Historically, when Americans began the great westward movement of the nineteenth century, the Holy Spirit had to devise a way of reaching a fast-moving populace. The answer was evangelism in "sawdust and tears" revivals. Preachers reduced the gospel to the simplest, most essential matters for conversion - "Hit them with a just and angry God and drive them into the arms of a loving Jesus" - preach guilt and repentance and bring them to the altar to receive forgiveness and the new birth. There is nothing wrong with that. By it the Lord converted a nation! Revival preaching is needed all the more as our nation falls further into sin in an anti-christ culture.
But that "reduced gospel" was not intended to tell the whole story, and it could not. It said little or nothing about the continuing struggle to sanctify the heart. In the siteenth century, Ignatius Loyola founded the Jesuit order, which ignited and carried the greatest missionary effort ever in the history of Christianity. Loyola taught and applied tough disciplines for sanctification after conversion, sayiing of St. Francis Xavier, "The lumpiest lump of dough I ever kneaded."
Benedictines also established and followed a "rule of life" for sanctification after conversion. (Some Protestants need to beware of making judgments here. Read about these men. You'll find they were truly born anew!) John Wesley founded the Methodist Church, so named because its adherents insisted upon a "method" of sanctification after conversion. Wesley's followers were among the leaders of the Great Awaikening in America during the eighteenth century.
Benedictines also established and followed a "rule of life" for sanctification aftyer conversion. (Some Protestants need to beware of making judgments here. Read about these men. You'll find they were truly born anew!) John Wesley founded thwe Methodist Church, so named because the adherents insisted upon a "method" of sanctification after conversion. Wesley's followers were among the leaders of the Great Awakening in America during the eighteenth century. All these men knew the fulness of the gospel. They knew the need to bring the continuing roots of sinfulness to death on the cross long after we receive Jesus as Lord and Savior.
But during the second great awakening in America, during the nineteenth century, generations of Christians received nothing but the "reduced gospel." Sunday after Sunday, they heard only evangelism preached. Many m,en responded to the call of God, picked up thier Bibles and went out to preach - without benefit of education. We intend no judgment here; the Lord needed and called them. But most knew little beyond the "reduced Gospel!" They did not know the Church's acculuated knowledge and wisdom for dealing with the pesky practices of the old nature after conversion.
Thinking they were totally neew creatures and thier born-anew parishoners ought likewise to be able to walkl rightly in Chrisit, they laid on heavy exhortations: "You are new creatures, now live up to it! Do it! Just try harder!" Though their parishioners were new positionally new creatures, they continued to be plagued by unholy passions which kept springing up and from undead roots! The could not do it.
Exhortation only threw them into fleshly striving. Then, in their determination to be holy, many fell into the dynamic described above, until cycles of suppression and expression either forced them into sin or drove them into lives of quiet despair. (Some, wiser and humbler, broke free from the cycle and found true peace in Christ, but I wish the reader could sit in my office and listen to the defeated, confused life-stories I hear, all because so many Christians have not heard of the gospel of sanctification after conversion!)
Taken from "Why Some Christians Commit Adultery - Causes and Cures" - by John Sandford - copyright 1989.
