Sanctified?

What is the role of faith in sanctification? What is the primary agent in sanctification? Sanctification is the process of God sharing His life with and through us (Wesley 276-278). It’s the process of God sharing His life with man that results in sanctification, which means that man needs Him. This happens as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, primarily the Holy Spirit, work changes in us who believe. Faith is the condition of sanctification; repentance and obedience are the primary agents in sanctification.
What is the role of faith in sanctification? ‘Faith is defined as “an evidence and conviction of the things not seen.” It implies supernatural “evidence,” of God and of the things of God (Wesley 275). It is by faith that we receive Christ. It is by this that he is ‘made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption’ (1 Corinthians 1:30). Wesley says we are sanctified by faith (Wesley 278) ‘Faith is the condition of sanctification: none is sanctified but he that believes; this alone is sufficient for sanctification. Every one that believes is sanctified. No man is sanctified until he believes’ (pg. 278). Man does what he believes is right, why then would a man turn from sin to Christ? Men turn from sin because they do what they believe and they believe that they should turn. Faith’s role in sanctification is to continually turn man from sin to Christ.
What is the primary agent in sanctification? Wesley says that the primary agents in sanctification are obedience and repentance (Wesley 276-278). To repent means to turn from sin to Christ. Repentance is required so that man can become holy and like Christ. God sees that Jesus Christ is perfect and holy; when we have faith in God and repent we are sanctified so that we can be like Christ. When man repents, he is being obedient to God. Man does what he believes, and if he believes in God, then he will want to obey God, and he will see his sin and repent. When someone repents, they are obeying God. Take for example, soccer; if someone trained every day of the week for a year, their skills would increase immensely. If they were to only play in the games on the weekend and never practice, their skills would slowly become better, but would never reach the height of the one who practiced. The same goes for Christians, if you are obedient to God, and do what he says, you will become more like Christ and more holy. If you don’t then you’ll be the one missing out. Obedience and repentance are the primary agents in sanctification.
Since a man does what he believes, and he believes in God, and he wants to be apart of God’s life (sanctification), he would need to obey God (obedience), repent from his wickedness (repentance), and he would have faith in God, which would turn him from sin to Christ (faith). Therefore, without faith we cannot be saved, and cannot be sanctified. Faith’s role in sanctification is to turn the man from sin to Christ and obedience and repentance are the primary agents in sanctification.

Beauty of the World

What is beauty? Jonathan Edwards defines beauty as the combination of qualities that make something pleasing and impressive to look at, listen to, touch, smell, or taste. What is the difference between beauty being objective or subjective? Objective usually connotes having to do with facts about the physical, material world. Subjective means “in the mind of a subject”. How would Edwards argue against some who believes beauty to be a ‘subjective’ reality?

Jonathan Edwards believes that beauty is an objective reality. He argues that beauty is in the object and not in the opinion of the person looking at it. Usually, we look at something and think, ‘wow, this is beautiful!’ But is there anything which is beautiful objectively, that is, apart from a person making a subjective judgment? Does ‘wow, it is beautiful!’ mean no more than ‘I like it?’ This conflicts with conventional experience because when we say something is beautiful, we imply that everyone would think it beautiful. In contrast, however, it is a practical fact that different things are beautiful to different people. Therefore, it is argued, beauty is subjective. There may, however, be a thing that, being seen, should please. In other words, if an object isn’t pleasing to someone, that person is somehow at error. Such an object would, then, be objectively beautiful.

In Beauty of the World, Edwards shows his understanding of beauty. Although he is well aware of and fairly enamored with the beauty of nature, he grounds beauty in proportionality and ‘suitableness.’ He says that the modern light theory is a proportionate relationship of vibrations, stimulating the optic nerve that makes the green grass and blue sky and white clouds agreeable. Colors are a source of ‘palpable’ beauty. Edwards argues that beauty is the right relations of things to other things. They partake of a proportionately ‘sweet mutual consent’. This definition of being frees us from having to say, ‘beauty is what people take delight in.’ We can freely say, ‘beauty is proportionate,’ and, ‘what is proportionate is often what people find pleasing.’