“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
- Philippians 4:4 NIV
Last month, we looked at the New Birth and ended with a promise to continue our consideration about what comes after that New Birth. We do that this month.
The term associated with this phase of the Christian life is “sanctification.” It is the process by which we are made holy. When we speak about “Scriptural Holiness,” this is ultimately what we are talking about. It is the process by which, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are made to be more and more like Christ.
This connection with Christ is crucial. Sanctification and Holiness are not fuzzy or unclear ideas that we can fill with whatever we want. That is to say, it is not simply “being a good person,” doing certain things, or avoiding certain things. It is about speaking, acting, and being more and more like how Jesus would be, speak, and act, if he were in your place with your background, gifts, and skills. If we ever treat holiness as if it is mostly about doing this or that, or not doing this or that, we weaken the connection between holiness and Jesus. This connection must be preserved because any would-be holiness that is not connected to Christ is necessarily a kind of legalism, not true holiness.
This is one of the crucial distinctive aspects of the Wesleyan tradition. It isn’t that nobody else in church history has felt that sanctification is important; however, many Protestants focus so much on justification, or “being forgiven,” that sanctification can seem like an afterthought. By contrast, Wesley felt that it was the whole point of the Christian life. Comparing “religion” (by which he meant Christian faith) to a house, Wesley wrote: “Our main doctrines, which include all the rest, are three, that of repentance, of faith, and of holiness. The first of these we account, as it were, the porch of religion; the next, the door; the third, religion itself.” (Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained; VI.4)
The traditional Protestant distrust of “works” is reasonable. Today, just like in the 16th century, there is a temptation to think that God accepts us because we do more good than bad, or for some other reason that focuses on what we do. It was important to re-center the importance of trust in Christ. Indeed, even with sanctification and holiness, it isn’t really something that we achieve with our hard work. It is letting God live God’s life in us and through us more and more (Galatians 2:20). However, we do have a role to play in this growth in holiness.
Jesus frequently compares us to plants, to trees that bear fruit. The thing about living things is that they grow. Living plants grow and also bear fruit. The only way for a plant to not bear its fruit is if it is either dead or else unhealthy in some significant way. Further, though a farmer cannot force a plant to grow if it is not healthy, they can ensure they set things up for success. They can make sure the seed is good before planting, make sure the soil is ready, make sure that the ground is fertilized, make sure the weeds are pulled, and make sure that insects and fungus don’t take hold. Much work can be done. In fact, the farmer who refuses to do the work that they can do will almost certainly end up without a crop.
This is important because people sometimes act as if the fact that God is the one who sanctifies us means that we cannot do anything or even that we should not do anything. The scripture, with its persistent calls for holiness, wouldn’t make much sense if there was nothing for us to do. However, the things we do are like the work of the farmer. We cannot force the growth, but we can get obstacles out of the way, we can guard against things, influences, and habits that interrupt the growing process.
The crop analogy is particularly apt. Things don’t happen, in general, on a timeline of days but of weeks, months, and years. If the land has not been tended to, if crops are grown without nourishing the soil with fertilizer, the crops will decrease in their yield. Not overnight, but over time. In the same way, if the land has been neglected, steps can be taken to prepare it to be fruitful again, but you aren’t going to get it there overnight.
The Wesleyan stress on sanctification and holiness is sometimes, then and now, claimed to be a kind of “works righteousness,” but nothing could be further from the truth. If we are seeking to be saved by our works, what we are hoping for is that by doing the right things, regardless of our relationship with Jesus, God will accept us because of those works. What Wesley was talking about were the fruits of faith, the things that naturally spring out of a life of faith. However, because this holiness and sanctification is indeed the natural result of faith, it was important that we do indeed grow in holiness. To continue to identify as a Christian indefinitely without growing in holiness is, in the Wesleyan tradition, a contradiction in terms. You don’t need fruit to be loved by God; you don’t need good works to be accepted by God. However, if you continue as a Christian, you must begin to bear fruit and have that fruit grow over time.
Some readers might be thinking, “Now hold on a minute. What if someone comes to faith at the end of their lives? What if they have neither time nor opportunity to show fruit?” That set of circumstances is certainly possible, and Wesley would say that a person in that situation is surely saved without any fruit.
That being said, this situation is probably less common than we might think. After all, the thief on the cross came to trust in Jesus in the final moments of his life, nailed in place and actively dying, and even he could bear witness to Jesus and his victory over the sin of humanity (Luke 23:39-43). We sometimes say “I didn’t have a chance” when what we mean to say is that we did not take the chance. If you have been a Christian for any length of time and your life is indistinguishable from what your life would be like without Jesus, it is crucial that you recommit yourself to Christ, repent, and believe the gospel.
Think about what it would mean if we could really be Christians without God transforming our lives. It would mean that we can be putting our trust in Christ, being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, God himself, and obeying by grace the commands of God, all without any fruit becoming manifest. It is true that this growth may not always happen as fast as it should, or as fast as we might like it to, but it must happen, or else it raises the question as to whether we really do trust Christ, whether we really do have the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us, and whether we really do want to obey God.
To put it simply, Wesley taught that if we do not have some evidence that our lives have been changed and are found in Christ, it is hard to say that we are actually saved. This brings us up to the topic for next month, where we will consider what it means to be assured of our salvation in this life.
