Do you not like Piper's description because it sounds so "you centric"?

 

Daniel,
I was following you along pretty good until you said the part about a person must surrender to God. It seems to me that human initiated surrender is no different than human initiated obedience. In other words you seem to be saying sanctification cannot proceed until a person surrenders himself to Christ by his own strength.

Perhaps this surrender is something that is a result of regeneration and the Holy Spirit enables a person to be active in the process. It is a responding to and feeding off of the continuing grace of sanctification.

At any rate you have certainly identified the false legalistic way of sanctification (do's and don'ts). As you seem to be saying, true sanctification should be from new inward desires and not outward conformity and this is a work of the Holy Spirit.

Am I totally confused about your point or am I getting warm?

 

Frank - exactly.

Jazzy - if you are confused it is probably my fault. you said:

It seems to me that human initiated surrender is no different than human initiated obedience. In other words you seem to be saying sanctification cannot proceed until a person surrenders himself to Christ by his own strength.

You make an astute observation, and answering it reminds me of trying to explain to an Arminian that predestination doesn't cancel out free will.

No one can really surrender unless God grants them the grace to do so, but anyone who is not willing to pursue it with their whole heart, is not going to find it. Anyone can temporarily and/or superficially try to conform to a standard of conduct - but doing so in a vacuum is not what Christ died to provide us.

The point is not to swap one human effort for another, it is to articulate the error of pursuing godliness at the expense of, or apart from, pursuing God.

The standard for Christianity is not outward "service" - that was Judaism looked like. The Christian is called to (and graced with the privilege of) bondservice.

My wife prefers me to "make it concrete" when I discuss such things - that is, she has a hard time seeing how a thing works itself out practically unless I give a "real world" example. So I will try and do that, and see if that helps.

Joe Christian is a sincere believer. He heard the gospel as a young man, and gave his life to Christ absolutely and utterly - his genuine and utter surrender was initiated by God, but that didn't mean Joe was sat as a passive passenger for the ride - his conversion was the single most hardest thing he ever went through - in the moment of his first surrender - the moment he was saved, he made a profoundly difficult choice - on the one hand he wanted with all his heart to live his own life by his own rules, and to enjoy it as best he could in whatever way seemed to please him - and at the end of which he knew he would forfeit that life because in order to have it he would have to forsake what was in the other hand - living his life utterly for, and at the beck and call of Jesus Christ his Lord. In that aweful moment a war raged inside him, but just as a damn bursts, so too he suddenly found himself able to turn in faith to Christ - to trust him with his life and after life. Surrender and faith mixed together and he was saved.

Notwithstanding, Joe gave into a temptation the very next day, and because of his ignorance and shame, he ran from Christ like Adam ran from God in the garden. The enemy quickly seized the opportunity and convinced Joe that he had not only lost his salvation - but that salvation was thereafter impossible - that he had blown his one and only shot. In the strength of that lie Joe runs from God and doesn't look back for years.

Eventually however, God reigns Joe in, and teaches him the truth about his own salvation. But Joe has been so far gone for so long, he isn't interested in simply "playing" Christian - he wants it all - he wants to know God as fully and as thoroughly as a man can no God - to be as holy as a man can be this side of heaven. The only problem is that Joe has become quite comfortable in his sin, and while he desires to be holy, he doesn't desire it so much to actually give up all his sin. He -is- willing to, say, stop running amber lights - and 99% of the time he stops his care when the traffic light goes amber - but if Joe is in a hurry, well... he can be excused if he steps on the gas to get through the occasional light. Joe doesn't speed anymore, but if he is following someone who annoys him, well, he can punch it over the speed limit - just to get past them. He gives God a real, tangible "obedience" - only it suffers from one small but critical flaw - it is only available when Joe is "willing" and it only goes as far as Joe is "willing" to let it. Joe has given God everything =but= the reins. Joe has his focus on what he is giving up to God, and as long as his focus is there he will never understand that his focus ought to be on what he is =not= giving up to God - and that is absolute control of his life.

God has no interest in Joe's sacrifices (obedience) if they always and ever come out of a heart that refuses to draw near to God.

Surrender is different than obedience because while genuine surrender produces "bond service" obedience, yet an external obedience does not, nor cannot produce (nor is it indicative of) genuine surrender.

There is a world of difference between taming the beast and slaying it. Obedience without surrender is suppressing and restraining something that remains alive - but surrender is not merely taming the beast, but offering it up to be slain. It doesn't slay the beast itself, but surrenders the beast to the cross.

I feel my words are quite inadequate, and I am probably just confusing you more by coming at it from a different angle. Let me know if that clears it up at all or just muddles it worse.

Dan

 

Daniel,
I think I now see your point here. I will meditate on it a bit and see if I have any more questions or comments. Thanks for pursuing this subject as I really want to understand the dynamics of how it all works better.

 

Daniel,

I agree with a good deal of what you've said. I especially agree that sanctification comes through faith and not by works. That is agreement to be excited about!

Here's where I think I need some clarity. You write:

there is no such thing as a partial submission to God, we are either entirely submitted and therefore in bondservice, or we are somewhat rebellious and therefore entirely independent, but deceived into imagining that we are "mostly obedient."

Here's one of the places of disagreement. I simply disagree that "partial submission" is impossible. If I may, I would phrase it this way, I would say that imperfect obedience is altogether possible. For example, I believe that it is entirely possible for me to preach a sermon that I sincerely desire its purpose to be God-honoring. However, it may also be that while I am preaching such a "great" sermon, that I feel personal, and sinful, pride in my prowess at articulation. Isn't it possible for the sermon to be edifying and truly faithful and yet I still taint the "work" with pride?

The reason that I believe this to be possible is because I am truly free from sin and yet I am being freed from sin at the same time. If not for salvation, I would never have had a desire to preach a God-honoring sermon in the first place, and yet I find that even when I go to do the good thing, evil is present with me.

This is not an excuse for sin. And I'm certainly not advocating that one has to sin. But the fact is, to our utter shame and horror and disgrace, that we do sin. It is utterly abhorrent that Christians are, as you so rightly point out, not bound by sin to sin and yet they still sin. In short, I agree with Luther that I am simultaneously just and sinner.

Unless I am misunderstanding you, then I cannot see that sanctification can be a process in your understanding. If it is, then what are you in process of being "freed" from? If you are free from all sin, then why do you still sin? From whence comes the impulse? Can you say that you are, even now, entirely submitted to God? If not, then are you then saying that you are utterly disobedient? It seems under your system that a believer is either sinlessly perfect or utterly disobedient.

I'll tell you how I understand the vestiges of sin that still dwell in me the best way that I can. When I was a kid, I hated onions on my pizza but my dad, to my great dismay, always insisted on ordering them. His retort to my complaint was that "I could just pick them off." Well, yeah. The problem is that even after they were gone, I could still taste the taint of onion.

Now, I hate sin, and by God's grace the penalty and bondage to sin was once the scourge of my soul has been lifted. However, sin so permeated my being that even with it gone I can still taste onion...err..sin, in many of my "deeds" in retrospect. Sanctification, I believe, is the process of taint cleansing, and it works only by faith. That is why, oddly, I love the law. It points out areas of onion taint that need faith scrubbing.

 

I regret that I have not been able to read the last few posts in their entirety. (Man am I a slow reader... I feel like a third-grader sitting in a tenth-grade class.) I'm just briefly hovering here between other stuff.

But was that a toilet? Classy. I gotta get me one.

 

Brad - I am not ignoring your post - I am writing up a reply. I have just been swamped lately...

 

Daniel,

It's a horrible reality that some people have to work for a living.;) No problem.