I've been waiting to take another run at my series on Christian Defeatism . In particular, I've been meditating and taking notes on the, in my view, neglected concept of Sanctification. Couple that with my teaching assignment tomorrow on Exodus 15 and the five-inch thick Exodus commentary that Stroke loaned me, and out popped this post.

In Exodus, Saved for God's Glory, Philip Graham Ryken calls sanctification "the long, hard, difficult process of being conformed to the holiness of God”. Below is an excerpt from his commentary on the end of Exodus 15:

“The Wilderness is a hard place. It is a place to meet with God, to be sure, and yet it is always a difficult place. It is barren and desolate. Thus the Israelites were setting out on a long and arduous journey. They had seen a great salvation, but for them it would not be “happily ever after.” They still had a pilgrimage to make, a pilgrimage that was both spiritual and physical.”

. . .

All our problems and persecutions are meant to teach us to depend on God alone, to have absolute confidence in his faithfulness. It is important for us to know where we are in the Christian life. We have not yet reached the promised land. We are still in the wilderness, where God is sanctifying us. Knowing this keeps us from having the wrong expectations and also enables us to "consider it pure joy . . . whenever [we] face trials of many kinds, because [we] know that the testing of [our] faith develops perseverance" (Jas. 1:2,3).

Emphasis mine.

This is a good reminder, and it speaks to two equal and opposite errors that we can commit as Christians.

The first error is to assume that sanctification isn't real or, if it is, that it is a rare occurrence for the Christian. This is the equivalent of staying in Egypt, chowing down on those delicious leaks and onions while bemoaning your slave status. I've observed this attitude (particularly in the blogosphere, for some reason) an alarming number of times. It's generally expressed in "I'm not OK, and don't even get me started on you" statements, and the subtext is that we'll never be OK ("at least not in this life" is the adder), so let's all quit pretending.

Look, sanctification is not easy. In fact, it's hard. But you can't read the Bible, and the New Testament in particular, without getting hit in the face by the repeated exhortations to press on, to be transformed, to conform to Jesus, to change. The lives of the writers of the NT were hard - but better! How else could Paul write this?

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ - Philippians 3:8

I'm not worthy to clean Paul's toilet, but I am, in my bumbling way, heading to the same destiny that Paul was.

About the hard aspects of sanctification: I came to the realization a long time ago that the Christian "desert experience", "season of dryness", or even "dark night of the soul" is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes God wants us there.

The desert may last a long time. Indeed, the life of a Christian is - the joys and victories we may experience included - a long season of wandering as a stranger and alien in a land that is not our home. Perhaps in your life you haven't seen a lot of evidence of any kind of progress toward Christ-likeness. That, of course, can point to a deeper problem, but it may also just be that the time hasn't come yet for the kind of outward progress that people (or even you) might notice. A plant can spend a lot of time spreading roots under the soil. It's not wasted time. Israel wandered in circles as the older generation died off, but that wandering prepared the younger generation for the Conquest. And in reading the Exodus, you begin to see the progression toward a nation that had the ability to take the Promised Land.

One side-effect of sanctification is perseverance. Don't give up! Your destiny is to become like Jesus. And not just in the sweet by-and-by, but as part of a process, the process of learning to bear fruit, in your life here on earth that is visible and consciously observed and enjoyed. We were made to step into the Jordan at full tide and cross safely over to the other side. It takes a lot of work by the Holy Spirit to get us to the point where taking that step of faith seems the natural thing to do.

So, if you feel like you're in Egypt, that's not a good thing, but it's not a bad thing either, unless you've just decided that that's your (and everyone else's) destiny. It's not.

The second error is to assume that sanctification has already happened, at the moment of salvation. This is what I term the Edlredgian Heresy (tongue in cheek, sort of) that "your heart is already good", just because you're saved.

Heh - good thing he never slapped a heart monitor on my ticker. Some of the things I think and meditate on would make your face melt. I'm not there yet.

But I'm heading there. I press on. The Promised Land is my destination. And, if you're a Christian, it's yours too.

We don't get to go there without changing.

(more coming on this topic in a later post).