Sanctified Postition

One of the most horrible, most cruel forms of punishment in Paul’s day was a method employed by the Romans to put people to death, was to take a corpse, someone who had already been executed and to strap that corpse onto the body of a live person.

One can imagine what it must have been like as that corpse began to rot, what an abhorrent presence that would have been. Paul paints that very picture when he illustrates the ever-present problem that his sinful nature presented to him.

Paul could not escape his sinful nature no matter how fervently he tried. We can rejoice and we can give all the glory and the praise to God and to our savior Jesus Christ for the fact that even though that sinful nature is strapped onto our fleshly backs like a rotting corpse, God does not see us in our flesh from his judicial perspective.

Our fleshly bodies will never be worthy of heaven in that they will never be able to perform to the measure of the righteousness that is true of God. We are alive because of our position, not at all because of our practice. God no longer views us in our human flesh, he views us in our position in the second Adam (Jesus Christ), he views us in our glorified identity. 

In our position in Christ, now we can bear fruit unto God, but it is only in our position in Christ, not through this fleshly body in which we dwell. Only when we come to see ourselves as God sees us and are able to fully appreciate and understand who God has already made us to be and who he’s made us to be in Christ, can we become in our behavior what he wants us to be in that aspect of our lives. 

We need to be less interested in trying to become something, or trying to do something, and we need to become a whole lot more interested in learning about who we already are, that is the key. As we understand what God accomplished for us through his son, we build upon that foundation the truths of who he has made us to be when he placed us into his son, we begin to view ourselves as God views us, and there is great security to be found in doing so. 

God’s love for those who are joined to his son is the same unalterable and unending love God has for his son. That is how closely connected we are to Christ, no sin, no circumstance, no member of creation, no amount of time, no measure of distance will ever be able to diminish God’s loving attitude towards those who are united to him by way  of being in his son. 

Our perfectly righteous standing in the eyes of God is not something we accomplish for ourselves through time whether by way of better performance or by way of our most sincere promise. Positional sanctification is not a process, it is a past tense accomplishment that can never be revised, reduced, or retracted.

We cannot lose the perfectly righteous standing we have in God because it came by way of our sanctified position in God’s son. We are justified through our sanctified position in Christ; we have a new identity. It is impossible for a believer to lose his salvation, but a believer can die physically.

If that believer decided every morning before eating cereal, that they are going to coat their cereal not with milk, but with a fifth of whiskey, what is that believer going to do to their body? A believer can die functionally in that they can serve no further useful purpose here on earth, no heavenly purpose on earth to those to whom they become an ambassador. 

Self-sanctification

Motivation is the key component when it comes to self-sanctification. Do we have a self-sanctification in the positive sense of separating ourselves from those things we know that are not good for us or not good for others, not in order to merit any more righteousness before God through that performance, but in light of all that God has already made us to be IN Christ (Our new identity).

On the opposite end of that self-sanctification spectrum, we have those who suppose that their behavior is the source of their right standing with God, that is self-sanctification negatively. They suppose that becoming more righteous in practice will make them more righteous in God’s sight, faulty thinking on their part, Paul called it foolish.

It will not gain them Heaven, it will not help them avoid the second death. Paul lets us know that in the book of Romans that God did not make Heaven for good people, God made Heaven for sinners who are justified freely by God’s grace.

Paul did not set himself apart in order to gain a greater righteousness before God through his performance, but that he made his life-style (to the best he could) conform to who God had already made him to be in his sanctified or set-apart position being joined to Christ that he might more affectively reach others.

That was Paul’s key motivation; there is a vast difference in those two motivations. Setting oneself apart for holiness is one thing, setting oneself apart because of the holy standing God has already given that individual in Christ is something altogether different.

People have a difficult time separating their performance in the flesh from their position in Christ and it was the question from the religiously minded people of Paul’s day that remains the question from the religiously minded people in our day. Most people think in those terms because most people fail to properly understand justification, the cornerstone that comes prior to sanctification.

If we misunderstand justification, we are going to have a difficult time understanding sanctification. Since people link a justified standing before God with performance of their own, they also link a sanctified standing before God with their own performance. And as a result they believe the degree to which they stand sanctified in God’s eyes depends entirely upon the degree to which they remain holy in behavior.

If they do not see themselves as being holy in conduct, they do not believe that God sees them as being holy, either. And consequently, if they do not see others as being holy in their attitude and actions, they do not think God sees them as being holy either! Holiness linked to performance is what religion is all about, a new reconciliation over and over and over again.

If we think that our justified standing before God, our sanctified standing, is contingent upon the presence of holy deeds and the absence of unholy deeds in our life, we are going to think that God’s attitude toward us and therefore, our position with him in Christ is of a fluctuating nature.

If we think our relationship with God is of a fluctuating nature, we never know where we stand. So, people’s minds are up and down and all around, an emotional roller-coaster as to where does one stand with God? God may be happy with me today, he may very well be angry at me tomorrow is how it is often reasoned.

Where do people go to see how far they have removed themselves through their behavior from God’s favor? More often than not, they go right back to the Law of Moses taught in the halls of religianity by ministers of righteousness. That can only lead in one direction, instability.

It is the “I have been good, I have been bad, God’s happy, God’s mad” mindset; a mindset that results in people having to be dishonest with themselves as to their own practical holiness. The religiously minded begin to believe they are indeed measuring up as righteousness becomes relative to those people.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are people walking away from a God they perceive as being unfair in having created them to fail in the first place. Some take it to the extent of a total denunciation of God altogether. If God does exist, how can he demand perfection? If God does exist, the fact of his fairness or unfairness does not really matter, does it?

You see, no matter where on the performance spectrum one happens to sit, whether it be the perceived safe-haven of religion or avowed atheism on the other end, a misunderstanding of the need for and the manner of justification (Our righteousification) and sanctification (How we are set apart in Christ), resides at the core of that unstable thinking. 

God's Reconciliation to His Enemies

Does God really hate man because of the actions of men? The fact is that God loves man so much that the magnitude of his love is almost incomprehensible to imagine. In the past, God stood far off from the sinner, but God’s love is so paramount that he says he loves humans who are actively his enemies.

Certainly, the bible shows that God does not like the actions of men, but God reconciled himself to his enemies while they are still in hostility, although this statement may appear to be strange and impossible, but it is not. These are important words; God’s reconciliation to mankind took place when man was actively his enemy, not after man repented.

An enemy is one that is on the other side of the fence, he is in absolute opposition and his actions are hateful, and it was while mankind was in this state of utter hostility and in direct opposition to God, that we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. God’s reconciliation to man is from God’s side only.

God alone decided to make peace with man, and he did it through the death of his son, while man is still very much ungodly, a sinner, and while man is an active enemy to God. This one-sided reconciliation on God’s part is self-evident proof of God’s superabundant love to man.

As far as God is concerned, he loved us so much that he was willing to let his own son die on for sinful man, and have his son pay all the penalties of our sins, forget our rebelliousness and overlook our hostility, while we were still sinners, still rebellious, and still hostile. God made up his mind to become completely reconciled to mankind before man made any signs of making peace with God.

God has told the world through Paul’s teachings, that he has reconciled himself to them because of his love for them, and it was God alone who did this harmonious act; we have had nothing to do with it, all we have had to do is to receive the reconciliation that God has made with mankind.

God has one-sidedly reconciled himself to mankind through the death of Christ on the tree; all sins and hostility are paid for as far as God is concerned, and it is time all people begin to believe it. No longer do we have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who we are and what we can do.

No longer are our sins held against us, no longer does the death penalty for sin hang over us. The just do, in fact, live by faith, but it is not our sinless lives that allow us to be called just; we do not live sinless lives. True faith is believing that God raised Christ from among the dead, thus, because of the resurrection of Christ, those who believe in Jesus are secure in their redemption.

Justification is an act of God; it is not an action of man. Our justification is secured by the vindicating act of God in resurrecting Jesus. Our possession of Christ’s righteousness is guaranteed by the reality that Christ has been raised from among the dead, for we have been justified through that resurrection.

Sin causes a debt to God so large that it can never be paid by ourselves, but the person who knows what Jesus Christ really accomplished, also understands that those who are reconciled to God through the death of Jesus Christ in which he bore our sin, exist in a completely new relationship with God.

Justification is the judicial act of God whereby he declares us righteous. As we stand before God in his courtroom, the evidence is overwhelmingly against us. Yet, as he drops the gavel, he pronounces no penalty. We are seen as Christ is seen. 

New Identity

There is a difference in what the Bible calls the flesh or known as the sin nature, and what the Bible calls the old man or known as the old nature, these are not the same terms. The sin nature has not died, we know it is alive and functioning in every one of us, none excluded.

We all have that sin nature towards satisfying the lust of our flesh toward serving ourselves; we all have the sin nature to contend with. Paul would have us understand that while we still contend with our sin nature, God eradicated our identity with our sin nature as far as our righteous standing before him is concerned and our identity in the Bible calls that the old man or known as the old nature, that is gone, crucified.

So, while we continue to have and will continue to have to contend with the sin nature on this side of life before we get our new bodies with that life God has within himself (John 5:26), same kind of life God gave Jesus when he raised Jesus from among the dead, same kind of life the tree of life produces, God no longer sees us in our identity with the old nature.

God can only view individuals in this age of grace one of two ways, we are either in the old nature or we are in the new nature, we cannot be both. While we are in the new nature we contend with the sin nature, but we are not in the old nature in God’s view of us.

The sin nature we have inherited from Adam God no longer identifies us as being in that, because our identity in that, the Bible calls the old man or known as the old nature. What did God do with the old nature? He eradicated, crucified the old nature with Christ. God wants us to reckon as true what he believes to be true, and that is the fact that as believers he has crucified everything we were in the first Adam.

Everything we are in our incapacity to serve him sufficiently to merit a righteous standing before him, God has done away with. God no longer views us in the old nature; he views us in a new nature, that is the key to living a successful life. So we quit trying to merit a righteous standing before God base on what we do or abstain from doing.

We do not look at our righteousness any longer as coming from what we do or abstain from doing. We view our righteous standing with God based on what Christ accomplished for us. When we stop focusing on the do’s and cease focusing on the don’ts, the do’s and don’ts become a lot easier.

Every believer is standing in the gift decree of righteousness, the very perfect righteousness as God’s perfectly righteous son. Believers are placed into the son, so that when God views them, he no longer views them in do’s or don’ts, he view them in the do’s and don’ts accomplished by our savior.

Our life is hid with God in Christ, God views us in the son, God’s sentence on the old nature was not REFORMATION, it was total eradication. That sentence was carried out when we died with Christ. God had no intention of repairing the old nature, no plan to clean the old nature up and make the old nature more presentable, God’s intention was to kill the old nature.

We had our identity in the first Adam, Adam in rebellion; we now have a brand new identity in the second Adam (Jesus Christ). This is identity truth, sanctification, set-apartness truth. Those who would die in their sins are those who would continue to have their identity in the first Adam, Adam in rebellion. Understanding identity is key, we have a brand new identity, a new nature. 

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. 

Were the Jews Embracing Paul's Message

Were the Jews embracing Paul’s message? While some believe Paul’s message, the vast majority rejected it; a validation of why God had set Israel aside nationally in the first place, and why God had called this new Apostle who would be sent to the Gentiles.

Paul had gone to the Jews of Asia first, that was his intent. He held their unbelief up in front of them and he said, “Now I am free to go to the Gentiles in Asia”, and he did so. They were envious of the attention the apostle Paul was getting, and that envy had led to a rejection of not only Paul, but of Paul’s message.

Paul had already proven blindness when it came to the Jews and there is nothing special about those of Jewish heritage who are in that land today. They enjoy no higher status with God during this age of grace, no matter what some may say or think, than any other nationality on the face of the earth; all must come alike to God today.

When God deals with Israel as a special nation again, when they are re-gathered to that land, they will be re-gathered in belief, they will enter the land and given the totality of the land. Christ, their King, will be with them, and they will dwell safely according to scripture, that will take place after the tribulation of those days, at Christ’s second coming.

What makes Paul’s good news unique and distinct? According to the secret that was revealed to Paul? Do you believe it was an all-sufficient reconciliation where the entirety of the world’s sin debt was concerned, or do you believe that you must obtain a new measure of reconciliation every time you sin, and that is by seeking a new measure of forgiveness from God, that he might be reconciled to you.

Who in the world are you asking for forgiveness from? From God, therefore the assumption is that he is not reconciled when you sin. In your mind, you are separating yourself from God by your sin, and Paul is saying that God has already reconciled you where your sins are concerned. Seems like Paul should have been able to make great progress with his message of grace; exclusively revealed to our Apostle, the apostle Paul by the ascended, glorified Christ. 

Monotheism of Israel

Illustrations of the diversities of early Christianity are many,  which are called Christologies. Christologies is what do you believe about Christ: what kind of nature is Jesus Christ?

We can map out all these differences; when did Jesus become divine according to the gospel of John? He always was. He was with God from the very beginning. Everything was created through him. The beginning of the gospel of John ends up having the Christology that now become Orthodox Christianity.

Before Jesus was executed, he was recognized as a prophet, he seems to accept himself as a prophet, and it may be that he claimed to be a king or a messiah, but certainly by the time of his execution, some people thought he was a king, because that is the charge on which he was executed.

The Romans executed Jesus, because at least either he or other people were claiming that he was a king. He is a prophet and he is a king, but does that mean Jesus is divine? No, of course not.

The Israelites had lots of kings that were not divine. The Israelites had lots of prophets that were not divine. Many modern people get the idea that the word “Christ” or “Messiah” in itself signifies divinity, but it doesn’t. The “Messiah” in Jesus’ day was simply some Israelite figure who would rise up and take over the throne of David and reestablish the kingdom of Israel.

Calling someone the messiah in the ancient world did not mean that he was divine. Jesus is a prophet; he is even considered the messiah, but that does not make him divine. Some Christians therefore have to make a decision. Is Jesus human and only human? Is Jesus human and divine?

Jesus being human and divine is the take most followers of Jesus end up taking, although there are some followers today of Jesus who believed he was purely human. Those who believe Jesus was purely human tended to understand the Israelites history and they even accept him as a messiah, but that does not mean they think he was God.

They know the monotheism of Israel does not and cannot evolve from polytheism, because the two are based on radically divergent world-views, radically divergent intuitions about reality. The monotheism of Israel was not, it could not be the natural outgrowth of the polytheism of an earlier age, it was a radical break with it.

Monotheism was a revolution, not an evolution. Therefore, they say, no, Jesus cannot be divine. The early Christians who chose the human and divine route, though they had to spilt this up. Some believed Jesus was always divine; others believed Jesus became divine.

If Jesus became divine, then when did he become divine, at his birth, at his baptism, or at his resurrection? Other Christians say, no, he always was divine, but even they believed in different choices too, because some believed Jesus was divine but also fully human.

Other Christians believed Jesus was fully divine but not fully human. They believed Jesus was so divine he was God, so that when Jesus walked along on wet sand on the beach, his feet did not leave footprints, that is how divine he was, but this belief became declared as a heresy.

Out of all these choices, only one of them is considered Orthodox by the later church, so that what Christians end up with is the Nicene Creed, or the Creed of Chalcedon, which is what Christians came to believe? There were lots of complexities in early Christianity that finally got whittled down into a more united consensus view on Christology. 

It is God’s sovereign right to choose the criteria and he chose to use the criteria of belief. God has always used faith in every age; God has always used faith, or what a person believes, as the criteria necessary to effect salvation for humankind. 

Our faith in the good news of Christ given to Paul enables God to impute us with the faith of his son. Once we believe, and are sealed, it is not about us; our faith, but Christ’s faith. If you want God to view you today, you got to be in his son.

For any one to think they are just before God through their performance; to think that they have perfected themselves with God through their behavior proves that man is a liar and the truth is not in them. One who puts their faith in the Nicene Creed or any Creed, has not met the criteria that God requires, and living up to a Creed is based upon performance.

Ministers of righteousness have a lot of fun with these Creeds controlling people! How can you get into his son, and have all of his righteousness freely imputed to your account? By simply taking God at his word, concerning what his son accomplished for you.

This one-sided reconciliation on God’s part is self-evident proof of God’s superabundant love to man. As far as God is concerned, he loved us so much that he was willing to let his own son die for sinful man, and have his son pay all the penalties for their sins, forget their rebelliousness and overlook their hostility, while they were still sinners, still rebellious, and still hostile.

God made up his mind to become completely reconciled to mankind before man made any signs of making peace with God. God has told the world through Paul’s teaching’s (not through Creeds), that he has reconciled himself to them because of his love for them, and it was God alone who did this harmonious act; we have had nothing to do with it, all we have had to do is to receive the reconciliation that God has made with mankind.

God has one-sidedly reconciled himself to mankind through what the death of his son accomplished; all sins and hostility are paid for as far as God is concerned, and it is time all people begin to believe it. This three-in-one god concept has its roots from polytheism; monotheism was a revolution, it was a radical brake from polytheism, not an evolution of polytheism!

If you want to believe Jesus is God, whatever. God has reconciled himself to man, before man wrote those Creeds?