Aversion to Sanctification? A Phobic Reaction
In light of some recent comments I’ve run across again on this issue, it’s time once more for the “Aversion to Sanctification” blog post, since the problem persists and appears to have become part-and-parcel of what some perceive to a confessional Lutheran understanding of God’s Word. More recent examples of this problem in action include a pastor posting a picture of a guy giving “the finger” and claiming there is nothing wrong with that and defending it, continued comments about how no matter what good works are done they are still “sinful,” and the ongoing effort to turn every comment in the Scriptures about the good works to which we are called into a discussion about the second use of the law, virtually laughing off Proverbs 31 and saying that text does not really apply to individuals but is really about Christ and the Church. But, I think the comment that took the prize was posted on my Facebook wall where the text of God’s Word was actually twisted to the point that the that indicates that God has prepared good works for us to walk in, to read “good work upon which God has prepared us to work” thus not about good works, but about Christ. All these things are put forward with the best of intentions, but they betray an unhealthy lack of balance and understanding on these issues. So here’s an oldie but a goodie:
I was just in a conversation with two younger men who were seriously saying that listening to the audio pornography and vile filth of Eminem is appropriate for Christians. One suggested that because only what comes out of a man is what makes him sinful that it matters not what he sees, or hears, as a Christian. These two young men are sadly typical of a poorly formed understanding of the life of good works to which we are called as Christians that seems pandemic in the Christian Church, where apparently some can wax eloquent about how they are striving to be faithful to God’s Word, but then turn right around and wallow in the mire and squalor of sin. This all the more underscores for me the point that we have a serious lack of emphasis on sanctification in our beloved Lutheran church. There is much teaching that is not being done, that must done. Simply repeating formulas and phrases about justification is not teaching and preaching the whole counsel of God. Comforting people with the Gospel when there is no genuine repentance for sin is doing them a disservice. There is a serious “short circuit” here that we need to be mindful of. Let this be clear. Listening to the “music” of swine such as Eminem is sinful and willfully choosing to listen to it is sin that drives out the Holy Spirit. This is deadly serious business. Deadly. Serious.
More recently, I’ve run across pastors laughing and yucking it up about posting the “F” word on their Facebook page and getting huffy when they were admonished about that.
Pastors who wash their hands of this responsibility claiming that they want to avoid interjecting law into their sermons when they have preached the Gospel are simply shirking their duty as preachers and are being unfaithful to God’s Word.
We have done such a fine job explaining that we are not saved by works that we have, I fear, neglected to urge the faithful to lives of good works as faithfully and clearly as we should. This should not be so among us brethren.
I’m growing increasingly concerned that with the necessary distinction between faith and works that we must always maintain, we Lutherans are tempted to speak of good works and the life of sanctification in such a way as to either minimize it, or worse yet, neglect it. I read sermons and hear comments that give me the impression that some Lutherans think that good works are something that “just happen” on some sort of a spiritual auto-pilot. Concern over a person believing their works are meritorious has led to what borders on paranoia to the point that good works are simply not taught or discussed as they should be. It seems some have forgotten that in fact we do confess three uses of the law, not just a first or second use.
The Apostle, St. Paul, never ceases to urge good works on his listeners nad readers. I recall a conversation once with a person who should know better telling me that the exhortations to good works and lengthy discussions of sanctification we find in the New Testament are not a model at all for preaching, since Paul is not “preaching” but rather writing a letter. This is not a good thing.
A number of years ago an article appeared that put matters well and sounded a very important word of warning and caution. It is by Professor Kurt E. Marquart of Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I strongly encourage you to give it your most serious attention.
Antinomian Aversion to Sanctification?
An emerited brother writes that he is disturbed by a kind of preaching that avoids sanctification and “seemingly questions the Formula of Concord . . . about the Third Use of the Law.” The odd thing is that this attitude, he writes, is found among would-be confessional pastors, even though it is really akin to the antinomianism of “Seminex”! He asks, “How can one read the Scriptures over and over and not see how much and how often our Lord (in the Gospels) and the Apostles (in the Epistles) call for Christian sanctification, crucifying the flesh, putting down the old man and putting on the new man, abounding in the work of the Lord, provoking to love and good works, being fruitful . . . ?”
I really have no idea where the anti-sanctification bias comes from. Perhaps it is a knee-jerk over-reaction to “Evangelicalism”: since they stress practical guidance for daily living, we should not! Should we not rather give even more and better practical guidance, just because we distinguish clearly between Law and Gospel? Especially given our anti-sacramental environment, it is of course highly necessary to stress the holy means of grace in our preaching. But we must beware of creating a kind of clericalist caricature that gives the impression that the whole point of the Christian life is to be constantly taking in preaching, absolution and Holy Communion-while ordinary daily life and callings are just humdrum time-fillers in between! That would be like saying that we live to eat, rather than eating to live. The real point of our constant feeding by faith, on the Bread of Life, is that we might gain an ever-firmer hold of Heaven-and meanwhile become ever more useful on earth! We have, after all, been “created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). Cars, too, are not made to be fueled and oiled forever at service-stations. Rather, they are serviced in order that they might yield useful mileage in getting us where we need to go. Real good works before God are not showy, sanctimonious pomp and circumstance, or liturgical falderal in church, but, for example, “when a poor servant girl takes care of a little child or faithfully does what she is told” (Large Catechism, Ten Commandments, par. 314, Kolb-Wengert, pg. 428).
The royal priesthood of believers needs to recover their sense of joy and high privilege in their daily service to God (1 Pet. 2:9). The “living sacrifice” of bodies, according to their various callings, is the Christian’s “reasonable service” or God-pleasing worship, to which St. Paul exhorts the Romans “by the mercies of God” (Rom. 12:1), which he had set out so forcefully in the preceding eleven chapters! Or, as St. James puts it: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (1:27). Liberal churches tend to stress the one, and conservatives one the other, but the Lord would have us do both!
Antinomianism appeals particularly to the Lutheran flesh. But it cannot claim the great Reformer as patron. On the contrary, he writes:
“That is what my Antinomians, too, are doing today, who are preaching beautifully and (as I cannot but think) with real sincerity about Christ’s grace, about the forgiveness of sin and whatever else can be said about the doctrine of redemption. But they flee s if t were the very devil the consequence that they should tell the people about the third article, of sanctification, that is, of new life in Christ. They think one should not frighten or trouble the people, but rather always preach comfortingly about grace and the forgiveness of sins in Christ, and under no circumstance use these or similar words, “Listen! You want to be a Christian and at the same time remain an adulterer, a whoremonger, a drunken swine, arrogant, covetous, a usurer, envious, vindictive, malicious, etc.!” Instead they say, “Listen! Though you are an adultery, a wordmonger, a miser, or other kind of sinner, if you but believe, you are saved, and you need not fear the law. Christ has fulfilled it all! . . . They may be fine Easter preachers, but they are very poor Pentecost preachers, for they do not preach… “about the sanctification by the Holy Spirit,” but solely about the redemption of Jesus Christ, although Christ (whom they extol so highly, and rightly so) is Christ, that is, He has purchased redemption from sin and death so that the Holy Spirit might transform us out of the old Adam into new men . . . Christ did not earn only gratia, grace, for us, but also donum, “the gift of the Holy Spirit,” so that we might have not only forgiveness of, but also cessation of, sin. Now he who does not abstain fro sin, but persists in his evil life, must have a different Christ, that of the Antinomians; the real Christ is not there, even if all the angels would cry, “Christ! Christ!” He must be damned with this, his new Christ (On the Council and the Church, Luther’s Works, 41:113-114).
Where are the “practical and clear sermons,” which according to the Apology “hold an audience” (XXIV, 50, p. 267). Apology XV, 42-44 (p. 229) explains:
“The chief worship of God is to preach the Gospel…in our churches all the sermons deal with topics like these: repentance, fear of God, faith in Christ, the righteousness of faith, prayer . . . the cross, respect for the magistrates and all civil orders, the distinction between the kingdom of Christ (the spiritual kingdom) and political affairs, marriage, the education and instruction of children, chastity, and all the works of love.”
“Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, unto Thy Church Thy Holy Spirit, and the wisdom which cometh down from above, that Thy Word, as becometh it, may not be bound, but have free course and be preached to the joy and edifying of Christ’s holy people, that I steadfast faith we may serve Thee, and in the confession of Thy Name abide unto the end: through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord. Amen.”
Kurt Marquart
Concordia Theological Quarterly
Thank you. I too am concerned that we live an outwardly pleasing to God lives as those who are justified by faith. Just as my children are expected to behave according to our desire shouldn’t we strive to live according to our Heavenly Father’s desire. I have been called a baptist, pietist and so on for holding this view.
All vocations are callings of God whether the pastorate, other church work or garbage bin cleaner. We should want to do them all as unto the Lord. May God grant this to us.
Good and timely word Pastor Paul. I share your concerns and it is certainly one of the signs of the times, no doubt. Recently I have been reading a book of homilies by the Icelandic Lutheran bishop Jón Vídalín (d. 1720, his two main influences, apart from Dr. Luther, were Chemnitz and Johann Gerhard) who never tires of telling his audience how important sanctification is for Christians, yet without ever straying into legalism. He keeps emphasizing how Christin freedom is to be used only to practice sanctification, that which is pleasing to God, and never as a license to do whatever one pleases. There is of course nothing new under the sun, but reading bishop Vídalín’s homilies encourages me to continue the work of the Gospel handed over to us by those who have gone before us. We must never tire of doing what is good and right before both God and man and thus we do well remembering St. Paul’s exhortation to the Galatians: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
(Gal 6:7-9 ESV)
Thanks for being willing to touch this “third rail” of Lutheran theology and keep the very real problem out in the open. I am as glad that God is conforming me to the image of his Son in my daily life as I am that he has made me his child in Christ.
Well said. God has not authorized us to protect the doctrine of Justification by refusing His call to instruct and discipline the Church.
In fact, I would go one step further and say that if we neglect sanctification we deny justification. For if a Christian is not called to love and to strive to demonstrate the Law but can, perversely, live in opposition to the Law, then where is the need for continued repentance and forgiveness? Where is the daily need to hear again and again the comfort of justification through Christ? The New Man was not created by the Law, is not saved by the Law and is not fed by the Law but he, nevertheless, desperately loves the Law as his own life for it illuminates the will of his Father. And the new man can not help but love the will of his Father.
“I read sermons and hear comments that give me the impression that some Lutherans think that good works are something that “just happen” on some sort of a spiritual auto-pilot.”
One source of that notion, perhaps: “The believer need not at all be exhorted to do good works; his faith does them automatically….he cannot help doing them.” C.F.W. Walther in Thesis X of God’s No and God’s Yes, condensed by Pieper, CPH, 1973.
If that is all Walther had to say on the subject, you may have a point….but it is not. Spend some time with his sermons.
Thanks for this post. I was wondering if you could give me some Lutheran books about sanctification. I have read Seinbeil’s Sanctification: Christ in Action and use To Live with Christ by Gertz but was wondering if you had any other suggestions.
I would have thought we surrender the pilot’s seat to a Holy Spirited pilot rather than an auto pilot! And that is difficult, being a aircraft pilot myself I would never like to let go of the controls. Perhaps we need to surrender doing and rather be Christians and let the God the Holy Spirit be the God our Father and his Son intended him to be! From my experience confessional faithful pastors are just as prone to not letting go as are those whose sin is easy to see!
Grace, Mercy, & Peace
Friarpuk
As a result of our recreation in Christ, we are not automatons who have no ability to work and cooperate with the saving grace of God, NOT, in order to save ourselves, but…to do that which is pleasing in His sight, to let our light shine before men, etc. I’m not sure where the idea has crept into our circles that sanctification is some kind of purely passive process and we are not to be about striving to do good works, but it is not Lutheran, because it is not Biblical.
Thank you for posting this! This IS one of the problems with synod. And from Marquart no less!
Is there a difference between the 3rd use of the law and sanctification?
Dear Paul,
Thanks for this post and for Marquart’s article. It is a problem, no doubt about it. It is more than a theological problem – it is chiefly a vocational problem. . .
I think that what is missing in our church culture, at least among Lutherans, is the gentle-but-firm pastoral rebuke (often best done in private). God has given pastors this responsibility, as is clear in I Timothy 5:1-2, 5:20; II Timothy 4:2-4; Titus 1:13, 2:15. The pastoral rebuke is part and parcel, i.e., of the essence, of the office. But how can the people be led if the pastors go bad in this area?
There is a lot to think about here, Paul. Thanks for your loving concern for the church!
Yours in Christ, Martin R. Noland
I suspect the passive version of sanctification has crept in because we are afraid to preach the motivations of sanctification in such a way as to turn it back into the first or second use of the Law which use the threat of punishment or the promise of the reward (in 1st use) as the motivating factor for Law keeping. Neither of these are the motivation for the third use of the Law which flows as a response to the Gospel.
The preacher should, therefore, maintain St. Paul’s line of reasoning. Paul almost always follows this pattern: 1. You have been redeemed by Christ…2. therefore, you are part of the body of Christ….3. therefore, here is how, as part of the Body and out of love for Him who is the Head, you will relate to and treat the other members of the body.
It is that concept of the Body of Christ being the glue between the doctrine of justification and the doctrine of sanctification that I see being so absent in our consumer driven, individualistic society where the main question is “what’s in it for me?” Christianity simply doesn’t answer that question. It is when we try to answer that question without redirecting our attention to the Body that we either fall into works righteousness or passive sanctification.
Oops, “I suspect the passive version of sanctification has crept in because we are afraid to preach the motivations of sanctification in such a way as to turn it back into the first or second use of the Law” should have been:
I suspect the passive version of sanctification has crept in because we are afraid we migth preach the motivations of sanctification in such a way as to turn it back into the first or second use of the Law
Greetings Pr. McCain,
I share your concern. At a theological conference I attended within the last year, I was having a few beers (a FEW really!) with some fellow attendees – all of them of the confessional brand (of which I would count myself) and one of them remarked about the size of a waitress’ ‘assets’ in somewhat vulgar terms and I must have looked a little shocked because his friend remarked, “We are still working on his sanctification” with a chuckle. A long discussion on pietism ensued.
On another occasion I got into a fairly heated exchange with a Pr who plays Dungeons & Dragons – a fantasy role playing game which simulates magic. Speaking as a child of the 80s and having played it myself back then, I know it is for many young people sort of a ‘gateway drug’ to the occult. Having your kids trick or treat on Halloween is one thing, but D&D? It’s like a pastor subscribing to Playboy just to read the articles if you ask me – never mind the Catechism or God’s Word on the subject!
I hope the Pr who dropped the F-bomb on Facebook has been sufficiently embarrassed or shamed by his colleagues into removing those remarks. I’m not saying I am perfect – only Christ is – but I also am not serving in a pulpit as a called servant of the Word either. Pastors are called to a higher standard (1 Timothy 3) and all Christians are urged to “Abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thess 5:22). Some translations say, “every *appearance* of evil”, that is a fairly high threshold.
I have heard some clergy say that when a parishioner sees them swear or exhibit some off-color behavior it humanizes them and makes them approachable but I have seen that sort of thing drive just as many people out the door or motivate them to stop giving.
I think the reoccurring justifications based on objections to pietism, Luther’s salty language, concerns over good works, etc are really just justifications – and not the theological kind. I mean the king Adam gave to God in the garden, “the woman you gave me…”
I also think it is also an occupational hazard. An ordinary person will say they are tired or angry or had a long day at work to justify bad behavior, a pastor probably gives a theological excuse instead of an ordinary ‘secular’ excuse. It probably sounds ‘ordinary’ to him while it sounds *really horrible* to church-going laity who probably have a more heightened sense of division between the sacred and the profane. I think that line gets blurred for many professional clergy, especially when someone wakes up in a parsonage and walks across the lawn or down the street to work. I think it diminishes the awe. The 1st time I helped serve communion as an Elder, I felt like young Luther did, having a sense of fear and respect, handling the sacred elements for the very first time with that robe on. I had a pang of unworthiness and I reminded myself of the Gospel and snapped out of it.
All that said, it is a comfort to not be part of a denomination which stresses guilt like Rome, personal betterment like the Reformed or a blistering standard of perfectionism like the Pentecostals do. Lutheranism works well because we have a realistic (Scriptural!) understanding of human nature. Still we are called to be Holy (1 Peter 1:15-16) and we are created to perform Good Works (Eph 2:10). We are not called to mediocrity (Rev 3:15-16).
‘Nuff said.
Still further evidence of the immense blessing that Rev. Marquart was to our church. He is badly missed.
In my experience, I’ll often offer a summary statement about each chapter — Romans three, four, and five — and then point out that there THEN follows Romans chapter six (and, for that matter, the rest of the book). How anyone who considers himself a confessional Lutheran can miss this dynamic, especially with the teaching of Baptism in the first few verses and the “wages of sin” and “gift of God” at the end of the chapter, I have no idea, so clear it is. I’ll also use the “recitivism” illustration, how the prison doors are wide open with the bidding, “You are free to go,” yet too many insist on staying. But, that’s pietism, isn’t it? (sarcasm on for a moment)
Thanks for the badly needed “oldie but goodie.”
Spelling! I meant “recidivism” in my post.
Thanks for this, Pastor. I have relatively recently become a Lutheran from the Calvinistic branch of evangelicalism; when you leave sanctification-focused Christianity in favor of the pure, objective gospel, it is hard not to have an aversion to talk about ‘what we should be doing.’ I’m still striving for that balanced perspective, but atleast I’m now in a place where I can find that.
Hi Paul
I agree we must participate in the Christian life, good works, etc. But there is a danger, and a very real one, that the tax collector of Luke 18 one week is a sinner and the next week becomes a pharisee through the works he has participated in and glorified himself to the detriment of God.
Practically time and time again I have witnessed the practice of parishioners, fellow pastors, and even within myself that a greater sin is committed in the wake of doing good works from one claiming the effort for themselves. Diverting the glory from God to self.
My argument is not against good works, but I do question the source of them. Yes we must do good works, but how is it that I do them? How is it that I can carry the faith daily, how is it that I can go to church to receive the sacraments and the word for edification and salvation?
I wish I could send you a pic of an old windmill I photographed on holidays on the west coast of Australia. This windmill had no fan blades left on it at all. It had the capacity to still pump water but the pump couldn’t work because the wind had no way of turning it.
I believe it has to be the Holy Spirit that turns the wheels, and when the wind blows we have no option but to produce what the Holy Spirit seeks to do. Being a Christian, is like the windmill fulfilling it’s being. But when we choose to reject the Spirit, his automation no longer gives us the ability to move in the actions of good works. (aka the sin against the Holy Spirit)
Surly I please God if I let the Holy Spirit be God the Holy Spirit and move me to the works he has planned for me in advance to do, rather than struggle seeking to do the good works I am not called to do. If we the windmills try to spin the opposite way to produce water, against the efforts of the Holy Spirit, is this still not sinning against the Holy Spirit?
I believe Christendom still fails to honour the Holy Spirit in the way the Father and Christ intended him to be honoured. For 200 odd years the church has swung from one pendulum extreme to the other with regards to sanctification, good works, and the work of the Holy Spirit. We in the Lutheran Church struggle too. But we are closer than most because we in the tradition of Luther put Aristotelian philosophy and human rationalism aside in favour of Scripture translating Scripture.
We claim the Holy Spirit calls gathers enlightens and sanctifies the church. Sometimes he leads me to Christ and sometimes he puts on his pointy boots and kicks me where “the feathers are thinnest” (to quote Foghorn Leghorn), constantly driving me to the cross.
Your argument about passivity, I believe, is wrongly based on the “doing” of good works. The church’s teaching including the Lutheran’s understanding is only going to reach some clarity when we move from “doing or not doing” to “being or not being”, the functional ontology of sanctification. Our good works depend on what our being is. If it is with God then we do, if not then we don’t.
To use another picture we are human beings not human doings. But yes I do plenty of human things but it’s not because I wilfully do them, rather they are a part of my being.
The same for us as Christians, I return to church as a willing part of my being, I feel the need to have sin forgiven and to receive the sacrament. And that looks like I do the works, but this work is really believing in the One the Father has sent (Jn 6:29), whereas if I choose not go perhaps I don’t believe and I definitely don’t “do”.
Yes you and I might strive, for good works, but we fail to do anything unless God is there daily raising us in faith (Col 2:12).
And finally I find it more offensive those who stand up every Sunday sacrificially telling God what they are going to “do” for him, one might saying swearing what they are going to “do”, than the fellow that drops the occasional “f” word. I reckon God might have different pleasing good works for each of us, at different times, since we are part of the “davar” the life event, where he is letting his light expose different things in all of us of which we need to repent.
Hey but that’s just my piety, which I am not forcing as new law on anyone!
Grace Mercy Peace
Friarpuk
You make some good points, in a sort of theoretical sense, but your comment about “being” instead of “doing” simply does not square with the clear text of Holy Scripture in which there are many “doing” verbs re. our lives of good works. Similarly in the Lutheran Confessions. In our effort to avoid error in one direction, we need take care we not talk ourselves around, or under, or over, or beyond what the Holy Spirit speaks to us through Scripture on these issues.
By the way, next time you comment on this blog site, use you real name, thanks.
Yes, we need to preach the 3rd usage of the law and make every effort to keep it more diligently than all the Reformed…but woe onto us if we begin to think, like the Reformed, that we are actually keeping it like we should. (Matt. 5:48)
For you see, Jesus must not only forgive us for our wretched, perverted and lustful deeds, EVEN MORE, He must forgive us for the “best deeds” we’ve ever done. (Is. 64:6).
This understanding of sin and Jesus as our only boast (1Cor. 1:30-31) separates us from both the Reformed and all of Rome.
11. Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work.
26. The law says “Do this”, and it is never done. Grace says, “believe in this” and everything is already done.
Martin Luther – Heidelberg Disputation Theological Theses (1518)
St. Paul makes the whole issue of doing good works vs. the effect of not doing good works
in 1 Cor. 3 – verses 11 to 15. This pertains to a saved person.
@ptmccain
But we must bear in mind that the strength to do good works and to abstain from evil works is supplied soley by the Gospel. Paul admonishes the Christians “by the mercies of God” (Rom 12:1) to present their bodies a sacrifice unto God. The only thing that will create the love of God and of the brethrren in us is “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19,11). in every case the Gospel must write the Law of God into our hearts. Luther reminds us that those preachers who use the Law instead of the Gospel to effect Sanctification are to blame for the paucity of sanctification and good works. (Francis Pieper Christian Dogmatics v.3 p.19)
My aversion is not to Sanctification but rather those who usurp the work of the Holy Spirit with an equally phobic reaction, and replace good works that will naturally occur from faith (effected by the Holy Spirit), with works that come from a faith in the self. An automated response within as a result of the Spirit’s indwelling therefore is much more acceptable and pleasing to God than a human effort that comes about as a result of the divine verdict of condemnation.
Friarpuk
@Friarpuk
Oops
Sorry Paul
AKA
Pastor Heath Pukallus
Western Australia
@ptmccain
Yep Sorry
Force of habit with the nickname.
Pastor Heath Pukallus
LCA – Western Australia
Jesus speaks practically on the distinction between doing and being. Especially when we let scripture translate scripture. It turns into an academic exercise when we look at verses of scripture outside the context of what else scripture has to say. In the narrow context when the text says “do”, one will find that our only way to do anything is to “be”. And the chief surrender of being is “be”lieving.
Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
(John 6:28–29 ESV)
You are spot on with your comment on avoiding the word of God and what the Spirit has to say. And that is my whole point, it is the Spirit within, calling, gathering, uniting us individually and as church, not Heath Pukallus, not Paul Mccain, nor anyone else.
Yes I have studied the context of the “doing verbs” for a number of years now along with the verb “to be” beginning with the great I AM and athough I am (no pun intended) in agreement with you that good works acompany faith, those works find their source in us in the Holy Spirit, who works through the means of the word. We can slide around the word of God too when we lean towards us being the central active agent in the “doing”, rather than allowing ourselves to be the passive being through which the the Spirit actively works.
What none of us wants is to have the church or individuals sanctifying works that have no right being sanctified therefore leading the masses away from repentance and the forgiveness of sins. The very real practical danger, being experienced in the western world today.
Grace, Mercy, Peace
Pastor Heath Pukallus (Friarpuk)
@Tim Strang
Hi Tim
We need to include verses 16-17 here too. Being a Christian and doing good works are differnt sides of the same coin. But our being (i.e. holy) preceeds the doing (good works). Unless we are made holy we have no way of doing anything.
Pastor Heath Pukallus