In the days when people routinely lived multiple hundred years, this epithet is written about the only fellow rumored never to have known death. Word has it that he was such great friends with God that one day, after Enoch was about 300 years old, God just went a little farther than usual on their daily walk, and they ended up in Heaven.
There are a lot of things written about the mysterious process Christians refer to (thus further complicating it) as "sanctification." Many don't understand it; many more don't understand why it's important, still more miss the point entirely.
One person asked a blanket question just today to a bunch of Christians, "If we're all going to be changed 'in the twinkling of an eye' after death, why bother with sanctification down here? "
Good question. From a purely logical perspective it doesn't make sense, especially because in our own efforts to live a morally clean life, we stumble and fall pitifully over and over again. Many hit burnout and just give up.
The spiritual disciplines (prayer, reading God's word, doing the next right thing, and the dubious practice most Christians refer to as "witnessing" (translation, being so militant, vocal, weird, holier-than-thou, cosmic, and/or heavenly minded that nobody wants anything to do with God... or is it?) all have their place, but what it all boils down to is this: what is my motivation for living a life of devotion to God?
If I pray out of rote, or because it's what I'm "supposed to" do, what good is it? If I give money to the church out of duty or some vague idea that God is going to reward me for giving Him what belongs to Him anyway... I have to mistrust my motives for giving. There's a passage in 1 Corinthians 3 that says that on the day when Christians stand before Him, He'll test our works by fire. The things that remain will be like jewels... but the wood, hay and stubble of our works will be burned up. These perishable things are practices like (but not limited to) :
- doing things He wants done by relying on Him, but in our own strength instead
- focusing on rules and restrictions rather than relationship and resting in Him
- church attendance out of habit
- singing songs we don't mean in our hearts
- judging people by our own standards of tradition rather than accepting them in truth
- running ahead and asking Him to bless our pre-conceived plans
- turning prayer into a dreary exercise and reading the Bible into a chore
- turning the joy of sharing His love with someone else into a reason to make someone else feel guilty for not doing it the way we might do it
What drives the process we call sanctification anyway? What are those jewels that will remain after everything gets burnt up?
Two people can therefore do exactly the same thing. Let's say it's ummm, serving dinner to the homeless at the soup kitchen. One person is doing this because he was guilted into it by the outreach coordinator, browbeaten into it by his pastor, or because he wants the recognition or the satisfaction of having done something that people see as good. Another does it because God has given him a heart of compassion for the down-and-outers, and he actually loves the people he is serving. Even if the first person tells every homeless person about God's love, and the second person says nothing, who is showing them God's love?
To answer the original question at the first of this post, it's not a question of beating our brains out over something that God is going to accomplish anyway in the "twinkling of an eye." When the sanctification becomes a goal, we've missed the point.
It's all about gratitude.
It's about wanting to spend time with Someone who rescued us from certain death, wanting to get to know intimately Someone who loves us without conditions. The sanctification (the love, joy, peace, and all that other good fruit of the Spirit-filled life) is a by-product, not a goal.
Enoch knew that.
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