Written by Samuel D. James |
Friday, March 4, 2022
What we want are extraordinary fixes to ordinary problems. In this desire we miss the reality that there’s always something else to fix, there’s always something else to do, and there’s always something we’ll miss. Looking for extraordinary means is a roadmap to variously intense levels of personal frustration.

I’m suspicious that one reason older generations of Christians tended to be skeptical toward ambition—even calling it a sin on occasion—is that they were able to see something more clearly than we moderns can. Life in the 21st century West is by definition fast, mobile, and wandering. If you want to do something else, you can. If you want to be something else, you can. For most people alive right now there’s never been another reality except this one. Like the fish in David Foster Wallace’s famous illustration, we don’t really see this, we simply live within it.
Older saints, on the other hand, were more likely to see freedom and upward mobility as a singular thing, something that stood out when someone you knew claimed it surrounded by family and friends and community that were more or less resigned to their lot in life. For moderns ambition is ambient, but for them it was a condition with a definable list of attributes and consequences.
My point is this: When you’re removed from something in this way, removed enough to recognize it as something other and not just swim in it, you probably have a better angle of vision on it than others. And I think one thing that these older Christians saw within ambition was a rule of diminishing return with spiritual side effects. It’s what I’m learning right now in my own life and thinking:
There’s always something else.

The problem with most species of ambition is not that they seek good change or more success or greater mastery. The problem is that most species of ambition are self-referential. Ambitious people don’t generally say they want to make a million dollars or start 3 companies or earn 2 doctorates. They don’t put numbers to their ambition. They simply say, “I’m ambitious,” by which they mean, “I’m always moving.” The constancy and restlessness shift from the means to the end. Spiritually speaking, continual dissatisfaction—a resilient inability to say, “Ok, I’m good now”—has almost always been flagged as dangerous.
But it’s not just material ambition. What about spiritual ambition? Recently in my reading I came across this sentence from a theologian and it stopped me in my tracks: “There are no extraordinary means of grace in the Christian life.” I lingered over that line for a while as it delivered a broadside to most of my Christian walk. How many years have I spent as a believer earnestly, diligently, even tirelessly, seeking an extraordinary means by which I would finally feel the intimacy with Christ I desire and the temptations that beset me just fall off like sawdust? The matter-of-factness of that sentence pummeled me. That one book, that one sermon, that one conference or that one conversation I’m looking for to put all the jagged parts of my spiritual life into an incandescent whole…it does not exist. There’s always something else to do, but there are no extraordinary means of grace.
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Though sanctification is based on what Christ accomplished in His death and resurrection and is experienced in the lives of believers by the power of the Holy Spirit, God has appointed certain means to assist believers in the pursuit of growth in grace. The believer’s progressive sanctification will be commensurate with his employment of the means of grace. The central means that God has appointed for the sanctification of His people are the Word, sacraments, and prayer. 

If you were seeking a succinct definition of the biblical doctrine of sanctification, you would be hard-pressed to find a better one than that found in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. In the answer to Question 35, the Westminster divines wrote, “Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.” Although this is an accurate definition of the progressive nature of sanctification, Scripture sets out several other important aspects of sanctification that are necessary for us to gain a full-orbed understanding of this benefit of redemption. Consider the following five things:
1. Christ is the source of sanctification.
Believers are sanctified by virtue of their union with Christ. He is the singular source of sanctification insomuch as He supplies His people with all that they need to grow spiritually as they abide in Him by faith. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “You are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30, emphasis added). To become the source of sanctification for His people, Jesus had to sanctify Himself in the work of redemption (John 17:19). Though He had no sin (2 Cor. 5:21), He consecrated Himself for His people by perfectly obeying the law of God as well as the mediatorial commands of God (John 10:17–18). Geerhardus Vos explained, “This . . . is not to be understood as a change in the Savior, as if this sanctification presupposes a previous lack of holiness, but as the consecration of His life in mediatorial obedience (passive and active) to God.” In addition to His obedient life, Christ was sanctified for us when He died on the cross. Since the sins of believers have been imputed to Christ, and He bore them in His body on the tree, they were judicially purged when He fell under the fiery wrath of God.
2. Regeneration is the fountain of sanctification.
Since justification is a legal benefit of redemption (i.e., a once-for-all act), sanctification more properly flows from the transformative blessing of regeneration. The implementation of a new nature (i.e., regeneration) into the lives of believers at the beginning of their Christian experience begins the process of sanctification.
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In sum, LeCroy was wrong and did well to retract his claims and apologize, and Stover was right to publicly oppose him. But in the process he stumbled and suggested things are more hopeful than they are just now. For it is written that we will know men by their fruits (Matt. 7:15-20), and who can deny that the fruits of Revoice and Transluminate and the like have been vile? Strife and quarreling, the driving of people and churches from our fold, the threat of a denominational split, and the shameless public discussion of what it is shameful and dangerous to mention publicly (Eph. 5:3), and which was previously unthinkable, have all hobbled our church. All this has happened because the leaven was not purged at the first infection (1 Cor. 5:6-7; Gal. 5:9), and for that there is much occasion for grief on the part of all of us.

In a recent article Tim LeCroy made some claims to which another Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) minister, Charles Stover, objected in a response. LeCroy’s original article has been withdrawn and replaced with an apology, so I have little inclination to address it directly. But having read the two articles and pondered the matter for a few days I find myself thinking that it is Stover’s article that is the more alarming.
That is perhaps a startling statement, and if you are familiar with my previous writing you will know that I have been quite blunt in responding to LeCroy and to the purportedly now defunct National Partnership of which he was a prominent member. Permit me an explanation. I do not object to Stover’s rebuttals, which accord with the truth and were justified by LeCroy’s original claims. It is rather statements like these that unsettle my conscience terribly:
I had no idea that Missouri Presbytery was meeting regularly to investigate Memorial Presbyterian Church, Transluminate, and Greg Johnson. I was not aware of the impassioned debates and floor speeches being conducted at Presbytery.
And:
I am quick to correct detractors when they accuse our presbytery as being liberal.
For it would seem to me that investigations and impassioned debates do not justice make, at least not as a matter of course. They perhaps produce the appearance of energy and life, but it is their end result that matters, not they themselves.
And what was the end result of all Missouri’s debating and investigating? Were the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) purity and peace increased? No indeed, and it was very much the opposite. The accused seized the investigation as a vindication. He went before the whole nation and exposed his own denomination and his ostensible brethren to ridicule in the eyes of unbelievers – something no believer should ever do to another – and appealed to these investigations and debates as proof that he was guiltless and was subject to needless opposition on the part of others in the PCA.
Let me state it plainly: the many words and the passion notwithstanding, those debates and investigations accomplished nothing beneficial, at least as far as the PCA as a whole is concerned. They did not punish wrong, but rather forced the opponents of wrong to pursue the matter by other means and in other forums. Even now the denomination is greatly absorbed in the matter as it seeks to amend its Book of Church Order to hopefully prevent another similar debacle, a matter which will drag on for the foreseeable future. What should have been put to rest efficiently long ago has festered and spread throughout the whole denomination and occasioned continued disagreements, with no end in sight.
That passion and those debates and investigations do not, as such, suggest that the presbytery in question is solidly orthodox/conservative/sound/faithful or whatever we wish to call it; nor do they commend our processes as fair, efficient, and apt to produce a good result. To the contrary, they suggest inefficiency, delay, and an excessive fondness of words, wrangling, and procedural minutiae, as well as an elevation of process over result and of procedure over its proper end. If it be objected that the churches and elders in question nonetheless confess sound doctrine as expressed in Scripture and in our standards, let me rejoin with a paraphrase of James: ‘You say that you have sound doctrine and holiness apart from discipline; should you not rather show me your soundness in the faith and your zeal for holiness by your discipline?’ For professions of orthodoxy notwithstanding, such an orthodoxy is as dead and useless as the purported faith of James’ readers (2:14-26). It may sparkle in the sun and have the appearance of great majesty; but in the time of testing it proved no more than a façade. It failed utterly, and it did not even do that efficiently.
Now one might say that these are only the rants of a fundamentalist doom monger who has in espousing them committed slander himself. If one is so inclined I invite her or him to look at this and to make the case that this is anything other than slander (my contact info is in the bio line) or that objecting to such a thing is somehow inherently ‘fundamentalist’ or sinful. And I would invite such a person to ask himself these questions: was John a fundamentalist when he objected to Diotrephes “talking wicked nonsense” about him and his companions (3 Jn. 10)? If the answer is no, why then should I be deemed a fundamentalist for opposing someone who showed his character in such unjust malignment as in the tweet linked above?
As for Stover’s claim that Missouri Presbytery is not liberal, let us grant, for the sake of argument, that the public profession of faith of its members is indeed sound. About the most generous thing that can be said in such a case is that, as far as the maintenance of public orthodoxy and discipline is concerned (key phrase), such a conservatism gives cause to say ‘with conservatives such as these, who needs liberals?’ That sounds excessively harsh and uncharitable; but I do not make it, if you can accept it, because I am a hateful fundamentalist provocateur who revels in quarreling. Remember what was being investigated by Missouri Presbytery. Memorial Presbyterian allowed its property to be used for a series of plays promoting and celebrating unnatural sexual confusion (what is called, with doubtful accuracy, ‘transgenderism’).
Now God says in his law that “a woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God” (Deut. 22:5). How much worse do you think it is when someone puts on the physique of the other sex and subjects himself or herself to physical mutilation by surgical or chemical means to attain it? Such a thing involves a revolt against nature and against God’s created order itself – which is to say that it is about the pinnacle of impiety. That it is often a result of mental disturbances and past trauma and is attended by a plethora of other miserable mental maladies I grant; but the thing clearly propagates by example. The more acceptable it is, the more common it is; and if anything, the misery to which it reduces its sufferers is all the more reason to refuse to do anything, no matter how slight, that in any way encourages the existence and spread of such a dangerous thing.
Now God also abundantly attests that when his people use that which he has given them to commit abominations in his sight they arouse his anger and jealousy, defile the places in question, and bring God’s curse and just condemnation upon themselves (Lev. 18:24-29; 20:22; Deut. 27:15-68; Isa. 1:28; Jer. 2:7; 16:18; Eze. 36:17-18). He attests further that those who have authority and responsibility to restrain wrong in such cases are solemnly obligated to do so, and that they themselves will suffer his wrath if they fail in this (Ex. 32:25; 1 Sam. 2:12-36; 3:11-13; 2 Chron. 28:19; Rev. 2:14, 20). Now a church in Missouri Presbytery did what was abominable in God’s sight and did what must be considered an act of apostasy after the fashion of the ancient Israelites. And the presbytery’s response was to investigate and issue a report, and not to meaningfully punish the church or its leadership or restrain the evil. Its response was about as effective as Eli’s to his wayward sons, and we see how that ended (1 Sam. 4:17-21).
All of which is to say that conservative or not, professedly orthodox or not, the actual nature of Missouri’s deeds was not productive of orthodoxy and tended strongly in the other direction. That’s a bold claim, admittedly, and it is not everyday that I – who am an insignificant man and vile sinner – accuse an entire presbytery of being derelict in its duty. That is defensible only if my view of things is correct. But if my view is correct, then it would seem to me that Scripture (Zech. 7:9; 8:16; Eph. 4:25) and our standards (WLC Q. 144) require me to speak in such a way, but with much sorrow and the strong hope that there will sincere and full repentance for the future.
In sum, LeCroy was wrong and did well to retract his claims and apologize, and Stover was right to publicly oppose him. But in the process he stumbled and suggested things are more hopeful than they are just now. For it is written that we will know men by their fruits (Matt. 7:15-20), and who can deny that the fruits of Revoice and Transluminate and the like have been vile? Strife and quarreling, the driving of people and churches from our fold, the threat of a denominational split, and the shameless public discussion of what it is shameful and dangerous to mention publicly (Eph. 5:3), and which was previously unthinkable, have all hobbled our church. All this has happened because the leaven was not purged at the first infection (1 Cor. 5:6-7; Gal. 5:9), and for that there is much occasion for grief on the part of all of us.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name.
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