Sanctification

God has set you apart and he calls you righteous based not upon what you do or what you abstain from doing, God decided to give a judicial decree of rightness apart from our behavior, apart from our practice based solely on our belief.

The judicial decree of rightness God grants to those who believe is called justification, God alters your identity by removing you judicially in God’s mind from an identification with the first Adam and now you are judicially identified with the second Adam (Jesus Christ).

That joining itself is where sanctification comes into play; God gifts every believer with a judicial decree of perfection, perfect righteousness. The pride nature in man has a difficult time understanding how righteousness from God’s viewpoint can be granted apart from their conduct and /or commitment.

Therefore, performing that which is good and ceasing from that which is bad is directly related in most people’s minds especially the religious mindset today to the way that God views a person.

We are saved unto good works, we are saved for the purpose of good works, but we are not saved by our good works, or kept saved by our good works, or not upon any promise you might make along those lines, but upon Christ’s righteousness and your faith in Christ’s faithful sacrifice on your behalf. It is at that point of your belief that God through his power from on high or what is called holy spirit sets you apart.

Most have the idea that sanctification means to become progressively less sinful, therefore, progressively more holy down through the course of time through the avenue of either their promise or performance, their conduct or commitment.

Relative righteousness comes into play as we try to sanctify ourselves according to what we perceive in our judicial minds, relative righteousness based, as to be righteous. Therefore, we stop doing some things, and we start doing some other things and we begin to believe that we are a prize package especially if we can relate and be connected to a large group doing the same thing. That is self-sanctification.

Those hearing this message might believe this good news and become the instantaneous recipients of a new identity by being placed into Jesus Christ, the one who reconciled them to God. New identity in God’s son comes only by way of being placed into God’s son; the miraculous judicial transaction called sanctification.

You are identified with every aspect of the one to whom you are joined at the point of your belief. When Christ died, it is just as though you died from the judicial viewpoint of God. When Christ was buried, it is just as though you were buried right alongside Christ from God’s viewpoint, that is how intricate is your union.

When Christ was raised from among the dead, you was raised from among the dead from God’s perspective, this is what being in Christ is all about. You are joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, what is his is yours. This is how intricate, this is how intimate is our union with our savior, this is your new identity and has been your new identity from the very instant you believed Paul’s gospel. 

Sanctification is a set-apartness that comes by way of baptism into Christ, not immersion into water, but immersion into God’s son. God’s power from on high or what is called holy spirit is how God baptizes a person in this instance. Pastors do not perform this baptism.

God is no longer imputing man’s sins unto them because he imputed those sins to his son, would that mean that the entire world would then instantaneously become dead to sin? The answer is no! The answer is because reconciliation and sanctification are not one and the same, they are two different truths.

No one is dead to sin apart from being baptized into Jesus Christ even though God is not imputing man’s sins to their account no person is placed into his son apart from belief.

We need to understand that forgiveness was all upfront and all-inclusive, but when we accept this idea of conditional forgiveness/forgiveness on the installment plan; a little forgiveness here, a little forgiveness there, the need for new forgiveness for new sin, that is the atonement program of Israel, not the reconciliation program of the body of Christ.

If you want God to view you today, you got to be in his son. It is a son issue on your part, not a sin issue, in order to receive the gift of salvation.