Journal: Reformed Presbyterian Theological Journal
Volume: RPTJ 07:1 (Fall 2020)
Article: Keeping Nothing Back Which May Promote Holy Ends: Westminster On Preaching And Sanctification
Author: Barry J. York

RPTJ 7:1 (Fall 2020) p. 51

Keeping Nothing Back Which May Promote Holy Ends:
Westminster On Preaching And Sanctification

Barry J. York

President and Professor of Pastoral Theology and Homiletics Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Many of the influences streaming into modern preaching in the West downplay the necessity of holiness in the church. These tributaries come from various directions, forming a flood of thought in the church that gives the overall impression to those in evangelical churches that there is virtually no process between justification and glorification.

Arminian theology, still preached prevalently in American churches with its emphasis on the power of the human will, leaves its hearers underequipped in matters of sanctification. Whether it is the Wesleyan teaching of entire or instantaneous sanctification, dispensational influences that ignore the third use of the law of God, or the Baptist stress on regaining a lost salvation through responding to altar calls, preaching in many quarters of the evangelical church is adding confusion rather than clarification to matters of sanctification.

Reformed preaching is not immune from this confusion over sanctification. Though an encouraging influence in many ways, the more recent Christ-centered or gospel-centered preaching movement has strains of antinomianism present in it. A notable example is the teaching and downfall of Tullian Tchividjian, former pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and author of the book Jesus + Nothing = Everything. The book title would be fitting for a work on justification, but the book’s topic is sanctification. Tchividjian’s confusion regarding sanctification and his stress on a lawless grace causes him to say things such as, “I like to remind myself and others that the only thing you contribute to your salvation and to your sanctification is the sin that makes them necessary.1 This conflation of justification and sanctification causes Tchividjian to ignore and even deny the many means the Lord has given us to grow in holiness.2

Even closer to home, the redemptive-historical preaching approach embedded in Reformed seminaries and churches has in a surprising way contributed to some of the neglect in treating sanctification in preaching. With its well-intentioned desire to reveal Christ in every text of Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, the redemptive-historical method often overlooks the immediate moral applications, particularly in narrative preaching, with what Dennis Johnson calls its “helicopter approach” of hovering over the text.3 The redem...