Tag Archive

THE KEY TO SANCTIFICATION

(Friday Church News Notes, January 20, 2012, www.wayoflife.org

 Many teachers have espoused one particular key to sanctification in the Christian life. For some it is “abiding in Christ,” and they use John 15 as the key. For others it is a second blessing or a spiritual baptism of some sort. For others it is to rest in or dwell on one’s identification with Christ at the cross (e.g., the “Calvary Road”). John Piper proposes “Christian hedonism” as the key.

 Yes, many “keys” have been proposed, but the Bible takes a multiple approach to sanctification and spiritual victory. It is not only resting or not only abiding or whatever, it is abiding and resting and yielding and obeying and avoiding and pursuing, etc. If there were one “key” to sanctification and spiritual victory, the New Testament epistles would be much shorter than they are. Writing to the church at Corinth, for example, Paul would merely have laid out the “key” and that would have been the end of the problem.