Sanctification

 I once had a professor who said “What would you say if I told you that when you are truly sanctified (made holy) you can sin as much as you want?” Of course, the whole class was a little confused at the scandalized notion presented. But the teacher went on to explain his intentionally provocative statement. If you are truly sanctified then you would not desire to sin. So, a Christian could sin as much as he wanted because he would not want to sin at all. Regardless of other conversations we could have on this topic, I think we would all agree that our sanctification ends there, that is the telos, the end goal. Whether in heaven or the new heavens and new earth, God will complete the work he has begun in us and will restore his image in us and purify us entirely.

     Right before Jesus is betrayed and hauled off to be tried and crucified, Luke’s Gospel tells us of Jesus’s prayer to the Father on the Mount of Olives. At first glance we see the humanity of Christ on display, the desire to not suffer followed by the resolve to do the will of the One who sent him. This movement from the request to not suffer to his final resolve is an important one. But there is something else that we often skim over in our reading, it has to do with the will(s) of Christ. If Christ is fully God and fully human, whose will does he have, the will of God or the will of a man? If we zoom out a bit, the question deepens. There are times in the life of Christ when he seems to know things that only God could know, like the heart of the scribes when he heals the paralytic in Matthew 9. Yet, there are other times when he does not know, like when talking about the Last Days in Mark 13, Jesus says, “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

     In the early church, there were debates about how Christ is both divine and human. More pointedly, in the seventh century, the debate got even more specific and was about how many wills/minds did Christ have. Did Christ only have the divine will or only a human will, or did he somehow have both? The language of will has to do with the desires and affections, it is what controls our actions. Now this may seem like a trivial question; however, its implications are deeply important. Firstly, it helps us to understand Scripture and how in one instance Christ seems to be all-knowing, while in another moment he seems to not know. Secondly, it is important for how we understand salvation.

     The first implication is self-evident enough, but what does it have to do with salvation? It begins with a key group of thinkers in the 4th century called the Cappadocian fathers, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the first two were brothers!). The Cappadocian fathers helped to give us our language around concepts like the Trinity and how to understand the two natures of Christ. In a controversy over whether Jesus was fully human (as opposed to only fully divine with just a skin costume on) Gregory of Nazianzus claims, “what God has not assumed, God has not healed.” His point was that for God to truly heal all of humanity he had to take on the fullness of humanity. If God only took on our flesh, then only our flesh has been healed, but what of our minds and our desires?

     This is why the two minds of Christ debate was so important. If Christ did not have both the divine mind and the human mind then we have not been fully saved. You might ask, why does he need the divine mind, isn’t the human mind sufficient? The problem would be then Christ wouldn’t be fully divine then. It is as the divine touches the human that it heals. This is why we see in Jesus’s prayer “Not my will, but yours.” The human will is sanctified and it desires the will of God. Like iron left in the fire, soon the fire consumes the iron and the two cannot be distinguished.

     This is why it matters for us today because it helps us understand the work of God in our lives and the hope that we have in him. Our minds and wills are being formed into the mind and will of God so that we desire what God desires. Not only do we desire it but we do it. Some call this sanctification others theosis or deification. It is the sanctifying work of God in our lives where both our bodies and our minds/desires will be attuned to his and the image of God is restored within us. This work begins in us at baptism when we are joined to Christ and it continues throughout our lives. It is our spiritual and mystical union to Christ that heals us. Just as the union of Christ’s full divinity and full humanity healed humanity, so our union with him actualizes our healing.

     As for now, we struggle and we fight to form the will and mind of God in us. However, we do this not alone or by our strength and determination. Our striving and struggle to form ourselves to God rests in the work that he began in his incarnation, life, crucifixion, and resurrection. The healing of our bodies and minds has been accomplished in Christ already. But it is through the aid of the Spirit in our lives that our struggles against our fallen bodies and minds, that the work of Christ is being accomplished. Our temptations, our struggles, are the operating table in which God heals us. It is the sacraments, the reading and hearing of Scripture, prayer, and devotions that are the surgeon’s tools that continue to heal us.

“Through the veil”,

Fr. Aaron