The Swinging of the Front and Back Doors

Santification has been written about by some as though it could be called "the science of saint-making." But since we are all saints by calling (“called to be saints” 1 Cor 1:2), it is better to think of it as “the process of being conformed to the image of Christ” (Romans 8:29). As we shall presently see, it is better to think of this process as something that is done to us (like crucifixion to the world), then something we do to ourselves. (Yes there are verses that say crucifixion is something we do to ourselves, but that has to do with our volition in accepting what has already been done to us). Indeed, santification is the extention and working out of our spiritually based crucifixion and resurrection in Christ. It is something done to us that we cannot do for ourselves.

What is santification about? It is about the fact that most Christians, when they first come to Christ, come to Him with the “front door” of their minds, and only much later bring the back door of their minds - their hearts - to Him. Let me reiterate this distinction that Christ Himself made.

As I’ve spoken of it before, there is a front door to our minds, and back door to our minds. The front door of our minds is the mind proper. It’s the very small, tiny thing that’s only awake for about sixteen hours or so a day, and spends most of it’s time awake worrying “what shall I eat? what shall I drink? how shall I be clothed? How shall I be housed?" etc. etc. ad nausuem. This little tiny helpless thing also spends it’s time worrying about what’s coming in from the back door, the heart, because some of what comes from the back door is not from God, but from the carnal, Adamic nature, which is in opposition to the mind of a human being who has consciously given himself or herself to Christ. This is the strife of the two natures.

Rom 7:15-24

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-- this I keep on doing.

20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law;

23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

(NIV)

James 1:8

8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

(KJV)

James 4:8

8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

(KJV)

Now fortunately, most Christians do not have much natural mental discipline in the front-door part of their minds. The fact that they cannot always keep the back door of their minds - their hearts - from leading them into sin causes them to realize that there is more of themselves they have to allow Christ to have then they at first realized.

Saved they are! Christ sees them from His eternity as fully in the promised land of His eternal love by reason of His blood shed for all their sins in time. But fully in fellowship with Him in time by concrete communication, they are not always. Through the back door of their hearts they can always be tempted away from Christ and into sin.

As this strife of double mindedness goes on, two events should eventually take place.

1.) The pressure of temption from without and within becomes so intense that Christ is continually resorting to in the concrete communication of prayer. The front door of the mind continually pounds on the back door of the mind for Christ to take up his residence there. By His grace, this brings Christ to the heart at the back door early and often.

2.) The pressure of self-discipline eventually causes the front door of the mind to collasp of its own into the arms of Christ, who has now been a frequent visitor at the heart at the back door. This is where the mind eventually learns to practically believe in Christ’s presence in the heart, and learns to rely on His presense there to handle every contingency of life. This is where the Holy Spirit of God becomes more president in addition to being resident. This is were double-mindedness ceases for the most part and the unity of mind and heart in Christ begins.

This is not a fanciful notion of mine. This is the great land-bridge between Romans chapter 7 and Romans chapter 8:

Rom 7:24-8:4

24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

25 Thanks be to God-- through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Rom 8:1-4

1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,

2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

3 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man,

4 in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

(NIV)

It it when we stop struggling with the front of our minds, and start resting in Christ who dwells at the back door, in the heart, that we start to practically come into the things that Christ has for us while we are on earth. There is a picture of this in Christ’s prediction to Peter of what Peter’s future life was going to be like:

John 21:18

18 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.

(KJV)

It is also the practical picture that is seen in the biography of every great Christian:

“The pattern seems to be: self-centeredness, self-effort, increasing inner dissatisfaction and outer discouragement, a temptation to give it all up because there is no better way; and then finding the Spirit of God to be their strength, their guide, their confidence and companion, -- in a word, their life.” [V. Raymond Edman, They Found the Secret, Clarion Classics, Zondervan, 1984]

It is then when Christ really begins to be able to grow us and use us more and more. There will be things that He will bring us into intuitively, by the back door, at the heart, that we will not totally be able to accept with the front door, our minds and wills. That will make for some interesting times indeed. But we will learn and re-learn the surrender of acceptance.

Now note well that I am not calling the last part of this process, “the deeper life,” or “a second blessing.” There is no such thing as a “deeper life” or a “second blessing.” Christ wants the whole of us from the time we first believe in Him to the time we meet Him in heaven, and for all eternity. This is the end and aim of Christ in regard to us.

The process of furnace-and-collasp tends to look and feel like two separate processes, and like one is following on the other, but this is simply due to the stubborness of our own minds and the deceitfullness of our own hearts. But having said that, it can also not be denied that there is shallowness at the beginning of our Christian life, and deepness (or at least deep-er-ness) at it’s end in time.

But the process of santification is not without its dysfunctions. There are things that can go wrong with the process. And they are things that have to do with us and not Christ.