You Don't Care About God's Standard or God's Approval: More on Virtual Christianity

Part One

Justification by faith brings the "in Christ" position for the believer.  "In Christ" the believer is approved before God.  That's how someone is saved by faith.  In that way, justification by faith brings approval in Christ.  Christ did everything the Father wanted Him to do.  He wanted to do it and He did it.  In a positional way, the believer receives the imputed righteousness of Christ, the righteousness that Christ lived, and, therefore, is approved in Christ.  He doesn't get this approval by works, but by grace through faith.

The idea of justification by faith isn't that someone, who isn't interested in pleasing God the Father or living in a way that God the Father approves, still receives approval in Christ.  What's the problem here?  He doesn't know God.  He doesn't believe.  Trusting the Father also means that the Father will help or aid in the pleasing of Him.  That's saving grace.  He helps the one who wants to do it.  Wanting to do it is part of the belief that saves.  What I'm saying is that this falling short of saving faith, and yet something less than saving faith is being accepted as sufficient.  The "faith" itself falls short of the biblical and then historical Christian components, what have been termed notitia, assensus, and fiducia.

Notitia falls short, which is knowledge.  Jesus Himself is short shrifted of many qualities that are offensive to the one who isn't seeking practical approval from Jesus.  Saving faith requires assensus, the conviction that the content of the notitia is truth.  Sometimes a childhood profession wasn't saving faith and this is laid bare by the lack of conviction toward obedience to the Lordship that someone professes to know.  It's only a profession.  Fiducia requires commitment.  This person lacks in commitment.  Jesus said someone needed to count the cost.  Saving grace isn't about what grace allows, but what it enables.  Wanting something allowed that offends Jesus is lacking commitment.

This is what happens.  Someone doesn't want to please God.  He wants God's approval, but he doesn't care about living in an approved manner to God.  He just wants the approval.  He especially wants to feel approval -- from himself and others all around.  Don't criticize this person.  He loves himself and the world.  He wants approval despite his superior love for himself and the world.  He doesn't love God.  He says he does, most likely because of a feeling, which isn't love, or at the least something short of love.  He loves himself and the world.  With the love of God, he could live to be approved unto God.  He doesn't want to.  He "wants" to in the sense that he wishes he had the affection and will.  That he has for himself and the world.

A corrupt view of both justification and sanctification arises.  I say justification, because this false view of sanctification can't be accompanied by a true  or right view of justification.  Justification comes by saving faith, not a dead or demon faith or mere intellectual assent, and a right or faithful view of Jesus Christ.  This isn't a doctrinal malfunction, but a practical one, that is really laid out in 2 Peter 2.

A person attempts to fit Jesus, the Bible, and his understanding of faith into own own lust.  He tries to accommodate his love for himself and the world, the allure of those, into a version of Christianity provided by false teachers, who make it credible with their officiality.  "Teachers" are affirming this corruption.  It's a lie.  The leaders of these churches use this false doctrine, an unbiblical and even heretical one, to make merchandise of their adherents.

Jesus sanctified Himself by the truth (John 17:19), which is that He did everything the Father told Him to do.  Believers are not sanctified by a lesser standard than Jesus.  They too are sanctified by everything God says -- all of His words, sayings, or commandments.  That's what God approves.  That goal doesn't change, just because a person might sin and not fulfill it perfectly.

The Apostle Paul labored that he might please God.  This is fundamental to sanctification.  It repeats itself in several places in the New Testament, even a familiar text like Colossians 3:20:

Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.

The Lord is well-pleased by children obeying their parents in all things.  In all things.  This is the sanctification God is working in the believer, which the believer works out (Philip 2:12-13).  Hebrews 13:21 explains it very well:

Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever.

In sanctification, God wants to "make you perfect in every good work to do his will."  This is what is well-pleasing in His sight, not preaching the gospel fluently to yourself or to just keep doing the work of believing you're already all done with approval when you were justified.  That isn't even justification, let alone sanctification.

The purveyors of the false view of sanctification about which I am writing do not care about God's standard or His approval.  They care...about themselves.  They nourish and cherish their own flesh.  Like Peter writes, they deny the Lord that bought them (2 Peter 2:1).  They don't like having a boss, and they get around it with what Peter writes in the next chapter, by wresting scriptures unto their own destruction (2 Pet 3:16).