Walk by Faith

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. (Colossians 3:5-6 ESV)

It is one thing to compare the Biblical teaching of our Sanctification with the man-oriented false teaching that is prevalent seemingly everywhere, but then easily overlook the fact that so many believers are desperate to know how to obey the command in the passage I placed at the top of this post (Colossians 3:5-6) to put to death the sin in them. Christian living is frustrating for the truly regenerate when they forget that we are actually commanded in Sacred Scripture to “be what we already are.” That takes us aback because we do not “feel” Holy or Christlike. Why? Our repeated sins lead us to believe that are anything but. Then we hear false teachers like Rick Warren and his followers tell us that what we need is his program of behavior modification to fix us right up. When I was a youth, the big thing was “let go and let God.” Well, that didn’t work either. Both trying hard to not sin through some program and simply “letting go” to have God take over leads to the inevitable breeding of discouragement, apathy, and the lowering of God’s standards. 

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I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. (Romans 6:19 ESV)

Sanctification: “The work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.” – The Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q.35)

This post came about from a discussion among our discernment group today about this article/video by John Piper. My initial response went something like, “isn't what Piper and Warren and these guys doing is substituting Transformational stuff for Biblical Sanctification. In other words, we become more and more self-able, self-sufficient instead of more and more humble and dependent upon the grace of God, which is what Christian maturity is all about.” From that I began working out how to build this post around contrasting real, Biblical Sanctification with this manmade, self-made stuff that Rick Warren and the behavior modification gurus that follow him teach. What I came up with is that you should go to John Piper’s link and watch his video and/or read the post there then read the technical stuff below that I have condensed from a Theology manual. Then at the end, I will give you three links to articles I posted back in September on Sanctification. I think you will see that Biblical Sanctification is quite different than what these people are teaching. 

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