{"id":227,"date":"2012-01-30T20:46:07","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T00:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/?p=227"},"modified":"2019-03-24T07:17:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T11:17:26","slug":"sanctification-is-not-the-think-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/sanctification-is-not-the-think-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanctification is not the Think System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s begin by making one thing clear.\u00a0 Some Christian communities apply a great deal of pressure on their members to take up the impossible task of making themselves more Christlike.\u00a0 The gospel of self-improvement, of course, is not the Gospel at all.\u00a0 We are not made better through improving our adherence to the Law.\u00a0 Rather, Christ frees us from the curse of the law by declaring us holy and Himself transforms us into His image.\u00a0 He sanctifies us.\u00a0 This sanctification is a gift we receive, not an obligation that we must carry out.\u00a0 Making ourselves Christlike leads to nothing but error and self-righteousness.<\/p>\n<p>That said, we also need to consider the other side (and yes, there really is one).\u00a0 The theology held by such communities is rightly opposed by faithful Christians.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it seems that much of this opposition is falling into the perennial human weakness of avoiding one error so strenuously that they embrace a different error.\u00a0 In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0056262\/\"><em>The Music Man<\/em><\/a>, con artist Harold Hill, who sold instruments to River City, lowered their practical cost by offering a solution to all the hard work required to actually learn to play an instrument.\u00a0 By using his &#8220;Think System,&#8221; all a budding musician allegedly needs to do is think about good music, and it will happen on its own.\u00a0 You don&#8217;t need experienced teachers; you don&#8217;t need practice; you just need a desire to play good music and an imagination.\u00a0 Needless to say, it didn&#8217;t exactly work out that way (though the parents were indeed happy just to see their children &#8220;playing&#8221; in the end).<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, it seems that we have a similar system in many churches when we are told things like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You don&#8217;t have to try to do good works&#8211;they flow naturally from faith.<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re making an effort at being good, you&#8217;re enslaving yourself to the Law; let the Gospel set you free from this burden.<\/li>\n<li>Let yourself be nourished by Word and Sacrament and good works will just take care of themselves.<\/li>\n<li>Actually trying to be Christlike leads to self-righteousness and should be avoided.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The best lies (or the most damaging poorly phrased truths) always contain a strong dose of essential truth:\u00a0 Good works <em>do<\/em> flow naturally and spontaneously from faith.\u00a0 We <em>are <\/em>free from the burden of the Law.\u00a0 It <em>is<\/em> only through Word and Sacrament that we are nourished and sustained in this work-creating faith.\u00a0 We <em>don&#8217;t<\/em> make ourselves Christlike&#8211;Christ makes us Christlike.\u00a0 And indeed, working to be good <em>can<\/em> lead to self-righteousness.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the problem: &#8220;spontaneously&#8221; does not mean &#8220;without effort&#8221; for a creature whose God-given nature is to work.\u00a0 Naturally does not mean &#8220;without instruction&#8221; for a creature whose God-given nature is to learn.\u00a0 The sanctified life is not a semi-human life that excludes all sorts of basic steps of living.\u00a0 This pernicious error creeps in among those essential truths when human effort is not merely displaced from a false role as causal agent, but hermetically sealed off from this new life altogether.\u00a0 Those caught up in this error take the theology that provides us with the proper understanding of real life and instead use it to supplant real life.\u00a0 Our spiritual development does happen naturally apart from our accomplishments, but being constantly told to reject any conscious participation in this very development turns a divine blessing into a painful and muddled experience.<\/p>\n<p>Many Christians whose faith motivates them to try and be better at loving God and serving their neighbors find themselves ill-prepared for the task because their churches have neglected to regularly teach the whole counsel of God.\u00a0 When they subsequently ask for preparation and instruction from their church, they are often slapped down with accusations of believing in works-righteousness and told to simply attend on Sundays and forget about anything else.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve even heard pastors complain about it being impious for their flocks to desire anything more than showing up on Sunday for the Sacrament.\u00a0 When these Christians study on their own and eventually try to pass on what they&#8217;ve learned to similarly confused brothers and sisters, they are sometimes accused of being busybodies who are trying to reign in those &#8220;wicked&#8221; neighbors who they secretly look down upon.<\/p>\n<p>The problem lies here:\u00a0 Many well-intentioned Christians suggest that because good works flow spontaneously from faith, they necessarily require no effort\u2013that we are not just passive recipients of sanctification, but <em>inert <\/em>recipients.\u00a0 This, they hope, will keep our own works safely away from our salvation where they do not belong.\u00a0 In reality, however, sanctification <em>does<\/em> end up involving my own real effort&#8211;not because my efforts are achieving sanctification, but because my efforts (along with the rest of the real me) are what is <em>being<\/em> sanctified by God.\u00a0 Humans are creatures that try.\u00a0 When Christ sanctifies us, he therefore sanctifies our trying, and so we try to do good.\u00a0 Humans are creatures that learn.\u00a0 When Christ sanctifies us, he sanctifies our learning, and so we learn to do good.\u00a0 Humans are creatures that want.\u00a0 When Christ sanctifies us, he therefore sanctifies our wanting, and so we want to do good.\u00a0 Humans are self-disciplined creatures.\u00a0 When Christ sanctifies us, he therefore sanctifies our self-discipline as well, and so we discipline ourselves to do good.<\/p>\n<p>We do these things because we already <em>are<\/em> being sanctified.\u00a0 We therefore fall into a theological error when we think our trying and learning and wanting and self-discipline are responsible for our sanctification.\u00a0 When we do this, we deny Grace and misinterpret our lives to our own destruction.\u00a0 However, we likewise fall into error when we assume that anyone who is visibly trying and learning and wanting and disciplining themselves to do good is wallowing in works-righteousness.\u00a0 We do a disservice by reflexively turning our noses up at those pastors, teachers, and laity who actually admonish their brothers and sisters to be imitators of Christ.\u00a0 We harm our neighbors when we immediately cast suspicion on Christians who ask their churches for training in doing good.\u00a0 They are not asking anything of their pastors that Christ does not already require of them (see, for example, Titus 2-3).\u00a0 The apostles were not afraid to admonish Christians towards good works.\u00a0 Neither should we be.\u00a0 Telling someone to <em>make themselves<\/em> Christlike is wrong.\u00a0 Instructing and exhorting them to <em>be <\/em>imitators of Christ is part of the very Word through which we are sanctified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s begin by making one thing clear.\u00a0 Some Christian communities apply a great deal of pressure on their members to take up the impossible task of making themselves more Christlike.\u00a0 The gospel of self-improvement, of course, is not the Gospel &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/sanctification-is-not-the-think-system\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8,32,7],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sanctification is not the Think System - The 96th Thesis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/sanctification-is-not-the-think-system\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sanctification is not the Think System - The 96th Thesis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Let&#8217;s begin by making one thing clear.\u00a0 Some Christian communities apply a great deal of pressure on their members to take up the impossible task of making themselves more Christlike.\u00a0 The gospel of self-improvement, of course, is not the Gospel &hellip; 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