Beloved,
All it takes is an energy-sucking head cold or a restless toddler needing a new pull-up at 1:30am or a dental exam revealing the beginnings of a cavity on my back molar to remind me that I am far less sanctified than I imagined. These are three of the tiny tests God has brought into my wilderness life this week, and they have become the source of the devil’s temptations. How so?
- The energy-sucking head cold: “Oh poor you, Nick. Why don’t you act like the whole world revolves around you and wallow in self-pity and laziness?”
- The restless toddler and his middle-of-the-night potty accident: “Maybe if you pretend you are asleep, he’ll wake up Tessa instead. After all, you have mentally taxing work to do tomorrow!”
- The unwelcomed cavity: “Surely the dentist doesn’t know what she is talking about, Nick. You brush your teeth twice a day, floss occasionally (more regularly after a recent exhortation from Joyce England!), and swore an oath never to touch high fructose corn syrup. This lady just wants to make a quick buck!”
It is quite embarrassing to put words to my thoughts, but there you have it! It only takes a few tiny tests – so tiny, in fact, that they are hardly worthy of being called tests – to reveal a self-pitying, self-serving, self-trusting heart. These unpleasant providences are gracious interventions of God, delivering me from the allusion of having arrived in the holiness department.
Last week we began looking at our third core principle as a church – God-delighting piety. It is important to stress up front that while we prize the Christlike life, the best of us have only made a small beginning in the attainment of it. And whatever attainment we have made is not because of us but because of Christ by His Spirit. The Westminster Confession of Faith, speaking of the internal war between the flesh and the Spirit in believers, states, “In which war, although the remaining corruption, for a time, may much prevail; yet, through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part doth overcome; and so, the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (13.3).
It is only through Spirit-wrought union with Christ that we are delivered from the enslaving power of sin in definitive sanctification (Rom. 6:1,2,11) and are enabled to put to death our remaining sin in progressive sanctification (Rom. 6:12). Christ is our strength! It is through vital attachment to Him that our hearts are ongoingly conformed to His so that we begin to respond to the Father’s tests and the devil’s temptations like He did.
When we talk about piety, we are talking about a life that depends entirely upon the Spirit to make us more like the Son of God. John Murray explains, “It is by the efficacy and virtue which proceed from the exalted Lord that sanctification is carried on, and such virtue belongs to the exalted Lord by reason of his death and resurrection. It is by the Spirit that this virtue is communicated.” Truly, apart from Christ and His resurrection Spirit, we cannot make an inch of progress in holiness. But that doesn’t mean we resign ourselves to passivity, letting go and letting Christ. Yes, our sanctification is 100% His work in us. But it is simultaneously 100% our work. Again Murray states “that our whole being is intensely active in that process which has as its goal the predestinating purpose of God that we should be conformed to the image of his Son. Sanctification involves the concentration of thought, of interest, of heart, mind, will, and pursue upon the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus and the engagement of our whole being with those means which God has instituted for the attainment of that destination.”
We are called to a dependent activity and an active dependence as we pursue after death to sin and life unto God in Christ (Phil. 2:12-13).
Those words really summarize what we are after – a Godward life in and through Jesus Christ. Every trial and temptation is a test to drive us toward the Christ who is our righteousness and our sanctification. Even the smallest ones.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick