Articles
Growing Up In Christ
Dealing with ourselves on an emotional level or on the plane of basic desires is hard -- so hard that we might give ourselves a pass. “That’s just the way I am” is a comforting rationale that dodges the issue. Depending upon our genetic makeup, certain reactions come to us naturally. For someone who is strongly passionate, the knee-jerk response to mistreatment is likely anger. For someone who is passive, procrastination or indifference may lead to sins of omission.
Let’s reiterate a point made in a previous article. Temptation is the internal response to some sinful stimulus -- but it is not sin (James 1:12-15). The mere feeling of anger is not sin, but to be ruled by that emotion to the degree that we intend to or actually injure others is sin. For instance, if some hothead angrily drives to his adversary’s house in order to punch him in the nose and it turns out that his potential victim is not home, he already has sinned in intent. He is not merely angry but is overtaken by that anger as to commit violence.
But how do we get control of ourselves at the level of emotion or desire? This involves a process of growth in the New Testament known as “holiness” or “sanctification.” When we initially obey the gospel, we are “sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:10). A similar concept is found in Titus 3:5: “But according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”
Paul combines these two ideas in I Cor. 6:11: “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” Thus being washed or cleansed by the blood of Jesus, we are “set apart” in a special relationship unto God; we are “holy” or “sanctified.”
While saved, we are not yet entirely what God wants us to be. There are sinful habits to break; there is a renewal of our thinking that must occur; there is ignorance to replace with a true knowledge of things as instructed from God’s word. The Christian must develop new goals, new moral structure, new purpose of life, new relationships that will aid him in becoming “a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).
This growth process “may be called progressive sanctification because it is the ongoing process in which the Christian becomes increasingly separated from sin itself” (Cottrell, The Holy Spirit, p. 65).
Suppose a man enjoys all the fruits of a sexually liberated society and then becomes a Christian, but he struggles with lingering desires and patterns of behavior that have dominated his life for years. Some of the Thessalonians also had trouble with this, so Paul wrote in I Thess. 4:3-7:
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such ... for God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness.
The Holy Spirit has taught us through His revelation that basic desires may be expressed lawfully or unlawfully. Those “who do not know God” do as they please, often harming others in the process. Knowing this is true and that “the Lord is the avenger of all such” should provide the incentive to reorder our thinking.
Other perspectives also come into view: indiscriminate sexual activity exposes one to disease, to the wrath of a jealous husband or wife, to the possibility of conceiving a child, to the dehumanizing of oneself and another person, etc. In other words, the Holy Spirit supplies both teaching and incentive to act honorably.
We will never change our thinking or behavior without first conforming to new value structures that originate with God. This is the level on which we fail so often: We try to change something outwardly without first changing inwardly -- i.e., without altering our thinking, goals and spiritual orientation.
Misguided sexual desire, or any other sinful inclination, can be overcome by an inward transformation that only God can accomplish. Fully yielding to the gospel and all its divine resources, combined with our personal desire to please and honor God, is the key to progressive holiness: “But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy’” (I Pet 1:15-16).
