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Originally Posted by moral necessity  Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistInCrisis [The Wesleyan rightly concludes that Christians sin and need grow in their faith and practice. But they err in that they consider the work of sanctification to be synergistic, just as they do salvation. | Excellent word choice in this last sentence! I've been waiting for someone to say that for 2 years now! Synergism in sanctification is just as dangerous as synergism in justification! "We are his workmanship", meaning the entire process of salvation, from election through glorification. |
Let me just state that we need to be a bit careful in saying that sanctification is monergistic.
I just taught on Galatians 5 yesterday. You might find this helpful:
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Paul states in verse 13: 13For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
I read an interesting observation the other day and it’s this: Christianity is like a narrow bridge that crosses two dangerous rivers that converge. On the one side of the bridge is legalism. Men who fall into legalism leave the Gospel and deceive themselves, as the Judaizers did, that they can earn salvation from God’s hand by being serious about His law. They deceive themselves about how serious the law is and also about how righteous they are.
The other river is the river of license. Men who fall off the truth fall often in the opposite direction in thinking that it doesn’t matter what we do. As long as we sign a decision card and say we believe in Jesus then nothing we do matters. Such men have no concern at all for the things of God and see Christ as some sort of fire insurance.
But the freedom that the Gospel provides is freedom to obey. Again, the fleshly ideas of the man who wants a license to sin asks: “What kind of freedom is that? Real freedom is the ability to do anything I want.”
But that’s not what Gospel freedom is. Gospel freedom is freedom from the curse of sin and death. It’s freedom from the wrath of God. We are made alive for a purpose. We are made alive that we might live unto Christ.
Make no mistake yet again. Don’t fall off the bridge back into legalism and think I just gave you a “save yourself by obeying” program. Remember, first, that you are made alive in Christ out of sheer grace. You cling to His feet in faith. As you feel the touch of a Savior where the Judge once stood, and as you hear the loving words of a Father where slavery once reigned, your heart is transformed to desire the things that please your heavenly Father. Your life, your affections, your wants, and your desires ought to be fixed on pleasing God. You are not pleasing God in order to be accepted by Him. NO. That’s the Law. You strive to please God only after you have been accepted by Him. That’s the Gospel: God’s acceptance comes first and then our gratitude and lives of love come second.
This is why Paul states: 14For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Do you see what changed? The law earlier was said to bring a curse to us because its perfect righteousness condemned us. After we place our trust in Christ we die to the Law and are raised in newness of life. We die on the one side of the Law that condemns us and rise again with Christ on the other side of the law where we see the things that please our heavenly Father. The law, in our immaturity, could only be viewed as “Thou shall or thou shall not” but the law in our maturity, in our newness of life, is “I love the things that my heavenly Father delights in.”
I love working with computers. It’s my hobby. I can sit for hours at a computer screen. But that’s work for some people. It’s slavery to them. It’s law to them. The Ten Commandments are the words of a slavemaster to those in the flesh but to those of us who have been born again, we don’t just stop at not killing men but we uphold and love life. We don’t stop at not coveting a man’s property, we rejoice in what God has blessed our neighbor with. We don’t stop at not lying or gossiping about men but we go out of our way to uphold our neighbor’s good name.
Verse 15: 15But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
Paul is describing what is happening in the Galatian Church. Isn’t it interesting that a Church that is trying to be serious about the Law is marked by people caring only about themselves. It is marked by people gossiping, talking behind people’s backs, taking sides, and literally trying to destroy one another? When you abandon the Gospel for “moral reform” according to good deeds you always get selfishness and destruction because you’re in the way of the flesh and not in the way of the Spirit.
Paul states: 16But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
You have not been redeemed to live according to the flesh. You have been redeemed to put to death those things. This is one of the reasons Paul commands us to stand fast in our freedom because moral programs will provide no power to overcome the immorality, idolatry, backbiting, jealousy, division, and other fruits that flow from our sinful human hearts. Religions of self-improvement put a band-aid over the solution by the appearance of righteousness but the inside are dead man’s bones and the stench of the rotten corpse inside the pretty exterior is smelled by all.
Remember, our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are all fruits of the Spirit that God has given us. We don’t make the fruit. He does. It begins with the Gospel that transforms our lives and, as we abide in Christ and His work, the fruit flourishes.
And so, Christian, what fruit are you bearing in your life? Is your life marked by deeds of the flesh? Do you care about the things of God? Does the idea of pleasing and worshipping God bring you delight or do you desire other things first?
Yes, I know you and I are falling short but please, after all this, don’t turn this into a program of “…maybe if I start to obey the law then God will bless me….”
No. Stand firm. The work on the Cross is completed. Believe the Gospel and stand free from the curse of sin and death. Be converted by the Gospel that you might desire the things of God so that His law becomes sweet to you because it reflects the character of the One who accepts you and adopts you into His kingdom.
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Now, depending upon what you mean by saying sanctification is synergistic it could actually be accurate to state that. When we state that justification is monergistic we are stating that we did nothing prior to God making us alive and giving us faith. However, we really do exercise faith.
When we are united to Christ by faith, then, we die with Christ to the curse of the Law and our slavery therein and are raised in newness of life to be slave of Christ.
In that newness of life we are actors. We are not passive recipients impelled by some force but our dispositions are such that we make moral decisions. We are no longer under compulsion to sin as we were when dead in sin but are, indeed, alive and able to choose the things that please our heavenly Father.
The Wesleyans and other perfectionist schemes fail in treating grace like an infused quality. That is to say that the goal of the Christian life is to strive in such a way as to wait for that critical breakthrough where
I will be perfected to the point where sin no longer attracts me. Christians are then sort of waiting around for a second blessing or a moment of breakthrough where they "really let go" and God infuses enough grace in them that they live lives perfectly.
What is lost in this schema of sanctification is the "just while yet a sinner" that is critical to our understanding of the Gospel. Christ justifies the un-Godly. While we are still sinners we stand justified. While we were enemies we received the promise of inheritance and are now His friends.
The goal of Christian obedience (and sanctification) is on a completely different tenor.
We are still acting so it is synergistic from that standpoint. But the basis for our desire to obey is gratitude. It is doxology. It is the relationship of a son to his Father. The Gospel precedes our motivation to obey and stays in front of us as the motivation to obey.
We certainly will and do become more holy and more transformed to Christ. We become more crucified to the world and the world becomes more crucified to us. But, always, it is the Gospel that impels and not an evaluation of ourselves that compares our blessing on a spiritual plane of perfection and seeking to attain another disciple's plane of perfection. All our perfection is filthy rags and we will never get to a point where we can hope to stand apart from Christ and His righteousness.
You see, those who are united to Christ by faith are inexorably on a path to glory. It's not that we are trying to be obedient so that we can attain to the victorious life. We have received every spiritual blessing already and His grace now is sufficient for us because, though we sin, we know that God is for us and does not cast aside the children who sometimes fail in their desires for obedience. We weep for our sin because it grieves our Father and as we groan "Who will deliver me from this body of death!" the answer comes swiftly "I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord!" And then when we've start to wonder, yet again, how God could possibly accept a wretch like us as He did at the first His Spirit testifies with our Spirit that we are sons of God and we cry out: "Abba! Father!"
I don't know how else to put it. I have been placed upright by the Gospel and I love my Savior. But the body of flesh still wars within me and I *must*, with fear and trembling, put that interloper to death! But God has empowered me and is empowering me with the disposition and strength toward that end. I can neither wait around for someone else to do the battle for me when the battle is at hand nor can I give myself credit for the spiritual life and the spiritual armour I have to give the battle. God gets the glory for my life and God gets the glory for where the flesh is conquered.