Thank you for this Brad. I will definitely head over to Owen's piece and read it with great interest. Glad to see the Grace Guys getting in the fight.
'16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.' John 17
For my little contribution I would just like to note that our standard understanding of sanctification and our simplistic assignment of that understanding whenever holiness is mentioned cannot be accurate. Why? Because Christ says that He sanctifies Himself. He has no sin, no lack of holiness, no moral failings of any kind or potential improvement that He could be referring to. Whatever sanctification is, it is something that the Holy One Himself, the Root and Foundation of all holiness can experience.
I have my doubts about 'progressive sanctification' at all simply because in the Law we find that a thing is sanctified entirely as a single declarative act. A temple vessel is either holy or unholy, clean or unclean. It seems absurd that what the Law accomplishes completely and immediately, or at most in 7 days, the Gospel accomplishes in this very dubious was of fits and starts piecemeal over the course of decades. Which is greater than which?
'The whole robe of salvation is one piece woven without seam, not made to be divided. If we would study the Law then we would know that God does not make garments from a patchwork, here one thing and there another, or plant fields with multiple crops, His works, obviously including salvation are the same from one end to the other. He is not in to hybrids or chimeras. Trusting in Christ is not a matter of a moment and then we move on. Believing in His goodness to sinful men is the whole matter of life, this life and the next. Loving God and believing in His unmerited favor are not merely synonymous, they are identical. They are coextensive. He who believes in the goodness of God and the gift of Jesus Christ is fulfilling the greatest commandment by that very belief, and it is this position as a believing beggar which fulfills all of the Law not by doing anything but simply by continuing to be itself.' sorry to quote myself but this is from my recent piece on Matthew 7 https://comfortwithtruth.substack.com/p/the-narrow-gate
Thank you for this Brad. I will definitely head over to Owen's piece and read it with great interest. Glad to see the Grace Guys getting in the fight.
'16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.' John 17
For my little contribution I would just like to note that our standard understanding of sanctification and our simplistic assignment of that understanding whenever holiness is mentioned cannot be accurate. Why? Because Christ says that He sanctifies Himself. He has no sin, no lack of holiness, no moral failings of any kind or potential improvement that He could be referring to. Whatever sanctification is, it is something that the Holy One Himself, the Root and Foundation of all holiness can experience.
I have my doubts about 'progressive sanctification' at all simply because in the Law we find that a thing is sanctified entirely as a single declarative act. A temple vessel is either holy or unholy, clean or unclean. It seems absurd that what the Law accomplishes completely and immediately, or at most in 7 days, the Gospel accomplishes in this very dubious was of fits and starts piecemeal over the course of decades. Which is greater than which?
'The whole robe of salvation is one piece woven without seam, not made to be divided. If we would study the Law then we would know that God does not make garments from a patchwork, here one thing and there another, or plant fields with multiple crops, His works, obviously including salvation are the same from one end to the other. He is not in to hybrids or chimeras. Trusting in Christ is not a matter of a moment and then we move on. Believing in His goodness to sinful men is the whole matter of life, this life and the next. Loving God and believing in His unmerited favor are not merely synonymous, they are identical. They are coextensive. He who believes in the goodness of God and the gift of Jesus Christ is fulfilling the greatest commandment by that very belief, and it is this position as a believing beggar which fulfills all of the Law not by doing anything but simply by continuing to be itself.' sorry to quote myself but this is from my recent piece on Matthew 7 https://comfortwithtruth.substack.com/p/the-narrow-gate
Thank you for writing about this. It has helped give words to some thoughts about sanctification being two fold.
We have been sanctified, that is, set apart for God.
And we are being sanctified, or being made holy as He is holy.
I'll think on this a while more now.
In many minds, Sanctification is the untied shoelaces on the Air Jordan’s of Salvation.
Thank God Jesus already “laced up” all of Sanctification in His Salvation—a Gift to Believers.