This morning I picked up CJ Mahaney’s book the Cross Centered Life. I have heard several people talk about the impact this little book made on their lives. The focus of the book is to bring the Gospel back to the center of our churches and our personal lives. Mahaney says that “too many of us have stopped concentrating on the wonders of the cross.” Instead we focus on activities, our own merit, our emotions, or a host of other things that though they are not bad, they are not what is of utmost importance- the Gospel of Christ is.
The chapter that struck me was called “Breaking Free from the Rules of Legalism.” I think too often when we think of legalism we think of people who place crazy rules on themselves and others and call it godly but as Mahaney points out “legalism is seeking to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God.” With this definition we can see that many of us have a tendency to be more legalistic than we thought. Many of us, including me, often feel less accepted if we don’t perform well.
One of the professors here at Southern, Thomas Schreiner, say it well when he said that “legalism has its origin in self-worship. If people are justified through their obedience to the law, then they merit praise, honor, and glory. Legalism, in other words, means the glory goes to people rather than God.”
I think the easiest way to distinguish between our trying to earn favor with God and our trying to be godly by become more like Him can be identified by defining the words justification and sanctification. Justification has to do with our status before God. When God saves us He transfers the perfect, sinless record of Jesus to us. The work of justification is God’s work alone. Sanctification however is the process of becoming more like Christ, the process of believers growing in holiness. The process begins the moment we are saved and ends the day Christ comes back for us. Mahaney says that “sanctification is about our own choices and behavior. It involves work. Empowered by God’s Spirit, we strive. We fight sin. We study the Scripture and pray, even when we don’t feel like it. We flee temptation. We press on; we run hard in the pursuit of holiness. And as we become more and more sanctified, the power of the gospel conforms us more and more closely, with ever increasing clarity, to the image of Jesus Christ.”
Therefore we can distinguish justification and sanctification by saying that justification is being declared righteous and sanctification is being made righteous. Justification is our position before God and sanctification is our practice. Justification is Christ’s work for us and sanctification is Christ’s work within us. Justification is immediate and complete upon conversion and sanctification is a process.
Mahaney sums up this distinction that we all need to make by stating the mistake legalist makes, “He confuses his own ongoing participation in the process of sanctification with God’s finished work in justification…Our participation in the process of sanctification comes only after we’ve been totally accepted and made right before God through faith in Jesus.”
We must seek to find our joy and fulfillment in life by living a life that is centered on the cross, the finished work of Jesus. We must not focus on what can do but on what He has done. The Gospel must be the central point of our lives.
