Where we discuss sanctification, progressive or a gift; early church views on holiness; sanctification and morals; Stephen’s message on Israel’s failure; Pharisees and sinners; Jesus and his Father; self-examination; the Open Heaven; the body of Christ.

December 8, 2024

Tim: We are in Hebrews 12 where the author is giving us general exhortations. In verse 14 he tells us:

¹⁴ Pursue peace with all people, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. 

This is an interesting verse as it is pivotal in the debate about sanctification or holiness. The debate can be summarized: “Is sanctification progressive, achieved by effort over a lifetime, or is it a gift that comes through Christ? If it’s the former, then there is work to be done; if it’s the latter, we don’t labor to be sanctified, and it is not progressive.

Hal: I don’t see anywhere in scripture where progressive sanctification is taught. Where do they get the idea because it sounds like a belief in works.

Tim: This has been a conundrum that started not too long after the first century. In my opinion, it started with the corruption of the Gospel where, in the church, certain people are allotted extra holiness because of their position or lifestyle. For instance, if a man remained celibate, he would be regarded as more holy than a man who was married. If a woman refuses marriage and remains a virgin, she is thought to be spiritually superior to women who marry and give birth.

This kind of thinking is expanded so that bishops, priests, and nuns would be considered more holy or more anointed than those who are not. They are considered closer to God, and they were given more authority within the church hierarchy. The message to others was, “If you want to achieve this level of closeness to God, you need to work harder and sacrifice more.”

Dwight: it also has to do with how you define sin. The old group we met with defined everything in terms of morals. Sanctification progressed by their morals improving, having fewer bad thoughts or being less angry. That makes sanctification progressive by default and changes the Gospel.

Heather: I hope this doesn’t offend anyone; my husband comes from a Jehovah’s witness background and, for some reason, they always had a rift with the Baptists. They accused the Baptists of just being Sunday morning Christians. I’m not familiar with Baptists, so I was just wondering.

Roger: That attitude is in every denomination.

Hal: It’s not just the Baptists, it’s everyone! My dad used to tell me he was raised in a Catholic school in New Jersey. He would tell me those Catholic boys would come to confession on Saturday, go to church on Sunday, then start the week sinning all over again.

Heather: Sinning is fun! (Laughter)

Tim: It does depend on how we understand the concept of sin. If we look at concepts like “falling from grace” (Galatians 5:4) or “sinning willfully” (Hebrews 10:26), they are traditionally defined in terms of morals and behavior. If you’re going to church, then you start slipping, carousing and stuff like that, the Baptists would say that you have “fallen from grace” or that your engaged in “continual sinning” as mentioned in Hebrews.

This misses the whole context of these writings! In the contexts where Paul speaks of “falling from grace” or “continual sinning,” the warnings or scoldings are for people who are living in the liberty of grace going back and adopting the self-righteous ritual religion of the Judaizers. The Judaizers preached that righteousness in Christ was not sufficient, so they needed to adopt circumcision and faithfulness to the customs of Moses.

Heather: So, it was a teaching that said, “I’m better than you because I do this…”

Tim: That sums it up. We have seen this in Isaiah 65 where the people had adopted an attitude which said, “Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am holier than you!” (Isaiah 65:5) This attitude creates the rift between the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, and the tax collectors and sinners. In the theology of the Pharisee, the sinners were not welcomed into the presence of God and should keep to themselves.

One of the mysteries of the Gospel that I’m still working through is, “How is it that the legalists can be very strict and rigid in keeping the laws and the rituals, but for some reason they still fall short of being people of high moral values?” Jesus was continually calling them out for breaking their word or foreclosing on widow’s houses. Their attention to legalistic details did not make them better people!

Peter recognized this and expressed that this was a burden that neither they nor their fathers were able to bear (Acts 15:10). Israel’s history is a story of the failure of Old Covenant religion. It was the main theme of Stephen’s sermon recorded in Acts 7. He expounds on the regular failure of the Fathers and their rebellion against God’s ways.

Before Stephen gave the invitation, he pointed to everyone that brought him to trial and said they were doing exactly like their fathers did! Instead of hundreds coming to the front to give their life to Jesus, they got angry and executed him. The point is that when you give yourself to this self-righteous type of religion or an “I’m better than you” attitude, you never seem to rise to being an exemplary moral example.

Heather: So, you’re not living in love?

Tim: It’s more the result of what you said earlier in having that “I’m better than you” attitude. When we watch Jesus interact with the scribes and the Pharisees, we noticed that he does not commend them for their way of life. We do not see Jesus saying to them, “Good job guys! You are really making a difference with all those sacrifices and Sabbath-keeping. Keep up the good work in calling out sin!”

He’s more like, “You guys pour your heart into the little things like tithing and public prayers, but then you go and foreclose on widows and weasel out of your contracts.” Matthew 23 is one whole chapter devoted to pointing out these things. Still, the religious leaders would argue that they are the true children of God.

Jesus reaches out to the tax collectors and sinners, the outcasts of the culture who are condemned by the religious elites for their lack of morality. The story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1 ff.) still astounds me! He has one dinner with Jesus, and he is totally transformed in his morals.

The “Woman Who Was a Sinner” (Luke 7:36 ff.) knew something about Jesus that motivated her to wash his feet with her tears and used her hair to dry them. The Pharisee host was silently judging Jesus for letting this woman touch him, but she is the one who is transformed at the end of the day, not him. There is something about the message of the Gospel that is missed in institutional churches. If the Gospel was truly preached, you would have a community that is far more interested in loving one another than in judging one another.

Heather: It’s almost like if you show the world whatever you’ve done wrong and you work on yourself to make yourself better, that would be showing love to others because you’ve worked on yourself.

Tim: The two great commandments is to love God first, then the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. If we are going to move forward in life to be examples of the Gospel virtues, we must start, not with faith in Christ, but what I like to call the faith of Christ. This is simply where Christians believe about themselves what Jesus believed about himself. Jesus heard the voice from heaven saying to him, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). If Jesus believed this about himself, then this statement should be considered true about us as well.

The Gospel calls us to start with the Father’s relationship with his son, Jesus. The confession of the Christian should be, “As Jesus was the son of his Father and was his beloved child, and if he is well pleased with him, then that stands true for me as well. He is also well pleased with me in every aspect.”

In John 17, Jesus is praying that the glory the Father gave him would be passed on to his followers. This glory states that Jesus dwelt in the presence of his Father and there was no sin between them. There was no sin to confess and there was no work to be done to please the Father. This is the beginning of the Gospel where we confess that we have the faith of Christ. What Jesus believed about the Father is the same faith we adopt for ourselves.

If we hold the truth that Jesus’ Father loved him intently, then we also hold the truth that the Father loves us intently. We love ourselves, not on the basis of what the people around us think but based on what the Heavenly Father thinks about Jesus. Others around us may despise us or think we are losers, but the Gospel points us to the heavenly voice that spoke to Jesus to embrace what he heard.

I think this is what transformed the tax collectors and sinners. Jesus’ teachings were reversing everything they had heard from the scribes and Pharisees. Every word they heard from the religious leaders were words of condemnation proclaiming God’s curse upon them.

If Jesus was forceful the scribes and Pharisees over their legalism, I believe he was equally forceful – compassionately so – in telling the tax collectors and the sinners, “Stop listening to those guys! Whatever those guys have been telling you, you must completely wipe it from your minds, because that is not from God and that does not represent your heavenly Father.” This is the glory that the Father gave him and he was passing that along to the outcasts.

Jesus declared a oneness with his Father, and that oneness is shared by those to whom he gives his glory. We become unified in what the Father believes about us; that if his love embraces me, that it embraces you too. Zacchaeus heard the beauty of this and determined that he could not go on living the way he had been. He said, “I must get out there and enrich somebody else’s life! If the Father thinks I’m that valuable, then I want to go to others and pass that value on to them.”

Heather: I don’t see a lot of that anywhere today.

Tim: No, the message of guilt and fear is far more common. The message that “you haven’t been doing enough” is more the theology of progressive sanctification.

Ron: It seems to me that we don’t have any more ability to judge ourselves than to judge anyone else.  We can discuss what is wrong and what is sin, but should we have the ability to put that on ourselves because then we would judge ourselves?

Tim: That’s an interesting point because if we take it upon ourselves to judge ourselves, are we in agreement with God about that judgement? There are many traditions in evangelicalism that encouraged extensive self-examination. The problem with this is that we can always find something rotten within ourselves, or we can go into our past and dredge up old stuff.

 There is a real version of us and there is a movie version. We watched the movie Captain Phillips last night. Excellent movie, very intense! In the movie Captain Phillips, portrayed by Tom Hanks, is portrayed as being self-sacrificing toward his crew. He begged the pirates leave his men alone and take him. I read some trivia about the movie and in real life the crew described Captain Phillips as being arrogant and condescending to them. He was kind of a jerk.

Debbie: Nobody wanted to sail with him.

Tim:  Right! He was a hero in the movie, but a jerk in real life. I think this is the way Jesus saw the scribes and Pharisees. They had an inflated view of their own goodness as in the example of the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector. The pharisee heaped a lot of praise on himself thanking God that he was not like others, especially that tax collector. Self-righteousness will always distort what we are truly like.

So, the problem with self-examination is that we are not always honest with ourselves. We can dredge up junk to stroke our egos, or we can amplify guilt, fear, and shame. When Paul talked about examining yourself to see if you are in the faith, I don’t think he means examining your works and judging yourself by that. What he means is to examine yourself to make sure you are resting in the righteousness of Christ alone. In Christ, God’s judgment upon us will always be, “Not guilty!”

This is one of my reasons to reject progressive sanctification. Judging yourself according to your works or morals is setting yourself up to fail. Institutional Christianity has hardwired us to believe we will never measure up to God’s holiness without works. When you examine yourself in the light of Christ and you are depending upon his righteousness to be your righteousness. The judgment in Christ should always be that we say to ourselves, “I am not guilty; I am acquitted before my Father and righteous in his sight. I have no sin because Christ has removed it.”

Ron: I’ve never heard this taught in church and my point is that I was taught that you need to examine yourself and condemn yourself.

Dwight: That’s why preaching the Gospel to yourself every day is essential! That self-examination should reveal that I’m in Christ and blameless.

Ron: I agree! I think we should just appreciate ourselves and that after examination we are right before God in Christ.

Tim: Exactly! When Paul said, “Test yourselves to see if you’re in the faith; examine yourselves!” (2 Corinthians 13:5) he was simply saying that we should preach the Gospel to ourselves.

Heather: The whole point of judging ourselves or examining ourselves brings up a judgmental voice about us. You’re saying God wants us to look at ourselves as equal to Christ. That’s usually not what we think about Christ, so what are we thinking about?

Tim: There is a concept I’ve read by some theologians called the “open heaven.” We sometimes read this concept in the New Testament. For instance, when Jesus was baptized and came up out of the water, we are told, “…behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the spirit of God descending as a dove and settling on him” (Matthew 3:16). It was at this time the voice of God spoke to Jesus saying, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.”

In the next chapter, Matthew 4:1-11 narrates the temptations of Christ. It describes Jesus as being in the wilderness, but I think that’s metaphorical because, in one scenario, we find him at the pinnacle of the temple. The devil here (or the “malicious slanderer” as the Greek word diabolos actually means), are the scribes and the Pharisees, the ones who challenged Jesus by sneering at him, “If you are the son of God…”

In the context of these temptations, it’s important to remember that Jesus had just come from hearing his Father affirm his love to him from the opened heavens. Jesus clung to the truth of that voice and overcame the devil’s sneering accusations. When we enter the wilderness of Old Covenant or legalistic religion, we overcome accusations by embracing the word of Christ in the Gospel over the legalists.

Valori: It’s a matter of seeing who is in control; God or man.

Tim:  Yes! To whom will we listen in those situations? Another example of the open heaven is Stephen after his sermon. Just before he was executed, he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the son of man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). Stephen is standing in two worlds. The one world is infuriated with him ready to kill him; the other world sees his Lord standing at the right hand of God ready to receive him. In the one world, the people are raging against him they’re calling him a blasphemer; and the other, Jesus is demonstrating honor to him.

Earth and heaven are communicating two contrasting messages to Stephen. To which message was Stephen listening? Which message governed his spirit? This scenario gives life to Jesus’ prayer, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). We will hear the testimonies of those on earth who might slander and condemn us, but this is not the message we would hear when the heavens opened.

As Dwight pointed out earlier, when we preach the Gospel to ourselves, we are preaching the realities of heaven. Those realities we’ll likely conflict with the realities of earth. Earth may deride you saying, “If you are really God’s child…,” while heaven will affirm, “In Jesus, you are indeed!”

Valori: Is there a legitimate place where we examine ourselves for our behavior?

Tim: Good question! In this case, we turn our attention to the second commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The question for self-examination is not, “Am I pleasing to God,” but “Am I loving my neighbor as I should?”

Heather: Like I mentioned earlier, we have a hard time acting in love.

Tim: That’s human nature. It’s not unnatural to feel homicidal towards family or others in the world. We are all familiar with experiences in our relationships where we want to retaliate or strike back had a wrong done to us.

Heather: You wouldn’t want me to carry through with my thoughts unless you’re willing to come visit me in prison.

Tim: I get it! This is a good line of discussion where we need to be wise in our relationships with one another and how we treat one another in love.

Roger: I’ve been thinking about Philippians 2:3-4 where Paul says, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”

This isn’t saying never look out for your own interests. Being also concerned about the interests of others is not an easy thing. It does not mean to let yourself be used as a doormat, and it doesn’t mean to beat up on yourself or let somebody else emotionally beat on you.

This is opposite of the attitude of the Pharisees. They believed they were more important than anyone else and they could justify foreclosing on widows’ houses. It is totally opposite of Christ, but it also reflects modern Christianity where you are supposed to sacrifice for your church and for others. There is a balance to be considered.

Hal: The word “others” at the end of that verse has no modifier, so “others” doesn’t have to be a part of our fellowship. It could be whoever I run into in my daily routine. That’s one of the hardest things about the Gospel and it’s why we need Jesus.

Tim: We’re hindered a lot by institutional religion that expects us to expend energy in support of the institution to be pleasing to God. The best illustration is Martin Luther who complained that his church made loving God very difficult. Getting into the good graces of God was not easy and it didn’t leave a lot of time to love others.

Luther was so frustrated in his church-fueled efforts to please God that he broke down in that moment of honesty and admitted that it drove him to actually hate God. If his religion caused him to hate God, what do you think would be his attitude to his neighbor?

Valori: That’s one of the problems with progressive sanctification. You forget about other people because you must focus on your own spiritual well-being.

Tim: The old Baptist revival meetings were a good example of how much work you had to do to get to God. Sermons usually emphasized your failings and there was a lot of manipulation to get people to the front. This was necessary so the evangelist could report to his base to keep the money coming in. This may sound cynical, but I heard an evangelist who admitted this. He knew the invitation system wasn’t biblical, but the optics of people coming down the aisle had nothing to do with the Gospel but made a greater impression on his donors. Billy Graham’s invitations were carefully choreographed.

Heather: It sounds sadistic to me that they want to have people sobbing and fearful.

Tim: I know that every ministry is not like this, but I lived through a lot of it in my younger days. At the end of a Gospel message, the only decision anyone should make is that God is faithful and they are infinitely loved by the Father through Jesus Christ. That is our strength rather than knowing how wretched and sinful we are.

Going back to the question from Valori, if the work of Jesus was to create a community of love, then it is good that we examine ourselves in our behavior toward one another. We should ask ourselves if our behavior toward our brothers and sisters is loving and if it builds them up in their faith that God loves them.

Roger: We should not motivate people by fear of judgment but by the love of God.

Tim: I keep thinking back on the Zacchaeus where his attitude would be, “If I’m this valuable to the heavenly Father then how do I turn around and pass that value on to someone else?”

Ron: God’s love is demonstrated through people who show his love to one another.

Tim: I think that’s profoundly true! Musicians had written songs about how you are the hands of God and the voice of God to others. I think if someone questions the love of God, maybe it’s because the entity that calls itself “church” has failed in preaching and demonstrating that God is love. Perhaps they spend more time preaching fear, guilt, and condemnation than they do that God is love. No wonder people are skeptical about the love of God.

Heather: We should strive to be selfless.

Tim: To an extent.

Valori: Once, when I took one of my sick children to the doctor, he looked at me and knew I had the same sickness. He told me to take care of myself first so I would be able to care for my child. I think God calls us to take care of ourselves so we can love others. That’s loving one another as we love ourselves.

Tim: We worked with a couple in Pagosa Springs who’s ministry was to work with ministers experiencing burnout. The statistics on burned out ministers are astounding! Men and women who give themselves to minister to others generally don’t do a very good job of looking out for themselves.

Roger: I’m reminded of a story about the little child who was frightened during a lightning storm. She told her mom that she was afraid and would she come and comfort her. The mother told her to not worry, that Jesus is with her. After some time of silence, the little child said, “Mom, I want comfort with skin on it.”

Tim: I think this conversation is crucial even though we are rehashing some things from before. Once we grasp the purpose of Christ’s work on earth and what it was intended to do, it liberates us from this idea of progressive sanctification. His work was meant to liberate us from a religion that brought fear and guilt and free us to a life of liberty and cleansing of the conscience. In this condition, we can love others the way God wants us to.

Lynn: One key is remembering that we’re not all exactly alike. We don’t all have the same gifts. I can’t tell you how many times I felt I was failing because I couldn’t give someone the counsel they needed. I felt I didn’t have as much empathy as others, so I felt guilty and felt like a failure.

Tim: I think there has been too little attention to the idea of the Gospel and community. The Gospel defines the nature of a community. 1 Corinthians 12, which is the classic passage about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, really defines the character of the community.

One of the main takeaways from that chapter is that we are not all the same, and that is natural within the community. He presents both sides of the picture that we are many members but one body (v. 20). He displays the other side which says we are one body but many members (v. 14). Further, we are not all eyes, or feet, or hands. We’re not supposed to treat each other like we have identical abilities.

I think the idea is that if we give ourselves time with one another and stick together with one another through good times and bad, we will grow in strength with one another. It’s ludicrous to think that in a couple of weeks taking a couple of classes that someone is considered qualified to be a functioning member of the body. Spiritual maturity is a lifetime endeavor.

Some mature quickly while others are much slower. Sticking with one another in love and patience is how we both run and finish the race.