When I first heard ‘Let go and Let God’, it sounded so God-exalting. I was in high school.
It’s open to personal interpretation, one can finish the idea with whatever one wants.
For example, ‘Let go and let God … take over and control your difficult circumstances’. That would be biblical when referenced with a passage like Philippians 4:6-7.
Or when one is describing justification. ‘Let go and let God … save you, you must do nothing to save yourself’. That is biblical!
But do we ‘Let go and let God … sanctify us’? Does God simply hand sanctification to us through faith? Or, does God ‘do sanctification’ for us and pour it into us? Does scripture teach that God fulfills it apart from us, like He does with election, regeneration, and justification?
Enter: the Keswick Movement
The slogan ‘Let go and let God’ originated with the Keswick Movement. This movement began with a tent revival in Keswick, England in 1858 soon after the release of Wm. Boardman’s popular book The Higher Christian Life. Thus, it is also called the Higher Life movement. But, soon the Movement faded.
In 1919, Lewis Sperry Chafer promoted Keswick (pronounced Kĕzick) theology and the movement started up again. Later in the 1950s Steven Barabas promoted it. More recently, Charles Ryrie promoted it in the 1980-90s.
Reformed theologians exposed these teachers as unreformed in their times respectively: B.B. Warfield, John Murray, and John MacArthur.
Its continuance relies on annual week-long conventions. These conventions use the entire week to guide people through each of the theological themes explained below.
Some of the later annual Keswick Conventions included familiar speakers like the missionaries Hudson Taylor and Amy Carmichael. Amy Carmichael was the adopted daughter of Keswick cofounder Robert Wilson. The devotional writer Oswald Chambers, and evangelist Billy Graham.
Incidentally, Chafer was a devoted student of C.I. Scofield. The famous Scofield Reference Bible is essentially the explanation of Keswick teachings.
Their idea of ‘faith alone’
Both Reformed and Keswick teachers agree that one is justified solely by faith alone without works.
But Keswick theology goes on from that. They teach that one is also sanctified by a faith alone without works. According to Keswick theology, faith simply and passively believes that Christ has finished all of salvation for you. This applies to justification and sanctification in the same way.
In other words, you are sanctified by faith alone: believing the truth that ‘God does it all’. And thus, by faith, sanctification is as finished as your justification. They point to Col. 2:6-7 and Gal. 2:20 and claim that these passages teach this idea.
Their ‘faith alone’ defined
In the Keswick Movement, a second act of passive faith unites one to Christ. This union totally gives you Christ’s perfect obedience of sanctification. So, simply believe that Christ’s perfect sanctification is enough for you. Moreover, you should not try to add to that with your own obedience.
In Keswick terminology, the sanctification from this second act of passive faith is called “entire sanctification”, or “the second blessing”.
This second act of faith creates a second category of Christians: the completely sanctified, holy Christian. Ordinary Christians believe and confess their justification. Yet, they still live carnal lives. But the sanctified Christians are now Spirit-filled through this second act of passive believing. These are fit to live sanctified lives.
In other words, these special believers are more than merely justified. Now they are sanctified and holy as well. On the other hand, the ordinary “lesser” believers are simply living below their full privileges in Christ.
Keswick sanctification
Its nature
The nature of Keswick sanctification is three-fold. First, it is a gift that one must willingly accept by faith alone. Secondly, one must experience a ‘consecrating crisis’ before one is given sanctification. Finally, one must appropriate it through a process of being filled by the Spirit.
Its themes
‘Let Go’ … surrender all, lie quietly before God. Become empty. Decisively yield all up to the Lord. Then He will enter every chamber of your being. When this happens, He will bring with Him all the riches of His grace and glory.
‘Let God’ … have passive faith: simply believe that Jesus has done, and is doing it all. Decide to do nothing, and let God do everything for you.
‘Crisis of consecration’ … puts those two things together. The crisis is the turning point. This is where you decide to give up on what you do (let go). You just rest and trust. No more struggling or trying, just believe (let God).
Keswick theology calls this experience the “twin door of surrender and faith”. Once through this ‘door’, one is consecrated, set apart and pure. Now ‘the process’ of sanctification starts.
‘The process’, or, ‘anointing of the Spirit’ … amounts to allowing the Spirit to fill you. This becomes a continuous filling for the now hallowed ‘consecrated christian’. Just as water fills a passive container, the Spirit fills the passive christian. The Spirit does this ‘process’, and your efforts stop the ‘process’.
Keswick Spirit-filling unites the believer to Christ in an extraordinary way that sanctifies them. Now a life of victory will flow freely because one consciously united with Christ through passive faith. One’s only effort in this process is being conscious of one’s own utter emptiness and insufficiency.
Spiritual leakage
Unfortunately, you can leak the Spirit and you will not stay Spirit-filled. How? You can forget that God did it all. You can start trying, and make effort to obey. Or, you can slip back into sin and carnality. You will need another crisis of consecration to start over; let go and let God. This keeps people coming back to the conventions.
Full and finished
The first thing to remember is that Keswick sanctification is not about the holiness of your actions in this life. It’s about the attitude of your faith; is it passive?
In Keswick theology, sanctification is about Christ’s finished holiness replacing your attempts. It comes through simply believing a second time through another act of faith. And, since Christ’s obedience is perfect and finished, this sanctification does not and need not progress.
Keswick theology teaches that believers can’t become more holy because the holiness is Christ’s. They deny spiritual growth through struggle. They also teach that your personal effort works against Christ’s sanctification in you.
Their words
Keswick sanctification results in spiritual power so that you can ‘do the will of God’. As faith increases through surrender, “the power will flow in”, ~Evan Hopkins, Law of Liberty, 1920, pg 127.
“Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One”. ~the words that produced the Higher Life crisis experience for J. Hudson Taylor on 9/4/1869.
“We received Him by faith, and by faith alone; therefore, we are to walk in Him by faith, and by faith alone”. “When I lie passive in the Potter’s hands, then He saves me fully”. ~Hannah Whitall Smith, Journal, April 1973.
Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck explains how the Keswick theology changes even Luther’s words. “The Keswick leader Robert Pearsall Smith augmented Luther’s slogan ‘being righteous by faith alone’ with: ‘as well as being completely holy by faith alone’”. ~Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, pg 246.
Charles Ryrie and Zane Hodges claim that the only thing needed for salvation is intellectually believing. They also taught that other elements in salvation like repentance and obedience are heretical additions to the gospel. In their theology, these additions result in salvation by works.
Ryrie explains Keswick sanctification. “It is like God slobbering all over believers so that no one else will find them appealing. Much like a girl with a lollipop”. He also teaches that Christ does not need to be our Lord to be our Savior. He teaches a big difference between salvation and discipleship. ~C. Ryrie, Balancing the Christian Life, Moody Pub., 1994.
(more to come)
