The gift of sanctification that empowers and transforms us to be able to love our neighbour as Christ loves us can be understood as exorcism and healing combined together.
Sanctification and The Removal of Temptation
Salvation from the consequences of our sin does not remove from us our ongoing desires and inclination to sin. We remain essentially self-interested, so that even our desire to follow God is rooted in our desires for self. Though we wish to do good, we end up doing what is wrong. Our inclination towards selfish behaviour and the objectification of others remains within us.
Even our conscience fails to be an accurate guide for it to is fallen and corrupted by our own inwardness. This is what Martin Luther called the inward turned heart. Like being in a hall of mirrors where at every turn you see yourself reflected back to you, when our hearts are turned inwards we remain fixed on our own good and our own desires. This is true even when we do good deeds for others.
The Inward-Turned Heart
We can continue like this, living in the shadows of our inward turned heart, even while processing faith. But Christ doesn’t want us to stay like that. The call to discipleship is the call to be like Jesus, and the call to be like Jesus is the call to be attentive to the ‘other’ and to love them as God does. However, this isn’t possible while we remain locked within ourselves. We can’t even break out of it on our own.
But the prevenient grace of Christ, and the work of passive sanctification that we receive in justification, enables us to recognise in ourselves that we are not yet where we need to be. We are convicted of our failings and mistakes, of our sins and of our ongoing desire for sin. Then we are able to reach out and ask Jesus to make us holy, to sanctify us, to redeem every part of us, so our hearts are turned outwards to our neighbour.
The sanctifying grace of Christ as the Holy Spirit dwells within us and transforms our minds and wills moves our attention from the inner world of our desires to the external world of the neighbour. As we are confirmed to Christ through the Holy Spirit to share in Christ’s holiness we hearts are broken open and the love of God is able to work in and through us.
To do this, the Holy Spirit breaks the strength and power of the remaining sin in our lives. It takes hold of the fear and anger and shame that so often separates us from our fellow human and breaks those dark concerns apart with the light of God’s love and acceptance. When we know ourselves as loved and accepted by God, we are able to let go of the insidious lies we tell ourselves that lower ourselves from the image we have been made in.
He Breaks The Power of Cancelled Sin!
Sanctification binds, breaks the power, and banishes the evil desires from our heart and mind. Sanctification works like an exorcism and a healing combined into one act of transformative love. Our brokenness is restored, our pain is soothed, our fear is broken, our hearts are comforted, and our minds are restored.
Sanctification means we now share in Christ’s holiness. Then throughout our life we grow in our understanding of what that transformation means for us, and, more importantly, in our capacity to see and attend to people in need.
That is the purpose of sanctification. It is granted to us not merely for our own sake but for the sake of others. Being holy means loving people as God loves them. That means to desire their good, their wellbeing, and their transformation. Which means taking responsibility for people in need and acting with love to seek their good.
Sanctification is not really about us. It is about the way we see and move in the world, the way we love and attend to the people around us. Sanctification is the power which grants us the ability to become a neighbour to the person in need.
But that is only possible when the power of our selfishness, our objectification of others, and our fixation on personal desire, to direct and control us is broken. Sanctification exorcises the remaining and enduring desire for sin in us, and heals our hearts and minds from the wounds that our sin has caused to us.
Read More Like This:
“By Love Serve – the Mission of the Army”
“Understanding Spiritual Warfare”
“Why Moses Wasn’t Called Moses – Reading the Exodus as Divine Conflict”
“What Does The Salvation Army Believe About Holiness?”
“Spiritual Warfare: Stupidity, Malice, Responsibility, and Resisting the Powers and Principalities”
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