John came to college as a self-professed atheist, which made his appearance at the small campus Christian fellowship something of a curiosity. He had grown up without any religious background and wanted to know what the whole Christianity thing was about. John did the same for the other religious groups at the school. This voyeurism soon turned to devotion. He went to every meeting, every retreat, every bible study he could. In a matter of weeks, the atheist label he once wore proudly was soon exchanged for another: Christian.
I was a sophomore watching all this unfold and having a real convert to Christianity brought a sense of excitement to the Christian fellowship. But what happened to John next followed an all too familiar pattern. Having become a Christian, John graduated to the real work of Christianity. He was soon pressured by upperclassmen to dump his non-Christian girlfriend. He was told to mine his heart for sinful attitudes and bludgeoned with doctrines like predestination. As quickly as John became a Christian, his devotion faded into agnosticism. The whole drama struck me as a cruel bait and switch.
If you’ve been around Christians long enough, you’ll eventually hear about some form of sanctification. The good news preached to the world morphs into the discipline of the Christian maturity. The gospel gives way to Law. “It is not enough to have just plain ordinary faith” Gerhard Forde observed, “we must be possessed of ‘real.’ ‘true,’ sincere,’ ‘heartfelt,’ ‘experienced’ faith.”[1] If faith can be likened to a mustard seed, it will either grow or die. You’re either becoming more holy (sanctified) or backsliding into apostacy. Onward and upward.
It’s easy to see sanctification as a Christian form of the self-optimization quest found in the wellness scams and the entrepreneurism of the business world. The idea behind both is largely the same: that there is a version of yourself who is capable (and should) run at max capacity. The fully optimized life depends on “life-hacks” designed to make simple tasks easier. A term, Oliver Burkeman notes, that presumes, “your life is best thought of as some kind of faulty contraption, in need of modification so as to stop it from performing suboptimally.”[2] An optimized life attempts to unshackle yourself from your foibles and the things that hold you back and get the most out of your programming.
Along the same lines, Christians often moralize otherwise morally neutral activities, all according to a loosely-defined understanding of (Americana) wisdom. Afternoon naps are a sign of laziness. Video games are for children (if that!). Certain life events, like marriage or having children, are best forestalled until one achieves a level of maturity and financial independence. In the name of Christian growth, everything in life qualifies as either a help or a hindrance toward personal holiness.
The abundance of regulations introduced to the Christian after conversion principally arises from notions of progress in the Christian life, what is often termed “sanctification.” You are a sinner now and sanctified perfection is the goal toward which you must strive, stepwise, in an gradual process of greater sanctity.
It might be a surprise to hear that Jesus didn’t really teach about sanctification. You might even say he was weak on sanctification. To him, one either had faith or one didn’t. Throughout his ministry, there’s little sense that the Christian life is one of constant self-optimization toward holiness. The disciples either followed him on the way or they abandoned him altogether. The quality of one’s faith was of little concern to him; faith’s mere presence entailed a dynamism that did not need to be regulated. When Jesus likened faith to a mustard seed, he did so to illustrate that the impossible can be accomplished by such a small thing (Mt 17:20). The word that falls on good soil produces an abundance of harvest (Mk 4:8). The word that fell elsewhere was not received in faith.
To Jesus, one is or is not a Christian. No one can serve two masters. There is no in-between, half-sanctified, faulty contraption in need of minor modification. The movement Jesus started was one of conversion, of repentance and radical transformation marked by a break from one’s past and the joining an alternative community. One might say death and resurrection. The issue isn’t whether Jesus preached about rules (he had a great deal to say about church life). Particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus preached a kind of communal perfection that exceeded the rigor of his Jewish contemporaries alongside repeated teachings about not judging your neighbor and the need for extravagant forgiveness.
But if Jesus is right (ha), then the issue of sin in the Christian life has everything to do with the either/or presence or absence of faith. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit. The difference between the two trees, or how a sinner becomes faithful, depends upon Jesus’ own work as a physician sent to heal the sick in body and spirit. The kind of sanctification Jesus seems to have envisioned has far less to do with personal progress toward sanctity and much more to do with sin and restoration. The very kind of restoration experienced by the disciples themselves, who abandoned or denied Jesus when he was arrested, only to have Jesus appear to his apostate followers after his resurrection.
Where there is sin, faith is rekindled anew by a return to the grace and forgiveness of God that never left us.
“Grace,” Gerhard Forde says elsewhere, “does not call on the old self … to somehow traverse a new way. It announces him who is the Way.” In doing so, it brings life where there was death, faith where there was none. Sanctification does not look, feel, or count as progressive holiness. It is the word of forgiveness given over and over again, no bait and switch necessary.
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[…] realize that they are failing at their job. What does the work of sanctification is the word of forgiveness spoken over us again and again despite our earthbound […]