-like does so because of God and nothing else.  I believe sanctification is just as much an act of God as justification and is just as much a miracle.

I guess I am just wondering if I am misreading something here or am taking something out of context.

Noel Heikkinen preaching and Dan Price leading music at OBI’s Fall Spiritual Emphasis Week. These guys are excellent brothers and God blessed their efforts. I look forward to having them back, and I encourage BHT readers to visit them at eriv.net and at Riverview Church in Lansing.

One of the former Rule 40 watchblogs has just called it quits. I’m sure they meant well and I still think that if we could get them together with their victims to actually talk we would clear up a lot of misunderstandings.

Jack said: Maybe I did misread Ellen, but my experience has taught me that the church is a place where we all pretend to be better than we really are, precisely because of the tyranny of the “ought”.

Jack, that may be true – it’s sometimes true of me.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t strive daily be become more like Christ.

If Christ does not change our attitudes toward those we claim to love…

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 

Josh said: Ellen, here’s your statistic: divorce rates among Christians are just as bad as they are among everyone else. And if you think that only a negligible portion of those affluent dads in wealthy, white, congregations is worshipping work and valuing children only insofar as they perform at school/sports/sanctification, you’ve got another thing comin’ (guitar solo). You don’t have to go out “there” among the heathen to find dads that don’t give a crap, have completely given up, or are just downright malevolent. Just look across the pew.

Josh:  That is the difference between we “should” and we “do” (or don’t).  Where is church discipline?  Does anybody care?

Joel: I am coming to town. Can we get together tomorrow post 1 p.m.?

Jack: You are the man. How has Christ made me better? By showing me what I am: a man whose sins crucified the son of God…and I still commit them, even after I know that. My knowledge of my sin is the foundation of the work of grace in me. I cannot imagine why Christians ever say they are “better.” He is greater. I am less. That’s it.

Greg: Contradictory? I don’t think so, unless you somehow think that God is impressed with your sin-tainted efforts. If I understand things correctly, the only “work” that matters to God is believing in the One He sent, and the only righteousness that means squat to God is Jesus’s righteousness. Unless my righteousness surpasses that of the scribes & Pharisees, I will certainly be unable to participate in the Kingdom of Heaven. Thank God, Jesus has exchanged HIS righteousness for mine, otherwise I’d be screwed.

I’m genuinely glad you believe you are a better father as a result of being a believer. Are you saying that your efforts are what you made you a better father? Or was it a divine work of grace for which you can take no credit? If the former, would you then say that believing fathers who suck at fathering just aren’t trying hard enough? Or, what makes you different from sucky believing fathers? Are they “backslidden”? “Carnal”? What about a guy who does in fact suck at fatherhood but has tremendous control of his thought-life? Are you willing to play your “I’m a great father” up against his “I don’t lust in my heart”?

How do we compare sanctification, anyway? Was the tax-collector justified but not sanctified? If he kept coming to the temple, beating his breast and pleading, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!”, would you eventually get tired of him and ask him to stay away? Aren’t the well-behaved Pharisees much easier to have around? There is nothing so irritating to our sense of propriety as ill-behaved but humble tax collectors, is there?
Sanctification? I believe in it, but I no longer pretend to understand what it looks like. I used to think I was getting better and better. Now I know I’m not. The most significant change that I see in my life is this: I am a lot more honest about how much I suck, and a whole lot less impressed with myself than I used to be. Is that sanctification? Beats me.

Greg, what is the ‘doctrine of sanctification’?

A friend once had an answering machine message that said; “Jesus loves you just the way you are, and too much to leave you that way”; is that true?

Jack: You said that we should say “I am every bit as screwed up as I was before, but I have a Saviour who welcomes me at His table and will absolutely finish that work He started in me.” Is that not a contradictory statement? Doesn’t the fact that God is going to finish the work He started in me mean that I am not as screwed up as I was before I met him? As for me, I feel confident that I am a much better father than I would have been without Christ. I don’t disappear for hours or days. I don’t come home drunk off my butt. I am faithful to their mother. I choose to pour into them – their education, hobbies and sports – much more than I pour into my own interests. I pray with them every night before they go to bed, as we acknowledge Jesus as our savior, deliverer, healer, and master. I can’t speak for the rest of the dads in the country, but I give God thanks and praise for the decent job of parenting that my wife and I are accomplishing. In my case, for sure, without Christ I would be a very screwed up dude – and quite incapable of effective parenting.

I mean, doesn’t the doctrine of sanctification teach us that we are supposed to be becoming more like Christ throughout our lifetime? Do you and Kent believe the doctrine of sanctification is valid? Don’t get me wrong. I have recently gone through some things that have shaken me deeply and made me well aware of how far I have to go, but thankfully I have godly nice friends who really know me providing me with encouragment and reminding me how far I have come. Throughout church history, the godliest people (starting with St. Paul) have been thoroughly convinced of their sinfulness, but that does not mean they were not a genuinely beautiful reflection of Christ on the earth in their time.

JS: Maybe I did misread Ellen, but my experience has taught me that the church is a place where we all pretend to be better than we really are, precisely because of the tyranny of the “ought”.

Jack, I think you misread Ellen’s ought as an is. Is it really that controversial to say that Christians should be better fathers? That, having known the infinite love of the Father shown to us in Jesus Christ, and taking to heart the admonitions of Paul, Proverbs, etc., Christians should be the best fathers in the world? This strikes me as both obvious and necessary. Christians should be better fathers.

I know men who are terrific fathers and not believers. I know men who are believers and lousy fathers.

Of course. But like Ellen said, this means that something is wrong: sin. So Christians fathers should be better fathers, but in fact are sinners. This is hardly news.

Ellen, you said:

We should be able to see a difference between the world’s father’s and the fathers who are Christians. If we can’t then there is truly something wrong.

My question is why? What is it about trusting Christ that changes men from being bad fathers to good fathers? Do men magically become different people when they become believers? I’m willing to bet that any cross-section of the population, whether believers or not, would turn up pretty much identical. In fact, I’m willing to argue that part of the problem in the church is that we pretend to be better people than we really are.

I know men who are terrific fathers and not believers. I know men who are believers and lousy fathers. The notion that we somehow become better people when we become believers is responsible for an awful lot of posturing in the church. It would be so much better if we could admit, “I am every bit as screwed up as I was before, but I have a Saviour who welcomes me at His table and will absolutely finish that work He started in me.”

Noel Heikkinen did a podcast from here at OBI. I’m forgiving him for mangling the name :-), but he’s got the whole OBI thing down. Good first impressions of what we do. A good listen.