Once for All, Again and Again, and More and More

Part 2, Riding a Bike and Mixology

In the last post I described the pastoral complexities in trying to balance justification and sanctification in my prison Bible study. 

As I shared, I generally just talk about grace. I think that's the main message we all need to hear, over and over again. But I do, from time to time, encourage the men toward Christian growth and maturity, despite the enormous obstacles they face. As you can imagine, prison isn't the most wholesome environment to spend your days. And yet, when we explore sanctification I'm pastorally alert to policing judgmentalism, a performance-based religiosity, and haunting guilt. 

I mainly accomplish this balance dialectically, keeping justification and sanctification in tension, not letting the conversation fall too heavily to one side or the other. Similar to keeping the tensions between faith and works. I like Karl Barth's comparison of this method to riding a bike: you have to keep the two pedals moving to maintain forward momentum. You pedal back and forth: Justification. Sanctification. Justification. Sanctification. Justification. Sanctification. Should you ever stop pedaling, you'll fall over. 

If the message were just justification, justification, justification, justification, over and over again, without ever a turn to sanctification, the gospel would become distorted. We're "saved," but that salvation never impacts my life and how I treat others. That's a thin view of salvation. 

Conversely, if the message is just sanctification, sanctification, sanctification, sanctification, over and over again, without ever a turn toward justification, the gospel also becomes distorted. Grace is displaced by a works-based righteousness, a legalistic pursuit of holiness and piety. 

So, you have to keep pedaling the bike: Justification. Sanctification. Justification. Sanctification. Justification. Sanctification. This is the dialectical method. Less a fusion between the two ideas, than point versus counter-point, the truth located not on either side but in the interplay between them. The key is establishing and maintaining this tension.

Vital to this process is pastoral sensitivity to context. In some contexts, the message of grace needs to be emphasized. In other contexts, the call toward holiness. And it's generally a moving target, so we have to be alert to what the situation calls for at this particular moment. And since shame and guilt are the main spiritual struggles out at the prison, I lean toward grace. My mixture is four parts grace and one part sanctification. That seems to be the right theological cocktail for this pastoral situation. We're grace and holiness mixologists.