This article is the second part of John Murray’s order of redemption continuing with sanctification and concluding with glorification. As a refresher, the order follows these eight steps. The concept of union with Christ is covered as a bonus at the end.
Effectual calling -> regeneration -> faith / repentance -> justification -> adoption -> sanctification -> perseverance -> glorification
5. Sanctification: the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness. The process begins with regeneration and is grounded in justification. Its aim is to eliminate all sin and achieve complete conformity to the image of God’s Son in knowledge, righteousness and holiness. Sanctification involves the concentration of thought, of interest, of heart, mind, will and purpose upon the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus and the engagement of our whole being with those means which God has instituted for the attainment of that destination.
- Recognition of sin and conflict with it
- Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? – Romans 7:24
- I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. – Job 42:5-6
- Sin is not master of us
- Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness… But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,… But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. – Romans 6:12-13, 17, 22
- Progressive maturation into Christ’s likeness
- Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. – Philippians 2:12-13
- And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. – Philippians 1:9-11
6. Perseverance: a guarantee that the persons given to Jesus shall continue in Him unto death and cannot be snatched away.
- and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. – Matthew 10:22
- All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. or I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. – John 6:37-39
- I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”- John 10:28-30
- In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. – Ephesians 1:13-14
7. Glorification (immortality): it is the attainment of the goal to which the elect of God were predestined in the eternal purpose of the Father and it the consummation of the redemption secured and procured by the vicarious work of Christ. It occurs at the resurrection of the body, which produces the complete and final restoration of human nature (body and spirit) in conformity to the image of the risen, exalted and glorified Redeemer’s glorified human nature. It will be an instantaneous change that will take place to the whole company of the redeemed when Christ comes again the second time and will descend from heaven with a shout of triumph over the last enemy bringing the realization of God’s redemptive plan.
- But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. – Philippians 3:20-21
- When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality – 1 Corinthians 15:54a
- even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus – Ephesians 2:5-6
- and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. – Romans 8:17
Bonus topic – Union with Christ: it is the application of the efficacy of His death and in the virtue of His resurrection leading to a deliverance from the power of sin. Union occurs at our calling and binds us to the efficacy and virtue by which we are sanctified with the ultimate fruition as glorification as Sons of God. We are “in Christ”:
- Elected: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him… In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace – Ephesians 1:3-4, 7
- Redeemed in death and resurrection: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,- Ephesians 2:4-6
- Created anew: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. – Ephesians 2:10
- Christian life: I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge – 1 Corinthians 1:4-5
- Dead: For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. – 1 Thessalonians 4:16
- Glorified: For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. – 1 Corinthians 15:22
- Analogies that illustrate our relationship to being ‘in Him’: building stones and corners tone (Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 2:4-5), Adam and humanity (Romans 5:12-19; 1 Corinthians 15:19-49), husband and wife (Ephesians 5:22-33), head and other members of body (Ephesians 4:15-16), vine and branches (John 15) and members of the Trinity (John 14:23; 17:21-23)
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The other man went home saying, “O, I’ve done all this fasting, and I’m not a tax-collector, and I’ve paid my tithe, and I went down to the temple today and I did something spiritual.” But the other individual was the one who went down to the temple and he did do something spiritual; he gave God his heart. He went home justified. It was an actual change. And so being justified freely as this verse says, through His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; you see how it all fits together as a whole in God’s plan.
1. If it be asked, how Christ came to be the Redeemer? it may be answered, as the love, grace, and mercy of God the Father moved him to resolve upon redemption, and appoint his Son, and call him to this work; so like love, grace, and mercy, wrought in the heart of the Son of God to accept of this call, and engage in this work; the love of Christ, which was in his heart from everlasting, and was a love of complacency and delight; this showed itself in various acts, and especially in giving himself for his people to redeem them; in giving himself an offering and a sacrifice for their sins; in laying down his life for them; all which is frequently ascribed to his love (Titus 2:14; Eph. 5:2, 25; 1 John 3:16), and this love is unmerited, as appears from the characters of the persons for whom he died, observed before; and so is called the grace of Christ, free grace, unmoved and unmerited by anything in the creature; and to this is attributed the whole affair of our redemption and salvation by Christ (2 Cor. 8:5), pity and compassion in his heart towards his people in their miserable and enthralled state, moved him to undertake and perform the work of their redemption: “in his love and in his pity he redeemed them”, as he did Israel of old (Isa. 63:9). This love, grace, and mercy, influenced and engaged him to resolve upon the redemption of them; hence he said, “I will ransom them, I will redeem them”; as from the grave and death, so from every other enemy (Hosea 13:14), and as he entered into covenant engagements with his Father from everlasting, he considered himself as under obligation to perform this work, and therefore spoke in language which imports the same; as that he must work the works of him that sent him, of which this is the principal; that he “ought” to suffer and die as he did; and that he “must” bring in those the Father gave him, and he undertook for, and bring them safe to glory.
Here I am gathering a few passages of many because I merely want to remind my readers that the hope of all the godly has ever reposed in Christ alone. All the other prophets also agree. For example, in Hosea it is said: “And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head” [Hosea 1:11]. This he afterward explains more clearly: “The children of Israel shall return and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king” [Hosea 3:5]. Micah, also, referring to the people’s return, clearly expresses it: “Their king will pass on before them, Jehovah at their head” [Micah 2:13]. So, too, Amos – meaning to foretell the renewal of the people – says: “In that day I will raise up the tent of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins” [Amos 9:11]. This signifies: “I will raise up once more the royal glory in the family of David, the sole standard of salvation, now fulfilled in Christ.” Hence, Zechariah, as his era was closer to the manifestation of Christ, more openly proclaims: “Rejoice, daughter of Zion! Be jubilant, daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; righteous and unharmed is he” [Zechariah 9:9, cf. Comm.]. This agrees with the verse of the psalm already quoted: “Jehovah is… the saving power of his Christ. Save,… O Jehovah” [Psalm 28:8-9, cf. RV marg.]. Here salvation flows from the Head to the whole body.