The Surprising God

This post continues a series re-capping insights from Alexandra Radcliff's book,  The Claim of Humanity in Christ, Salvation and Sanctification in the Theology of T. F. and J. B. Torrance . For previous posts in the series, click a number:  1 ,  2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 11 .  Last time we explored the Torrances' view that sanctification, rather than being what we achieve through our works, is an already-accomplished reality in Jesus. The Christian life is thus not about making ourselves holy, but about participating, by the Spirit, in what already is true of us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. That being the case, an important question is this:  How do we participate?  Is the idea of participation in Christ just a nice theological concept, or is it a day-to-day reality? To many critics of Torrance theology, the idea seems far too conceptual. After all, we live on earth and Jesus (in his glorified humanity) is in heaven. One day he will return to earth,

This post continues a series re-capping insights from Alexandra Radcliff's book,  The Claim of Humanity in Christ, Salvation and Sanctification in the Theology of T. F. and J. B. Torrance . For previous posts in the series, click a number:  1 ,  2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 10 ,  11 .  We come now to the section of Radcliff's book where she drills down on the subjective (personal) outworking of the objective sanctification that is ours in and through Jesus. But before focusing on the subjective aspect of sanctification, Radcliff returns to the objective, lest we we lose sight of an important gospel truth: Humanity is not only set free from the burden of attempting to achieve salvation, but also from the burden of attempting to achieve sanctification.... This is a significant contribution [by the Torrances] for, having been justified by faith, it is often supposed that it is the Christian's task to work out his own sanctification. (p. 123) Sadly, Christians often oper