Particular Pitfalls of Independent Baptists: Performance-Based Sanctification

a lot to say, but not sure if i have the time at this moment. i think this is an important idea that needs to be talked about. i do generally agree with the take here.

well, ok, while i’m typing… . . i lived in a very performance based environment for a while. oh, we were the most pleasing to God… no one said it; in fact they said the opposite, but that just made us more pleasing to God, you know…

… i left in good standing, too… . and then i started to meet people who had no head space for rules like that, and who loved much more and more sacrificially than I did in a biblical way I had never really seen up close. I mean to say, that my rule-based environment would never have really led me into this type of godly love or to see the fulness of God’s heart and what are truly His standards. It kind of oddly led me away from that and taught me to judge people in ways God does not judge us.

Anyway, in that rules environment, I was quite the “saint.” ;) Then I got married and had kids … and I started to wonder if i was even a Christian because I just couldn’t control myself with the constant irritation. There was so little to none godly love developed in me …

My moment of first light in that dark time was when I realized that the gospel meant not only that Christ had died for my sins, but that He had also lived for me the perfect, God-laws-entirely-fulfilled life for me for each and every day… . I think this was the time my sanctification really started, that I really began to look at Christ and see the beauty of His obedience and let it start transforming me.

There’s a lot to appreciate in Bob’s post and I don’t disagree with most of it. But the problem is that it lumps some dissimilar things together, resulting in a false choice.

Don’t try harder in your Christian life. Focus on Jesus more. Bask in His love, and try to realize how truly amazing and dumbfounding is His grace.

Either we believe in striving toward godliness or ​we believe in preaching the gospel to ourselves everyday.

Either we believe in trying harder or we believe our transformation is God’s grace at work in us.

But this is a false choice. I just coming back to the NT itself and what it clearly calls us to do.

• 2 Co 5:9 NKJV 9 Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.
• 2 Ti 2:3–5 NKJV 3 You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 4 No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. 5 And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.
• 1 Ti 4:7–8 NKJV 7 But reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness. 8 For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.
• Heb 12:3–4 NKJV 3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. 4 You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.

The lumping dissimilar things together part is mainly this: if you believe you must try harder, then you also believe your sanctification depends entirely or ultimately on you. But these are two very different ideas. God uses means. Just as He used the preaching of the gospel by particular people to bring me to repentance, He uses spiritual disciplines (and other means) to grow me in holiness.

Believers do need to understand that their growth in godliness does not truly/ultimately depend on them. They need to understand that personal effort isolated from humble trust in God’s resources and activity is doomed from the start.

They also need to understand they are called to try harder. We are called to “more sacrifice and greater devotion.”

I want to point out an internal consistency problem with this view also. Bob says “Don’t try harder. Focus on Jesus more.” The first sentence rejects increased effort while the second calls us to to more effort. In a “don’t try harder” paradigm, imperatives have no place, so why enjoin us to try harder at “focusing on Jesus”?

What does “focus on Jesus more” mean? If it is something we intentionally exert ourselves to do, the theological objection that sanctification does not depend in any way on what we do crumbles.

I do believe we should focus on Jesus more… and try harder to do that, even while we also try harder to simply obey more fully and consistently.

Aaron,

Thank you again for bringing the proper balance. Bob makes many excellent points and I appreciate the tone of his articles. I just finished expositing the entire book of Hebrews. One cannot escape the serious warnings about not persevering in chapters 2, 4, 6, 10, and 12. We are commanded constantly to obey God’s Word by faith, but that obedience is never presented as optional for the believer. We are to pursue holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. We are to work out our salvation via obedience to God, knowing that God is working in us to will and to accomplish. I fully realize we are not saved on the basis of our obedience. Nevertheless, Hebrews ties faithlessness in church attendance to apostasy in chapter 10. It is not only the Gospel that must be believed by faith, it is the whole counsel of God that must be believed by faith. I fear an unhealthy reductionism.

an ongoing struggle to find the biblical balance of being motivated by grace, empowered by the Spirit while carrying out the idea of agonizomai. The ditch of throwing out rules is as sinful as the ditch of a reliance on rules. God help this generation to find His balance without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I meet too many who (according to my standards :D) are doing the latter.

Aaron and Mike, Thank you. I was thinking the same thing as I read the article. As I preach I try to direct the thinking away from rules based sanctification, but in doing so I want to be so careful that it does not sound like I am saying that it does not matter how we behave. Expository preaching verse by verse through a whole book of the Bible allows that to happen naturally, but I must constantly guard against my own biases as I preach so that I do not put too much focus on the one side and ignore the other. It reminds be that as I preach there is a need for God’s grace and the power of His Spirit, as well as the call to study and rightly divide the word of truth. I left evangelicalism for fundamentalism and I have also struggled with making sure that I not overreact against the permissiveness that I saw there and end up in the works based sanctification camp. What continues to bring the balance is God’s word itself because if I simply react to the problems I have seen in both groups, then I will end up leading people from one ditch to the other instead of keeping them on the right road.

I think if the folks in the pews committed to reading their Bibles cover to cover at least once a year, half the problems we experience in churches would be solved by default.

Reading the Bible, OT or NT through in a year has been heavily promoted at Hamilton Square for the last 10+ years..

[Susan R]

I think if the folks in the pews committed to reading their Bibles cover to cover at least once a year, half the problems we experience in churches would be solved by default.

[Rob Fall]

Reading the Bible, OT or NT through in a year has been heavily promoted at Hamilton Square for the last 10+ years..

[Susan R]

I think if the folks in the pews committed to reading their Bibles cover to cover at least once a year, half the problems we experience in churches would be solved by default.

That may be, and it’s a good thing to promote Bible reading, but I wonder how many congregants are actually committed to doing so. Many moons ago I was sitting in the nursery with 2 other ladies who grew up in Christian homes and in this church that very much promoted Bible reading in all the usual ways. They were talking about how they wanted to do better at reading and studying, but didn’t know how to go about it. They asked each other and myself what devotionals books were preferred. They had never read the Bible cover-to-cover one time in their lives. One lady said that she usually just let her Bible fall open and read whatever chapter it opened to. I was floored. These wereintelligent, sweet, and what I would call ‘Godly’ women from their attitudes and visible behavior.

My suggestion was to use those nifty things called ‘page numbers’, start at 1, and keep reading until you see the words The End. Rinse and repeat.

Bottom line though- people who aren’t grounded in sound doctrine, understanding the functions of the church and the qualifications of pastor can be easily influenced and deceived.

The word balance keeps coming up. I know that Bob - as well as Matt Olsen in his recent posts on legalism - are trying to correct an imbalance and I appreciate that. The tricky part is correcting imbalance in one direction without creating imbalance in the opposite.

What tends to happen is that, rhetorically, ​performance-included tends to collapse into ​performance-based​ and, as a result, rejecting ​performance-based​ tends to collapse into rejecting ​performance-included​.

​Interestingly, the performance over-correction has both Reformed and Dispensational expressions. The first systematic version of it that I remember encountering was in Miles Stanford’s The Green Letters. What struck me at the time was how emphatically he insisted that there was nothing for believers to do​ in sanctification—and then he devoted chapter after to chapter to telling us to do certain things. :D

The truth is that everybody believes Christians are active in sanctification. It’s just that some seem to not realize they believe it. So instead of asking “what are we to do” they are busy saying “stop trying to do.” It’s better to just accept the reality of the need for “trying” (aka doing/working/striving) and seek to understand ​how​ we try and what kinds of things we are to do… and how we view what we’re doing.

I really think the latter is the crux. There really is no such thing as “our own strength.” I don’t blow my nose “in my own strength” (every heart beat is His work) but I also understand that God is not going to do it for me. (I’m doing things “in my own strength” when I fail to recognize where all “my” strength really comes from.)

It’s promoted like this:

• In December, folks sign up on lists (which are never audited) to commit what they want to read in the next year.
• In January, folks inform the church office what they’ve read through the last year. Based on that information, certificates of completion are handed out in a Sunday AM service. A few years back, a five year old received a NT certificate. His mother had read him the NT over the course of the year.
• We have daily Bible reading schedules available in the lobby.
• Pastor Innes just completed teaching a book by book OT Survey and NT Survey series on Wednesday nights.

I guess this is a heavily promoted as you can get with out putting guns to people’s heads.

[Susan R]

[Rob Fall]

Reading the Bible, OT or NT through in a year has been heavily promoted at Hamilton Square for the last 10+ years..

[Susan R]

I think if the folks in the pews committed to reading their Bibles cover to cover at least once a year, half the problems we experience in churches would be solved by default.

That may be, and it’s a good thing to promote Bible reading, but I wonder how many congregants are actually committed to doing so. Many moons ago I was sitting in the nursery with 2 other ladies who grew up in Christian homes and in this church that very much promoted Bible reading in all the usual ways. They were talking about how they wanted to do better at reading and studying, but didn’t know how to go about it. They asked each other and myself what devotionals books were preferred. They had never read the Bible cover-to-cover one time in their lives. One lady said that she usually just let her Bible fall open and read whatever chapter it opened to. I was floored. These wereintelligent, sweet, and what I would call ‘Godly’ women from their attitudes and visible behavior.

My suggestion was to use those nifty things called ‘page numbers’, start at 1, and keep reading until you see the words The End. Rinse and repeat.

Bottom line though- people who aren’t grounded in sound doctrine, understanding the functions of the church and the qualifications of pastor can be easily influenced and deceived.

I prefer to read carefully 2 chapters a day and dig in as much as I can rather than rushing through and reading the whole Bible in a year. I don’t see anything magical about “the whole Bible” in a year.

I do think it is important to read the books that are more difficult and sometimes perceived as less of a blessing. And so we (wife and I) read the Bible through in this manner.

There’s nothing magical in and of its self in reading the Bible through in a year. Nor does it take the place of in depth Bible study. However, if your dealing with a demographic who is basically Bible illiterate, it’s a good way to resolve that problem. It also gets folks used to dealing with what is Scripturally true, thus making it easier to deal with the counterfeit.

Reading through the Bible is good for general perspective. Reading through the same book repeatedly for awhile is beneficial in digging deeper. I don’t think one way is superior; I think a variety is helpful.

Really? Did someone actually suggest that reading the Bible in a year was magical? I need new glasses. Or maybe I should borrow Jim’s, since his can see things that aren’t there.

This week’s score: Susan-2, Jim-0.

What I’m suggesting is that even in churches where regular Bible reading/study is encouraged and promoted, people just aren’t reading the Bible. They read devotional books by the score, but as great as some people are, they aren’t inspired by God, and they aren’t the Holy Spirit. We aren’t commanded to read books about the Bible, we are commanded to read God’s Word.

The Bible-in-a-year is a handy program- some read it more than that, some read at a slower pace. Reading more doesn’t mean that someone is ‘rushing’ through it, though. Some people are voracious readers, and reading the Bible several times a year is proportionate for them.

A preacher I know once expressed it this way- the layperson is like film, and when they read the Bible, they put something on the negative. When they study and hear good teaching and preaching and get involved in the body of Christ, there is something there that can be developed- a relationship with Christ and spiritual maturity. The more the congregation is grounded, the fewer the doctrinal pitfalls are allowed to be dug.

Susan makes a good point by emphasizing the continual diet of Scripture by reading it all…regularly. An interesting benefit of reading the entire Word en masse is similar to the benefits of travel.

Getting out of my little world, especially traveling abroad, opens my eyes to diverse swaths of culture & humanity. The broader my context of scriptural texts, the better my perspective on the gospel thread that ties the Bible together. This recognition of God’s metanarrative and our place in God’s story helps subjugate my pet topics while providing rich nutrients for sanctification.

So to Susan’s point, one who consumes, meditates and applies Scripture broadly is less likely to need rules and “the preacher” to tell them how to grow in grace.