Justification and Sanctification: The Believer's Journey

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The justified person is the being sanctified person and the person who is not being sanctified or is not giving any evidence of it either has never been justified or doesn't understand what it means to live within the framework of God's great salvific purpose. [00:01:52]

God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. How has he done it? By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. [00:03:25]

Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. [00:05:10]

Justification is forensic, it is legal. Every so often I hear people praying and they say thank you that you have made us righteous through our justification. No, he hasn't. He doesn't make us righteous through our justification; he declares us righteous. He doesn't make us righteous. [00:06:25]

Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are so renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness. [00:07:10]

Let no one deceive you with empty words because he realizes that there's going to be a whole ton of people that come around and say oh you don't have to believe that stuff. The Gnostic heresy in that period of time was very attractive because the Gnostics taught that anything that you do with the physicality of your body cannot affect your spiritual standing before God. [00:12:02]

The wrath of God is not the fiery outburst of a dad who's lost his temper and kicked the cat and driven his car into the wall. No, it's not like that at all. It is the settled response of the entire holiness and character of God to everything that he knows is marring and spoiling and disappointing and just destroying life. [00:17:19]

Where is the answer to the wrath of God? Where has God's wrath been poured out? It has been poured out on the cross of his dearly beloved son in order that we might be able to heed the word of Hebrews: flee from the wrath to come. [00:20:04]

The evidence of the fact that we have been brought into the realm of the justified is in the ongoing of his work in us, which is teaching us to say no to ungodliness, to stand away from these things, to nip it in the bud, because of who we are. [00:21:18]

The now matters because of the then. Contemporary philosophy says the now matters because there is no then. This is dead poet society. This is Robin Williams. What a tragedy when I think of Robin Williams. He probably believed that. [00:13:52]

The law could never put a person right with God because nobody could ever keep the jolly thing. We've all broken the law. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So if our view of Christianity is what you're supposed to do is you get involved with a group of people and then you just try your best for the rest of your life and hopefully you'll be able to overcome some of the bad stuff you've been doing. [00:02:38]

God says you want to do it on your own, this is how it goes. Read Romans 1. How does it go? Suppress the truth, idolatry, immorality, homosexuality, the destruction of a culture. You want it on your own, let me show you how it works. [00:18:44]

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