INDEX
INDEX
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Let us be careful not to mixing up Justification and Sanctification! |
As John Bunyan declared, the sublime secret of the Bible is "that a righteousness that resides with a person in Heaven should justify me, a sinner on Earth." This is righteousness by faith. It is a righteousness which the Reformers declared to be "an alien righteousness" - a righteousness completely outside of man and so foreign to sinful reasoning that it can be known only by the Gospel. Of course we, are responsibility to "live for Christ, our best life, but that at its best (by any man) falls far short of the mark of PERFECTION that God demands. ONLY one MAN ever fulfilled that demand of God's... the MAN JESUS Christ! Let us be careful not to mixing up Justification and Sanctification! Sanctification is what God does in the believer; it is not the good works of the believer. Important as they are, neither sanctification nor good works is the basis of salvation or the foundation of the Christian's hope. Sanctification, of course, is a work of God's grace, but it is the result of a more fundamental act of grace. Unless sanctification is rooted in justification, and justification in election, sanctification cannot escape the poisons of subjectivism, moralism, or Pharisaism. Sinful reasoning might tell us that what God does in changing the heart of the sinner is the most important thing God could possibly do in the salvation process. This contention is the heart of Roman Catholic teaching, and it must be admitted that the overwhelming preoccupation of neo-evangelicalism today is its message of being saved by "letting Christ come into your heart," by being born again, etc. It is neo-evangelical Romanism. The great truth of justification by faith alone, however, does not deal with the acts of God within the believer, but with the saving acts of God outside the believer. First, the reason for a man's acceptance with God unto life eternal is sheer grace: "being justified freely by his grace" (Romans 3:24). The Greek word here translated freely is elsewhere translated without cause. God's grace is not conditioned on any quality in the human heart or life. So far is it from relating to a quality within man that the apostle declares that this "grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" (2 Timothy 1:9). Grace is a quality in God's heart, his disposition to be kind and merciful to those who are lost and undeserving. Grace means God's attribute of accepting those who are unacceptable - including those whom he has sanctified. |