Bruce McCormack Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, 1991- 1976 PLNC Alumnus, Alumni Award 2004 [Following Lecture is from his Systematic Theology course, also given in Sam Powell’s Theology Class, November 19, 2004]
Lecture 14: “Called unto Holiness: The Doctrine of Sanctification” Prayer: A Hymn for Pentecost “When the Most High came down and confused the tongues, He divided the nations: but when He distributed the tongues of fire, He called all to unity; wherefore with one voice we glorify the All-holy Spirit. Amen.” In the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 12, at verse 14, we find the following, rather staggering, admonition: “Strive for peace with all people, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” Just what is that “holiness without which no one will see the Lord”? What I want to try to do in the next 50 minutes is to provide an introductory answer to that question.
The Presupposition of Sanctification: the “Sin Nature” Sanctification is the work of God in us. It is a transformative work of the Holy Spirit by means of which the dominion or rule of sin over our lives is destroyed; the “lusts of the flesh are increasingly weakened and mortified”, and the fruits of the Spirit are quickened and strengthened. It is a work of the Holy Spirit which remains incomplete in this life and is only consummated in the next life, in glorification [Westminster Confession of Faith, 6.075, 6.076]. Thus, the presupposition of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit is the existence in us of what Paul calls our “sinful nature”(see, e.g. Gal .5:16-18; Eph .2:3). It would be helpful to begin with a brief analysis of sin as “nature”. For unless we see clearly what our problem is, we will not fully comprehend the significance of our rescue from it. In what follows, I am going to set forth a description of the “Fall” and the “sin nature” which flows from it which I have derived from one of Karl Barth’s lesser known writings, his first commentary on Romans (published in 1919). According to Barth, sin and death came into the world as a result of the human desire for independence or autonomy vis-à-vis God. The desire for independence was itself motivated by a longing for freedom, but the “freedom’ achieved was, in fact, the very opposite of real freedom. It was much rather a form of imprisonment and slavery. Adam had been created in a relation of immediacy to God, the world and to other human beings. In his desire for autonomy, Adam stepped out of the original relation in which he had his being in God and took up a detached position over against God, resting entirely in himself. He became an independent “subject” for whom God could only be an “object”. As a direct consequence of this action, he also distanced himself from the world and other human beings. He stood over against the world in the stance of one who would acquire dominance over it through analytical reason. He cut himself off from other persons, regarding them with suspicion as threats to his “freedom”. For Barth, this move represented the loss of real freedom, for real freedom is “communicative”; i.e. the capacity to limit oneself freely for the sake of granting freedom to the other. The truly free subject is the subject who is free for others, who lives in and through others. From a truly free being whose subjectivity was structured through interpersonal “communicative” relations, Adam became an “individual”: a subjective centre constituted by the self for the self, a subjectivity structured through self-relatedness and therefore, a “subjectivity imprisoned in itself”. As a consequence, the human being of this aeon is “an I . . .an individual thrown back on herself and precisely for that reason, a sinful human being. . .the I which is only I, the human for him/herself, without God”. So the “fall” consisted in this: from existing as one whose “being” was a being-with and a being-for God and other persons, Adam became one whose “being” was a being-over-against God and other persons. And thus, every thought, word and deed of the fallen Adam was the expression of this alienated and alienating orientation. It is the self which is constituted in this way - as the self-relating, self-positing, self-constituting autonomous individual - which is the root of all sinful acts and which must be dealt with if human existence is to be truly redeemed. For it is from this self-relating, self-positing, self-enclosed stance that all the other consequences of sin flow. In becoming autonomous, self-relating creatures we are cut off from the God in whom is Truth. Our ‘foolish minds are darkened” and we employ our reason as a tool for providing rationalizations for our sinful actions. Second, in becoming autonomous, self-relating creatures we are cut off from the God in whom is Life. Death, for us, is no longer a dying in the presence of God, a dying unto God, but rather, a dying in the absence of God. Biological death is now a curse. Third, in becoming autonomous, self-relating creatures we are cut off from the God who is Love. Where once we were “children of God”, we have made ourselves into enemies of God. Seen against this background, “sanctification” will be seen to consist, most fundamentally, in the overcoming of the “old self” and the creation of a new, redeemed self. What we need to do now is to ask: how does this take place?
II. Mortification and Vivification: Divine Surgery or Existential Encounter? How does sanctification take place? How does the Holy Spirit work “in us” to effect our sanctification? If the description I have just given you of the sinful condition of unredeemed humanity is accurate, then it would be quite natural to understand the work of the Holy Spirit in the following way. The Holy Spirit is the power of God which breaks into the circle of that self- enclosed autonomy into which we have placed ourselves; breaks into it, with the fullness of a Reality more real than all we are accustomed to think of as real; breaks into it with the fullness of a Reality so overwhelming that it cannot be doubted and cannot be evaded. And what does the Holy Spirit do in breaking into our self-imposed circle of autonomy? The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus Christ. He makes known to us who Jesus Christ is and what He has done on our behalf. In the Farewell Discourses recorded in John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks at length to the disciples of the Spirit’s ministry. John 15:26: “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf...” Or, again, John 16:13,14: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” The primary ministry of the Holy SpirIt, according to the Farewell Discourses, is advocacy; it is the revelation of Jesus Christ. In that the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus Christ to us, the circle of revelation is closed; the knowledge of God which was made possible objectively in the incarnation is made subjectively real in us in the power of the Spirit. And in that the circle of revelation is closed, the circle of self-enclosed existence into which we have placed ourselves is blown wide open. Now it follows from this description of the primary ministry of the Holy Spirit that the primary means employed by the Spirit in the sanctification of human life is the “renewal of the mind”. It is for this reason that Paul says, in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” It is for this reason that Paul declares, in 2 Cor. 10:5, that he takes “every thought captive to Christ.” It is for this reason that Paul defends his apostolic authority in 1 Cor.2: 16 by saying, “ . . .we have the mind of Christ”. And it is for this reason that he tells the Philippians that the basis of ethical action that is pleasing in the sight of God lies in “having this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus” (Phil.2:5). Compare also Eph.4:23-4 where Paul makes our being made new in the “attitude of our minds” to be essential to the creation of the new self which is “like God in true righteousness and holiness”. The encounter in which the “old self” (viz. the self-constituting, self-relating, autonomous self) - the encounter in which the “old self” is overcome has the character of personal communication or address; a communication between the Divine Subject and a human subject, between Divine reason and human reason. It should be noted that revelation, where and when it occurs, will produce faith and obedience as its result. Grace is irresistible. As a consequence of this divine Self-communication and the claim upon us which it registers, we are made to be new creatures — men and women whose being is once again a being-with-and-for God and a being-with and-for other human beings. Our subjectivity is no longer centred in ourselves but centred in God; our rationality is renewed - not by being chemically or structurally altered - but by being given God as its object. To know God, to truly know God, is to be changed. What I am suggesting to you is that all of the various aspects of the Spirit’s work “in us” - the adoption as sons and daughters, regeneration etc. - are a function of this revealing activity in which God is made known and God’s verdict that we are justified in Christ is made known. Now I must tell you that the interpretation which I have offered to you here constitutes a departure from the classical tradition at a decisive point. Throughout much of the history of Christian thought (right up through the Reformation in fact), sanctification was understood as a kind of divine surgery. It was understood this way, first of all, because the sin from whose dominion we need to be delivered was understood as a kind of disease, a contagion, an infection which pervades the soul and its powers. It was understood this way, secondly, because grace was thought of as something quasi-physical; a power, perhaps, that is akin to physical power or causality and which is infused into the human soul. Where sin and grace were understood in this way, sanctification was understood as a “healing” of the disease or, to change the metaphor, as a “cleansing”, a rooting out, of an internal impediment to faith and obedience. When, against this view, I hold that the “mortification” of the “old self” and the “vivification” of the “new self” occurs through an existential encounter with the incarnate God who is revealed to us by the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, I am working with a different anthropology than did our forebears. I do not understand human “being” as something which can be completely and exhaustively defined without reference to its relation to God. And for this reason, I cannot understand the human soul in an a priori fashion, as something quasi-substantial, some “thing” with powers of its own, which is complete in itself apart from and prior to all the decisions, acts and relations in which the lived existence of the individual is carried out. I cannot do this because, as I understand the biblical witness, what it means to be “human” is defined by the relation to God. As the “old self”, human being is a being determined and defined by a broken, disrupted relationship with God. As the “new self”, human being is a being determined and defined by a restored relationship with God. In both cases, it is the relation with God which determines the kind of being we are. Let me draw out the thread one step further. “Human being” is not something given and self-contained. If it were, it could be described with equal legitimacy by theology on the one side and the human sciences (psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, etc.) on the other side. But if I am right, if “human be is defined by the relationship we have to God (whether a broken relationship or a renewed relationship), then Christian theology cannot look first to the human sciences. If it is to be faithful to Holy Scripture, it must look first to God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ as witnessed to by the prophets and apostles. Christian anthropology must be theological anthropology. To return then to the doctrine of sanctification, “mortification” and “vivification” occur through an existential encounter with Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit who illumines our minds and hearts so that we may know Him. I call this encounter “existential” because the relationship which is established with God through the awakening to faith is a dynamic one. It is a dynamic relationship because the speaking of the Holy Spirit by which faith is awakened is not a speaking which occurs once and for all in a single, definitive moment of our lives, and then ceases. We do not “have faith” for the simple reason that we do not have the Holy Spirit. Rather, the Holy Spirit has us and faith is the response which is awakened in us anew in each moment of our Christian lives as the Holy Spirit continues to speak. We never reach a point in our lives when the Holy Spirit ceases to work. So if we were to ask: why is sanctification a process? the answer must ultimately lie on the side of the divine willing. God wills that it should be that way. God certainly has it in His power to transform us completely in an instant if He should sochoose. So if we are not transformed completely, entirely sanctified in an instant, the only explanation for it is that God did not choose to do it that way.
III. The Most Basic Content of Sanctification: Holiness. Personal “holiness” has fallen on hard times in mainline churches - And yet, there can be little question but that, for Paul, “holiness was central to the Christian calling. In Romans 6, Paul tells us that all who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death (v.3). And he continues, “We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he/she who has died is freed from sin.” Notice in this passage the use of the past tense. “Our old self was crucified”; “he/she who has died is free from sin.” What is in view here is the foundation of the Christian life “in Christ”. Now what does it mean to be “free from sin” where such freedom is regarded as a completed action? I would say that it means that we have been (past tense) set free from the power of sin to condemn us (or, with Galatians 3, the “curse of the Law”). But now, Paul goes on to make it clear that the struggle with sin is not over by any means. For Paul exhorts his readers to do something. “Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men and women who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you...” (vv. 12-14). Now clearly, the presupposition of Paul’s imperative is an already accomplished state- of-affairs. But the imperative remains in force because we have not yet, in ourselves, been made completely free from sin. “For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield you members to righteousness for sanctification” (v.19). Clearly, for Paul, sanctification has strongly moral overtones. It is not simply a change of mind, though it begins there. It is a movement from unrighteousness to righteousness, from moral impurity to purity. There are a vast number of passages to which I could make appeal in establishing this, but what I have highlighted here will have to suffice. And what is it that effects this movement from unrighteousness to righteousness? from moral impurity to purity? The grace of God, to be sure, but my question is: how is this experienced on our side? What is the sine qua non on our side - that “without which” none of this happens? Not as a precondition, mind you; there are no preconditions on our side for the efficacy of God’s grace. But what will be found on our side wherever grace is effective? That is my question. The answer, I think, is to be found in the New Testament concept of “dying to self. Now this concept has come under fire in recent theology, due to the ideological uses to which it has, at times, been put to use. But it seems to me that the solution to the problems created by the improper use of biblical teaching will not be found in disuse; the solution lies in proper use. We need to learn and understand the proper significance of this most important of theological categories for speaking rightly of the heart of Christian living. Let me give you a definition. “Dying to self”, in the New Testament sense, refers to the total and complete surrender of all patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting which we erect for ourselves in order to be able to stand before God as those who (mistakenly!) think they have a claim on Him. The “self” which needs to die is the “old self”, that “self” which has gladly listened to Tempter’s lie “ye shall be as gods” and has sought to be something for itself, over against God and who now needs to defend itself against God by whatever means possible including, especially, all forms of self-justification. “Dying to self” means sweet, blessed surrender, the cessation of attempts to be something on my own steam, of trying to be something over against God so that I can be set free to be something in Him. The most fundamental act of the Christian life is this act of submission in which I give God everything which - up to now - I have used to defme myself as a self: my talents (let us say for music or sports or academic work), my ethnicity, my political party affiliation, my union, my sexuality, my...(fill in the blank). I give God all thosethings without reservation and maybe, maybe, if God wills, He gives them back to me to be used as means through which I can glorify Him in certain concrete and particular situations and contexts. But I no longer define my “self” in terms of them. Who am I? I am a sinner redeemed by the blood of Christ. That is all. All the other things that the world sees when it looks at me no longer define me. As Paul puts it, “ . . .whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ...” (Phil.3:7-9). Now notice: the passage we just looked at in Romans 6 makes the past tense to be basic, foundational, for the imperative. We have been crucified with Christ. But crucified.., with Christ. Holiness is never simply a predicate of human being and existence; something that describes you and me as we are, in and for ourselves. Holiness describes Christ; He is the Holy One. And it describes us insofar as our lives our brought into conformity with His own. Our holiness is derivative of His. We are made holy through the claim He lays upon us (“You have been bought with a price”) and the response of faith and obedience which is awakened in us, moment by moment, by the power of the Holy Spirit. “Dying to self” can be put to ideological uses, of course. Where, in nineteenth century America, African-American Christians were told by slave owners that “death to self” meant putting aside the desire for freedom, there we are confronted by ideology. Where, today, a woman is told that she must not use her spiritual and natural gifts, that “death to self” for her means the repression of her God-given gifts, there we are confronted by ideology. “Dying to self” does not mean passivity in the face of the repressive attitudes and actions of others; it means the subjection of all things to God for His use -for His use - and not my own. A number of years ago, I had a conversation with Jim Loder about prayer. He told me a little about Teresa of Avila’s three stages of prayer. I’ve long since forgotten the first two stages, but the third is indelibly imprinted on my mind. At the third stage, he said, the Holy Spirit prays you. I remember staring at him in incomprehension and saying “I’ve never experienced that.” He stunned me by saying quietly, “Yes, you have”. Immediately, I began to respond “No, you don’t know me well enough to know that - I haven’t, I couldn’t possibly”. And then, suddenly, I knew he was right. I remembered something that I had long forgotten: kneeling, on many different occasions, at a Church of the Nazarene altar of prayer, hands outstretched, eyes closed, no longer cognizant of anyone or anything around me but the presence of the Holy Spirit, praying without words, experiencing on the deepest possible level: surrender and peace. It was in those moments that I think I did indeed experience what Teresa meant when she spoke of being prayed by the Spirit. Did that surrender mean that my sin nature was dead and gone? No. The problem with living sacrifices is that they have a way of getting up off the altar and walking away. But I will tell you this as honestly as I can: my experience of those moments of complete surrender have become all too rare since my arrival in Princeton in 1980 to do doctoral work. I am, I suppose, like most seminarians and professors of theology. I all too easily allow my study of theology, my “work for the Lord”, to be a substitute for a truly surrendered life. Well, it just isn’t enough. I reached a turning-point of sorts three years ago when I taught a January term course at Nazarene Seminary and once again came into contact with men and women for whom the pursuit of holiness was the most important thing in their lives. What I learned through them was that what I should have known all along; that that my greatest need - and your greatest need, each and every one of you - is to experience (really experience! in the depths of your soul) that surrender in which alone is real freedom. Holiness is not the enemy of a joyful life; it is the essence of it. We talk a lot here at Princeton about social problems. We would like to change the world if we could. Let me tell you something: you have no idea the impact you could have on the world if you lived before it a model of the completely surrendered life. If you want to change the world, ask God to change you. And, then, ask Him to do it again, and again, and again.
IV. Sanctification and Good Works In Romans 2:13, Paul says “It is not the hearers of the Law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.” On the surface, this passage might seem to pose an insuperable obstacle to Luther’s understanding of justification. It is not surprising, therefore, that he devoted a good deal of space to explaining its significance when dealing with the theme of justification in his lectures on Galatians 3. Who are the doers of the Law? Luther asks. And his answer is that they alone are “doers of the Law” who believe that they are justified freely in Christ apart from their works. First they believe, then they do good works. In a memorable image, Luther says that faith takes a would be doer of the law and makes him/her into a tree, and his/her deeds become fruit. “First there must be a tree, then the fruit. For apples do not make a tree but a tree makes apples. So faith first makes a person, who afterwards performs works. To keep the Law without faith, therefore, is to make apples without a tree” [Lectures on Galatians, L.W. vol.26, p.255]. It lies close to hand to point out that though there is such a thing as “civic righteousness”, it is not this that was meant by Paul in speaking of those “doers of the Law” who are justified before God. “Civic righteousness” refers to the fact that it is perfectly possible for a citizen to fulfill the law of the land. But such a fulfillment of the law is merely formal; it involves a merely external or outward conformity between behavior and the dictates of the law. But that in itself tells us nothing as to the “righteousness” of the one obeying those laws. It could well be that outward conformity to the law of the land arises out of a servile fear of the punishment which would follow if the law were to be broken. Such “obedience” is to be distinguished from the joyful “obedience” which is freely offered out of love for the law-giver. The conclusion which these observations press upon us is that to do the “good”, i.e. to really obey the law in the sense which God requires, is something which the believer alone can do. The “goodness” of the model citizen is of no value whatsoever where justification before God is concerned. The relevance of this discussion for the theme of sanctification is not far to seek. As Luther says, “Faith first makes a person who afterward performs works.” Looking back to the reflections drawn from Barth’s commentary on Romans which we just considered, we might say: first the new self must be created, the self which is structured interpersonally, whose being is a being in and for God and the neighbor and not a being over against God and the neighbor. It is this subject whose works are truly “good” in the theological sense of the word “good.” Such works are, of course, not good in and of themselves. They are not “good” simply because they were done by Christians. They are “good” only by virtue of the fact that they arise out of and are fully commensurate with a rightly ordered relationship to God and the neighbor. Therefore, sanctification, no less than justification, is prerequisite to good works.
V. Sanctification and Liberation Thus far, I have maintained that sanctification has to do most fundamentally with holiness. Without holiness, without that mortifying work by which the “old self” is weakened and eventually destroyed, without that vivifying work by which the “new self” is created and renewed after the image of Christ, there is no ethical agent in the Christian sense, no one to do “good works”. But sanctification, it seems to me, entails much more than just this work in the inner person. If sanctification has to do most fundamentally with the creating a new way of being in the world which means the end of the sinful, isolated self, then it already has within it an impulse which points us outward, towards others. Sanctification as the actualization of righteousness in the individual presses towards the actualization of righteousness in society, in that network of relationships (economic, social and cultural) which govern our lives in this world. Christ came not simply to create new men and women but to make all things new; not just the inner person but the outer person as well and the whole network of relationships in which we stand. The work of sanctification is not finished until both the inner life and the outer life have been transformed and renewed after the image of Christ’s righteousness. Sin must be dealt with at every level; first of all, and most basically, in the hearts of men and women, but then also in those institutions and forms of social organization which are symptoms of that root sin. Concretely, this means that sanctification is not “entire” at the point at which saints are created. Sanctification is only “entire” at the point at which the fabric of our social lives has been transformed as well. But it is of the utmost importance to remember that only she is a doer of the Law who obeys the law out of love and gratitude to the Law-giver. There must be redeemed subjects before there can be a redeemed society. Society cannot redeemed, to give just one example, simply by passing civil rights legislation. Now don’t get me wrong. Civil rights legislation is very important in a fallen world, because it places the coercive power of the state behind the demand for civic righteousness. We would be in deep trouble without it. But making whites conform externally to the law is not at all the same as purging racism from their hearts. It is the root of racism in the human heart that must be dealt with. And that is why the sanctif work of the Spirit begins in the human heart. But, having acknowledged that, it must then be said that the work is the Spirit is not complete, the work of the Spirit is, in fact, stunted, if structures of injustice are not also transformed. If Christian men and women have truly been sanctified by the Spirit of God, they will give witness to this by their active engagement in the struggle to overcome the “forms” of social life which hold us in bondage in our day. There are two extremes, it seems to me, that we need to avoid. The first is a Pietism which would reduce salvation to a matter between the individual and God, to something that occurs in the soul and nowhere else. Such a view rests on a fundamental dichotomy between the inner person and the outer person, between the soul and society. Unbelief is hidden in this separation, for Christ came to make all things new. The other extreme is a Christian activism which wants to change society without the transformation of the inner person, without redemption from the root of that sinfulness which leads m and women to create structures of injustice in the first place. Here again, unbelief in hidden in this separation. The new world which Christ is bringing will not only have different structures, but it will also be inhabited by different people; women and men, girls and boys, who have been set free from the law of sin and death. It is for that that the Church in our day should be praying when it prays: “Come 0 come thou Spirit of Life”. Amen.
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