Sanctification
Read: Matthew 22:9-14 Matthew 24:42-51 II Peter 2:17-22 Luke 12:42-48 Matthew 5:25-26 Acts 26:18John 1:12-13 I Corinthians 6:19-20 I Corinthians 12:13 Galatians 5:22-24 Galatians 6:1 John 3:7 (KJV)
Salvation initiates the sanctification process, but the experience of salvation completes God's rescue of the believer from eternal death and the sin that causes it. In Acts 26:18, Jesus' charge to His new convert, Saul of Tarsus, exactly describes the purpose of the gospel. Jesus sent Paul to preach the good news that those who believe in Christ will be converted, brought out of darkness to light, saved from the power of Satan, and have their sins completely removed from their lives forever which God guarantees by giving them an eternal inheritance. God's forgiveness of the eternal effects of sin correlates with His removing them from the life of the believer forever. Jesus' shed blood washes away every believer's sins forever.
Adam and Eve's disobedience caused them, and all humans who came from them, to lose that which God said they would lose; that is, their lives. Original sin is that darkness and eternal separation from God that all humans have inherited from Adam and Eve's fall. When Adam and Eve believed Satan's lies instead of God's Word, then Satan gained an eternal power over them; that is, the power of death and eternal separation from God. This darkness and weakness inside of man causes him to commit sins. Original sin causes mankind to disbelieve God's Word and to try to avoid it. Original sin causes man to be allied with Satan, whether we know it or not. This is the reason why Jesus called Satan a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Lucifer invented lies and attempted to murder God when he rebelled. Satan attempted to murder Jesus on the cross. Satan has murdered all those who die in their sins, having never accepted by faith the grace that God has provided for them in the cross of Christ.
The message that Jesus told Paul to preach was the good news that He had come into the world to rescue humanity from the power of Satan which destroys them. Jesus has already done all that is needed for man's salvation and sanctification. Every individual can receive His salvation and subsequent sanctification simply through his or her faith that Christ has already saved them. Those who reject this faith remain under the power of Satan.
To be sanctified means to be set apart by God for His purpose. Jesus called the initial moment of sanctification being "born again." This is an apt description because those who receive Christ as their Savior by faith become immediately and forever rescued from the power of sin and Satan and are born into the family of God. At the immediate moment that a sinner repents and believes, the Holy Spirit enters that person's heart, washes that person in the blood of Christ which removes all of their sin, and causes that person to come alive inside with the eternal life of Christ Himself. God removes their deadness forever, quickens and recreates their dead spirits and souls, and gives them eternal life. God can do this because His Son has already sacrificed Himself for them, suffering for their sins, dying in their place, being buried to remove their sins, and being resurrected to give them His justification and His own eternal life. This initial moment of sanctification is aptly described in John 1:12-13, in I Corinthians 12:13, and in other places in the New Testament.
Those who are born into the family of God can never lose their salvation or sanctification. They become God's children forever. In order for them to lose their salvation, God would have to nullify the blood of Jesus with which He cleansed them. God would have to take back His Holy Spirit by which He made them come alive. God would have to disinherit His own children and give them back to the Devil. God would never do this. Whatever God does is forever.
When a repentant believer becomes a child of God, he or she enters into a new relationship with God. All believers retain their free will, and so they can still sin after becoming a believer. God allows this because He desires to prove that sin can never separate His children from His grace. God's eternal salvation is a part of His project of proving that Love conquers all. Just as parents can have good and bad children, God has good and bad children. Some of God's children choose to obey God's Word and try to conform their lives to the "fruit of the Spirit" as described in Galatians 5:22-23. These good children have submitted their lives to God's sanctification process by which they are being "conformed to the image of His Son" as related in Romans 8:29. This does not mean that God's good children become perfect in this world. The purpose of the process of sanctification is to perfect them eventually; to free them of sin completely and to make them like Jesus. God's children do not sanctify themselves. The Holy Spirit sanctifies them, but only as they choose to yield themselves to His control.
God also has bad children. Children who disobey God, and refuse to yield their lives to the control of the Holy Spirit for their sanctification. Many stories of God's children who have backslidden on God for at least a part of their lives are recorded in both the Old and New Testaments. One fact stands out from all of these stories. God never, ever disowns any of His bad children. God never breaks His promises to His children, good or bad. God will certainly punish His bad children, but He will never give up on them until He has eventually brought them back to Himself and has completly sanctified them.
In Deuteronomy 30:1-10, God promised the children of Israel that one day He would make them the only righteous nation in the world. God prophesied that He would do this even though He knew that He would have to severly punish them many times in the future for their periods of disobedience. God even prophesied that one day He would scatter the children of Israel throughout the whole world. But God's power would not fail to regather them and reestablish them as the only righteous nation in the world. In a similar manner, God will never give up on any of His backslidden Christian children until He brings them back to Himself.
As Galatians 6:1 teaches, God does not consider sins in the lives of His children as that which causes eternal damnation. God has forever freed His children from eternal damnation by washing away all their sins in the blood of Jesus. God has already freed His children from eternal damnation and the power of Satan through the crucifixion, death and resurrection of His Son. Thus, God considers sins in the lives of His children as being faults or errors that He needs to correct. Just as an earthly father does, God uses both mercy and punishment to correct His children. But no matter how long it takes, God will correct His children again and again until they finally learn to submit to the power of the Holy Spirit to sanctify them fully and to cause them eventually to become as much like Jesus as is possible for a human to be. God will not fail to accomplish this task with every one of His children.
Read; John 13:1-17 John 19:34 Ephesians 5:26-27 I John 1:8-10 II Timothy 2:19
Jesus has already purchased His church with His own blood and saved it forever from eternal damnation, but in order to sanctify His church completely and keep His children in constant fellowship with Him, God washes His children in the water that flowed from the pierced side of Jesus on the cross. This shed water from the Lord's side represents the power of the Holy Spirit to cleanse believers by His use of the Word of God. By reading the Word of God, believers come to realize that their sins cause a loss of fellowship with God and a hindrance to their sanctification. If then, being under conviction, believers confess and repent of their sins, then the Holy Spirit will cleanse them with the water of the Word and will forgive them and restore them to fellowship with God. For these reasons, it is of vital importance that every child of God read their Bibles (KJV) every day, pray and repent of their sins, and walk with God every day. Those who do this will avoid much punishment and trouble in life, but those believers who do not will eventually become fully sanctified by God no matter how long it takes.
The bad children of God do not do this. Nevertheless, God's power to correct them will eventually cause them to repent of their sins and a return to complete fellowship with God. To this end, God's prophecy in Ephesians 5:27 that He will someday present His entire church to Himself as a perfectly clean and glorious church, He will certainly fulfill. Just as a mother washes her dirty children in water, so God washes His sinful children in the water of His Word. God's power to sanctify His church completely does not mean that He ever violates the free will of any of His children. God uses His corrective power to convince His children that it is in their best interest to submit to the power of the Holy Spirit to sanctify them eventually and completely. Should God ever violate the free will of any person, saved or unsaved, then God's test of His Love will have failed because His power will have overridden the test. God will prove that His Love can never be destroyed by using the free choices of His Love.
Read: I Thessalonians 5:23 Colossians 2:11 I John 3:9 Romans 2:28-29 I Corinthians 15:22 II Corinthians 5:1-5 Romans 12:1-2 Romans 8:9-17 John 3:3
As long as believers dwell in the world, they are only two-thirds saved. Every human has a body, soul and spirit. Lost sinners possess a dead soul and spirit forever, and eventually, a dead body forever. A repentant sinner who has been saved by Christ has been "born again." The Holy Spirit has washed them in the blood of Christ, and has recreated them with the life of Christ dwelling in their souls and spirits. Christ has made their new souls and spirits alive forever. As such, these recreated souls and spirits cannot sin because they have been wholly sanctified by the presence of Christ within them.
These new souls and spirits can be affected by sin, but sin cannot adhere to them. When believers use their free wills to commit sins, their sins are caused by their fleshly appetites and adhere to their bodies, the source of their fleshly appetites. The Holy Spirit within their new souls and spirits becomes grieved by the fleshly sins of the believer, but the believer's sins adhere only to his or her body. For these reasons, the bodies of all humans, both saved and unsaved, must die and return to dust as one of the penalties for sin. There can be no exceptions. Thus believers are completely and forever saved in their souls and spirits, but their earthly bodies must die and be lost forever.
Even so, God does not allow believers to commit sins because of their fleshly appetites. God commands believers to submit their bodies with its fleshly appetites to the control of the Holy Spirit within them. God expects believers to stay away from sin and to hate sin. God severly punishes believers who choose to live in sin both in this life and in the afterlife. The will of God is that believers should live clean lives as a witness for Him to unbelievers so that they might repent and believe. Backslidders sometimes cause unbelievers to remain lost because of the hypocrisy they see. For these reasons, God severly punishes backslidden believers. Sinful believers should beware God's punishment because, according to II Peter 2:20-22, their temporary punishment will actually be far worse than even the eternal punishment of unbelievers. II Peter 2:17-19 refers to the punishment of unbelievers, but II Peter 2:20-22 changes to the temporary punishment of backslidden believers. These scriptures clearly teach that their "latter end is worse," and that it actually would have been better for them to have never been saved than that they should get saved and then backslide on God. Even so, God will always accept the true repentance of backslidders, wash them in the water of His Word, and restore them to full fellowship with Him.
Read: I Thessalonians 4:13-18
The fact that believers' earthly bodies will die and return to dust does not mean that their bodies will not be saved. Believers will be forever saved in body, soul and spirit. Their souls and spirits are saved when they are "born again," but their bodies will not be saved until the Rapture of the church. When Christ comes in the air to call His church home to Himself, He will save the whole church in body as He has already saved it in soul and spirit. As II Corinthians 5:1-5 clearly teaches, God has already created new bodies for believers just as He has recreated their souls and spirits. At the Rapture, God will bring these new bodies with Him so that "asleep" believers in their graves will receive their new bodies to be united with their souls and spirits already with the Lord. Believers who are "alive and remain" will receive their recreated bodies united with their already recreated souls and spirits, and will leave their old bodies behind to return to dust. God's universal rule, as recorded in Genesis 3:19, is that all earthly bodies must die and return to dust.
Read: Matthew 22:9-14 Matthew 24:42-51 Luke 12:42-48 Matthew 5:25-26 Hebrews 13:5
Fundamental Baptists seem to be closest in their beliefs to the true teachings of the Bible (KJV) than any other denomination. Yet, the Fundamentalists have largely ignored the clear teaching of the above scriptures that God will temporarily punish backslidden believers in the afterlife. Perhaps, they fear that they will be accused of believing in Purgatory, but these teachings have nothing to do with Purgatory. The doctrine of Purgatory seems to be that most believers must themselves suffer for their own sins for a time in hell before they can be accepted by God to heaven. But this doctrine is not possible because scripture clearly teaches that Jesus has already suffered all of the eternal effects of sin forever. Those who accept by faith that Jesus has already paid the entire penalty for their sins will never suffer for their own sins in a Devil's hell or any place like it.
However, the above scriptures do teach that God will temporarily punish His backslidden children in order to correct them. God never punishes His children for their sins because Jesus has already paid that price and God has forgiven them forever, but He reserves the right to correct His wayward children. If God holds the right to punish His wayward children in this life, then why not in the afterlife. The above scriptures teach that God consigns unrepentant backslidders to a place called "outer darkness" or "prison" when they die. This place has nothing to do with the Devil or hell or Purgatory, nor is it any place of separation from God's protection of believers from Satan's oppression. Jesus came into the world to save sinners from the Devil's eternal oppression by taking away their sins, and to give them eternal life which they will still retain even when in temporary punishment.
God reserves the right to correct His wayward children, but never allows them to be punished forever. The punishment of "outer darkness" is similar to a parent who sends a naughty child to their room to think about the wrong that they have done. Just as the parent is still with the child in the home, God is still with His punished child even in the "outer darkness." Some unbelievers are also in this "outer darkness" but God never recovers them. But God will, after a time of punishment determined by His judgment, recover His wayward children to heaven to be with Him forever. God's punishment for sin in the unbeliever is an eternal punishment, but God's punishment of His children is corrective and temporary. Christ sacrificed Himself to transform unbelievers into God's children.
The type of suffering which backslidders endure is called "weeping and gnashing of teeth." Although the unbelievers will also suffer "weeping and gnashing of teeth," they will not suffer to the depth that the backslidders will. According to the comparison of the sufferings of unbelievers and punished believers in II Peter 2:15-22, the punished believers temporary punishment will be far greater in depth than even the eternal punishment of unbelievers. The unbelievers will suffer regret that they did not do something to try to keep themselves out of hell, but the backslidders will suffer remorse for their failures to live in accordance with their Savior's commandments. Their anguish for the grief and disappointment that they have caused their Lord will be so deep as to be unimaginable. Every person may believe or not believe according to their will, but the one decision that every person should avoid at all costs is to accept Christ as Savior and then return to a sinful lifestyle.
As Matthew 22:9-14 clearly teaches, even after the Rapture backslidders will be consigned to a time of punishment in "outer darkness." One may ask: How can believers who have received perfect bodies, souls and spirits be punished? The answer lies in Jesus' question to the quest without a wedding garment: "Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?" Both the bad and the good had been invited to the wedding. This means the whole church will be Raptured, not just a part of it. The quest without a wedding garment was not properly dressed. Jesus' question to him was intended to make him aware of his own shame at not being properly dressed for the wedding. Jesus had him cast into "outer darkness" to make him suffer remorse and shame for daring to come into the Lord's wedding when he had been caught in a sinful lifestyle when the Lord Raptured him.
Read: Luke 12:45-48 Romans 2:5-16 John 1:9 John 5:21-22 Acts 10:42 Hebrews 9:27 Titus 2:11-12 Isaiah 65:1
In Hebrews 9:27, the Bible teaches that God judges every person immediately following their physical death. The general teaching of Christianity is that Jesus restricts His judgment to only two directions, the saved go to heaven and the unsaved go to hell. However, Jesus taught in some of His parables, and the Holy Spirit taught in Romans 2:5-16, that Christ employs a wide latitude in the kinds of judgments that He makes. Just as a human judge usually allows himself some flexibility in the judgments that he makes within the confines of the law, so the Bible teaches that Jesus allows Himself great flexibility in the judgments he makes, but within the confines of His law.
Unmistakably, God's Word teaches that eventually all believers in Christ will get to heaven, and all unbelievers will be cast into the lake of fire. But until this final judgment, Christ employs wide latitude in His temporary judgments of belivers and unbelievers alike.
The teaching of the Holy Spirit in Romans 2:5-16 concerns all mankind in general before God separated mankind into His church saved by the blood of Jesus and those who have heard the gospel and have rejected it as recorded in Romans 3. This fact is made clear in Romans 2 verses 6 and 11. These scriptures teach that before Christ came, and even now to everyone who has never heard the gospel, the human race is divided into those who do good and those who do evil. Those who have never heard the gospel and yet try to practice goodness and morality may be doing so because God has already touched them in their hearts by His grace and has saved them. John 1:9 and Titus 2:11-12 clearly teach that Jesus provides His light and His grace for every human who has ever come into the world. Those who do evil will perish for their evil whether they know the law or not. Those who have never heard the gospel but practice goodness may be doing so because they have already been saved by God's grace even if they are not conscious of it.
John 5:20 clearly teaches that "the Son quickeneth whom He will." The general teaching of the church is that a person must be fully conscious of their salvation in order to be saved. But John 5:20 indicates that Jesus saves whomever He wills regardless of whether they are conscious of it or not. The teaching that a person must be fully conscious of their salvation in order to be saved cannot be correct because that would make such a consciousness a required condition for salvation when the scriptures absolutely teach that the only condition for salvation is the grace of God provided through the sacrifice, death and resurrection of His Son. Faith itself is not a condition for salvation because in the first place it is given by the grace of God, and in the second place faith merely opens the heart to receive the grace of God already provided by the sacrifice, death and resurrection of Jesus. No one gets saved until the Holy Spirit applies the blood of Jesus to cleanse the spirit and soul of that one who humbly cries to God to give faith to him or her. The gospels indicate that Jesus often saved and healed people who showed no outward sense of repentance or faith whatsoever. The maniac of Gadara is one such example. Yet, Jesus could see the hidden faith that He had given them even though they were not aware of it themselves.
Jesus commanded the church to preach the gospel to every human because their hearing of the gospel would unleash the power of the Holy Spirit to make them fully aware of their sins and the salvation that only Jesus can provide. Believers who are fully conscious of their salvation will also be open to greater sanctification by the power of the Holy Spirit, and will thus have a greater desire to spread the gospel to others. Nevertheless, there exist many believers who have never heard the gospel and who experience little sanctification, but yet are saved by a hidden faith given to them by the grace of God. The fact that God does this does not violate the free will of man because God saves every person the moment they choose to believe, whether hidden or not. But this moment also causes each believer's salvation to extend into eternity from the foundation of the world.
One of the mistakes that the church makes about the nature of God is that it sees God as being, in a sense, hidebound by His Word. Perhaps because of fear of the future, the church endeavors to use God's Word to try to predict everything He might do. However, the Word of God itself teaches that God is an Almighty Person with unlimited free will. Thus, as a Judge, God uses great flexibility in His judgments; and as Almighty, He does whatever He pleases, sometimes quite unpredictably, but always within the confines of His Law.
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