1.
Justification and Sanctification
In
our justification, God turns to us despite our sin. In our sanctification, God
turns us to himself despite our sin. In our justification, God tells us, “I
will be your God.” In our sanctification, God tells us, “You shall be my
people.” Like justification, our sanctification is God’s work. Other words
which describe this work of God include regeneration, renewal, conversion,
penitence, and discipleship. But the term sanctification, which means being
made holy, reminds us that the work of reconciliation in all its aspects
belongs to God because only God is by nature holy.
Justification
and sanctification are mutually related. First, they are not two separate
actions but two distinct movements accomplished together in the one being and
life of Jesus Christ. Second, although they are accomplished simultaneously in
the one reconciling act of God, they nonetheless remain distinct. Jesus Christ
as humbled Son of God and exalted Son of Man is one person, but his humiliation
and exaltation do differ. Third, though
not to be confused, justification and sanctification must also be kept
together. If we separate justification from sanctification, we separate God
from man. We separate grace from gratitude, faith from love, forgiveness of
sins from freedom for God. If we separate sanctification from justification, we
separate man from God with opposite but equally destructive consequences.
Finally, justification and sanctification are ordered in relation to one
another in a mutually subordinate manner. Justification is first as the basis
of sanctification while sanctification is first as the goal of justification.
2.
The Holy One and the Saints
Jesus
Christ was and remains fully holy because he wholly offered himself as faithful
covenantal partner of God in free obedience to God. This sanctification has
happened completely only in him. But as our representative, Jesus Christ
accomplished in himself the full turning of man to God. All other forms of
sanctification, whether of Israel, the Church, or eventually the world, are
included in this one direct form and are now determined by it. Too often
Christ’s movement toward us is seen as his act while our movement toward him is
seen as our own. But Jesus Christ is not only the humiliated Son of God but
also the triumphant Son of Man. In his sanctification lies the sanctification
of every human being.
But
how do some people come to participate subjectively in the sanctification of
all people established objectively in Jesus Christ? Christians are people whom
Jesus Christ confronts as their Lord and who, on that basis, are compelled to
understand themselves as his servants. When the Holy One of God so claims them
as the sinners they are for himself, placing them under his kingly direction,
touching them with the quickening power of his Spirit, they participate in his
holiness. His direction thereafter determines their existence instead of sin.
He speaks with divine authority and power and people obey in response.
Servants
in Christ are “disturbed” sinners. They are awakened and therefore troubled in
an inescapable way. God’s kingdom now actively and incessantly challenges their
sloth. They can no longer be smug. In different terms, we may say that
Christians are saints because the direction of Christ their Lord limits and
compromises their being and activity as sinners. But Christ’s direction is
instructive as well as critical. He calls people out of the world and to
himself to be his witnesses back in the world. He gives them total freedom from
the total bondage of sin so that, as disturbed and limited sinners, they may
lift themselves up and look to Christ their Lord.
3.
The Call to Discipleship
Christians
are those to whom Jesus Christ has said, “Follow me.” The call of discipleship
is first the summons through which Jesus claims us as his own servants and
witnesses. This summons is the gracious command and commanding grace of Jesus
Christ our Lord. Second, the call to discipleship makes us loyal to the Lord
who calls us. Third, it means denying ourselves by stepping out cheerfully in
obedience to Jesus Christ’s clear and concrete commands each day. Finally, the
call to discipleship means breaking with the world. Jesus the Victor and victorious presence of
God’s kingdom has conquered all other sources of authority and power in our
world claiming our loyal obedience. We indicate this conquest through visible
acts of loyal obedience to the one true Lord who has freed us from all others.
This always involves the risk of offending others. But our visible
nonconformity is only our happy testimony to others of their liberation as well
in Christ. In the New Testament, free obedience to Jesus was indicated by lack
of attachment to possessions, destruction of fame, abandonment of the use of
force or fear of it, an end to overriding familial relations, even the end to
morality and religion.
4.
Awakening to Conversion
Sanctification
consists both in looking up to Jesus and in walking upward with Jesus in
contradiction to our downward slide into sloth. This looking and walking upward
take place outwardly in the freedom of the call to discipleship. They take
place inwardly in our awakening to conversion. Christians are those whom Christ
has awakened and daily reawakens from the sleep of sloth. This sleep however is
not just slumber but death, so our awakening occurs only by the power of God.
Because the power involved in our awakening is divine, the act itself is wholly
divine; because this act involves our actual waking up and walking, the act
itself is wholly human; so the act is both wholly divine and wholly human, with
the divine being primary.
Conversion
does not mean reform of life, no matter how serious, but its complete renewal.
As slothful creatures in ourselves we move straight downward to death. As new
creatures in Christ awakened to conversion, we stop moving in that direction
and start moving upward toward Christ. This movement of conversion means loving
others in freedom and in love freeing others. Second, our conversion to God
involves the radical renewal of everything we think and imagine, will and
desire, and speak and do in relation to every facet of life. Third, it involves
our enlistment into service as his witnesses with the Church in the world.
Finally, our conversion to God is not a once-in-a-lifetime event, nor a
periodically renewed event, but a daily movement.
In
this daily movement of conversion, we each live in transition from the old
person of yesterday and to the new person of tomorrow. We each live as wholly
determined by sin from the past and as wholly determined by grace from the
future. But we do move from the old and sinful to the new and righteous because
God wholly rejects the old person, delivering it up to eternal death, while
wholly identifying each as a new person taken up into eternal life.
Our
movement of conversion is initiated and sustained by the Holy Spirit. So, to
begin with, conversion is not a choice we accept or reject. It is a decision of
God in which we are set. This decision is liberating but in a most compelling
way. Second, we are set free by the powerful revelation that God is for us and
that therefore we may be for God. It is this truth, the good news of God’s
grace toward us revealed in Jesus Christ by the Spirit, that kills the old and
raises the new. Third, God’s liberating decision to be for us, and our
corresponding decision to be for God, have taken place decisively in Jesus
Christ. All the passages in the New Testament referring to the death of the old
and the raising of the new apply directly to Jesus Christ and then
indirectly—though in truth—to us in him as our Head by the Holy Spirit. Because
the great movement of conversion was fulfilled in his life, we may reflect it a
little even now in our own lives.
5.
The Praise of Works
Works
are actions (and inactions) and their consequences. In general to praise is to
affirm. The praise of works includes both God’s affirmation of them and their
affirmation of God. Works which are praiseworthy in this twofold sense are good
works. Of course it is primarily God who works and whose works are good. God’s
primary work is the history of his covenant with man which attains its goal,
God’s glory and our salvation, in Jesus Christ. Our work is good as it bears
witness to this good work of God. Consequently our works are good insofar as
Jesus Christ is their source, center, and goal despite the fact that we remain
sinners and our works remain sinful. Our works are good, therefore, when by
grace God daily empowers us to work as Christians.
6.
The Dignity of the Cross
Christians
are those ordered by God to bear the cross of Christ in the world. As the cross
was the coronation of Jesus as the one royal man, so with the cross the dignity
which is ours as Christians is conferred upon us.
The
cross of Christ meant his rejection by man and even by God. Our cross can only
be our rejection by some other people. In his crucifixion Christ is exalted as
Lord. In our suffering we are elevated from the fatal sleep of sloth. So our
cross corresponds to the cross of Christ, but in no way does it equal, repeat,
or complete his cross.
Sanctification
is the active participation of our whole being in the call to discipleship, the
awakening to conversion, and the praise of good works. Just because it is this,
sanctification involves the cross. The cross is not pleasant and is neither to
be desired nor sought. What is to be desired and sought above all things,
including preservation of self, is God’s will. As Christians we affirm life
when others abandon it, and abandon life when others cling to it, because we
know it is Jesus Christ himself who determines when we shall die.
In
the New Testament, the cross primarily means persecution. While violence
against Christians is relatively uncommon in America today, we nonetheless
continue to walk the narrow path that, despite all appearances to the contrary,
leads to our rejection by and isolation from a majority of Americans. Second,
because Jesus Christ our Lord suffered as a creature, any suffering as
creatures is suffering with him and therefore a sign of this fellowship.
Finally, the cross comes to us as the sharpest doubt about whether God is
really for us or whether we have really been for God.
Copyright © 2019
by Steven Farsaci.
All rights
reserved. Fair use encouraged.