We ended our discussion of Sanctification and Good Works today. The mystery to Gospel sanctification, mortification and vivification is the Gospel.
Puritan Thomas Brooks in The Unsearchable Riches of Christ wrote:
“Those spots which a Christian finds in his own heart can only be washed out in the blood of the Lamb.
‘Oh,’ says such a poor soul, ‘I pray—and yet I sin; I resolve against sin—and yet I sin; I combat against sin—and yet I am carried captive by sin; I have left no outward means unattempted—and yet after all, my sins are too hard for me; after all my sweating, striving, and weeping—I am carried down the stream.’
It is not our strong resolutions or purposes which will be able to overmaster these enemies.
There is nothing now but the actings of faith upon a crucified Christ, which will take off this burden from the soul of man. You must make use of your graces to draw virtue from Christ; now faith must touch the hem of Christ’s garment—or you will never be healed.” (HT: Of First Importance)
The Gospel is for Christians! We are saved by the Gospel and sanctified by the Gospel. But we live as if the Gospel was for saving and our own efforts are for living. Lewis points this out when he says, "The Christian doctrine that there is no 'salvation' by works done to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. (emphasis mine)
Tim Keller mentions this essay by C.S. Lewis as being influential in his thinking and preaching. Read and rejoice - "Mercy will receive us".
There are three kinds of people in the world. The first class is of those who live simply for their own sake and pleasure, regarding Man and Nature as so much raw material to be cut up into whatever shape may serve them. In the second class are those who acknowledge some other claim upon them – the will of God, the categorical imperative, or the good of society – and honestly try to pursue their own interests no further than this claim will allow. They try to surrender to the higher claim as much as it demands, like men paying a tax, but hope, like other taxpayers, that what is left over will be enough for them to live on. Their life is divided, like a soldier's or a schoolboy’s life, into time “on parade” and “off parade”, “in school” and “out of school”. But the third class is of those who can say like St Paul that for them “to live is Christ”. These people have got rid of the tiresome business of adjusting the rival claims of Self and God by the simple expedient of rejecting the claims of Self altogether. The old egoistic will has been turned round, reconditioned, and made into a new thing. The will of Christ no longer limits theirs; it is theirs. All their time, in belonging to Him, belongs also to them, for they are His. And because there are three classes, any merely twofold division of the world into good and bad is disastrous. It overlooks the fact that the members of the second class (to which most of us belong) are always and necessarily unhappy. The tax which moral conscience levies on our desires does not in fact leave us enough to live on. As long as we are in this class we must either feel guilt because we have not paid the tax or penury because we have. The Christian doctrine that there is no “salvation” by works done to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. Back or on we must go. But there is no going on simply by our own efforts. If the new Self, the new Will, does not come at His own good pleasure to be born in us, we cannot produce Him synthetically. The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort – it is to want Him. It is true that the wanting itself would be beyond our power but for one fact. The world is so built that, to help us desert our own satisfactions, they desert us. War and trouble and finally old age take from us one by one all those things that the natural Self hoped for at its setting out. Begging is our only wisdom, and want in the end makes it easier for us to be beggars. Even on those terms the Mercy will receive us.
(Lewis, C. S. Present Concerns. Harvest Books, 2002. 21-22)
How far removed is Joel Osteen's message to his Lakewood Congregation from our attempts at self-sanctification - with a little help from God? Why do you think Joel Osteen's message is so popular with Christian audiences? Watch this and ponder - 60 minutes interview with Joel Osteen.
For an excellent set of resources and an article Mike Horton wrote after his interview about Osteen with 60 minutes go here. Make sure to download and read Joel Osteen and the Glory Story.
Bob Newhart, Jesus and D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones agree
An excellent example of mortification of sin. I believe D.Martyn Lloyd-Jones would agree with Bob Newhart's demonstration of what Jesus commands. (previous post).
It's fall and time to get back to blogging the Westminster Confession. We've just studied Chapter 12 Of Adoption. I love how Dr. Gerstner covers this important chapter - He reads the text from the Confession and then he says, "What more can I say? Why gild the lily?" and he moves on to the Chapter 13, Of Sanctification.
Well I'm afraid that studying this chapter is not about 'gilding the lily' - it's going to be about seeing the lilly in the garden of weeds that has grown up around the doctrine of sanctification. Here we go
J.C. Ryle defines sanctification this way,
Sanctification is the actual making a man inwardly righteous, though it may be in a very feeble degree.
Sounds simple. Sanctification is largely about mortification of sin. But we will spend the next couple of weeks disabusing ourselves of sanctification misunderstandings.
I came across a great quote today from my gospel hero, D. Martyn Lloyd Jones:
I do not know of a single scripture— and I speak advisedly— which tells me to take my sin, the particular thing that gets me down, to God in prayer and ask him to deliver me from it and then trust in faith that he will.
Now that teaching is also often put like this: you must say to a man who is constantly defeated by a particular sin, "I think your only hope is to take it to Christ and Christ will take it from you." But what does Scripture say in to the man who finds himself constantly guilty of stealing, to a man who sees something he likes and takes it? What am I to tell such a man? Am I to say, "Take that sin to Christ and ask him to deliver you?" No, what the apostle Paul tells him is this: "Let him that stole, steal no more." Just that. Stop doing it. And if it is fornication or adultery or lustful thoughts, again: Stop doing it, says Paul. He does not say, "Go and pray to Christ to deliver you." No. You stop doing that, he says, as becomes children of God.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
From D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Sanctified Through the Truth: The Assurance of Our Salvation (Wheaton: Crossway, 1989), 54.
Sanctification is more than just 'Let go and let God''. Ryle says elsewhere:
In sanctification our own works are of vast importance and God bids us fight, and watch, and pray, and strive, and take pains...
