SANCTIFICATION --An Evangelical Tradition Neglected

Just reading a friend's xanga the other day and he talked about an article (in Chinese) written by Dr. Carver T Yu. In fact, I just discussed this essay with some of my friends a few weeks ago when a certain pastor came to our church and talked about Buddhism for the whole time. I suggested that this might be what he wanted to do-- to tell Chinese people about Christianity in their own way, so that they don't feel like it is something foreign.

This reminded me of this article he wrote on santification. (For the Chinese version of the same article, click here.) I have shared this essay with my fellowship last year.

"As spiritual heirs of the Reformers, evangelicals are all too familiar with the doctrine of justification by faith. We have however often overlooked the fact that sanctification is the other side of justification. Our Reformers put tremendous emphasis on the inseparability of justification and sanctification... Sanctification is the working out in our life the righteousness we have received absolutely free from God in Christ. Our salvation is empty without the holiness that is meant for our life. To Calvin, Christian life on the foundation of justification is a life of sanctification, a life of schooling under Christ, the inner schoolmaster. It is a life of learning to allow the Spirit to root out our heart's distrust and our mind's blindness. It is also a life of learning to submit our will to the Will of God, like Jesus Christ. Thus we can see why Calvin has given such great emphasis to the discipline of self-denial, of bearing the cross and dying with Christ, of meditating on the future life and the proper use of the present life.

However, the great tradition of spiritual discipline (in contradistinction to what we call "spirituality") seems to have fallen by the wayside. The term "sanctification" has become something that sounds rather strange to the ears of our congregations. Why? Because seminaries nowadays seldom teach sanctification as a doctrine, and much less as a way of Christian life.

Secularization has eaten into the bone of our modern life. Among Christians, the sense of the Holy has been seriously eroded, the feeling of fear and trembling before God has become numbed. Many Christians seek spirituality merely to escape from the unhappiness of their pressurized life. They are thus much more at home with the soothing commonsense spiritual wisdom than with Calvin's great teaching on Christian life."

He is a very good observer. And I like reading what he wrote.

Nowadays we can see this everywhere, we try to adapt Christianity to modern society so that more people can accept it. However, it was done in a way that distorts it.

You can see people emphasizing on getting peace and rest from Jesus and omitting the important parts of cross-bearing. (Not that getting peace and rest is not important, but this is NOT the only thing Christianity is all about. And you wonder why people think Buddhism is profound and Christianity is superficial, impractical, out-of-touch with our present life.)

The life of Christians was never easy. It never is, and never will be. Jesus never promised us that.

That's what our pastors promised though. And you wonder why all these people left Christianity after a while being thoroughly disappointed by "Jesus".