God Walks with Us Through the Process of Sanctification

In our last meditation based on the passage in Second Kings chapter 5, the encounter between Elisha and Naaman, we saw the terrible sin and mistake Gehazi makes when he goes after Naaman and asks him for money, thinking no one would notice and thus, in a sense, spoiling this lofty and beautiful process God wanted to carry out in Naaman’s life. We saw the corruption there.

This is interesting too, I think, if we pause for a moment, isn’t it? There have always been imperfect people walking in the ways of the Lord. So often we take offense because this happened or that happened, as if it were some extraordinary thing; it is part of human life, part of human nature. Throughout the centuries, God’s servants have always made serious mistakes. There will always be imperfection in the Church of Jesus Christ. We cannot be scandalized, run away, and reject the Gospel because this great servant of God, or this person we had been looking up to, did one thing or another.

Our eyes must always be fixed exclusively on Jesus Christ. He is the only one who will never disappoint us. Our pastors and the leaders of our congregation are flesh-and-blood men and women like anyone else, and we cannot be led astray by such things; we cannot place our faith in them. They are useful and a great blessing, but they are human beings, prone to fall, to sin, to offend, and to make mistakes like any other human being. That is what Gehazi represents: human imperfection in the midst of God’s perfection and power.

But we see something else here, too. Going back a little, when Naaman experiences this great miracle of God, he says to Elisha: Look, I simply want to tell you something. I am my king’s right-hand man, and often the king wants me to accompany him to the temple of his god. I know that he is not the true God, and from now on I will serve no other God but the God of Israel. But sometimes the king asks me to accompany him to the place of worship of this false god, and he leans on my arm. When the king bows before the false god, I have to bow as well in order to physically support my lord, and in a sense it would look as though I, too, were bowing, contradicting the promise I have made. But I am not doing it from the heart; my position physically obliges me to do it.

Elisha’s response is interesting. Instead of perhaps a flat no—telling him, “No, now you serve God alone and you cannot do anything that contradicts the confession you have made”—Elisha, with pastoral care, great generosity, and understanding, tells him: “All right, don’t worry. God knows your situation, and there is no sin in it.”

I have always pictured that lovely scene, where God’s mercy reaches out to a man who finds himself in a difficult professional situation, extending grace to him. I think that in pastoral care, pastors and counselors often encounter very unusual and difficult situations. We can choose to give people a legalistic, rigid, Pharisaical answer, or we can express God’s mercy. For example, in Jesus’ dealings with the Samaritan woman, the woman caught in adultery, or Zacchaeus the tax collector, we see the mercy with which the Lord treats these people. And with Peter, when he denied Him, we likewise see the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is not that we are talking about a false liberalism or about license. Rather, in pastoral care we must always live with that tension between rigidity and mercy: understanding what God wants of us, while also recognizing that people often need time to be purified and to put their lives in order so they can bring them to where God wants them to be.

Sometimes people come to our church who are caught up in difficult situations. God begins to work in their lives, and changing their way of life will be hard for them. It will cost them money; it may cost them the comfortable way they are used to living; they may have to break with someone they love. And often we, as God’s servants, do not have the gentleness, grace, mercy, compassion, patience, or pastoral heart to accompany these people through the processes they have to go through.

I imagine it took Naaman a long time to find a way of living that was wholly upright before God, and perhaps also to withdraw little by little from his position as a Syrian general. What is interesting is that God, through the prophet Elisha, says to him: “No, I am willing to accompany you on that journey of sanctification and growth toward perfection. As long as you are struggling with this, don’t worry. I will not condemn you, and I will walk with you.” God walks with us through our processes of sanctification and of bringing the different aspects of our lives into God’s order.

There must be in us a desire and a determination to do that, and we must submit our lives immediately, even though it is hard for us. When we live out of step with what God wants for our lives, there will always be some kind of consequence. But we must know that God is merciful, God is faithful, and God has compassion on us.

And there is a beautiful passage in Psalm 34, the last verse, which says: “None of those who trust in Him will be condemned.” God will not condemn us if our hearts are in the right place. If we want to please the Lord, if we desire to serve Him, if there is sorrow in our hearts because we know we are not fully aligned with what God wants for our lives, but we are doing everything we can to bring our lives to that point.

And pastoral hearts are needed. We need people with a heart for counseling, an understanding of the Word, an understanding of what the process of sanctification is like and how the Holy Spirit Himself works with us to bring us where God wants us to be, and an understanding that things take time. Those pastoral churches, those pastoral hearts, are what will make the difference.

In this twenty-first-century world, with all the bonds and all the experiences that have wounded and distorted people by the time they come to church, churches that are Pharisaical, rigid, legalistic, and mechanical in their view of sanctification will not be able to reach this culture. We need churches committed to God’s holiness but understanding of how the processes of sanctification unfold, as we see here with Elisha when he says: “Go in peace. God will show you what you need to do. Do not agonize more than you need to, because God has mercy on you.” Thank God for that, because otherwise where would we be, were it not for God’s mercy, grace, and patience?

Well, we are grateful to the Lord for this series of messages based on the encounter between Elisha and Naaman, and I hope it has been a blessing in your life as well. Thank you for sharing this time with me. Your friend and servant of the Lord, Roberto Miranda, bids you farewell. Until next time.