Sanctification By Grace Through Faith
by Pastor Robert Rhyne
“T
hey are truly beautiful proclaimers of Easter, but shameful preachers of Pentecost. For they preach nothing about the sanctification of the Holy Spirit, only about salvation in Christ.... However, Christ has earned for us not only God’s mercy but also the gift of the Holy Spirit, that we should have not only forgiveness but also an end of sins.
Martin Luther
When I began writing this paper I was excited to share how I had been relieved of workaholism through biblical truths I had learned from Christians in the recovery movement. I had begun to see that today’s talk about “addiction” was a modern way of saying what Jesus said in John 8:34: “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” My scope was simply to offer hope to workaholics: that Jesus can free us from that sinful addiction, as he can free us from any addiction.
But as I wrote, the seed idea grew into a mustard tree casting shade into areas so broad that I could scarcely keep up with the implications. I became convinced that I would have to write a book, but then discovered that the book had already been written, dozens of times. So I contented myself with merely introducing what the interested reader could pursue on his own through some of the books listed in the attached bibliography.
My theme expanded to: Sanctification by Grace through Faith. In the pages that follow I share several ideas which were largely absent from my thinking, preaching and teaching for the first ten years of my ministry, but which I am now trusting and sharing, and which are enabling me to enjoy life and ministry to a truly amazing degree. I’m sharing the hope of Sanctification by Grace through Faith along with Justification by Grace through Faith every time I open my mouth. I look back with regret that gaps and mistakes in my understanding of sanctification have damaged my and my hearers’ grasp also of justification, to say nothing of hindering the daily experience of the new life which is our spiritual birthright. My hope is that, having messed up thoroughly, I can better appreciate the importance of getting it right.
“Sanctification” refers to the Holy Spirit’s “setting apart” of people for God. This setting apart involves first of all what we are, and then what we do. Sometimes sanctification is narrowed down immediately to the performance of good works, but I think it is important to emphasize first of all the believer’s new identity in Christ, and then discuss the new behavior which results. [“God created us as human beings, not human doings!”] The catechism expresses our new identity: “...That I should be his own, and live under him in his kingdom, and serve him....” So sanctification is first something to be enjoyed, and then something to be done.
We are first of all set apart to be his own: to enjoy a relationship with our Creator God. He has related himself to us as a loving Father who accepts us as his sons and daughters in Jesus Christ. He is a heavenly Bridegroom who rejoices over us, his Bride, with singing (Zephaniah 3:17). He has given us a new identity in Jesus (2Cor 5:17). Where we were once identified as poor, miserable sinners in Adam, the sinner; we now bear the identity of God’s children: holy, without blemish, and free from accusation in Christ, the righteous one–even while we still sin. We now live under him in his kingdom: As the sheep of his pasture we draw our life from him; we reign with him as kings and priests. Finally, also, we serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness. “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).
All of these things–including good works–happen by grace through faith. Good behavior in Christ is a product of trusting Christ’s work in us rather than trying to perform in our own strength. Here is good news: God has made provision for us to replace the sinful behavior we hate with the good works we desire. All of us have struggled with besetting sins against which we seem to be powerless. Call them addictions, call them compulsive behaviors, or call them bad habits–we promise God it won’t happen again, we make New Year’s resolutions, we assure our families, but we do it again. Our sin may have to do with alcohol, money, anger, sex, food, power, pride, or (list your own). The only advice humans have to give is, “Try harder.” That doesn’t work, as we all have found. The Apostle Paul was amazed that the Christians in Galatia hadn’t learned the lesson (Galatians 3:3): “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” God’s solution is, “Trust me–I will do it through you.” That does work. Just as in justification we had to trust the work of Jesus for us, so also in sanctification we must trust the work of Jesus in us. This is the doctrine of the “mystical union.” Whether our struggle is with martinis or pornography, this doctrine describes God’s effective, practical solution.
In the pages following I will offer illustration and explanation. If I may be allowed to use my own case as an example, Part One will be an account of what these ideas have done in my own life, and Part Two will describe some of the effects I’ve seen among those I serve. The Scripture which summarizes what I hope to say is Galatians 2:20, (which has become my favorite verse because it says it all): “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Luther comments on this verse (Luther’s Works, Vol. 26, American Edition):
Here Paul clearly shows how he is alive; and he states what Christian righteousness is, namely, that righteousness by which Christ lives in us, not the righteousness that is in our own person. Therefore when it is necessary to discuss Christian righteousness, the person must be completely rejected. For if I pay attention to the person or speak of the person, then, whether intentionally or unintentionally on my part, the person becomes a doer of works who is subject to the Law. But here Christ and my conscience must become one body, so that nothing remains in my sight but Christ, crucified and risen (p. 166).
There is a double life: my own, which is natural or animate; and an alien life, that of Christ in me. So far as my animate life is concerned, I am dead and am now living an alien life. I am not living as Paul now, for Paul is dead. “Who then is living?” “The Christian.” ...Christ is speaking, acting, and performing all actions in him; these belong not to the Paul-life, but to the Christ-life. ...There is a double life, my life and an alien life. By my own life I am not living; for if I were, the Law would have dominion over me and would hold me captive. To keep it from holding me, I am dead to it by another Law. And this death acquires an alien life for me, namely, the life of Christ, which is not inborn in me but is granted to me in faith through Christ (p. 169).
J.P. Koehler, in a comment on Galatians 2:19-20 (The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, NPH, page 67), summarizes what I hope to say:
We are not to imagine that a holy life has not been provided for and that we must now lend a helping hand with the Law. The Gospel has abolished the Law, not in order that we might keep on sinning merrily, but in order that we may live to God. And this Christ does in us.
I.
Christians believe that they have been saved wholly and solely by the finished work of Christ. Unhappily, however, many believers think that the practical Christian life of obedient service to God, which follows as a fruit of justification, is a product of self-effort. This “try hard” approach to sanctification may not be embraced consciously, but it is assumed–perhaps by default due to our inherent legalism (opinio legis)–in practice. As Luther warned above, when we are focused on Christian behavior as something we perform in ourselves, we become doers of works subject to the law. The law, of course, arouses the sinful nature, and our obedience comes harder and harder. We then become discouraged by our failures and feel condemned by the law. We may then even begin to question whether we were ever justified.
May I illustrate from my own experience? From the time I transitioned to an adult faith at college in 1972 until the time I entered my first call in 1981, I lived “under grace,” enjoying the fact that I had been saved by the finished work of Christ. When I read the Bible for the first time in 1972 it was like having the light turned on in my life after the vague liberalism I had fallen into. I found out for sure that I was loved by God, that heaven was real, and that my Father had a purpose for my life. I had never known such joy. A cold, empty spot in my chest had been filled up with God’s love. I couldn’t get enough of Bible reading and study. My years in Seminary were wonderful because my responsibilities were so clear: learn the Bible and related subjects as thoroughly as possible so as to share the information in a parish–the very thing I was eager to do.
But when I began serving my first call in 1981 things changed. I became very self-conscious in my Christian life. This is perhaps a special danger for those in the public ministry, though certainly not limited to us. Somehow, sharing the gospel was not the natural, joyful occupation it had been during my “non-professional” days. The Great Commission fell on me like a ton of bricks and overwhelmed me. It became a law over me, coercing me, condemning me. I came to feel totally responsible for the faith, the behavior, the performance, and even the emotions of the thirty communicant members of my two congregations. I also felt vaguely responsible to add to that number every person within a hundred miles. To attack this impossible goal I used all the inadequate resources of my “self.” I became a performer, a fixer, a rescuer, a controller. As I became more and more self-conscious I found that for my happiness I was torturously dependent upon my members’ approval of me. Finally I became a workaholic, addicted to the institutions I was trying to build, and very much cut off from the “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” which are the matters of the kingdom of God (Romans 14:17). My main emotions for my first eight years in the ministry were anger and fear. Fear that I would not at all times and in every way please my congregations and God; anger because I was slaving away with little help and little result.
How was life for my wife at this time? She was extremely patient outwardly and extremely angry inwardly. She sat at home evenings acutely in need of my time while I was out counseling members who were not a fraction as troubled. From time to time she would try to tell me what my family needed, but she was speaking to an addict in denial. I don’t remember this, but she tells me I would walk away when she tried to speak to me of my neglect of my family. There were always plenty of good reasons why I had to do exactly whatever it was I was doing. And after all, I was doing it all “for God.” My work was out of control and my life was unmanageable.
Christmas of 1984 I took on another addiction which provided some escape from my workaholism: I bought a VCR. It’s difficult to describe the weird sense of well-being I experienced when I took some time out from the day’s schedule to peruse the video store, and had a movie on hand to watch at the end of the day. The entire process of planning to rent a movie, selecting it, and then watching it, acted as a drug for me. And like a drug addict, I would be irritable and miserable if I didn’t get my fix on schedule. The recreation of renting and watching a movie, innocent in itself, became for me a process addiction I could not control. (There are substance addictions and process addictions.) I even had recurring dreams, practically every night, of selecting movies to rent. In a check list for addictive behaviors, every single item was true of me and my videos. Along with watching the movies, it was a rare night that I didn’t have at least one Manhattan or a couple of beers. I would have felt uncomfortable if the refrigerator had been unstocked.
During all this time I was outwardly doing a creditable job of pastoring. My sermons and Bible classes were well liked by my congregations; membership grew at an average rate. Some people came to faith. But I was miserable in my work and daily wondered whether there might be some way out of it.
In January of 1991 a shift began which changed everything. I learned about “Christ-in-me,” the doctrine of the mystical union. I learned the truth expressed in Galatians 2:20, explained thoroughly in Romans 6-8, that I had been crucified with Christ and the resurrected Christ wanted to live through me. It was so simple: if only I would give up striving in my own energy and trust Jesus who indwelled me through the Holy Spirit, he would do it all.[1] Since then I have begun to experience in my personal life what Paul says: “Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Galatians 5:16). In my ministry I have begun to experience what Paul describes as “serving in the new way of the Spirit” (Romans 7:6) and “struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:29). Since January of ‘91 I have felt as though I was on vacation, retired, but have accomplished more than before. It’s because I quit; I gave up. My need for nightly videos evaporated, my need for the approval of those I serve was replaced (to a great degree) by the gracious assurance of Christ’s approval. I’ve developed an appreciation for Sharp’s Non-Alcoholic Brew. I’ve discovered countless other works of the flesh in my life which I never knew about and of which I can now repent (a life-long process). I discovered what it meant to live under grace and not under law.
I’ll never forget one night that January, lying beside one of the kids on the bed after reading them a bed-time story, and feeling perfectly at peace. I wasn’t in a rush to start a movie, I wasn’t looking forward to a beer, I didn’t feel guilty about not being at my desk. I was, for the first time in years, content to be where I was, what I was, when I was. I wasn’t straining into the future, I was focused in the present, silently praising God.
It wasn’t that I personally had changed or improved, nor had I arrived at some higher stage of Christianity. I had simply learned the implications of the fact that Jesus had been living in me from the time I was brought to faith. As I began to trust Jesus in me to live his life through me, I began to experience it. Conversely, whenever I fail to trust him, reverting to self-effort, I am quickly reminded that in myself I’m the same powerless sinner I ever was. A new life of obedience is not the result of an improved life, but rather of an exchanged life: “not I but Christ” (Gal 2:20). Boasting is therefore excluded as emphatically in the realm of sanctification as it is in justification (Romans 3:27).[2]
The key to enjoying Christ’s power in us is by rejecting our own fleshly efforts. Luther speaks of how it is through “surrendering entirely to Christ” that we experience all that is ours in Christ (What Luther Says, Vol. II, p. 657, par. 2028, Concordia, 1959):
If you desire to attain the true holiness which avails before God, you must utterly despair of yourself and rely on God alone; you must surrender[3] yourself entirely to Christ and must accept him in such a way that everything he has is yours and that what you have is his. For thus you begin to burn with love divine and become an entirely different person, born completely anew. Your inner being will then be entirely changed.
An illustration I find helpful is my first encounter with a self-driven power mower. I had been hired to do a man’s yard work. He provided the mower. I had used power mowers before, but never a self-driven one. After one circuit around the large lawn I was exhausted. I decided to go to the door and tell the man there was something wrong with his mower. But when I stopped pushing I found that the mower kept traveling, and actually began pulling me! The trouble, of course, was that I had been trying to go faster than the mower was geared to go. When I gave up forcing it, it took over and provided the progress. The same is true with our Christian lives. Christ is living in us with his power ready to provide the progress when we give up. Another illustration would be when I first learned to swim. I grew tired some distance from the side of the pool and began to panic that I wasn’t going to make it. I kicked and moved my arms with all the energy I had, but it wasn’t enough. Suddenly I struck my foot on the bottom of the pool. It wasn’t as deep as I had thought, and I could stand on the bottom with my head above water. In the same way, Jesus is there to keep our heads above water as soon as we quit our thrashing about.