Dolphin Safe Sanctification

My bride and I, during separate cardio workouts, listen to sermon audio ¹, and then discuss the sermon after dinner. We have been going through the corpus of a particular man we both admire (and have heard live several times). Who might that be? Here are some hints:

Hint 1: He is a celebrity pastor and missionary.
Hint 2: He has not been involved in any sort of scandal!

<cynicism>
     That already narrows the number of possible names down into the single digits.
</cynicism>

Hint 3: If God appeared before me and said: David, I want you to choose one living person to present the gospel live from Madison Square Garden and streamed to the entire world. So who will it be? Then, after I was done screaming, I would say: choose this guy.

Okay, tell me who you think it is.

So, the the most recent sermon we listened to involves (as many of his sermons do) sanctification. He taught about

1. The heresy of antinomianism², where believers (or at least those who believe they believe)  take grace as license to sin.
2. The idea that salvation is all of God--all of grace. We contribute nada.
3. The idea that no true believer accepts Christ as their savior but not as their Lord.
4. The idea that a Christian is not the same person trying to do better, but an entirely new (regenerated) person.
5. The idea that the mark of a Christian is sanctification manifested through lifestyle choices and good works, i.e., fruit.
6. The idea we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We should welcome and seek out opportunities to be a light and to commit ourselves to good works.
7. The idea that if we see no fruit in our lives then we should question our salvation.

I agree with all of these. But I think #7 is a blunt instrument that requires care on the part of preachers. It is a net that when cast out catches the chicken of the sea, but it also entangles some dolphins. In this case the dolphins are true believers who are less adept at handling the doubt that besets us all. For such vulnerable Christians, which may be any of us for a season, #7 might not be a productive wake-up  call. Instead it can be a debilitating and counter-productive obstacle to struggling believers who are not seeing, in the mirror, spiritual growth.

In short, you should never call anyone struggling with doubt because of, as they see it, a lack of fruit,   to question their own salvation. Never ever.  The bible doesn't. Jesus doesn't say "I never knew you" to those who are struggling to see progress in sanctification. To the Jews he says it to the pharisees who believed they already had a foot in heaven's door. And he says it to Christian "believers" who were supremely confident in their salvation and were utterly shocked when they realized they had placed their false hope in their own righteousness. 

Believers who are struggling with a lack of perceived progress in their sanctification do not need a wake-up call. They need encouragement, love and support. In most cases there is clear evidence of sanctification from an outside perspective, but the person struggling doesn't see it, and often denies any evidence you present. There can be a self-blindness when it comes to sanctification, which makes a believer susceptible to the nasty side-effects of medicine #7.

It is a tough problem--praise be to God  I'm not a pastor--but #7, while technically true, is not the right way to go. It's not helping.

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¹Not, of course, as a substitute for the local church. May it never be.

² I have never met an all-out antinomian. (I have, however, been called one!) That is, someone who makes a credible expression of belief, but then uses grace as excuse for carnal living. I have only heard unbelievers mock Christianity and especially Calvinism in this manner: "In that case, we might as well do whatever we want!" However, in seems that in Paul's day, in the nascent church, there actually were early "believers" who thought they could have their salvific cake and eat the sinfully sweet icing too. Or something like that.