The latter half of Albert Einstein’s celebrated life was spent on a grand quest – a quest to unify multiple disciplines into one simplified formula that would explain how everything works in the universe. Einstein called it Unified Field Theory. Modern physicists refer to the “theory of everything.” Einstein failed to achieve his goal. Though one of the brightest minds the world has ever seen devoted 20 years of work to this goal it was ultimately unsuccessful, and most modern physicists would say that Einstein was seeking something that has now been proven not to exist. Einstein wrote concerning Unified Field Theory, “Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open, and we try hard to discover about what is and is not in it.”

Though this book will touch on all of salvation from justification to glorification, it will primarily focus on progressive sanctification. And as I read through Einstein’s biography a number of years ago I felt there was something common between Einstein’s pursuit and the pursuit everyone has – one solution that answers every problem. I remember after reading through Einstein I began praying to understand what I dubbed the “Unified Theory of Sanctification.” Seriously! I prayed, “Lord help me understand the relationship of law and gospel, justification and sanctification, faith and works, effort and dependence. Help me understand and be able to speak to how all these concepts relate to each other.” And my second and more desperate prayer was, “Lord, I don’t want to just understand the concepts, but I want to experience your work of sanctification to the depths of my being.”

If you are reading this I suspect you too are on a quest – A quest to know Jesus better and serve Him well. You are seeking to “lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets” us all. You are seeking “to look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Perhaps you have grown weary or despairing in the journey, or perhaps the compelling beauty of Christ has grown dim in your eyes – Maybe you are weary of life and struggling to understand its meaning. The central aim of this book is that we (author and reader) would have our gaze refocused on Jesus Christ who is for us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

This is not a self-improvement book, I’m not looking for you to get it all figured out, rather my goal is that you would be encouraged to find soul-satisfying hope in Christ who is our life. I have spent most of my Christian life trying to determine what is and is not in the “box” of sanctification. And I have spent much of my Christian life in pursuit of the “holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” And while I have neither Einstein’s genius nor his mastery of subject area, I do have one thing in common with him – failure. This is not in any way a cause for me to celebrate – quite the opposite. Not only is my knowledge of sanctification frustratingly incomplete, but even more discouraging is the fact that my life doesn’t measure up to what I do understand. So you need to know right up front – I don’t have pat answers – if you are looking for that this isn’t the book for you. This is far more of an impressionistic painting than a hyper realistic one. There are fuzzy edges. There are things I cannot fully explain or connect. More than that there are certainly things I misunderstand – that I have wrong. And while God’s Word is certainly without error my comprehension of it is not. If you are anything like me when I crack open a new book I tend to think, “Finally this guy is going to give me the answers I’ve been looking for,” only to discover he is battling the same problems I am. I am a fallen human being. I don’t know all the answers and I don’t have it all figured (as this book should thoroughly demonstrate). All I can do is point as a fallible creature to the creator. At the end of the day our hope rests not on any man but one – The Man – Christ Jesus.

That is not to say that I have not profited greatly from many different authors. If the requirement for any of us is that we must understand it all and have it all working perfectly in order to minister to people we are of all men most miserable. Thomas Edison famously replied when asked about whether he was discouraged at his failure to produce an electric light bulb after many attempts, “I now know definitively 9000 ways that an electric light bulb will not work.” I am perhaps not quite as ebullient as Edison – there have been many difficult and discouraging days – but certainly the Lord has been a patient teacher. And my hope is that what Christ has taught and is teaching me through His word will be helpful and encouraging to you in your own pursuit of the one great treasure – the One who truly is the answer to all that is wrong with us – our glorious savior – Jesus Christ the Righteous. If this book enables you to see a little more of Jesus as precious and frees you by that look a little more from the snare of sin then it will have accomplished what I have earnestly prayed for myself and for you.

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