How Christian Growth Works
The three-stage cycle of sanctification
Big revision: I moved the grace of God to “step 0” instead of the end, largely after being freshly convicted by this Tim Keller talk. The grace of God is the obvious place to begin anywhere in Christianity, including Christian growth. Mea maxima culpa.
In our last post, we examined the fruit of the Christian life – the “double love” we hope to see growing when we cultivate the root of living, and the ever-deeper appreciation of God’s grace in the gospel. If that’s where we’re going, how do we get there – how do we grow in living the Word more faithfully?
I deliberately chose an odd phrasing for the third step of meditation:
1. Read the Word
2. Grow Roots into the Word
3. Be Re-Created through the Word
While the first two steps are active, the third step of transformation is both active and passive. This passage from Paul’s letter to the Colossians will show us why, and also give us a summary of how Christian growth works:
3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. [0]
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you [1]: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator [2]. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved [3], compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love [3], which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:5-14)
I’m not the first to do this – the basic framework was old in John Calvin’s day, and one pastor summarized it as a “waltz” – but here’s one way to visualize the cycle of Christian re-creation that’s historically been called sanctification:
0. God’s Grace
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:3-4)
I labeled this “step 0” because God’s grace is the sine qua non of the Christian life, including Christian growth. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones said somewhere, you can make yourself a Muslim, Buddhist, or atheist [or pseudo-Christian hypocrite]; only God can make you a Christian. That’s what these verses in Colossians are saying. To become a Christian is to have part of my soul die and be united to Christ, so that he becomes my life. I die to the kingdom of sin, which is governed by self-love; and I’m brought to life in the kingdom of Christ. This is done, not by my choice or by my will, but entirely by God’s gracious action.
And growth into this new life involves my will, but it’s also initiated and empowered by grace. As Paul exhorts the Philippians, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). Our will and our work – even our efforts to mortify sin and vivify righteousness – come from his work in us, just as surely as our justification and adoption. God’s grace convicts us when we need to change; his grace gives us the existential security and stability on which we stand to change; and his grace gives us the will and the effort to pursue change, even when it feels like dying.
1. Put off / Starve
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you (Colossians 3:5). Being re-created starts with the dying of our old self – some part of our soul that’s clinging to the love of self instead of the love of God and neighbor. It may be a sinful practice, like pornography or lying; a sinful idol, like the approval of others; or a sinful desire, like greed. But it’s something in our soul that we’ve become convicted needs to be gone. “Mortification” is the old word for this.
Now, it would be wonderful if mortification was as simple as execution: if I could just drag my pride out into the backyard, bury it, and come in for the next thing. But anyone who’s been a Christian more than a month knows it don’t work like that, and Paul’s language shows us that he knows it don’t work like that. The Greek translated “put to death” is more literally rendered “let die what is earthly in you.” The connotation is more of starving sin, so that it withers or atrophies, rather than executing it.
Mortification is refusing the desire for sin, so it gets weaker instead of stronger. It’s more like how managing an addiction works. If I’m addicted to alcohol or porn or my phone, I have this itch that sometimes seems overwhelming. I might think, I’ll just indulge this one time, the desire will go away, and then I’ll do better the next time. But even neurological evidence shows that indulging the desire shapes my brain to want it again, and to want it more urgently the next time. Only starving that desire – ignoring it, walking away, choosing to do or think about other things – can make it atrophy away. That’s often what mortification looks like.
2. Renewal
… the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (3:10). This is part of where the “be re-created” language comes from. To truly grow in godliness, rather than just replacing one idol or sinful practice with another, requires more than human effort. It takes becoming a new person, which is a divine work. Becoming a Christian involves a one-time re-creation that is sometimes called regeneration or the new birth, when God first puts the “new self” that bears the image of Christ in us. But that new self needs constant renewal, or re-strengthening; and that renewal also must come from God.
The ”waltz” model I linked above calls this step “believe,” as in, “believe the gospel afresh.” That pastor writes:
First, as you acknowledge sin, appreciate your justified standing with God. You are right with God because of your union with Christ and His righteousness, not because you are perfectly obedient in your life. Second, trust the power of the blood of Christ to be applied to your life at your point of repentance and to change you the same way you trusted the blood of Christ to save you at your conversion.
This step is vital for at least two reasons. First, it helps us remember that we’re not on our own, proving ourselves before God the Almighty Drill Sergeant. God forgave you for this sin before the foundation of the world, laying it over Jesus’ shoulders on the Cross. He declared you righteous, as if you’d never committed this, on the day he clothed you in the new self. And he adopted you as his son or daughter, knowing one day you’d finally repent of this sin and fight it. The long war of sanctification has battles won and battles lost, and if we think we’re alone in the fight we may despair or feel we need to “cheat” to feel better about ourselves. Remembering the gospel reminds us that God is with us in the battle.
Second, leaning into God’s renewing grace puts us into the Person that can truly change us. Like the apostle Paul said of Christian ministry, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). The Holy Spirit is who changes us. He’s not a force to be manipulated; he is a person who has promised to help us. Paul tells the Colossians that our new self is being renewed – the Spirit is working in us, though not always in the way or at the speed we might hope. Understanding this step in Christian growth drives us to prayer and the means of grace – worship, the sacraments, the Word, and Christian community – that we might remember God’s love for us and experience his renewing grace afresh.
3. Put on / Practice
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved … (3:12). Now, when we hear “put on,” we might hear something that sounds like pretending – faking kindness in front of other people, and then gossiping behind their back. (We can try that; but it’s hypocrisy, and Jesus had some rather strong opinions about it) But that’s not what Paul means by “put on.” Putting on the life of heaven is more like practicing than pretending.
I love this version of “Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me.”
And I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing these folks didn’t start singing and playing music the day before they recorded that. They’ve been practicing their craft for years, and probably practiced that song for days and weeks, so that they could perform it beautifully in the moment.
Putting on the life of heaven should be like practicing, not pretending. If I need to grow in compassion, I practice compassion, whether I feel it or not, and I pray that God will help it take root in my soul and change me. I do the same with purity, or generosity, or evangelism: I fight to bring it to life, not to impress Drill Sergeant Jesus, but because Jesus the Shepherd is “lead[ing] me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” I’ll have a growing intrinsic desire for the double love of God and neighbor, just like a newly married man has a growing intrinsic desire to love his wife.
In one of his letters, CS Lewis gives a personal example that shows both the importance of practicing righteousness and the joy when it becomes authentic:
Do you know, only a few weeks ago I realised suddenly that I at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood. I’d been trying to do it for years: and like you, each time I thought I’d done it, I found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again. But this time I feel sure it is the real thing. And (like learning to swim or to ride a bicycle) the moment it does happen it seems so easy and you wonder why on earth you didn’t do it years ago.[1]
Back Around to Grace
God’s grace is also essential when we find yet another part of our life that needs mortification, renewal, and vivification. That’s why it’s a cycle or a waltz: either because of our own cussed failures or because God thinks we’re ready for a deeper round of de-dragoning, the Christian life involves perpetually seeing new ways we are, like Paul said near the end of his life, the chief of sinners (1 Tim 1:15). Remembering that this all takes place in and through his grace helps us fight with hope.
I could say more, but “Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me” does it better than I could, so here’s another version so you can listen again :)
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
[1] C.S. Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. III, Narnia, Cambridge and Joy, 1950-1963, edited by Walter Hooper, (HarperCollins London, 2006), p. 1438.