Over recent years, an intriguing phrase on social media relationship updates has caught my attention: It’s complicated! I’ve not known exactly how to interpret this ambiguous phrase. I assume that it may describe a struggling relationship or perhaps one’s uncertainty regarding the nature of a relationship. As we encounter the stories of our Old Testament ancestors, it is easy to imagine that our ancestors might also have described the status of their covenant relationship with the Lord as complicated.

For many of us, the word “sanctification,” like the word “justification,” has come to refer to one particular moment in the life-story of the Christian. We think of justification as that moment when we first come to faith and our sins are forgiven. In the last article in this series of three, we saw that, while that is correct, the word justification has greater depth than that.¹

I have fond memories of the church in Mozambique and the ways it shaped my life. The Church of the Nazarene in Mozambique invests a lot of time in teaching and preaching on holiness. A week or weeks of holiness revival were normal and intended to rekindle interest in, passion for, and practice of biblical holiness of both heart and life. Such revivals focused on three areas: prevenient grace, saving grace, and sanctifying grace.

Jewish tradition refers to Deuteronomy 6:4-5 as the Shema. Shema is a Hebrew word that means “hear” and is the first word in this Jewish text: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Jesus, of course, quoted the Shema when He was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” Adding the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), Jesus revealed that all of the other commandments flow from these two—love God and love others.