From page 241
through the first paragraph of page 245, Bonhoeffer explores the relationship
between justification and sanctification. He begins with, “From now on,
Christians in the New Testament are only named “the saints” (page 241).
After writing of
baptism and justification, he writes of our preservation in God, “Living within
this divine preservation is the process of sanctification” (page 241). We are
placed in the Body of Christ through justification in Christ; we are preserved
in the Body of Christ through sanctification in Christ.
“While
justification incorporates the individuals into the church-community,
sanctification preserves the church-community together with all the individuals”
(page 242).
Bonhoeffer
highlights the two elements of sanctification, being separated from the world
and dedicated to Jesus Christ, and being made holy as our heavenly Father is
holy. As he does this, he not only relates sanctification to the individual,
but also to the church-community.
His confidence
in God’s work of sanctification is expressed by the image of us being locked in
a prison of the law and sin before coming to Christ, and of us now being “locked
‘in Christ,’ marked with God’s own seal, the Holy Spirit. No one may break this
seal. It has been secured by God, and the key is in God’s hand” (page 242).
“This means that
God has now taken possession of those whom God has gained in Christ” (page
242).
Bonhoeffer draws
our attention to the sealing of Noah’s Ark, within and without with pitch for
its preservation through the flood waters, so is the church-community sealed
with redemption, deliverance, and salvation (pages 242-243).
Again,
Bonhoeffer emphasizes that God’s People are “God’s earthly dwelling place, the
place from which judgment and reconciliation go forth to all the world” (page
243).
Bonhoeffer does
not limit sanctification to individual experience, as we may tend to, but contends
that it is also the experience of the church-community. In fact, Bonhoeffer
insists that if sanctification isn’t experienced within the church-community
that it is “pious desires of religious flesh” and “mere self-proclaimed
holiness” (page 244). His vehemence on this matter ought to give us pause to
reconsider the highly individualized form of Christianity that many of us
practice.
“Sanctification
through the seal of the Holy Spirit always places the church in the midst of
the struggle” (page 244). Bonhoeffer tells us that the struggle is to prevent
the seal from being broken, from both within and without, it is the struggle
for the earthly space that he has been writing about, it is the struggle for
God’s holy realm on earth, it is the struggle for separation from the world
(page 245).
On page 243
Bonhoeffer writes that the community of saints “implies three things.” A clear
separation from the world. Holy conduct. The hidden work of sanctification
“waiting for the day of Jesus Christ.”
The idea of
separation from the world may be difficult to us to understand, so enmeshed are
we in the world and its ways in our practice of what we term Christianity. Also,
some of us have had the experience of equating separation from the world in
terms of externals, of how we look on the outside – this was very much true of
me in my early years.
Being separated
from the world begins in our hearts and minds, it is a matter of the soul and
spirit. We offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices so as not to be “conformed
to the world,” but rather to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds”
(Romans 12:1 – 2).
We come to
realize that the temple of God (whether individual or corporate) has no
agreement, no meeting of the minds, with false gods. We must “come out from
their midst and be separate” “cleansing ourselves from all defilement of flesh
and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 6:14 – 7:1). Note
the tandem emphasis here on separation and holiness, the two dimensions of
sanctification.
Again, this may
be difficult when we are rooted in the things of this world: its values,
priorities, communications, affirmations. When our eyes are fixed on the world
we cannot really see our dear Lord Jesus. We become what we focus upon, we
ought not to be so foolish to think otherwise. We cannot serve two masters, no
matter how foolishly we argue otherwise. We can’t have dual citizenship with
the Kingdom of Christ and the kingdoms of this world.
I could give
example after example of how the professing church has brought idols into the
Temple, of how we profane the sacred ground of our individual and collective
lives and teach others to do so, but what matters is that we follow the Lamb
wherever He goes for if we learn to follow Him all other things will be
manifested for what they are; lies and chaff and sin and false teaching.
The people of
the world don’t need us to be like them; they need us to be a holy People with
a holy love and holy grace and holy mercy and holy truth in Jesus Christ. They
don’t need our gatherings to be entertainment venues. Our classmates and
coworkers and neighbors don’t need us to be chameleons, changing color and
blending in with our surroundings, they need us to be distinctly identified
with Jesus Christ (with all our warts and blind spots) caring for them, praying
for them, living lives of truth and integrity – being in the world but not of
the world.
We have been on
a binge of trying to sell Jesus, and what we have done is sold ourselves and
others to darkness. Instead of selling Jesus, we ought to be giving our lives
to Him and to Him alone. There is nothing about the Cross of Crucifixion that
lends itself to sales and marketing and shame on us for making the Gospel a
form of cotton candy guaranteed to rot our souls.
“By His doing
you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness
and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him
who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Cor. 1:30 – 31).
“May it never be
that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which
the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14).
