Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity, by Gordon T. Smith, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014, 256 pages, $26.00, paper.

In an age of extended adolescence, both in the world and in the church, Christians need to respond faithfully to the Lord who is calling us to spiritual maturity. But what exactly is the biblical vision for pursuing Christian maturity? How does holiness relate to wisdom, love, education, vocation, and to our life together as the people of God? Called to Be Saints challenges believers to develop a vision for Christian maturity that is centered on union with Christ and to pursue the ramifications of this vision in every area of life.

Gordon appropriately begins at the end—the telos—of our salvation which he defines as “the fulfillment of the purposes of God in creation” (26). He then emphatically insists “that what makes the Christian a Christian is participation in the life of Christ Jesus, or union with Christ” (37). The remainder of the book consists of four chapters where the goal of salvation flows from our union with Christ to holiness in wisdom, vocation, love, and in our affections. There are two lengthy appendices on “Congregations and Transformation” and “Christian Higher Education.” The book is well organized for encouraging an integrated vision of Christian maturity rather merely offering a few tips that might be helpful in some discrete part of a person’s life. The style is conversational and well suited for lay people.

There are numerous outstanding features to this book. Orthodox Presbyterians will appreciate how Gordon attractively presents the Christ-centered pursuit of holiness while clearly but charitably addressing the shallowness of much contemporary evangelical spirituality. Nevertheless, there are significant shortcomings in this work that make it appropriate for use by a competent teacher in a group setting but questionable as a stand-alone book to be given away or one to be displayed on a church’s book table.

Our first clue that something is amiss is that Gordon relegates the church and the pursuit of Christian maturity to an appendix rather than giving it the central place it clearly has in the New Testament epistles. Furthermore, this appendix primarily focuses on how Gordon’s vision for spiritual maturity should remake congregational life rather than how our shared life together as the family of God is central to the pursuit of Christian maturity.

Second, while the conversational style of the book makes it easy to read, this volume is littered with statements that can at best be called theologically imprecise at exactly those places where precision would be most helpful. For example, Gordon writes:

In other words, we must affirm a strong link between justification and sanctification. If not, it makes God lie. How can he arbitrarily call the sinner a saint? God can declare us saints in Christ if and only if we are truly made into saints by the power of God from our position in Christ sanctified through and through. (50)

Making justification dependent upon sanctification in this way is a denial of the Reformed and biblical teaching on justification based solely upon the imputed righteousness of Christ. One can only hope that Professor Gordon doesn’t understand what his words are plainly teaching.

Third, the book truncates the biblical teaching on Christian maturity by pitting things the Bible affirms against one another. For example, Gordon minimizes the pursuit of being like Christ and of intellectual belief in order to emphasize communion with Christ as being “the heart of Christian formation” (58–59). In light of Paul’s forceful call for us to imitate Paul as he imitates Christ (1 Cor. 11:1) and to “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2) it is better to see doctrine and the pursuit of Christ-likeness as aspects of rather than as competitors to abiding in Christ.

Fourth, this volume conveys a surprisingly shallow understanding of the wickedness and power of sin in our lives and in the world. Given how this volume presents sanctification in terms of being in union with Christ through the power of the Spirit, it is remarkable that it lacks a forceful call to mortify sin by putting to death the deeds of the flesh or a serious discussion of Paul’s robust presentations of the Christian life as a great struggle or battle. Particularly striking is that Gordon almost entirely ignores the Sermon on the Mount. The only references to our Lord’s central teaching on kingdom living are passing references to our call to perfection (18) and to not worrying (161).  Such omissions convey the impression that the Christian life is quite manageable and a rather nice addition to pursuing a comfortable middle-class American lifestyle.

While this is not Niebuhr’s “Christianity without a cross,” the low view of sin presented in this book may leave readers poorly prepared for the fierceness of the battle against Satan, the world, and indwelling sin that is part and parcel of the ordinary Christian life. While it would be unfair to condemn a book simply because it doesn’t say everything on a topic, there is a crying need to call our generation to take up the cross and follow Jesus and to mortify sin by putting to death the deeds of the flesh. The message of this book is ultimately less radical, less offensive, and less powerful than what is needed. It is a sign of how far North American evangelicalism has fallen that a book calling us away from adolescence to Christian maturity could still remain so shallow.

Regretfully, this book’s many positive attributes are outweighed by its even more significant shortcomings. Not recommended.

David A. Booth is an Orthodox Presbyterian minister serving as pastor of Merrimack Valley Presbyterian Church in North Andover, Massachusetts. Ordained Servant Online, August-September 2015.