Possessed by God - A New Testament theology of sanctification and holiness.
By David Peterson
Apollos (IVP). 191 pages. £10.99
ISBN 0 85111 510 1
'The popular view that sanctification is a process of moral renewal and change, following justification, is not the primary emphasis of the New Testament. Rather, sanctification is primarily another way of describing what it mean to be converted or brought to God in Christ and kept in that relationship. It would be more accurate to say that renewal and change flow from the regeneration and sanctification that God had already accomplished in our lives' (p136).
This is a summary of the thrust of this important book, but before we come to it in more detail there are various obstacles to be removed.
First, that word 'popular'. How can the author use the word 'popular'? Is not true to say that sanctification is not a popular subject or even a popular word among church people today? Who is willing to have a discussion about words today? There are problems with words in general and with this word sanctification in particular.
Have words any meaning? We live in an age when words are at a discount. Words are under attack both from the popular and the philosophical point of view. The deconstructionists are telling us that the meaning of words depends on the ears that hear them.
Nice words?
If we grant, as Christians, that words do have significance, we then ask: Can words keep their meaning? Eliot said: 'Words . . . slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, will not stay in place.' We know this is true. 'Nice' no longer has the meaning to the modern reader that it did to Jane Austen. New usages of the word 'evangelical' are creeping into the dictionaries. We have to keep qualifying that word in popular usage. 'Evangelical' is just such a word that has slipped.
Then, what is wordy? How long can a sentence be before the reader loses interest? We live in the age of the soundbite enunciated in time to catch the evening news. Have we time to discuss the real meaning of sanctification?
How do we treat words? Badly I fear. People have a fine disregard for words and like Humpty Dumpty make words mean what they want them to mean, even if the dictionary disagrees.
Feeling is more important now than precision of meaning. In the light of all these modern trends, how are we to deal with a book which is concerned with precision as to what a word actually means?
Then again the subject of sanctification is not exactly at a premium. Peterson quotes Packer when he says: 'Evangelicals today are disillusioned with what has long been put to them as 'holiness teaching' (higher life, deeper life, victorious life, entire sanctification or any other version of the 'second blessing' theme). What they heard now strikes them as sterile, superficial, stunting real growth and irrelevant to today's perplexities and conflicts about Christian living.' (Keep in Step with the Spirit, 1984.) Certainly I have not heard any sermons about holiness or sanctification recently.
Sense of failure
But whatever the barriers on the way, this is an important subject and one that is related to the perplexities and conflicts of modern Christian living. Underlying many of the problems of today is the sense of failure that many Christians have. They turn to any new thing hoping that this will give them the assurance, the joy or the spiritual lift they feel they are lacking because of a sense of failure. A sense that they are not what God wants them to be. It may not be clearly stated as a confession of a lack of holiness or a failure of sanctification, but it is there as a need. Peterson does not put it quite like that but his scholarly approach to sanctification gives us all a welcome key to clarification and peace in this area.
What he says struck me as fresh and exciting. Further thought and search shows this is return to old paths well trodden in the past but becoming overgrown from disuse, with the waymarkers made dim by time and weather. Can we go against the trend and see the benefit of trying to restore the word sanctification to its New Testament meaning? Because this is what Peterson is seeking to do.
Going back to the bookshelf I found that Berkhof did have a quote that says: 'The terms 'sanctification and holiness' are now used so frequently to represent moral and spiritual qualities that they hardly convey to the reader the idea of position, of relationship as existing between God and some person or thing consecrated to him; and yet this appears to be the real meaning of the word'. It is this real meaning that Peterson is unveiling.
Two aspects
Then J.I Packer' in his book God's Words writes: 'The New Testament makes it clear that this gift has two aspects. The first aspect is relational and positional. In this sense God sanctifies sinners once and for ever when he brings them to himself, separating them from the world, delivering them from sin and Satan, and welcoming them into his fellowship. In this sense, therefore, the meaning of sanctification approximates to that of justification, adoption and the new birth . . . From this standpoint, sanctification is a once-and-for-all belief which the Christian begins to enjoy upon his conversion, through faith in Christ and to which he can look back as a past event. But then he goes on to speak of the second aspect of the gift as recreative and progressive'. In other words, there is a growth in grace and holiness. In his more recent Concise Theology he quotes the Westminster Confession and goes on to say 'Sanctification is an ongoing transformation within a maintained consecration, and it engenders real righteousness with the frame of relational holiness.' So Packer knows that the old path is there but now gives it less emphasis. As Wainwright in his Lake District guides sometimes says, this old path is difficult to trace and may easily be missed.
Berkhof himself comes down on the recreative side: 'Sanctification may be defined as the gracious and continuous operation of the Holy Spirit, by which he delivers the justified sinner from the pollution of sin, renews his whole nature in the image of God , and enables him to perform good works'.
The definition of words has always been a problem. McGrath in his Christian Theology points out how near at one point the Council of Trent came to seeing what Luther meant about justification and says: 'This is perhaps a classic case of a theological misunderstanding, resting on the disputed meaning of a major theological term.'
Are we in the same difficulty now with the word 'sanctification' and can this book bring us to rethink what the New Testament really says about the word?
For the study
My strong recommendation therefore is that serious Bible students and pastors read this book. It is a book for the study, not light holiday reading. There are one or two errors in references which a second edition will correct. If you find them it will be proof that you are following the argument about hagiasmos closely . Let me turn you to 1 Corinthians 6.11 where the NIV has 'holiness' but the NRSV 'sanctification'. The emphasis is on status. God has brought the fallible Corinthians within the covenant and because they are there, God will keep them and empower them to work out that status in daily living as they are renewed . . .
Many Christians must have had the same prayer of Charles Wesley when he wrote:
Times without number have I prayed,
This only once forgive,
Relapsing when Thy hand was stayed
And suffered me to live:
Yet now the kingdom of Thy peace,
Lord, to my heart restore,
Forgive my vain repentances, and bid me sin no more.
Seeing sanctification as a gift of grace that speaks of status secure within a covenant gives a sense of assurance as well as motive for holiness.
Sanctification means having a new identity with the obligation to live according to that identity.
Back to the Doctor
I have to confess that I did not find Peterson's chapter on Romans 6 and 7 so lucid as the rest of the book. I found myself going back to Lloyd-Jones. (who is not mentioned in the bibliography) and Stott's Bible Speaks Today on Romans to clear my head.
But I hope I have said enough to make you want to read Peterson on sanctification. It may lead you (like me) to rethink the whole issue. Will it enable the Christian church to bring the subject off the backburner and perhaps alter the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary which gives the meaning that Peterson says is not the New Testament one.
