Last night, I was not able to complete the article about the relationship between sanctification and biblical counseling. The article has gone on too long, close to 1,800 words, and that is why I was compelled to stop.
This morning, I want to resume the writing, and this time I intend to cover the second part. For the first part, check here.
The CCEF Podcast on Progressive Sanctification
The CCEF podcast made the discussion of progressive sanctification very practical and easy to understand. As already mentioned in the first article, they intentionally avoided doing a theology lecture, though they recognize value in its proper setting. This time, their goal is for their listeners to understand the topic without going through theological intricacies.
Strickland, Gundersen, and Liu discussed the process of progressive sanctification, acknowledging the vital role of the believer’s union with Christ as the foundation for sanctification, the messiness of the process, and the goal of progressive sanctification.
What is progressive sanctification?
Before defining progressive sanctification, the podcasters introduced two approaches in discussing their topics. One is to take any issue out of real life and bring that issue to biblical truth. The second, which is what they did this time in discussing progressive sanctification, is to discuss the biblical truth first and then relate it to life.
In defining progressive sanctification, they distinguished between two aspects in sanctification. Theological students are familiar with such distinctions. They distinguished between the positional and the progressive aspects of sanctification. They described the positional aspect of sanctification as something of “permanent and invincible status,” that is, something that is done for us and considered complete. There is nothing we can do to add to or subtract from such a position. It is 100% the work of God.
Progressive sanctification, on the other hand, is an “ongoing process.” This is where the idea of messiness comes in. Strickland describes the process as “slow” and says that “we are always a work in progress” until the time we arrive in glory. What is frustrating for many believers is that there are cases where this process is not just slow but “super slow.” This discourages many, thinking that they are not making any progress in the Christian life after so many years.
Esther Liu shared a very insightful quote from Martin Luther, the great 16th-century reformer, to illustrate the nature of progressive sanctification:
This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.
For her, the quote from Luther “highlights some of the beauty of what progressive sanctification is trying to get at.” She shared about the tension between our desire to be like Christ and the frustration that we fail daily to live up to such a goal.
Union with Christ as the Foundation of Sanctification
Gunner Gundersen, recognizing the messiness involved in sanctification and the super slowness of the process, emphasized that union with Christ is the foundation of sanctification. This is the bedrock that believers must not forget for us not to be discouraged and finally give up on our ideal pursuit.
Darby Strickland reminds us that if we fail to see the foundation of sanctification, we will end up in one of “two ditches,” giving up and self-reliance. Giving up is tantamount to making God’s grace really cheap, and “obedience becomes optional.” Self-reliance, on the other hand, makes us legalistic, and when we fail, “we're going to be left feeling distant from the Lord, burned out, shame-filled, feeling enslaved to a God who's a taskmaster.” And the other side of it is when we think we are successful, “we're going to be self-confident. We're going to exalt ourselves through our works, and it's going to lead to pride.”
Esther Liu’s insight about the feeling of the need to obey God in order to love us more reminds me of a popular quote:
There is nothing you can do that will make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do that will make God love you less.
I don’t know who said that statement, but there is truth in it that the love of God depends not on our accomplishments but on His character. It emphasizes that grace is unconditional.
Gunner Gundersen mentioned an Old Testament word, “hesed,” referring to God’s “covenant love, steadfast love, loyal love,” a “kind of divine bedrock that everything else is built on, that can't fail, that won't fail..." Knowing that our “identity is firmly rooted in the foremost expression of that steadfast love, which is Jesus Christ,” this tells us that our “union with Him is permanent and secure and unchanging. . .” This truth comforts us despite the fact that the process of sanctification is messy and super slow.
The Messiness of Sanctification
Darby Strickland shared a personal experience teaching her kids at home “some complicated math process.” She mentioned two ways to do this. One, she could sit next to her kids, “pointing out everything that they're thinking is wrong, criticizing them, being frustrated with them if they're not getting it right.” Such an approach would add to their anxiety and their inability to learn. The other way is to remain “patient and kind, continually inviting them, encouraging them, delighting in the small successes, even if they haven't completed the whole problem.” In her experience, the second approach “fostered growth in her children.” She saw her children excited to come to the table and learn because they knew “that they were going to be loved, taken care of, even if they didn't get it.” The same thing with our God. Despite our failures, God does not scold us but remains patient and kind until we get it at the right time.
Gunner Gundersen shared his experience too with his kids to reinforce the analogy. This time is about his kids sharing pictures they had drawn of the family. It is easy to dismiss the drawing as “garbage.” However, he believes that someday, their drawing will improve. It is the same with sanctification. When we offer God our lives and services, they appear ugly and imperfect. However, God “looks at these things that we offer to him, but he receives them through Christ and the perfection of Christ.”
Esther Liu is confident “that there is a guarantee that there will be an end date to our sin,” and she finds comfort in Philippians 1:6, knowing that God will complete what he started. Instead of being discouraged, she rejoiced in those “little steps” or “baby steps.”
Darby Strickland concluded the discussion on the messiness of sanctification by reminding us “that we’re not meant to be heroes,” but to be a “people who depend on the Lord when we're weak and stuck.”
The Goal of Progressive Sanctification
Gunner Gundersen affirmed what Strickland said by quoting his father-in-law, saying that “there are no spiritual giants.” Afterwards, they shifted their discussion to the goal of sanctification.
For Darby Strickland, the goal is “more of a question of affections than behavior.” Esther Liu saw the goal more as “hope in the relational aspect of sanctification,” which means a “deeper dependence” on God. Sanctification should strip away any notion of self-sufficiency. In sanctification, we struggle for us to see where our hope really depends on. Liu elaborated on the character of this hope:
But it's allowing me to struggle to be a fruitful life-giving reminder of where my hope is actually found and where life is found in depending on Him through and through, from the beginning of my Christian life to the very end, grace that has led me this far and grace that will lead me home, . . .”
Gunner Gundersen describes this aspect of sanctification as:
So deeply relational to grow closer to him, to understand his love for us, to love him in return, which in the life of Christ, who didn't experience progressive sanctification because of his constant perfection, in his life that fleshed out in such radical obedience, and it was flowing from this, you know, this bottomless eternal spring of love and relationship.
Darby Strickland adds:
It flows out of a response of loving Him versus just this effort of something I have to do, I have to conjure, I have to obey.
Esther Liu mentioned the phrase “progressive nearness” used by Ed Welch in his book, Created to Draw Near. She affirmed that “the heart of progressive sanctification is actually a sense in which the Lord wants us to be nearer to him.” And then she warned about growing in a code of conduct that draws us further away from the Lord. She ends with a question asking whether our sanctification draws us nearer or farther away from the Lord.