Tag Archives: sanctification

Day 4: On Dogmatics

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Dogmatics attempts a ‘reading’ of the gospel which in its turn assists the Church’s reading. Developing such a ‘reading’ of the gospel entails, of course, the development (or annexation) of conceptual vocabularies and forms of argument whose range and sophistication may seem distant from the more immediate, urgent idioms of Scripture. But though technical sophistication is not without its attendant perils, it is only vicious when allowed to drift free from the proper end of theology, which is the saints’ edification.

John Webster, Holiness, 4

Resurrection Observation: It Really Matters

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Paul takes us the centrality of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 with a special focus on its implication for believers. He also gives an in-depth look in Romans 6 of how the resurrection affects the nuts and bolts of the believer’s everyday experience. 1 Cortinthians 15 and Romans 6 are important passages about the resurrection and their role in the believer’s life.

1 Corinthians 15 is the more broad, bold effect– “if Jesus is not raised then this whole thing is worthless and we are morons.”

Romans 6 is the more detailed, day-to-day effect– “live in the newness of life because Jesus is raised and you were raised with Him.”

The New Covenant, Sanctification, and Longing for Jesus

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“For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
(2Corinthians 6:16-7:1 ESV)

Paul has shown us that the New Covenant reality has been actualized by the Spirit.

This is seen in the context. Paul claimed in v. 2 that now is the eschatological day of salvation. He spoke of the new creation in 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” This is the gospel reality of the New Covenant. The new creation has broken into the old. We are those upon whom the end of the age has come! Because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, because He has ascended and sent His Spirit to gather and indwell His church, the realities of the New Covenant are enjoyed in this broken world.

And it upon this that he makes the command in 7:1: “let us cleanse ourselves of every defilement of flesh and spirit.” The every defilement that we are to cleanse ourselves from is anything in our lives that is a contradiction to the reality of the New Covenant! It is all the old stuff, that although it has passed away and the new has come, the old is still there. And we hate it and we just want it to go away.

How do we cleanse ourselves of it? It keeps coming up. Yes. It does and it will. This is the nitty-gritty stuff of sanctification. We go through our hearts and discover those things that contradict the gospel and when we find those things we declare over them the glorious reality of the gospel! The New Covenant is here and it is real. We are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ by the Spirit. This is how we are sanctified. The gospel of Jesus Christ comes to have its fullest effect on our lives. Sin will be no more and we will be perfectly conformed to His image.

And in our experience, we know that this is not something that we ourselves make happen. Sin is still there. This is the tension that makes us groan. We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. We mortify our sin and pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Theõsis and the glory of God in Christ

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Theõsis came up in class recently. I was largely unfamiliar with the term and  suspected it to be of Mormon error. Deification is not a definition that sits well with Christians, especially those from Protestant roots, especially within the Reformed tradition. It is an awkward explanation. The deification of Christians? Parktakers of the divine nature in some mystical sense where we ourselves become gods? That is weird and rightly so. It is Eastern and odd for me.

However, there is something amazing and perhaps inexplicable in Western categories when it comes to union with Christ. Paul said, “I don’t live anymore, Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Peter wrote about us becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2Pet 1:4). I brought the issue up in Table Talk today. Pastor John was right on to leverage the subject by emphasizing that our role is primarily beholding, not becoming. Glorification, the Western term, does involve the transformation of the corruptible man. But it is unto the end that we can become inhabitants of the New Jerusalem, it is for us to become fitting to behold the glory of God forever, completely free from sin’s inhibitions.

The transformation that we undergo should not distract us from the One of Whom and By Whom we are being transformed. Conformity to the image of Christ is less about our conformity and more about Christ. The point is the glory of God manifested in a dead man becoming the workmanship of God, all by and for God (Eph 2:1-10). And it is now that we can take seriously what it means that we are changing from one degree of glory to the next (2 Cor 3:18)…

It is now that we can really feel our identity. It is now that we actually get who we are. It is here that we come to the end of ourselves. The Heidelberg is not mechanical. Really, our only comfort in life and in death is that we are not our own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

John Murray on Hating Sin

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Indeed, the more sanctified the person is, the more conformed he is to the image of his Saviour, the more he must recoil against every lack of conformity to the holiness of God. The deeper his apprehension of the majesty of God, the greater the intensity of his love to God, the more persistent his yearning for the attainment of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, the more conscious will he be of the gravity of the sin which remains and the more poignant will be his detestation of it.

John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 145.

Old is Passing Away, the New has Come: Get Rid of Your Junk Because of the Eternal Purpose of God in the New Covenant

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“For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.” (2Corinthians 6:16-7:1 ESV)

It is upon this Spirit-born new covenant reality that Paul makes his imperative to “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit” (7:1). The flesh is used often in 2 Corinthians in a sneering way as synonymous to that which is being brought to an end (cf. 2 Cor 4:11; 10:2-4). Earlier in 5:17 he has pitted the flesh as the old nature that was brought to an end for those who are in Christ. “In Christ” actualizes the new creation that eclipses the old nature that is passing away. The old nature is passing away and the new creation is coming to a more present reality in the work of sanctification, or said another way, “holiness is being brought to completion in the fear of God” (7:1). This is the essence of Paul’s command. Because of the new covenant reality that is ours by the Spirit, let us cleanse ourselves of that which is of the old nature and therefore bring sanctifying work of God to its full effect. The basis of the Spirit’s empowering work is His already established presence in the actuality of the new covenant.

Calling Out the Junk to Be Transformed Into the Image of Jesus Christ

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“For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”

(2Corinthians 6:16-7:1 ESV)

Based upon the reality that God has made us, the church, His dwelling place–because He has redeemed for Himself a people through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: we are cleanse ourselves of every uncleanness. And in obedience to this imperative, we are bringing to completion the sanctifying work of God in our lives.

To say it more concretely: there are areas in our lives that are not in accordance with the gospel. They are defilements, uncleanness, inappropriate realities. What does it mean to cleanse ourselves of these things? They are only cleansed by the gospel. The gospel conquers them, puts them in their place, reigns over them victoriously.

We are never sanctified apart from the gospel. Paul is not commanding us to try harder and do better. He is telling us that because Jesus has saved us, we are to press in deeply, call out our junk, and let the wonder of Jesus rule in every corner and crevice of our being. And in so doing, we are being transformed into the image of Jesus. We are being sanctified. Holiness is being brought to completion. Jesus is glorified by His work.