Virtual Christian Living or Your Christian Brain in a Vat: The Avoidance or Corruption of Biblical Sanctification

Listen to my session from the 2019 Word of Truth Conference. As an addenda to that one, listen to this session from James Bronsveld and this one from Thomas Ross.

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Imagine a Christian life you don't actually live.  Jesus lives it for you.  You can't please Him yourself.  Impossible.  Instead then, just access the life that Jesus lived by faith or by preaching the gospel fluently to yourself (part of the lingo).  This supposedly honors God and Jesus more because He's the one who does it.  It's virtual Christian living where you just click on the faith button, the equivalent of your Christian brain in a vat wired into a Christian matrix.

This false view of sanctification reminds me of the "think system" of Professor Harold Hill in the musical, the Music Man.  Why do the hard thing of learning an instrument and how to read music, when someone can just use the think system?  The music is as good as being played, even if it is not.  Parents all over America have no need to sacrifice for music lessons or to do the hard work at enforcing the practice of an instrument.  Even if the child doesn't want to play, he can just rely on Jesus to have played for him, and feel no guilt for not practicing or improving.

This avoidance or corruption of biblical and historical sanctification takes the doctrine of imputation to a new and different level.  It isn't just positional righteousness imputed to you, which is biblical, but your whole practical righteousness too, which isn't.  Instead of doing the hard thing, the struggle, the beating your body into subjection, pressing toward the mark, fighting the good fight, and mortifying the deeds of the flesh, you just contemplate the cross and imagine that life you couldn't live to be already lived.  Done.

What I'm describing is very convenient.  It really does take all the pressure off you to obey all those imperatives of the New Testament. No expectations.  No worries about judgment.  No need for approval.  That was already settled at justification and it remains settled.  You just tell yourself it's already done.

With the hypergrace view, I don't need to care for my elderly parents, my alzheimer's-ridden father.  I'm not bothered by any compunction for their needs.  Jesus settled that.  I don't have to feel judged by anyone in some form of guilt ridden anxiety as they waste away.  I can just enjoy my life.  I can reduce my work to the equivalent of clicking a like button and adding a few hearts or emojis under a social network posting.

There is no use feeling guilty about disobeying or dishonoring parents, ghosting them, a wife not submitting to her husband, or even for not practicing the Great Commission, because Jesus paid it all.  Satiate in that like a Christian brain in a vat.   You preach that to yourself and the guilt is gone.  Instead you can go binge watch a season of Handmaid's Tale, as if it were a virtuous activity.  Jesus was checked in, while you were checked out.  Apparently, this is true freedom, unchained from the expectations of good works for sanctification.

Biblical Sanctification

James in his epistle explains this dead or demon faith in the second chapter.  Rather than feeling the obligation of actual service to someone cold and needy, just say, be warmed and filled, and you have that base covered.  James though says, no.  No, faith without works is dead.  Works?  Yes, works.  You, that's you, have to do good works.  The good works of sanctification don't count through justification -- just the opposite.

The New Testament is filled with imperatives Christians are commanded to do, things to avoid, activities to abstain, qualities to be, such as "be patient," "be holy," "be merciful," and "be glad."  You can't just turn those over to Jesus to live and then jump in your car to catch a rock concert for you.  Paul said he had to struggle to do what he should and not do what he shouldn't.  That struggle isn't necessary with "let go and let God."

Young people today want approval without the actual fulfillment of acceptable behavior.  They want to experience fleshly lust and the allurements of the world and not be judged for lapping those up.  With this system, God always gives them approval, because they're in Christ and God always approves of His Son.  They didn't think this system up.  Peter says that false teachers 'through covetousness with feigned words have made merchandise of them.'

Jesus did everything the Father wanted Him to do, and in John 17, He prayed that believers would be sanctified in the same way that He was, sanctified by the truth.  That sanctification doesn't come by His doing everything He was supposed to do and then our just trusting in everything that He was supposed to do, getting credit for living the Christian life because He did it for us.  Nope.  The Bible doesn't teach anything like that.  That is a monumental lie.

Justification and Sanctification

Justification is by grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone and apart from works.  We don't do good works for justification.  We receive positional righteousness by faith.  We then stand before God as righteous.  We don't have to prove anything, earn anything, or owe anything.  The price was paid by Jesus on the cross, His righteousness was imputed to us, and our sins were forgiven, past/present/future.

Is sanctification also by faith alone?  No.  It isn't.  Human effort is required for sanctification.  Sanctification is by faith and good works.  Is that new?  No, it is the biblical and historic doctrine of sanctification.  It's worth looking at a few places, even though there are hundreds of them.  A major portion of the New Testament teaches sanctification by works.  Sure, we do these good works through the power of the Holy Spirit and by the Word of God, but they are our works.  We do them.  God is working through us, sure, but we are still doing the works.  There are 1,050 commands in the New Testament and for an actual reason, not a virtual one. Those justified by faith are to do and will do good works.  God is also judging believers as to whether they are doing good works.  They will give an account to Him at the judgment seat of Christ for whether they lived them.

There are many verses that teach our part in sanctification, but consider Romans 8:13

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Who mortifies, puts to death in a continuous sense, the deeds of the body?  "Ye do."  The believer is responsible for mortification.  This reminds me of the previous chapter, when Paul wrote in Romans 7:21:

I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.

Paul would do good.  God is working in Him to do good (Philippians 2:12-13), but it is Paul doing good.  Faith is not alone for a Christian (read James).  A man may say he has faith, but that faith is dead if it is not accompanied by good works (James 2:14-21).  John said that a man may say he knows God, but without doing good works, keeping God's commandments, he is a liar (1 John 2:3-4).

This perversion of which I write eliminates biblical sanctification and stretches out justification all the way to glorification.  Someone isn't required to do anything in sanctification, except "speak the gospel fluently into his life."  The idea here is that you can't please God, that's impossible (this is a kind of voluntary humility, a humble brag), but Jesus does please the Father, so he can access it just by believing it.  Justification is moved into the sanctification slot.  With true sanctification, through the Spirit and the Word of God, the believer, who has a new nature, can and does do good works.  If he doesn't, that indicates he isn't a new person.

We are not sanctified by believing.  We are sanctified by working (and believing).  You won't work if you don't believe, but the sanctification comes by things like "mortification."  It's hard work.  It's a struggle.  You are doing this work, like Paul said, to be accepted of the Father (2 Corinthians 5:9).  We've already been accepted for justification.  That's settled.  We look for acceptance in our post justification works.  Someone can have greater fruit and receive greater rewards (1 Cor 3, 2 Cor 4-5). In Roman 12:1, we present our bodies a living sacrifice, and the consideration for us is that presentation, acceptable to God.  If so, it won't conform to this world (Romans 12:2).

"Gospel fluency," "contemplating the cross," or "let go and let God" do not represent biblical or historical sanctification.  They are another, modern iteration of turning the grace of God the lasciviousness, the apostasy of 2 Peter 2 and Jude.  They take away responsibility to obey the commands of the New Testament, fulfill the law of Christ, and turn it over to Jesus.  It just isn't true.  The New Testament doesn't teach it.

I call on anyone who has received or obtained or borrowed this false view of sanctification to repent.  Leave it behind.  Forsake it.  It is a cultic view formulated to allure its adherents as prey.  Sanctification is the second phase of ultimate salvation, the first justification, and the third glorification.  Your acceptance of an utterly corrupt, false view of sanctification does not bode well for your justification or your glorification.  If you don't like the kingdom of Jesus Christ now, living it out on earth in your sanctification, why would you think you would enjoy it in the future?  You love this present world, not the future one.