On Sanctification

This is why the secret of sanctification is to develop, within our hearts, a growing intensity of desire to please God, to be obedient to Christ.  That’s why we are called to fill our minds with the Word of God, that we may know more of the loveliness of God, the majesty of God, the sweetness and excellence of Christ.  The more we know Him, the more we understand how excellent He is.  The more we begin to have the mind of Christ, the more we begin to approve the things that God approves and disapprove the things of which He disapproves.  Then, our hearts will begin to come into line with our heads.

But, no Christian, in this world, achieves a 100% consistent desire to obey God only.  There is a powerful desire left over from the fallen nature.  When we have been born again and the Spirit has been shed abroad in our hearts, we have new natures, new desires, new inclinations, new attitudes, new love for the things of God.  But, that love is not perfect, it is not pure, it is not yet completely realized in our lives.  There is a constant daily struggle and warfare with the old self whose desires are battling the desires of the new self.  It is precisely this battle, with which every Christian has struggled, that Paul is setting forth here.

From: The Gospel of God: Romans by R. C. Sproul; reprint (Fearn: Christian Focus, 2011), pp. 155-156.  Comment on Romans 7.15.  Originally published in 1994.

 

We Are Inclined to Sin

Apart from his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards is most known for his twin works, Religous Affections (1746) and Freedom of the Will (1754).  One of his lesser known works is on original sin, an important work published posthumously.

In The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758), Edwards was not replying to any specific author, but he was moved to write what he called a “general defence” of this important doctrine.  He says of it, in his preface, “I look on the doctrine as of great importance; which everybody will doubtless own it is, if it be true.  For, if the case be such indeed, that all mankind are by nature in a state of total ruin, both with respect to the moral evil of which they are the subjects and the afflictive evil to which they are exposed, the one as the consequence and punishment of the other, then, doubtless, the great salvation by Christ stands in direct relation to this ruin, as the remedy to the disease; and the whole gospel, or doctrine of salvation, must suppose it; and all real belief, or true notion of that gospel, must be built upon it.”

Much of the controversy over human free will is waged in the context of speculative debate over the relationship of man’s freedom to God’s knowledge, or to election and reprobation.  For Edwards, the central issue of free will is rooted in the ancient controversy (as between Pelagius and Augustine) over the relationship of free will to man’s fallen nature and, ultimately, to his redemption throughthe gospel.  In a word, Edwards focuses on the broader issue of biblical redemption, or the gospel.  This same motive drove Martin Luther in his debate with Erasmus: the concern to see “sola fide” solidly rooted in “sola gratia.”  For Edwards, the greatness of the gospel is visible only when viewed against the backdrop of the greatness of the ruin into which we have been plunged by the Fall.  The greatness of the disease requires the greatness of the remedy.

From: Willing to Believe: The Controversy Over Free Will by R. C. Sproul (Grand Rapid: Baker Books, 1997), pp. 147-148.