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True Sanctification Breaks the Power of Self
Several authors have suggested that across any given ethnic and
cultural mix there are different love languages. By this they mean
that apparently some of us need to hear the message "I love
you" in a particular way.
For some, the language is deeds of kindness. For others, the language
is the giving of gifts. For still others, love is predominantly
heard when we commend them, boost them and speak well of them. Still
others need physical touch and affection. You get the picture. The
concept says that if a person needs to be loved in one language
and you constantly speak your love to them in a different language,
they may not really hear you or sense that they are loved by you.
The same reality is true for me when it comes to the language of
sanctification. Some phrases, words and metaphors really reach me,
while others never engage my attention. One particular phrase in
our article of religion on sanctification speaks well to many people,
but for me, it didn't speak my language: "... is cleansed in
that moment from all inward sin. ..."
The cleansing metaphor or motif just causes too many problems for
me. Whenever I hear that phrase, I start to think of dirty cloth,
soap, hot water and the process of scrubbing that removes a dark
stain. For years I rigorously searched for a better phrase than
"is cleansed in that moment from all inward sin."
I wrote letters to key biblical scholars in the Wesleyan tradition.
Their responses helped a little, but I never really found someone
who was speaking about these provisions of God in a manner and with
metaphors that really clicked with my heart and mind. I filled several
file folders with those letters, their responses, my notes from
commentaries and quotes from Bishop Wilson T. Hogue's History of
the Free Methodist Church. The quotes described the debate among
church leaders about whether they would commit to the theological
position of entire sanctification occurring in a moment of time
or of nothing occurring beyond justification except growth.
The necessity of feeding the people in my congregation and calling
them to the deeper things of God -- to holiness -- forced me to
cobble together my own personal article on entire sanctification.
It worked better for me. It seemed to be true to Scripture, true
to my experience, true to our tradition and rational at the same
time.
Entire sanctification is the work of God in response to a Christian's
surrender and faith, which breaks the power of addiction to self.
This full surrender changes our saving relationship to God, as
it delivers us from the spirit of rebellion. It opens the door to
the possibility of a wholehearted love for God and others. It lays
the foundation for a growing improbability of willful disobedience.
This deepened relationship with God, activated by His Spirit, releases
us from our self-sufficient, arrogant attitude; frees us from the
need to control others and dictate our own terms; and breaks the
habit of manipulating the world and God.
As the Holy Spirit is allowed to free us from our rebellious mind
and independent will, we grow in quantum leaps of Christlikeness,
making glad the heart of God, and bringing hope and joy to the heart
of the person being transformed.
This definition may sound academic, but let me tell you what it
was that so powerfully confronted me with my own arrogant, self-fixated
person.
When I married my wife, Peggy, I made a sincere covenant of marriage
with her. I promised to love, honor and cherish her for the rest
of my life. But in my youth, I was naive. I very quickly discovered
that marriage is one of God's best tools for showing you how selfish,
how addicted, how compulsive you might really be.
In October of our first year of marriage my parents came to visit
us for the weekend. We were happy to have them come and enjoyed
showing them around. It was about 10 weeks into our marriage. In
that time I had already moved my wife to tears on several occasions.
We had already had a couple of meals during which it suddenly dawned
on me that I was the only one talking.
Why? I was living out the self-addiction with which I had been born
and which had not yet been broken. I was hooked on me. Self, not
Christ, was the dominant, controlling force in my life.
After their visit, my parents talked about what they had observed
in me. They were very concerned. They had seen it immediately --
my lack of kindness, my insensitivity, my controlling comments to
Peggy. My dad wrote me a letter I have kept all these years. He
challenged me about what I was doing to my wife. It was the wake-up
call I needed.
I began to realize that although I was married, I was living as
though I was not. I was not yet giving consideration to this other
person as I ought. I was working my schedule such that when she
suddenly interrupted what I wanted to do, I became internally angry.
I never yelled at her. I never hit her. But I psychologically abused
her simply by failing to make the adjustment of surrendering to
my covenant of marriage.
I cannot point to a week, a day or an hour when my marriage turned
the corner. But the pain of my selfishness, arrogance and dominance
finally woke me up. I understood that although I had made a covenant
of marriage, I was not personally yielded to my wife and our covenant.
I was still wanting my way more than our way, my will more than
our will, my passions and dreams more than our passions and dreams.
You don't have to be a genius to figure it out. If you do not surrender
to your covenant and your spouse, not only will your marriage not
blossom, it will die at the very root and leave you barren, empty,
stale and alone.
By God's grace, there came a moment of surrender when my will replaced
lip service to my marriage covenant. Sometime in my late 20s I began
to get the picture and figured out that there was a way to reduce
my relational pain. I was smart enough to realize I did not like
what I was doing to Peggy, nor did I like what her pain was doing
to me.
Realizing my problem, I began to surrender. Peggy is pleased that
I did. My children, though they know very little of the reality
I am describing, are blessed because I did. My grandchildren will
also be blessed because I agreed to die to self-will and self-fixation
and to stop rebelling in anger at the loss of my freedom and independence.
In my marriage I experienced the God-designed principle of the universe:
when we agree to be bound, we are set free; when we yield our will,
we experience true release.
This paradoxical principle is captured in the old hymn "Make
Me a Captive Lord."
Make me a captive, Lord, and then
I shall be free.
Force me to render up my sword, and
I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life's alarms when by myself
I stand.
Imprison me within Thine arms, and
strong shall be my hand.
We enter into that truth by dying to our belief that we have enough
knowledge or wisdom to live autonomously, without reference to God.
In Galatians 5:24, Paul teaches us that those who belong to Christ
Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.
The Message says it this way: "Among those who belong to Christ,
everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding
to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good --
crucified."
What is the "sinful nature"? It is everything connected
with getting our own way. It is self out of proper relationship
to God. It is self-orientation, self-fixation, self-absorption.
It is self-referencing, self-deciding, self-exalting. It is that
tendency or bent toward fulfilling self's desires before fulfilling
the desires of God and others. We are all born with it and this
is our problem. This was my problem. Self that was not yet yielded
or surrendered to God.
What is crucifixion of the sinful nature? It is the radical decision
to renounce self-will, self-control and self-fixation as the operative
principles of our lives. It is the radical decision to reject self-addiction
and self-focus, while we listen for the cadence of the Holy Spirit's
voice so that we may get in step with Him. It is the radical decision
to repudiate self as the center of the universe.
In Galatians 5:25, Paul reminds us how we maintain this truth: "Since
we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."
You see? For me, it is relational -- not water and soap, not cleansing.
The Spirit empowers and inspires us. Paul prayed that the Ephesian
believers would experience power in their inner being through the
Spirit -- relationship. The Spirit then helps our willingness to
obey become a regular pattern of obedience.
In Galatians 5:26, Paul challenges us to guard against reverting
back. "Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying one
another." Conceit could easily be defined as self on the throne.
Self on the throne inevitably provokes others. Why? Because self
on the throne is insecure and envies others. It thinks we are better
than others and that we deserve more than others.
One of my favorite passages is 2 Corinthians 3:17-18: "Now
the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there
is freedom. And we ... are being transformed into his likeness with
ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit"
(italics added). Our self is becoming like the self of God in whose
image we were originally created. Our self is learning to love,
give, worship and serve in selfless ways.
As we surrender to the Spirit, who dwells with us and in us, we
are mentored in the mind of Christ (Philippians 2). We learn the
mind of the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who did nothing out of selfish
ambition; the One who did nothing out of empty or vain conceit;
the One who humbly considered others better than himself; the One
who did not look to His own interests, but the interests of others.
The One who made himself nothing, who took the very nature of a
servant, humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death
on a cross.
Go ahead now and reread my relational definition of entire sanctification.
Have you surrendered? Are you surrendering? Are you experiencing
the transforming power of God, which makes you like Jesus?
It is your privilege. The price is death to self-absorption, to
self-fixation. But when you pay that price, you will discover the
paradoxical freedom of the sanctified life, as the old hymn continues:
"My will is not my own till Thou has made it Thine; if it would
reach a monarch's throne, it must its crown resign."
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