Who Completes God’s Will? Part 2

Romans 1-3 is saturated with the basic concept that all of humanity needs a Savior from their sins. That visibly in human life and invisibly behind the scenes, the basic problem on the earth not the environment, it’s not war… these are all echoes of a deeper problem: mankind’s sin, resulting in God’s wrath. Thus, mankind needed a Savior, Whom God provided… Romans 5:1-2 speaks of this:

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Justification (Birth in Christ)

Christ went to a cross so that God would exchange your sin for Christ’s righteousness. What did that mean for Christ? Honestly, it meant damnation. Damnation so you wouldn’t have to endure it. Does that mean he went to hell? In a sense, yes. As He hung on that cross, and the sun was darkened, and the Father forsook the Son, he endured what could theologically (if not properly) be called hell. He did this for you… and gives to you the gift of faith that by trusting in Him for your salvation, your sin and the eternal consequences that accompany it can be exchanged for God’s righteousness through Christ. That is what the good news of Christ means.

Sanctification (Maturity in Christ)

In Romans 6, Paul tackles head on the question of what it means to be a growing Christian. Believers in Rome and throughout the world, much as today, treated Christ’s sacrifice as a get out of hell free card, one that gave them free liberty to sin as they chose. The thought of this is staggering. Why… why… why? Why would you keep on sinning and thinking nothing of it after what Christ did on the cross?

Paul’s response? “How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” He continues in chapter 6, speaking about how on account of Christ we should be yielding our bodies to serve him. And there is a practical application to your everyday lives… namely, that being saved by Christ, you begin to look more and more like Him. This is sanctification… as we act like Him we are cleansed from sin.

Glorification (Perfection in Christ)

Now, we normally see the connection between justification and sanctification quite well. But what do we normally think about the idea of glorification? If you’re like me, you think that “I’m not perfect now, nor will I ever be, until I die”… and then God bridges the gap. This is accurate to a degree, but it almost sounds like a cop out. There is a connection between your sanctification and your final point, where you’ll be finally saved. It’s this connection that we’re going to examine… what’s supposed to be going on your sanctification is working towards a goal… namely glorification.

A well-known preacher was once asked by a visitor “what does it mean to be sanctified?” The preacher responded “to be more glorified!” When we see salvation as a progression… becoming more Christlike until we are perfectly Christlike, we get a clue into how to properly interpret the passage we’ll look at shortly. Am I arguing for Wesleyan Perfectionism? Certainly not. But we butcher the text if we decide to treat salvation as anything less then a natural progression.

Is “Perfection” Here and Now?

It’s not for no reason that justification is likened to being “born again”, or that sanctification is referred to as maturing. Specifically Paul does this with sanctification, in Colossians 1:28, Colossians 4:12, Ephesians 4:13, and 1 Corinthians 14:20. Again, we’re talking about a process… here likened to maturity.

But the Scripture also speaks about within this process there being a level of perfection… that this spiritually maturing process has as its goal total perfection in the image of Christ. This, more then anything, is where people will balk. They see a connection between the birth and the maturing, but they don’t see how the maturing fits into perfection. Why is this? I think there are two reasons:

James 1:4-5 tells us that trials produce endurance which produces completion and perfection…. in this life.

In Philippians 3:15, Paul seems to think that perfection is possible in this life, when he says “as many of us as be perfect be thus minded.” At first blush, this seems to mean that Paul thinks that he’s perfect. The word for “perfect” in the New Testament is not so much the idea of complete Christlikeness, but maturity in your Christian life. Thus, Paul uses this same word for “perfect” to describe an adult man in 1 Corinthians 14:20. Thus, there is a state of maturity that Paul expects all Christians to progress to in this life.

However, just a few verses before this, Paul says that he isn’t perfect yet. In verse 12, Paul tells us that he is still striving for the prize. What is the prize? It’s the call of God that is found in Christ Jesus. What is the prize? Christ Himself. He is the final goal of our faith and our maturity, as we discussed from Ephesians 1 a few months back. We become like Him, and we get Him.

So there is a concept of “perfection” in this life that is maturity, where you are still growing and you still are not perfected in Christ. But there’s also a concept of “perfection” that is a final and complete conformity to Christ, in both inward glorification and outward glorification. Even in the two passages from Philippians above, there are two different Greek words typically translated “perfect”. We will take one to mean “state of maturity”, and one to mean “state of completion”. Paul wants believers to move to maturity… but maturity in no way means we are no longer growing. It’s a process that is started, continued, and completed by Christ.

Now that we’ve seen the timeline of salvation that is here in Romans, we’re going to zoom in towards the end of that timeline, to Romans 8. Now, the same theologian who said that Romans was like the crown jewel on an engagement ring also said that if we’re to continue that analogy, we’d find that Romans 8 is the pinnacle, shiniest, part of the jewel. Why? This is the part where our sanctification and our glorification meet. Romans 8 has been called the most encouraging chapter of the Bible. I mean, look at how it starts: because of Christ there is no condemnation for you. And it ends with the fact that because of Christ, there is no separation. God will neither condemn the Christian, nor separate Himself from the Christian. Period.

With this assurance, we still see a struggle and progression towards perfection, and as we look closely, we see that we aren’t alone in struggling and desiring for glorification. We’ll see next blog the nature of our desire as Paul describes it, and compare that to what we commonly find today.

Posted on 7/28/2008 under Daniel Viezbicke's Blog. Comments RSS feed.
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