Jesus justifies us before God. After justification we appear before God through the lens of Christ's sacrifice as acceptable, but not perfected.
Sanctification is a partnership between the Holy Spirit and ourselves - we can only participate in a relationship with the Holy Spirit because of Christ's sacrifice.
Blocks to Sanctification:
1. Refusing to take personal responsibility for our actions (one of the main reasons we are hated by secularists)
2. Falling into old patterns of behavior like loving self rather than others / judging others rather than loving them / dividing ourselves from other by any means possible.
3. Being motivated by fear rather than faith - fear leads to placing doctrine before our neighbor; mistaking literalism with 'right doctrine'; mistaking moral perfection with a saving relationship with Christ; judging others; separating ourselves/tribe from the rest of humanity; believing we are required to defend absolute truth (as if we could or that it depended on our defense); and defensiveness like using sarcasm, the bully pulpit, judgment and righteous indignation to slam home our idea of the TRUTH.
4. Refusing to practice our sanctification by withholding love from our neighbor.
5. Not making the connection between the need for being vulnerable (faith) and loving others.
6. Believing and preaching God's sovereignty (absolute truth) rather than practicing the Good News of Christ by loving God and neighbor through service.
7. Believing that the quest for moral perfectionism and the promotion of rigid Christian cultural norms for other Christians and nonchristians is 'doing God's Will'. Jesus told us what God's will was for all of humanity - love God and your neighbor - that is the whole story! Everything else is an opportunity for use to carry out God's will.
8. Practicing superstition and magical thinking - 'I found ten dollars in my pocket just when I prayed for God to help me with my finances!' or 'God blessed me by saving me from the burning building (not even recognizing that twenty other people were killed)!' or 'obviously that person was being punished for their sin because they were left destitute by a natural disaster or acquired a disease!' All of these ideas are antichrist and based on fear. We are all sinners!!!! No one else's sin is less horrific than another's. If God was in the business of smiting sinners - we would all be smitten! The existence of pain and suffering in the world is a residual affect of the Fall and is a call for compassion by all who follow Christ. When something horrible happens in our lives it is an opportunity for us to practice our sanctification - not determine who is at fault and who is being punished and how we escaped it because we have a REAL relationship with Christ or because we are the REAL sheep rather than the goats that got BBQed.
9. Viewing the world like secularists, as dualistic. 'The devil and God are in a war and we are called to fight for God!'; 'Everything bad that happens is a spiritual attack on us personally!'; 'Evil exists so that we can know Good (as if we could not know God without knowing the Devil)!'. The real difference between Christianity and the rest of human religion is NOT OSAS - it is an escape from Dualism, which we acquired as a direct result of the Fall. Once we decided that we could determine good and evil - it artificially split our view of the world into god/bad, right/wrong, Yin and Yang. Only a return to unconditional love allows us to escape this self made prison and only Christ can show us the way.
10. Succumbing to pessimism rather than living the Good News. If we are stuck in the mire of measuring the distance of the world to the drain that it is flowing down, we are still in prison. If we were on the Titanic, we would be called to help others, NOT sit on deck chairs determining who was responsible for incurring God's wrath or mutter 'I told you so' or asserting God's sovereignty all the way to the bottom!
11. Refusing to see other's perspective, which blocks the path to the skill of sympathy / empathy / conditional love / unconditional love and the highest form of unconditional love exercised by Christ on the cross - Forgiveness. Without these skills (all requiring a lifetime of practice) we are left out of the joy and healing and peace of the Kingdom of God.
12. Promoting a love of scripture and our understanding of scripture as the only answer to all forms of human study - science, psychology, etc. The Bible is a record of God's attempt to reconnect with His Lost Sheep (humanity) AND our failed attempts to reject Him / redefine what He was trying to do / and His faithfulness. It is an invaluable record of humanity and God's love for us. It is not a science book / psychology book.
This is the Christian life that is so often restricted by Christians to dry doctrine and theory.
Sanctification is a partnership between the Holy Spirit and ourselves - we can only participate in a relationship with the Holy Spirit because of Christ's sacrifice.
Blocks to Sanctification:
1. Refusing to take personal responsibility for our actions (one of the main reasons we are hated by secularists)
2. Falling into old patterns of behavior like loving self rather than others / judging others rather than loving them / dividing ourselves from other by any means possible.
3. Being motivated by fear rather than faith - fear leads to placing doctrine before our neighbor; mistaking literalism with 'right doctrine'; mistaking moral perfection with a saving relationship with Christ; judging others; separating ourselves/tribe from the rest of humanity; believing we are required to defend absolute truth (as if we could or that it depended on our defense); and defensiveness like using sarcasm, the bully pulpit, judgment and righteous indignation to slam home our idea of the TRUTH.
4. Refusing to practice our sanctification by withholding love from our neighbor.
5. Not making the connection between the need for being vulnerable (faith) and loving others.
6. Believing and preaching God's sovereignty (absolute truth) rather than practicing the Good News of Christ by loving God and neighbor through service.
7. Believing that the quest for moral perfectionism and the promotion of rigid Christian cultural norms for other Christians and nonchristians is 'doing God's Will'. Jesus told us what God's will was for all of humanity - love God and your neighbor - that is the whole story! Everything else is an opportunity for use to carry out God's will.
8. Practicing superstition and magical thinking - 'I found ten dollars in my pocket just when I prayed for God to help me with my finances!' or 'God blessed me by saving me from the burning building (not even recognizing that twenty other people were killed)!' or 'obviously that person was being punished for their sin because they were left destitute by a natural disaster or acquired a disease!' All of these ideas are antichrist and based on fear. We are all sinners!!!! No one else's sin is less horrific than another's. If God was in the business of smiting sinners - we would all be smitten! The existence of pain and suffering in the world is a residual affect of the Fall and is a call for compassion by all who follow Christ. When something horrible happens in our lives it is an opportunity for us to practice our sanctification - not determine who is at fault and who is being punished and how we escaped it because we have a REAL relationship with Christ or because we are the REAL sheep rather than the goats that got BBQed.
9. Viewing the world like secularists, as dualistic. 'The devil and God are in a war and we are called to fight for God!'; 'Everything bad that happens is a spiritual attack on us personally!'; 'Evil exists so that we can know Good (as if we could not know God without knowing the Devil)!'. The real difference between Christianity and the rest of human religion is NOT OSAS - it is an escape from Dualism, which we acquired as a direct result of the Fall. Once we decided that we could determine good and evil - it artificially split our view of the world into god/bad, right/wrong, Yin and Yang. Only a return to unconditional love allows us to escape this self made prison and only Christ can show us the way.
10. Succumbing to pessimism rather than living the Good News. If we are stuck in the mire of measuring the distance of the world to the drain that it is flowing down, we are still in prison. If we were on the Titanic, we would be called to help others, NOT sit on deck chairs determining who was responsible for incurring God's wrath or mutter 'I told you so' or asserting God's sovereignty all the way to the bottom!
11. Refusing to see other's perspective, which blocks the path to the skill of sympathy / empathy / conditional love / unconditional love and the highest form of unconditional love exercised by Christ on the cross - Forgiveness. Without these skills (all requiring a lifetime of practice) we are left out of the joy and healing and peace of the Kingdom of God.
12. Promoting a love of scripture and our understanding of scripture as the only answer to all forms of human study - science, psychology, etc. The Bible is a record of God's attempt to reconnect with His Lost Sheep (humanity) AND our failed attempts to reject Him / redefine what He was trying to do / and His faithfulness. It is an invaluable record of humanity and God's love for us. It is not a science book / psychology book.
This is the Christian life that is so often restricted by Christians to dry doctrine and theory.
