Sanctification--a few thoughts

1.  Sanctification is occurring if you see yourself as more and more sinful.  The only person who can see sanctification in you is someone else, and it has to be someone who's known you for a while.  Sanctification is about change.  I may not seem sanctified to those who meet me now.  But those who've known me for years remark about positive changes in me.  Yet, I see myself more and more as a sinner.  I am much more in touch with my motivations--most of which are selfish.  Becoming more and more acquainted with my selfish motivations does lead to change, over time, but ONLY if you feel forgiven for those sins.  This is where grace comes in.  Grace is the fuel of sanctification.

2.  You can't approach sanctification "head on."  You can't view the law as a good way to live.  If you do, those who tend towards self-righteousness (like me) will compare themselves to others and feel better about themselves.  For those who tend towards self-judgment (like Debbie), they will compare themselves to others and despair.  However, as you know more and more about the love of God for His created beings, change actually occurs.  As you come to understand God's boundless love and grace for you, you begin to exhibit love and grace towards others.  Grace is intoxicating--it can't be held in, held back, or squashed.  True 100% grace is infectious.

3.  Gerhard Forde--"True antinomianism is watering the law down so that we can keep it."

4.  Jesus didn't water down the law.  He said: "Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."

5.  The best way, at least for me, to interpret Jesus' view of the law is as a Second Use--it brings us to our knees so that we cry out to God for His grace.

6.  St. Paul's words about what a Christian looks like are 'descriptive,' not 'prescriptive.'  In other words, over time, others will say that you are becoming more like Jesus.  Occasionally, you will discover that you are more like Jesus--but it will be like a thunderbolt out of the blue, not a reasoned analysis of your qualities.  Reasoned analyses of one's qualities leads to self-righteousness or despair, neither of which is desired by God, neither of which is more holy, neither of which is more sanctified.

7.  At the risk of appearing to "toot my own horn," I'm going to share a couple of thunderbolts.

8.  The first thunderbolt occurred about 12 years ago.  A friend, although not a close friend, came to me with a sexual issue.  He wanted help with the issue.  He thought I might could help for this reason:  "Ellis, you used to be the most lustful person that I knew.  Now you're not.  What happened?"
My reply was the message of grace that I had heard from Paul Zahl.  I gave some of my Zahl cassette tapes to my friend.   A month later he came back and said:  "Are you sure this is right?  I've never heard anything like this."  I said: "When I first heard it, I hadn't either, but I think it's simply the 'old, old story of Jesus and His love which has been squelched by the Church."  Another month went by.  He came back again: "Ellis, this is life-changing.  I'm beginning to experience freedom from my issue."  His story is even more remarkable than this.  While I can't tell it without possibly revealing his identity, the message of grace changed him as radically as it changed me.

9.  Other thunderbolts have happened over the years.  Two recent ones:  I took my mother-in-law to lunch.  I know this doesn't sound like sanctification, but if you'd known me before, you would say: "Wow," at least that's what Debbie said.  So, yes, I was an a.....e before.  A second one was an email from a new friend--someone that I've only interacted with briefly.  Yet, he could tell that I loved him and cared about his issues.  So, he poured out to me his trials and triumphs.  Sometimes, indeed most times, listening is the best we can do for one another.  Well, listening and speaking grace.

10. Finally, here's my favorite quote on sanctification.  Sanctification isn't about trying to follow the law, but rather knowing that our transgressions are covered by the blood of the Perfect One, the All-Compassionate One, the God who's property is ALWAYS to have mercy:

It is instructive, in this connection, to remember that God’s appointed place for the tables of the law was within the ark of the testimony.  With them were “the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded”  (types, the one of Christ our wilderness bread, the other of resurrection, and both speaking of grace), while they were covered from sight by the golden mercy-seat upon which was sprinkled the blood of atonement.  The eye of God could see His broken law only through the blood that completely vindicated His justice and propitiated His wrath (Heb. 9: 4, 5).

It was reserved to modern nomolators to wrench these holy and just but deathful tables from underneath the mercy-seat and the atoning blood, and erect them in Christian churches as the rule of Christian life.