Musing 72

Much ink is spilled over what the nature of what the Christian life should look like. At times we fall into legalism when we add rules to the Christian life in an unbiblical way.

In the Bible Belt, the most famous examples would likely be the Bob Jones type of Independent Fundamentalist Baptist variety.

But there’s been uncountable variations on this over the history of the Church. What they all end up having in common as the ‘root’ error though, is the functional denial of the sufficiency of Christ for our right standing with God.

Sure, faith in Christ is a prerequisite for right standing, but either we need to do XYZ to guarantee final justification, or perhaps it’s redressed as “you believe in Christ to get saved, but you do XYZ to experience the fullness of God’s blessing”.

And it can be hard to navigate the nuances in that - after all, we are told in Scripture there is blessing in keeping God’s law. To honor God’s Word is good. But sin takes advantage of that to lead us in taking our eyes off of Christ as the sole source of blessing.

Another nuance to navigate is “what does that mean for our sanctification?” I would submit that this is why we need to acknowledge that our sanctification is something we live out because God is at work and has promised to bring it to completion. And there are times when the rules we set for ourselves are helpful. But in setting rules for ourselves, we often set ourselves up for failure because why? Sin takes advantage of the rules to bring out more sin.

And so we must rest in Christ and trust in His work in us.

This does not mean passivity in our sanctification. The NT is quite clear in its imagery that sanctification is an active thing. Sanctification is a normative part of our Christian walk, and if it’s not, there’s a problem. But if we look to the Law to give us life apart from our union with Christ, it brings nothing but death for us because the Law can’t give life.

The core of our sanctification has to be our union with Christ. Nothing else is effective, since apart from that union through the Holy Spirit, we will not have the changing power of God in us to effect change.