Cultural Sanctification - An Introduction
The tension in the room in Antioch was palpable. Paul had just called Peter out for stepping away from eating a meal with the new Gentile believers. Who was Paul to call out the main leader in the church from Jerusalem?
Yet, it needed to be done, because, as Paul would later write in Galatians 2:14, that the way Peter had been behaving was not in line with the truth of the gospel. The gospel, or good news, was about reconciling people back to God and to each other. This was particularly relevant to the church in Galatia because they were falling back into old Jewish customs trying to earn their righteousness before God. As a result of this reconciliation, the Spirit was birthing a whole new family of believers between the Jews and the Gentiles.
Yet, here was Peter, withdrawing from eating with the new Gentile believers. Why would Peter he do such a thing? As a Jewish man, it had been drilled into Peter from a young age that Gentiles were unclean and not a part of God’s covenant people and they so the Jews were forbidden to have anything to do with them.
A prayer in the Jewish tradition that had formed Peter was, “Praise God for not making me a gentile.” Peter had been shaped by this JewishCulture, which led to a sense of superiority and when Peter gets up from the table, Paul’s like, “No, no, no. Not in my house.” Paul has been in Antioch for 11 years leading the Gentiles to Jesus. Paul, through his deep understanding of the Jewish Scriptures and their fulfillment in Christ, had been living out a radical reconciliation that is both vertical and horizontal.
Peter’s Jewish Culture had shaped him in such a way that it led him to actually get up from the table when other Jews from Jerusalem showed up. And there it is. The power of how our culture shapes us. If Peter, the main leader in of the early church up until this point, has a reaction like this, where’s the hope for all of us?
The truth is, Peter’s culture shaped him and our culture in the West shapes us.
This is why we need, Cultural Sanctification. I define cultural sanctification as, “Being sanctified or set apart into the image of Christ involves seeing how culture has shaped and continues to shape us and allowing the Holy Spirit to birth us out of the fallen elements of our native culture.” I believe that this is what led Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr to speak these words in May of 1965 at Brown Chapel AME in Selma, Alabama; “We can’t save the soul of America without saving our white brothers. And they aren’t free. When you enslave an individual, you enslave yourself. I mean, all white brothers are slaves to that fear–slaves to their prejudices.” How many white preachers are there in this town? Slaves to their congregations, and they are afraid to take a stand, so they prefer to remain silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They know that segregation is wrong. They know they should take a stand, but they are not free. They are afraid and haven’t allowed the gospel of Jesus Christ to permeate their lives. And we’ve got to save those preachers. We have got to put Christianity back in the church.”(Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., May 31, 1965 Brown Chapel church, in Selma, 3 months after Bloody Sunday.)
In order to become the family of God that Jesus prayed for and the beloved community the Rev. Dr. King fought for, we must be willing to leave our native culture to become the new humanity that Christ died for. We must be willing to allow the gospel transform us from how the harmful ways our culture has shaped and divided us. We must be willing to allow the Holy Spirit seek to sanctify us out of our cultures.
We have chosen a culture of comfort, fear, safety, convenience, and privilege rather than the culture of God’s Kingdom. This is why Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr spoke these words in Where do we go from here?; “It is disappointment with the Christian church that appears to be more white than Christian, and with many white clergymen who prefer to remain silent behind the security of stained-glass windows.” Being sanctified out of culture will be hard; it will involve a deep dependence on the Holy Spirit and a godly dependence on those that don’t look like us. This is cultural sanctification.
Cultural Sanctification is the process by which followers of Jesus are sanctified out of how their native culture has shaped them to be born again into the culture of the kingdom of God. In the scriptures we see three stages of spiritual transformation; justification, sanctification, and being sanctified out of culture.
Justification is the idea that we are presented clean before God as if we had never sinned because of what Jesus does on the cross for humanity, the free gift of God where all our sins are pardoned and we are accepted by God as truly righteous because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Sanctification is the process of becoming which God makes us more and more like Christ here on earth as we discover who God is and who He has made us to be. Cultural Sanctification flows naturally out of both our justification and sanctification and is a stage, which the church is just now embracing. We see it play out in Scripture, particularly in the book of Acts, but it’s something that we are as the church rarely address.
This journey of being sanctified out of culture is going to be hard, especially for those of the majority culture. Why? Because people that come from the majority culture often feel they have so much to lose. But Jesus told his disciples that if they wanted to follow him, they must take up their cross and die daily.
If we learn are willing to die to the old ways that are not in step with the gospel, we will quickly see that we have so much more to gain, namely family. I can honestly say that I am a better person because of the diversity in my life. We must learn to depend upon the Holy Spirit for this profound transformation to take place in ways as He sanctifies us from how culture has shaped us. We often don’t know how culturally snared we are until we have the Spirit of God open our eyes to it. This frees us from any our bondage and baggage that we, through our cultural myopia, bring into the beliefs, perceptions, and practices of our Christianity. The Holy Spirit’s work in Acts 2 fell at Pentecost, thus beginning a new era in the church. It was the Holy Spirit’s work vision in Acts 10 that allowed Peter to see that the Gentiles were a part of the new covenant community. And it’s going to involve the work of the Spirit through the words, lives, and love of others, not like ourselves.
It was the Holy Spirit’s work that prompted Paul to oppose Peter to his face in Antioch because a vertical reconciliation was not compelling him to live in a horizontal reality. Peter was shaped by his Jewish Cultural Superiority by the Jewish prayer, “Praise you God, for not making me a Gentile.” Peter got up from eating with the new Gentile believers in Galatians 2 when other Jews from Jerusalem arrived, thus prompting Paul to call out his hypocrisy.
And just like Peter needed Paul to point out his cultural blind spots, we must learn to depend upon others, particularly those who don’t look like us, to point out our cultural blindspots. This takes Spirit empowered humility.
We’ve all been shaped by culture here in this country. We all have racial and cultural biases. We all need the good news of gospel. This cultural bias has resulted in a church that 11am on a Sunday morning is still the most divided in our country.
The church in the west has been getting up from table fellowship with our black and brown family for over 400 years, it’s time for this to end. When we have the courage to leave our native culture for the culture of the Kingdom of God, we experience so much freedom in Christ and we gain a new family!
This is why Paul says at the end of Galatians, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” We must be willing to sacrifice our cultural norms that are out of step with the gospel for the Kingdom’s culture and move into the New Humanity we are in Christ!
We need to hear the words of Dr. King to, “allow the gospel of Jesus Christ to permeate our lives.” Paul ends his letter to the Galatian church that the entire law is summed up with, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We do this best when we leave our native culture for the culture of the Kingdom and truly experience the freedom that only Jesus the Christ offers!