http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15758627/a-vision-for-leading-and-being-led

Audio Transcript

Are the pressures in my life making me more holy or more unholy? And how would I know? This is such a great question. A lot of our emails come from Christians who are feeling extra pressure in life. That is true today in an email from a young mom named Victoria, who is facing the challenges of raising little ones. “Hello, Pastor John,” she writes. “Since becoming a mom, I have found myself battling sin like never before. New sins that I never recall struggling with are popping up, seemingly out of nowhere, especially in this season with a 2-year-old and a newborn. My desire is to be a wife and mother to the glory of God, but I feel I have never been further away from this goal. Are these new pressures of motherhood sanctifying me or making me more unholy? And how can I tell the difference? Because I often feel as though I am becoming more unholy by them.”

This is a tremendously important question because it gets at a reality of sanctification that is often overlooked — namely, that pride and various forms of that sin can lie latent, unseen in the forgiven, Spirit-indwelt Christian, often giving the impression to the Christian himself and to others that we are more holy than we are.

I picture Christians in this condition like a glass of water. While the glass of water is very still, sitting on the counter, the sediment of pride and other sins can lie unnoticed at the bottom of the glass. So the water is clear and seems cleaner than it really is. But if you bump the glass — and that bumping corresponds to the pressures of motherhood, for example — then the sediment of pride and sin is stirred up and shows itself in attitudes and words and actions that show that the glass of water isn’t as clean as we thought it was. It’s more sinful than we thought.

“God exposes the remnants of pride and sin in our lives so that we see ourselves more clearly and repent more deeply.”

Now, that is a very important reality to come to terms with as a Christian. And this question forces us to come to terms with it — all of us, not just moms. So, I’m very glad for the question, even though it’s painful for us to talk about this, because, at least for me, I don’t like it when circumstances bump my glass and bring out the worst in me.

Let me just state briefly seven biblical observations that give the foundation for this understanding of sanctification and how we should respond to it.

1. God purifies his people through trials.

First, God teaches us in his word that the pressures of motherhood — or pastoring, or any other kind of trouble or pressure, small or great — are designed by God for the purifying of his people.

For a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6–7)

The pressures of motherhood are like a fire designed not to consume but to refine the gold of the mother’s faith.

[God] disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:10–11)

That’s the goal of all painful or pressured circumstances in the Christian life: the peaceful fruit of righteousness, the gold of godliness refined.

2. Trials cause some to fall away.

Tribulations and pressures drive some Christians away from the faith forever. Jesus said in the parable of the soils,

As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word [the glass is bumped], immediately he falls away. (Matthew 13:20–21)

3. God keeps every Christian.

God will not let his children, his elect, fall away. He will not let us be tested beyond the grace he gives us to stand (1 Corinthians 10:13). Or as it says in 1 Corinthians 1:8–9, he “will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son.”

Or Romans 8:30: “Those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he glorified.” If he called you, he will keep you.

4. We may not be as godly as we think.

The story of Job shows that some of the most godly people have latent pride in their heart that certain pressures and troubles will reveal. The book of Job starts like this: “There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1).

So, Job really was a good, godly, faithful man. He did not live in a way that brought down any blame on his actions. But then came the trials. At first, Job’s response was as good as it gets. In submission, in humility, in trust, he said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). But later it was more than he could bear, and he got angry at God. He said things like, “Why do you . . . count me as your enemy?” (Job 13:24). God wasn’t Job’s enemy. He wasn’t. This beautiful glass of water had now become cloudy. Job was not perfect.

And the result of Job’s glass of water becoming cloudy with pride and anger at God was this: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6). This is repentance when the glass is bumped and the sediment is stirred up that nobody knew was there.

5. God exposes pride to lead us to repentance.

This leads to the fifth observation: God exposes the remnants of pride and sin in our lives so that we will do what Job did — see ourselves more clearly and repent more deeply.

6. Our sanctification can feel sluggish.

This means that in the process of sanctification, it often feels like we are going backward. This is what she asks about. Job began so well in chapters 1–2, and later, it wasn’t going so well. He did go backward, at least temporarily. It looked like Job was getting more unholy. So what is the answer to Victoria’s question? She says that the pressures of motherhood are drawing more sin out of her, as far as she can see.

“In the process of sanctification, it often feels like we are going backward.”

So is she becoming more holy by these pressures — or more unholy? And what we’ve seen is that she is standing at a fork in the road. Will the pressures and troubles turn her into a third soil that falls away from Christ and proves she was never a Christian in the first place? Or will she be like Job in the end, which leads to repentance?

7. Fight like a forgiven child of God.

And so my final point, my seventh observation, is an exhortation: Let your pressures and troubles and the apparent increase of sin, which really was there all along, let it all make God’s grace sweeter, and let it make your heart humbler, and let it make your repentance deeper and your warfare against sin more earnest as you fight like a forgiven child of God.

Audio Transcript

If my sinful flesh was removed, put off, in Christ, then why do I still sin? That’s a question we get often, rightly so. It’s a question that should be on our minds as we process the glorious truths of Colossians 2:11–12. Today the question comes from two listeners.

Max in Tulsa, Oklahoma writes in. “Hello Pastor John! My question is this: Does the born-again Christian still have a sin nature? I read Romans 7 and Galatians 5 and it seems to say yes, we do. But when I read Paul in Colossians 2:11–12, he says our ‘body of the flesh’ has been put off, cut off, and done away with completely. Or so it reads to me. Biblically speaking, do genuine Christians have a sin nature or not? Thank you!”

The same text raised the question for a listener named Carlos, who lives in the nation of Colombia. “Pastor John, according to Colossians 2:11, a Christian’s sin nature has been cut away. So why am I still tempted to sin? Why do I still battle with temptation if such a decisive work has been done in me, in Christ?”

“We can’t pursue the kind of life God calls us to live if we don’t know what happened to us when became a Christian.”

This question is so important because we can’t pursue the kind of life God calls us to live if we don’t know what happened to us when became a Christian. There’s a great deal of emphasis today, it seems to me, on what has happened for us in the cross, namely that our sins are forgiven, and that we are accepted, and that we are loved, and that we have eternal life. But there doesn’t seem to me to be as much emphasis on what has happened to us in becoming Christians, what happened to us because of the cross.

And it’s precisely this — what happened to us, what changed in us — that Paul emphasizes as the key to how we are to pursue holiness and love and righteousness and all the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So, it’s a very important question.

Buried and Raised with Christ

Sometimes we can get all tangled up in our terminology, and so, in answering the question, I’m going to stay very close to the apostle Paul’s terminology.

Max asked the question in terms of sin nature. Now that’s not exactly Paul’s language but I think if we stay with Paul’s language, we will answer Max’s question. Paul teaches that when we become Christians through faith in Christ, we are united to Christ so that his death counts as our death. And that’s true in two senses, not just one. First, it’s true in that the punishment we deserve for our sin was taken by Christ so that his death on the cross was our condemnation and so there’s now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

But the other sense in which his death counts as our death is that we really did die with him. In a profound sense, we really did come alive with him in his resurrection. And so the question that we’re asking is, in what sense did we die? What’s dead, and in what sense do we have newness of life?

When You Became a Christian

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:11–12)

So let’s start with the text that Max refers to in the Colossians 2:11–12: “In him” — so there’s the union piece, in union with Jesus Christ — “In him, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh . . . ” — now that’s the phrase he picked up on: “put off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ” — “having been buried with him in baptism in which you were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.”

So Paul is describing what happens to a person when he becomes a Christian, and he symbolizes that miracle in baptism, been buried under the water and raised up out of the water to walk in newness of life like a resurrection. So first, there’s a union with Christ. He says, “In him, you were buried and raised.” Second, this union is experienced through faith. “You were raised with him through faith, in the powerful working of God.” Baptism is an expression of faith. Third, in union with Christ, we died, and in union with Christ, we were raised. Some aspect of our being died. Something new came into being by this resurrection with Christ. Fourth, Paul compares this death in baptism through faith to a circumcision made without hands. So the analogy is that just as the foreskin of the male sexual organ is cut off and thrown away, so the body of flesh is cut off and thrown away. And we’ll come back to that in just a second (what is the body of flesh?).

This raises more questions: Who died, and who came to life, when we became Christians? And Paul describes who died in at least four ways. First, he says, “I died.” Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lived.” So I died. Number two, he says our old self died. Roman 6:6: “We know that our old self was crucified with him.” Third, he says that our flesh died. Galatians 2:24: “Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh.” Fourth, he says the body of flesh. Now that’s a reference back to what we just saw in Colossians 2:11, the body of flesh. He says that in being buried with Christ, we have put off the body of flesh.

Now putting those four ways of saying it together, here’s what I conclude. In so far as I am identified with my flesh and in so far as my body is the instrument of my flesh, I died and my body died because my flesh died. Now, what does that mean?

What Is My Flesh?

What is my flesh? And here’s Paul’s answer to that question in Romans 8:7: “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh” — that is in the control and sway of this thing called flesh — “cannot please God.” So the flesh is not synonymous with the body. The flesh is my old self in its hostility to God. It’s insubordination to God. It’s inability to submit to God and please God — that’s my flesh. That’s what died when I became a Christian. God killed my hostility to God. God killed my insubordination to God.

God killed my inability to submit to God and my inability to please God. He killed me in that sense. And in the place of that old self of hostility and insubordination and inability, God created a new self. He calls it a new creation in 2 Corinthians 5 and in Ephesians 2:10. And what are the traits of this new creation, this new self that came into being when I was united to Christ and died and rose with him? Galatians 2:19–20 give a beautiful answer that says I died to the law so that I might live to God:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and here comes the key phrase I think, the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

So three ways Paul describes his new self as a Christian. First, he’s alive to God. God is real to him, precious, beautiful, desirable. He isn’t hostile to God anymore, he admires God, he loves God, he trusts God, he’s alive to God. Second, his new self lives by faith in the Son of God. So he’s no longer insubordinate and self-sufficient and self-exalting, he trusts the son of God like a little child. He submits and depends upon the mercy of God in Christ. He’s a believer, that’s what came alive. A believer came alive. And third, another way to say it is that Christ himself lives in us. I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.

The new self of the Christian is the God-loving, son-of-God-trusting, Christ-inhabited self. That’s the new creation that came into being when I rose with Christ.

Be What You Are

Now, Max is asking how this reality, not possibility, reality, these things really happen to us, we don’t make them happen, they really happen to us, how that relates, he says to my battle with sin. And the answer is that this way of understanding ourselves is the way we do battle with sin. Paul didn’t say, “Oh, since this glorious death and resurrection has happened to you, there’s no more battle of a sin.”

“Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the other words, be what you are.”

He said this new reality of life from the dead and this old reality which has died with Christ is precisely the way we fight sin in our lives. For example, Colossians 2:20, he says, “If with Christ, you died to the legalistic elemental principles of dos and don’ts — do not taste, do not touch, do not handle. . . .” And he’s explaining the false religion there. If you died to those, why are you submitting to such regulations? You’re dead to those. Don’t submit to them, be who you are.

Then later in chapter 3, he said, “You have died. So put to death what is earthly in you, immorality, impurity, passion.” So Paul did not say because you have died, there’s no battle. He said, “Because you have died, reckon yourselves dead,” Romans 6:11. Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the other words, be what you are.

Cleanse Out the Old Leaven

It may sound paradoxical, but it is a profound and glorious truth. God has made us what we are. In Christ, we are new creatures. We don’t make ourselves new creatures; we are new creatures. We act the miracle that he performed. He performed the miracle, we act it out.

Listen to first Corinthians 5:7: “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump of dough as you really are unleavened.” That just captures everything right in one verse. You are unleavened, so get the leaven out. I just love it.

So, I say to Max and to all of us, don’t let your death with Christ in your new life in Christ cause you to shrink back from making war on your sin as though that conflict should not be happening. Rather, let your death with Christ and your newness in Christ be the happy, confident ground where you take your stand and put to death the sin that remains.