Notes for Dyn of Grace from “Understanding Grace-driven Sanc.”
Historically, the Church has always found it a battle to keep the doctrines of justification and sanctification joined (and operating in their logical relation). Pietism (an emphasis on private religious devotion) separates the two cardinal doctrines of justification and sanctification; as does quietism (passivity, “Let go and let God”). Legalism (salvation by law-keeping) and antinomianism (turning grace into a license to sin) all mitigate against the unity of justification and sanctification.
Of all the groups in church history, the Puritans seemed to have best understood the essential and practical relationship between justification and sanctification.
As servants of Christ, our anthropology (doctrine of man) ought to reflect an extremely keen insight into the hearts of our hearers. Carnal sense (our natural ‘religious’ instinct) has no trouble understanding moral obligation, ethical responsibility, duty, performance, reward, merit, production, and law, BUT, it requires the ongoing work of God’s Spirit to understand and live by the grace of the gospel. The flesh loves control more than grace.
Only fresh acts of faith in Christ and the gospel can take us off of ourselves and dislodge self from being at the center (even Christians would rather do some work of service than do the work of believing—note Heb 4. Christ was witness to this propensity in hearers; a tendency to work rather than believe. (See Jn 6:27-29).
God has made us His possession that we might know and enjoy Him and in so doing glorify Him—all flows from Christ, our “Source Person.” We are saved to commune with the Trinity and in so doing ultimately realize (that is be transformed into) our true identity in Christ. Grace is a love relationship with our Heavenly Father through Christ our Lord in the power of the Spirit.
Sanctification is the outworking of this love relationship. When the believer maintains his relationship with the Lord, he is living a “separated unto God,” or “sanctified” life. Thus sanctification involves caring for our relationship with God (David Peterson, Possessed by God). Grace is relational throughout.
Ongoing faith in the gospel lets God’s verdict about us (justification) become the “loudest voice in our conscience.” The man who walks in the light of the cross learns to take in the glorious word of justification in Christ as the “loudest verdict” in his conscience. Oh how liberating this is! We’re all too often in a ‘grace-less’ mindset. When in that posture we tend to be overly critical, sensitive, self-protective, and walking on eggshells because the verdict of conscience is suspended upon the opinions of men instead of the verdict of Almighty God (Rom 8:32-34). Many professing believers are virtually undefended against the accusations of the evil one who works to keep the consciences of the saints in a heavy, joyless, and defensive state.
The sin and grace theme concentrated in the gospel is about God actively confronting our sin that we might be brought close to Him who is the source of all life, light, love, and blessedness. The cross brings us down that we might be raised up to live in overflowing gratitude for the “exotic love” inherent in our sonship (1 Jn 3:1).
God’s answer to our excesses, and spiritual lassitude, and propensity for fig leaves is fresh apprehensions of Christ and His grace. Wonder of wonders, as John Owen states in his work, Communion with God, our depravity is a huge point of interface with God. As we take our sin to the Lord and take Christ for our righteousness again and again, we are having communion with the Lord. God is honored—He takes delight in our frequent appropriations of Christ for our entire righteousness. (God’s verdict reckoned is communion with God realized.)
How much this differs from the carnal conclusions of our fleshly minds. When we make efforts to clothe the nakedness of our souls, we always do so at the cost of leaving the cross at the entrance gate of our salvation. It becomes a distant memory instead of a daily present reality for all the needed “bookkeeping” of our consciences with its outstanding accounts and consciousness of guilt.
Ongoing faith in the Gospel provides the motivation to maintain our relationship with the Lord. How do most believers live behind the doors of their souls? They tend to work 100 times harder on their goals and all of the accompanying props and supports of ego than they do upon
maintaining their relationship with the Lord.
If they only knew that what they are seeking (peace, joy, happiness, security, a non-accusing conscience, a sense of intense belonging) are byproducts of walking in close communion with the Lord – literally the dividends of the cross-centered life. (Let us not be afraid to preach the benefits of obedience. Paul spoke of the peace, joy, and hope that redound to the saint who lives a life of faith – Romans 15:13.)
2700 years ago Jeremiah proclaimed that God’s covenant people had a preference for stagnant leaky cisterns instead of the pure, cool fountain of living water found in the Lord (Jer 2:13). Why this preference for the irrational and for false sources? What motivates us to attempt to slake our thirst on bile-colored pond scum instead of the artesian well of God’s love and presence?
The answer is that since the Fall in Eden, men have placed their confidence in what they can control and produce. (God Almighty, through Isaiah diagnosed this penchant for control when He read the hearts of the Jews who were ready to boast, “My idol did them” (Is 48:5). By contrast, the faith that pleases God is self-renouncing—it looks away from self (and self’s desire to control). It looks away from self as a source and instead looks to God’s character, God’s heart, and God’s covenant with us; Christ Himself.
How we must get it into our heads and hearts that God desires to meet with us at the following juncture: God meets us at the cross when we deal with sin His way.
It’s true for the person just converted as well as the saint. When we begin to understand and practice this, then we will be better equipped to preach the vast Gospel theme of sin and grace to a needy people.
God’s infinite grace is full and free, but it is bestowed within the context of conditions produced by God’s Spirit. In His mercy, God grants the ability to repent. The Spirit produces brokenness over personal sin—the convicted man is crushed in his spirit over his lusts and his hurtful sinful patterns of behavior. The cross alone can produce a Spirit-convicted man who desires to leverage himself upon God.
The cross brings the sinner low; it dashes to the ground all human strategies for managing personal depravity. The man brought low abandons all false refuges and hiding places from judgment; he comes clean and owns his guilt. He judges himself worthy of divine judgment; he flees to the atonement. Only then (through this Spirit enabled conviction and repentance) does the “altar” of the cross become the sinner’s treasured everlasting meeting place with God (Heb 13:10ff.).
The Christian comes back to meet God there over and over again. By fresh acts of faith in the message of the cross, we are renewed and we are motivated to maintain our relationship with the Lord. The outcome of maintaining our relationship with the Lord is practical progress in sanctification (Rom 6:22-23).
The “grace” part of our gospel of sin and grace tells us that the cross-centered life demands our full attention. It refuses to be peripheral; it cannot be compartmentalized nor formalized. Life as a living sacrifice calls for universal obedience—every area of life is to be characterized by ongoing conformity to God’s Word.