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Sanctification as a Test of our Christian Standing

What do we make of a professing Christian who falls into sin? Is he or she to be regarded as a true Christian who falls or a false believer? The apostle John tells us that ‘by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected’ (1 John 2:3-5a). On the surface, that may seem clear enough, but the Bible recognises the terrible reality of sin as well as the transforming grace of Christ. How we answer this question will have implications for our struggles with sanctification in ourselves, and how we respond to sin in others, especially concerning the issue of church discipline.

Some biblical examples

The broader biblical revelation shows us that simplistic answers are out of place. The period of the Judges was a time when each man did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25). The last of those Judges – not counting Samuel (1 Sam.7:15-17) – was Samson, who is a morally ambivalent character if ever there was one. Samson’s life, recorded in Judges 13-16, hardly provides us with a model for godly living. Yet the New Testament assures us that he is a saved man (Heb.11:32).

The examples of Gideon (Judges 8:27) and Jephthah (Judges 11:29-40) are similarly unimpressive in some of their testimony. We have been prepared for this by the earlier example of Lot (Gen.19:30-38) but, again, the New Testament speaks of righteous Lot (2 Pet.2:7-8) – something the reader who skims rather than meditates might easily miss.

David is infamous for his adultery with Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah by proxy, and his attempts to deceive rather than confess (2 Sam.11-12). Yet Nathan the prophet confronts him as a true man of God who had fallen grievously, not as a hypocrite whose godliness was a façade. The prophet knew that, but could the ordinary Israelite have been sure?

There are solemn warnings to New Testament believers that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor.6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21). We must not be deceived – those ‘Christian’ idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, drunkards, swindlers, or the like will not inherit the kingdom of God. In one of his ‘I am’ sayings, Christ makes this same point, albeit in different language. The unfruitful branch will be cut off from the true vine (John 15:1-6). To cite Calvin: ‘Christ justifies no one whom He does not at the same time sanctify.’[1] To some degree, our sanctification must be a gauge as to our standing as sinners justified by free grace before God.

Unhindered progress or struggles and lapses?

At this stage one might wonder that the teachings of the New Perspective or Federal Vision might have more going for them than Reformed theologians have thought, but one error is not resolved by its opposite. Reformed theology has always seen justification as a perfect act while sanctification is an imperfect process, only perfected in the life to come. Martyn Lloyd-Jones tells of two converted drunkards whom he knew and whom he regarded as true Christians – one who never had any more trouble with the drink, while the other felt the power of temptation every day.[2]

            The imperfections associated with sanctification in this life do not lead to complacency in the Christian, but to lament, and a sense of realism. Perfection is compulsory but perfectionism is our enemy. John Newton was the wisest of counselors, and he said of God: ‘He has appointed that sanctification should be effected, and sin mortified, not at once completely, but little and little; and doubtless he has wise reasons for it’.[3] This led him to urge that assurance be sought far more on the direct receiving of promises rather than by evidences.[4] Concentrate far more on what Christ has done than on what you should do.

The ’Heavenly Doctor’, Richard Sibbes, also kept a biblical perspective: ‘The church of Christ is a common hospital, wherein all are in the same measure sick of some spiritual disease or other, so all have occasion to exercise the spirit of wisdom and meekness.’[5] Drawing on his capacity for apt illustrations, he pointed out that we know that the sun moves though we do not see it moving. So, Christians grow even if they do not see obvious growth.[6] The seed grows as the farmer sleeps, and, in a similar way, there is something hidden from us about how God’s kingdom grows, both internally and externally (Mark 4:26-29).

Problems both ways, but two concluding comments

(a) Sanctification is not necessarily straightforward, a progression in discernible stages from one degree of glory to another. For the Christian, our inner self is being renewed day by day (2 Cor.4:16). The work of the Spirit is to transform us ‘from one degree of glory to another’ (2 Cor.3:18). This, sadly, is often not linear. Yet if, as Sibbes puts it, ‘Grace is glory begun, and glory is grace perfected,’[7] then something of heaven will be seen in the believer.

Growth in holiness and Christ-likeness will not be at the same rate for all. Sometimes the apostle could be surprisingly patient with struggling Christians: ‘Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained’ (Phil.3:15-16). That concerns doctrine more than morality, but the two are not always easily separated. There are four soils – ultimately reduced to two – but to those who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, that fruit is not identical, either in quantity or quality. All those who are regenerate will bear fruit, but it is a case of thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold (Mark 4:20).

(b) Progress in sanctification must be real and serious, and even substantial in some ways, but may be accompanied by lapses, sadly even awful lapses. The man guilty of sleeping with his father’s wife (presumably his stepmother) at Corinth is given short shrift by the apostle Paul: ‘Purge the evil person from among you’ (1 Cor.5:13). One’s first thought might be that Lot and Samson would surely have fallen under the same condemnation – and so would David in the aftermath of his adulterous fall with Bathsheba.

            John says that he wrote First John ‘so that you may not sin’ (1 John 2:1). That is a demand for holiness. Then he added: ‘But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous’ (1 John 2:1). That is an acknowledgment of realism. In raising the subject of sin, the Bible walks a tightrope. John Stott has a valid point when he says that ‘It is possible to be both too lenient and too severe towards sin.’[8]

Sin must never be accepted, yet to pretend we live in victory over it every moment of our lives is delusional. In 1886 the Anglican commentator, Alfred Plummer, summed up how the Christian ought to live:

Although the believer sometimes sins, yet not sin, but opposition to sin, is the ruling principle of his life; for whenever he sins he confesses it, and wins forgiveness, and perseveres with his self-purification. But the habitual sinner does none of these things: sin is his ruling principle. And this could not be the case if he had ever really known Christ.[9]

To paraphrase Spurgeon, it is the sheep that falls into the mire, but the pig that wallows in it.

The true Christian wants to be holy, but is aware of sin within. He wants others to be holy, and the church to be holy, but he is wary of judging falsely or hypocritically (Matt.7:1-5). Drawing on the observation, and warning, of 1 Samuel 16:7, Jonathan Edwards notes the need for a humble evaluation on our part:

The true saints have not such a spirit of discerning, that they can certainly determine who are godly, and who are not. For though they know experimentally what true religion is, in the eternal exercises of it; yet these are what they neither feel nor see, in the heart of another. There is nothing in others, that comes within their view, but outward manifestations and appearances; but the Scripture plainly intimates that this way of judging what is in men by outward appearances, is at best uncertain and liable to deceit.[10]

Be severe on your own sin; do not be naïve about that of others; but judge with self-awareness and humility of heart.

[1] Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III,xvi,1.

[2] D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, Darkness and Light: Sermons on Ephesians 4:17-15:17, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1982, p.242.

[3] Josiah Bull (ed.), Letters of John Newton, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, reprinted 2007, p.70.

[4] Josiah Bull (ed.), Letters of John Newton, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, reprinted 2007, p.173. See also pp.195, 389.

[5] Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, revised 1998, p.34.

[6] Richard Sibbes, Glorious Freedom, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998, pp.158-159. Sibbes may have actually said ‘the earth rotates’ (David B. MacKinnon (ed.), Refreshment for the Soul: Daily Devotional Readings from Richard Sibbes, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2022, for 1 June).

[7] Richard Sibbes, Glorious Freedom, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998, p.158.

[8] J. R. W. Stott, The Epistles of John, IVP, Leicester, 1976, p.79.

[9] A. Plummer, The Epistles of St John, Baker Michigan, reprinted 1980, p.77

[10] Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections in Works of Jonathan Edwards, volume 2, Yale University Press, 1959 (reprint of first 1746 edition), II section 12, p.181.