This is part of my year-long series exploring human-centered alternatives to the spiritual promises in Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest. Today’s entry, “The Death Side of Sanctification”, promises that believers can achieve “sanctification” through identifying with Jesus’s death, claiming that the Spirit will “strip me until I have nothing left but myself” and that willingness to be “simply ready for death” leads to being “sanctified wholly” with Christ becoming “him in me.”
Here’s what pursuing sanctification through spiritual death and stripping away attachments actually delivered:
“You need to be stripped until you have nothing left,” his spiritual director explained with intense conviction. “Let Jesus crucify your old life. Be willing to hate even family relationships if they interfere with discipleship. Hand your naked self over to God, and he will sanctify you wholly.”
Mark felt spiritually stagnant in his faith and desperately wanted the complete sanctification that seemed to require radical spiritual death. The promise of being made wholly one with Jesus through systematic self-destruction felt like the breakthrough he needed.
Mark embraced this approach completely. He began systematically “dying to self” by withdrawing from friendships, ending his romantic relationship, distancing himself from family members who didn’t share his spiritual intensity. He believed this stripping process would lead to complete sanctification and freedom from unholy attachments.
For months, Mark pursued spiritual death through isolation and rejection of human connections that might compete with his devotion to Jesus. When loneliness and depression set in, he interpreted these as signs that the sanctification process was working—he was being reduced to nothing but himself to be handed over to God.
But the promised sanctification was psychological destruction disguised as spiritual growth.
Instead of experiencing Christ “in him,” Mark became increasingly isolated, mentally unstable, emotionally damaged. His systematic destruction of relationships created profound depression rather than spiritual freedom. The “death side” of sanctification was producing actual psychological death rather than divine transformation.
Meanwhile, Mark’s friend David approached spiritual growth with zero expectation of sanctification through relational death. When David felt spiritually stuck, he joined a service organization, deepened friendships, began dating someone who shared his values but challenged his thinking.
David’s spiritual vitality grew through connection rather than isolation, through engaging with others rather than stripping away relationships. His sense of purpose and meaning expanded through loving relationships and meaningful work, not through spiritual death to attachments.
When Mark finally sought therapy for severe depression, his counselor helped him understand that healthy spiritual growth requires connection, not isolation.
Where was the sanctification that was supposed to come through being stripped to nothing? Where was Christ dwelling in him after he’d handed over his naked self to God?
The breakthrough came when Mark began rebuilding the relationships he’d destroyed in pursuit of sanctification. David’s approach—spiritual growth through healthy connections—had produced the vitality and purpose that Mark’s spiritual death had promised but never delivered.
The silence where divine sanctification was supposed to manifest revealed the truth: there was no spiritual transformation through death to self. Only human connection and healthy relationships that actually nourished spiritual growth.
Reflection Question: When has building healthy relationships been more spiritually nourishing than pursuing spiritual death through isolation and detachment?
This story is part of my upcoming book “The Undevoted: Daily Departures from Divine Dependence,” which offers 365 human-centered alternatives to the spiritual certainties in Chambers’ devotional. Each day explores how reason, community, and human resilience can address life’s challenges without requiring divine intervention.
God or Delusion? 