Typically we think that the solution to two extreme views will be a blending of the two. So in this case, is sanctification best understood as a cooperative effort where God does his bit, and I do my bit? I don’t think that will help us. Our flesh will corrupt that model. Instead, let’s ponder the big biblical framework for sanctification.

Marriage.

The Sin Problem – Let’s back up a bit. We have to grasp the depth of the problem before we can fathom the wonder of the solution. The core of the sin problem is not bad behavior or faulty thinking or a weakened will. The core of the sin problem is the lie that we can be “like God” – that is, like the false god who made the original offer. We believe that we can be autonomous and it is that self-orientation which drives and corrupts everything about us.

Our inclination to autonomy can show itself in two ways. Some will lean toward licentiousness, casting off all restraint and living like the world. Others will lean toward asceticism and legalistic self-made righteousness, and also living like the world. Worldliness is not just one end of that spectrum. Worldliness is always shot through with the DNA of autonomy.

But God – We were dead in our sin, but God. We were living as dead folks in the realm of death, but God. God sent his Son to die for us, in our place, winning our hearts by pouring out his love into our hearts by the Spirit, and thus uniting us to Christ in a marital union. We are now one Spirit with Christ our bridegroom. We died with Christ. Our life is hidden with Christ. In Christ. Christ in me. Union. Marriage.

When we start to see how much marital union language there is in Scripture, it should start to purge us of the contractual approach we function with in this world so much – i.e. obey stipulations for the sake of gaining reward. But it is not easy to shake this idea, for our flesh will always pull us back in the direction of autonomy.

The danger of autonomy – So how do we see sanctification? In the context of a marital union the groom washes his bride by the washing with the water of the Word, that she should be holy and blameless before him, without spot or wrinkle. So he is proactive and at work in the bride to cleanse and transform her by the Spirit through whom the union exists.

As we read the epistles of Paul, for example, we can start to spot the union language that creates the ethos for the instructive elements . With Christ. In him. Christ in you. This is key to avoiding the danger of our autonomous impulses.

So on the one hand, we have to beware of the danger of autonomy. A healthy marriage is not marked by autonomous action. A healthy marriage is not two individuals doing their own thing, in their own way, by their own strength, with a mere tip of the hat to a status of unity.

The opposite danger – This raises an issue though: if it is not about our self-moved effort, are we saying we are therefore totally passive? Some go that way. It is all of God, and what I do doesn’t matter because it is “all of God.” This can lead to either licentious living – a marriage marked by the bride going off after other lovers. Or it can lead to mere passivity – a marriage marked by the bride being totally unengaged in life.

Again, we need to bring to the fore the reality of our marital union with Christ. In being united to him we do not become puppets. Not autonomy, nor automatons. Christ doesn’t desire to be married to a mannequin.

Thus we have language of union to counter our tendency to self-made righteousness. And we have instruction and direction to counter the possibility of puppet-ness.

Is the bride engaged in life, active and alive? Never more so! Biblical sanctification anticipates an active engagement from us. And in the context of a fleshly inclination that has always dominated us, there is need for clarification of what it means to walk in a manner worthy of the spouse who has captured and won our hearts. But that instruction must never be corrupted into a self-driven autonomous obedience for the sake of reward . . . there is nothing of marital union in that thinking.

Two Ugly Wives – Some churches are characterized by an autonomous self-driven effort, a legalism and rule-based obedience for the sake of reward. Some churches are characterized by an unengaged laxity, a sinful sloppiness that treats the desires of the bridegroom as effectively irrelevant to the life of the bride. Both are ugly. The dutiful wife who works hard but is totally self-absorbed in her diligence to be seen as a good performer of wifely duties, and also the straying wife who cares little for what her husband desires and plays the harlot with other lovers, are both broken images of marriage.

The Glorious Bride – The biblical image of Christ’s sanctified bride is so glorious. She is captivated by Him, beautified by His love, actively engaged in a dynamic communion with him and living moment by moment for him, her gaze firmly fixed on the one who loved her first.

The post Holy and Blameless Before Him first appeared on Cor Deo.

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I’ve spent too long having my steps directed

By those keen to have God’s character dissected:

As if ‘grace’ and ‘holiness’ are opposite poles,

The Yin and the Yang of a life full of holes.

“Yes, of course God is loving… But He’s holy, too,

Sanctified, set apart, from people like you.”

“Grace AND holiness, dear boy, and don’t you forget it!

Your life is unfit; don’t quit – admit and recommit!”

So I served this God through gritted teeth,

Trying to bring Him glory with each grudging deed,

‘Til, Pharisaic and melancholic,

I developed the tastes of a pornoholic.

“It’s laziness”, they said, “You need to pull up your socks,

“Stop making God angry by the filth that you watch.”

So I tried and I tried and I sometimes abstained!

But the desire to sin just always remained.

Turning off my computer felt like success,

But I’d lie up all night full of covetousness,

Conquering lust, but wanting it constantly;

Trading sin for sin was never true victory.

I continued this struggle, perpetually enslaved,

Knowing my heart’s desire was to love the depraved,

Whatever they’d said, this wasn’t “sanctification”,

Obedient in deed, but full of selfish frustration.

(If this sounds like a gross misinterpretation,

Allow me to offer the Genesis explanation).

This inward curvation can be traced back to Eden,

Where we thought our desires would give us true freedom.

That’s the root of all sin, its primary cause,

Not simply the fact that we broke God’s laws,

But that, when our Father offered us choice,

We turned from his goodness and his pleading voice.

Now, I’m not downplaying the evil of disobedience,

But deviance is the result of the heart’s prior allegiance,

To self. To stuff. Things we’ve whored ourselves to –

This problem is deeper than breaking a taboo.

I can’t help thinking that, fundamentally,

There’s something twisted in your anthropology.

It seems that, for you, the will here is king,

Ruling over the heart and pulling the strings

Making rational decisions for God and his law,

Since doctrine calls for duty in its every clause.

To you, the Spirit isn’t regenerating,

But infusing with power and thus accelerating,

Your own capacity for killing fleshly desires,

And doing the nice things that the Bible requires.

But my problem with this is, it’s Aristotelian.

The stoic, hiding in truth like a theological chameleon,

Has convinced us we’re central to our sanctification,

Since just love alone will likely lead to stagnation.

This falsity tells us that God’s saving grace,

Wasn’t quite enough and we must now embrace,

The role of our effort in completing our holiness,

(But with the Spirit’s battery-pack, always there helping us).

Yet, when I read Ezekiel, or Romans, or Galatians,

I can’t help but notice the signs of regeneration:

Grace makes my heart a whole new creation!

We’ve established, of course, that this grace is free,

It’s a gift which neither starts nor ends with me.

But I think you forgot that holiness, too,

Isn’t something you’re just enabled to do,

Since BY his grace you get his righteousness, too!

See, the thing about this ‘grace’ is, He’s a WHO, not a WHAT,

Who turns upward my gaze to the Son of God!

Grace isn’t a substance and he’s not your fuel,

Your gas in the tank for the ‘whole new you’:

Grace IS the Spirit, here to be your companion,

A person, a lover, by whom I’m in UNION!

Jonathan Edwards was quick to help us on this:

“God’s holiness & happiness consist in his loving-ness”

The very Spirit of God, pleased to dwell in unloveliness,

Finds in the depths of my heart his own wedded bliss.

You see, the blossom of righteousness is brought into bloom

When the bride is united in love with her groom.

So, my sanctification isn’t a constant fixation

On the expiration of God’s condemnation.

And having a heart changed by regeneration

Isn’t just “getting used to my justification”.

This is more than a shift in my legal status,

Or a ‘get out of jail’ card, given out gratis,

I’m not being changed because God decided to legislate this;

No. Now my whole apparatus is one with His goodness!

This union isn’t just for my liberation:

It’s about the bride of the King at her coronation!

I’m not ‘controlling desires which once controlled me’,

But I get NEW desires – that’s what it means to live free!

I’m not just a puppet who’s been given new strings,

I’ve got a new HEART which desires new things:

Like my Father in heaven – as the Spirit cries “ABBA!” –

I don’t see Him as Judge, but my new, loving Papa.

Now this struggle, this striving, this “killing of flesh”,

It comes from a heart that’s remade afresh,

Which means effort is in the context of a relationship;

The constant pursuit of deeper companionship.

So stop looking within for the strength you need

To be holy and happy and finally free:

Whatever you’re trapped in, whatever enslaves,

He’s stronger, he’s kinder and he’s mighty to save.

So call out to Jesus, to whom you are wed,

And love all that he is, not yourself, instead.

Ask the Spirit, “Beautify Christ today,

So my gaze is turned upwards, so my sin will decay.”

For if you are truly at one with the King,

Your eyes will be always and only on Him.

The post Poem first appeared on Cor Deo.

The reason for mentioning this is that most Lutherans today—those who embrace the Formula of Concord—treat the believer’s legal standing with Christ as primary and his indwelling as a follow-up benefit.  As such a believer’s justification is distinct from union with Christ, and union is treated as a benefit of faith and salvation.

But Mannermaa, a Lutheran scholar, views this arrangement as “alien to the Reformer” (p.41).  The nature of righteousness is, instead, a matter of the soul being transformed by Christ’s presence so that Christ’s union and the soul’s justification is the same event.  The shift away from Luther’s view, Mannermaa suggests, was Philip Melanchthon’s work.

I would add that this dismissed Luther’s immediate and experiential faith in favor of a more rational and disaffected arrangement.  Luther’s view was derived from the biblical language of marital union in which Christ’s initiative is the defining event of salvation: the divine lover comes and wins his beloved’s heart and that inaugurates faith as a response.

What follows from this pursuit and response?  Let’s turn to Luther’s own words in “The Freedom of a Christian” (1520—taken from his Three Treatises, 286-87).

“The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom.  By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31-32].  And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage—indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage—it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil.”

This last feature—the common possession of good and evil—was critical in Luther’s use of the divine-human marital exchange to explain the ontology of justification in Bible terms.  Every other feature of salvation flows out of this exchange.  We return to Luther:

“Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own.  Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits.  Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation.  The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation.  Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his.”

The clarity and simplicity of this understanding overturns the layers of legal and metaphysical conjurings that grew out of medieval scholasticism—most of which were put in place for the sake of non-biblical premises.  These included the idea that God’s radical difference-in-being as Creator from the creation—incommensurability—precludes such a union.  There was also a belief taken from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (who merely articulated human common sense) that God requires humans to be free moral agents who play some role in achieving salvation.  Both notions are reasonable but biblically wrong-headed.

What Luther had experienced in his own conversion and found anchored in the Bible is that any and every moment of human salvation reveals God’s Heart moving the human heart to respond.  How?  By the work of Christ’s wooing Holy Spirit who pours out God’s love in that person’s heart.

When we turn to the Bible to measure Luther’s view that faith is our experience of and response to God’s love we find support in every direction.  In the Old Testament the marital motif is common—usually with God’s heart being broken accompanied by his promise to restore a bond of love—as in Isaiah 53-54, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 16, all of Hosea, and more.  In the New Testament Luther’s key passages of 1 Corinthians 6 and Ephesians 5 make sense of the final wedding supper of the Lamb in Revelation.

This, in turn, sets up an expectation that faith involves the ongoing experience of God’s love—what Paul presumes in Romans 8—with intimate features such as the Spirit’s witness that we are now free to call the Father “Abba”.  There is also Jesus’ celebration in John 17 of his love for the Father that he intends to be the shared experience of all true believers.

What, then, of claims by many notable Christian scholars that faith is a disaffected and will-based effort by grace-enabled souls?

A good question!  It reflects, in part, another marriage: of Aristotle’s philosophy to Christianity, which Thomas Aquinas facilitated.  It may also reflect the rationalisations by professing Christians who are still resisting the Spirit’s wooing call—as in Paul’s kicking against the “goads” of Christ before his Damascus road conversion.  Real faith always works through love—a real love as is found in sound, affectively rich marriages.

Luther and his kin, of course, must not be accused of promoting a spiritual tautology—the experience of experience—as if mere experience is a proper ambition.  The only source of proper Christian experience is Christ himself, and to know him in a Heart-to-heart bond is to love him.

If any readers haven’t experienced this love I invite you to pray for eyes to see him and for ears to hear his gracious voice: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  If you do pray, be assured—as in John 3—that Christ’s Spirit will have been stirring you already and his newfound presence that follows will feel like a breeze stirring the once still forest of your soul.

Pray and see for yourself.

The post Experiencing God first appeared on Cor Deo.