Asceticism

Pastor Martin draws four practical implications from the doctrine of climactic sanctification. First, the Christian should not live in morbid dread or fear of death, since death's penal sting has been removed by Christ — illustrated by Stephen and Peter. Second, the believer should not give the disembodied state more emphasis than Scripture does, since the predominant biblical hope is the resurrection of the body (Romans 8, 2 Corinthians 5). Third, a biblically instructed Christian should neither deify the body (hedonism, humanistic health and birth theories, body worship) nor demean it (asceticism, fasting as more spiritual than feasting, doctrines of demons of 1 Timothy 4). Fourth, the Christian should not live with crippling discouragement over present imperfection, but with the confident refrain: I am not what I should be, not what I desire to be, not what I once was, and not what I shall be.

Addressing the philosophy of sensualism that permeates the mass media, Pastor Martin shows from Scripture that sensual pleasure was never meant to be the basis of blessedness, that sin enters when men seek it outside God's will, and that judgment falls on those who do. He rejects both the sensualist extreme and the ascetic extreme, teaching instead that God created man's sensual capacities as good gifts to be received with thanksgiving, subjected to God's laws of glory, moderation, and purity, and regulated in light of remaining sin.