The way to measure genuine growth in holiness is… How would you answer that question? Today on Things Unseen, listen as Sinclair Ferguson draws principles from two figures in church history to aid us in our pursuit of sanctification.
Friday always seems to come round really quickly on Things Unseen, and this week we’ve been thinking about sanctification, or holiness. And to end the week, I want to mention two important principles of sanctification, two important principles of becoming like Jesus. And I want to reflect on these principles through the eyes of two great Christians who commented on them and have given me what I think of as two watchwords. I’ll mention them in chronological order.
The first person is someone I’ve mentioned before because I think about what he says a lot, and it’s been a big help to me personally. I’m thinking of the words of the great seventeenth-century theologian and pastor John Owen. Let me paraphrase him. He says that you measure growth in holiness, not by the height someone seems to have reached or the place to which they seem to have arrived—Owen knew that we actually tend to do that, don’t we? No, he says, we measure spiritual growth by the distance a person has traveled to get where they’ve arrived, and especially by the obstacles they’ve overcome in order to get there.
Now, it’s no more wise spiritually for a Christian to be constantly taking his or her own spiritual pulse than it is to be doing that with your physical pulse, at least unless you’re under medical care. Looking inward all the time, that can tend to a kind of spiritual self-absorption, which at the end of the day is profoundly unhelpful.
But I’ve found what Owen says here tremendously helpful in recognizing growth and holiness in other Christians. Here’s a Christian who seems to have it all together, as we say. She’s streets ahead of that other lady in the church, who so often seems to be struggling. It’s surely that first lady that’s really grown in sanctification and holiness. Obvious, isn’t it? But is it? If you think of her in terms of the difficulties she’s had to face, the obstacles that she’s overcome, the disadvantages that she’s had, well, maybe there haven’t been too many of these. And maybe that’s a better measure of her progress. And the wonderful thing is this: you don’t need to appreciate her any less to be able to appreciate that that other lady has actually made tremendous progress, against all the odds. And when you see that, you begin to love them, to appreciate them, to admire them.
I wonder if I’m sounding now a bit like Paul in Philippians 3:1, when he says, “To say the same thing again is no trouble to me and it’s safe for you.” Well, if so, it’s true. And since I’ve found Owen’s words such a help to me in living and serving in the church family, I think they’re worth repeating again and again because they’re really part of helping us to understand how to live in fellowship—holy fellowship—with one another, because we begin to see other people through His eyes and to love them in a Christ-like way.
The second principle I want to mention however, is one that’s beautifully expressed in some words I read ages ago by the famous eighteenth-century Anglican minister Charles Simeon. His ministry not only had a massive influence in Cambridge, where he was a pastor, but also in the whole of the United Kingdom and even in Scotland—and right up to the present day. One of his students was a brilliant young man by the name of Henry Martyn. You may know his name because he became a missionary in India and Persia, and he died when he was thirty-one. Simeon said something about Henry Martyn when he was still a young man that has always impressed me. He says that the striking thing about Henry Martyn was not only that he manifested the fruit of the Spirit but that all of the fruit seemed to be in perfect proportion in his life.
I think you can see what he meant. I wonder if you know someone—or perhaps even are that someone—who has the fruit of self-control: very disciplined, self-disciplined. They’re not only firm, they’re almost hard on themselves. But they’re also hard on others. And you see, the fruit has got out of proportion. It’s not balanced by the fruit of gentleness. Their self-control is more intimidating than it is attractive. And perhaps, even sadly, it goes along with just a little touch of superiority or an assumption that everyone should be like them. Your life of self-control, if that’s true of you, is actually leaving an unpleasant aroma in the room when you leave it.
I imagine it’s been pointed out to you at some time or another that Paul speaks about the works of the flesh, plural, but about the fruit of the Spirit, a collective singular. The works of the flesh are the marks of a life that is actually disintegrating. The fruit of the Spirit mark the life that’s being reintegrated.
I once saw an interview with a Japanese master creator of bonsai trees—you know, those marvelous miniature trees. I know nothing about bonsai, so I found something he said really interesting. He said all bonsai trees are shaped in the form of a triangle. I’d actually never noticed that, although it’s fairly obvious. They are perfectly proportioned miniatures. But he said if you look you’ll see the triangle shape isn’t necessarily at the same angle on every tree. And I thought, “That’s a terrific metaphor for our sanctification.” Holiness, Christlikeness, becomes evident in our lives when the fruit of the Spirit is increasingly well-proportioned in us, has a Christ-like shape. But the angle, the angle that that same shape will take in each person’s life will be slightly different from every other Christian you meet.
That’s a wonderful thing to think about as we go to church this coming Lord’s Day, that we are all being reshaped in the image of Christ, and yet each one in a slightly different way. I hope you have a blessed weekend.
