Sanctification may be the one area of systematic theology that needs revisitation in each generation. Other topics pretty well get settled in certain eras. The early church councils clarified the deity and humanity of Christ. Augustine clarified the sinful nature of man in contrast to the optimistic perspective of Pelagius.

Yet sanctification keeps coming back for a renewed look, in recent years, in a number of books that emphasize grace. The authors write about how we are dead to sin and alive in Christ. They tell how we must cooperate with the Holy Spirit in renouncing the sins of the flesh, and those sins include the subtle ones we don’t easily detect—jealousy, bitterness, or a wrongly-motivated competitive spirit.

A key theme is our death to self, or the flesh or sin nature, and how we need to renounce sins of the flesh such as those listed in Colossians 3:5-8 or Galatians 5:19-21. A related, more positive theme is our union with Christ and how He is in me, and I am in Him. Some spiritual warfare writers, such as Neil Anderson, have also stressed our standing in Christ as a vital protection we need to recognize when we come under special attacks from Satan.

These messages don’t come from a particular group or movement or denomination. Dallas Willard is a philosophy teacher at USC and has written on what he likes to call spiritual formation, which others call discipleship. He stresses the need for inner transformation of the spirit, will and mind. His relatively recent book, Renovation of the Heart, (2002) stresses how we tend to neglect the spiritual side of our lives because of our flesh, or sin nature, and because of the surrounding culture’s emphasis on the material world. The academic world, especially, hardly encourages any pursuit of truth, creating a challenge to offer the claims of the Bible. Yet throughout the academic world there is a growing interest in the spiritual realm and some recognition that materialism alone won’t satisfy.

Willard develops his own vocabulary, in the tradition of Francis Schaeffer; yet it is worth learning his vocabulary for the benefit of his teaching. His ideas are not so much new as restated from a perspective different from that of traditional evangelical teachers. He stresses memorization of Scripture, for example, in a way reminiscent of the Navigators ministry. But he makes the case in the broader context of our responsibility for how we think: “The most obvious thing we can do is to draw certain key portions of Scripture into our minds and make them a part of the permanent fixtures of our thought. This is the primary discipline for the thought life. We need to know them like the back of our hand, and a good way to do that is to memorize them and then constantly turn them over in our minds as we go through the events and circumstances of our lives (Josh. 1:8; Ps. 1).”

Bill Hull, of southern California, has written from an unusual perspective as a pastor who sees discipleship as the crucial building block of church growth. Discipleship, for me and likely many other Christians of the Baby Boomer generation, has been associated with a parachurch organization, the Navigators. Yet Mr. Hull has shown in a number of books how to mix discipleship in the church. He sounds like a Navigator, or maybe a U.S. Marine, in those books, with a lot of good stress on the need for discipline in the Christian life. He was a basketball star growing up in Indianapolis in the early 1960s, and the disciplines on the court have been carried over nicely to the discipleship arena. He comes across as an aggressive coach/pastor. You may not love him in the midst of practice or training, but you will appreciate it later, in the spirit of Hebrews 12:11.

Yet in a more recent book, Choose the Life, Mr. Hull reveals how the Lord has prompted him to add a note of grace similar to the death to self and union with Christ. Dallas Willard writes the forward to this recent book, and parts of it are confessions of a pastor who tried to please the Lord and learned that the Lord was already pleased with him. But it was a painful learning experience that he kindly shares with the rest of us.

“The deepest sin of my life is holding onto the right to lead my own life,” he writes. “I am a high achiever. I like to be in control. I enjoy accomplishment. I love to ‘go for it.’ I like to think that I have all kinds of options available to me, that I can create, create, create. If I want to be transformed, I have to give that all up. I must confess my sin of insisting on leading my own life. That is how I got started. I humbled myself and asked God to lead me. I know it sounds trite and common, but when you get it, when you understand what it means to choose the life of following Jesus, it is the most liberating experience in life.”

What is intriguing to me, as a beneficiary of his earlier discipleship books, is that he has not seen a need to recant his earlier books. He was not teaching a wrong doctrine of discipleship, but the Lord has added some grace to the truths that he captured well on the subject of 2 Timothy 2:2 and Christ’s building of His church.

Southern California, with all of its great virtues, does not have a monopoly on this theme of grace. It is also in a book by Navigator staffer Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace: God’s Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness, (1994). From Oklahoma, Ken Boa has offered similar themes in books such as That I May Know God: Pathways to Spiritual Formation (1998).

As I have read these books, at times I got a little worried that I might be led astray into some wrong theological directions. Some of these writers seemed to reflect some Charismatic influences, and others are not necessarily Reformed. So I memorized Scripture around some of the themes and reviewed the material with our pastor, Dr. Roy Blackwood. Between Scripture memory and Roy Blackwood, I was pretty sure I could stay on track. I also could recall a sermon by Pastor Ken G. Smith in Pittsburgh in 1977, on Galatians 2:20 and the death of self and our union with Christ. Then he preached on a similar theme recently in Indianapolis. I also noticed other Reformed people taking up these themes.

In Total Truth (2004), Nancy Pearcey had a concluding chapter that reviewed Francis Schaeffer’s book, True Spirituality. Known more for his books on apologetics, Dr. Schaeffer also had written this book about how he longed for a closer walk with Christ, with emphasis on passages such as Romans 6 and Galatians 2:20. He learned the lessons in the late 1940s and early 1950s, though his book was not published until much later.

Death to self, writes Mrs. Pearcey, “means dying inwardly to whatever has control over us.” It could be pride or anger or fear. “Whatever it is that controls you, that is what you must place on the altar to be slain.”

Then from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Mo., President Bryan Chapell has offered his book, Holiness by Grace, with similar themes on sanctification.

The topic is not new, just a revival of an old theme from Scripture. The Puritan John Owen wrote about it in Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, which has been republished by Banner of Truth. Owen’s writing was helpful to William Wilberforce a century later. Wilberforce had come to Christ as a young man in England and would go on to lead the battle for abolition of slavery in Parliament and provide an unusual witness for Christ in political circles in Great Britain. Wilberforce, in many respects, has become a prime practical example of the application of the kingship of Christ over civil government, not only in England but also for many Americans in recent years.

With all these books on sanctification, shouldn’t we then be drawing closer to the Lord and growing in grace? Yes. But the books have to be read and digested and applied, and, for me, read several times. These books do belong in the category of life-changing. They are not entertaining. I usually don’t want to read them to put myself to sleep at night. Biographies do that much better.

Yet the life-changing impact of these books tends to be related to the depth of our commitment to the disciplines of the Christian life: regular Bible study leading to personal commitments or applications, prayer, worship service, memorized verses from the Bible leading into serious meditation, and accountability with partners in these disciplines. The Navigators focus on about five of these disciplines in their approach. Dallas Willard and others have about 15.

It is an interesting puzzle as to why the Lord is pouring out these themes at this time in history, from several different theological streams. Early church history concentrated on the doctrine of Christ’s person. The Reformation saw a concentration on justification by faith and a return to the authority of Scripture in all areas of life, with new access for believers to the Bible.

Yet sanctification seems to need special treatment at all times in church history. Some in the early church went to extremes to be sanctified, denying themselves physical comfort to seek spiritual growth. We can wonder about some of their tactics, but they were serious about walking with the Lord. Medieval writers covered sanctification from quite a few different angles. No one time period seems to be able to settle the sanctification question quite the way the question of the person of Christ was settled in the early church. It may be that each generation must review these truths and rediscover the application of these truths for itself.

“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving” (Col. 2:6-7).

Russ Pulliam is a contributing editor to the Witness. He is a ruling elder in the Second (Indianapolis, Ind.) RPC.