sermon: The Christian Paradox (Part One)

Saint or Sinner?
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 03-May-25; Sermon #1816; 83 minutes

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I received an email a few months ago, and my sermon today is an attempt to answer that email. I had thought several times of going ahead and just answering it but I thought after a while when I was mentally going through this, what it would take to answer the question. I thought, this is maybe something that other people have a question about, and it would probably be better to answer this email in a sermon. Then, by about last night I figured, well, two sermons it is going to take to answer this and that is the kind of thing that I was thinking about when trying to maybe type it up. I thought this is going to take a long time to answer and maybe the easiest way to answer it is through a sermon because I hope it will be more helpful to a wider audience than just the one person who wrote the email.

The question that was asked is, Are we all still sinners? Speaking as a member of the church of God, are we all still sinners? Of course, this came in the run-up to the Passover, and what is it that we talk about in the run-up to the Passover? We talk about self-examination because we still have a whole lot of sin still in us and we encourage deep self-inspection and that you should remove that sin from your life. So, from probably about January 1 we talk week after week for a good 2-3 months about sin and getting rid of it. And this focus, which we are very concentrated every year about doing this, drags some people down. It makes them depressed, makes them feel horrible about themselves, and they feel unworthy. They go around thinking "I'm no good. I'll never be able to please God," etc. etc.

But other people who do not believe this way or do not view things this way, argue that God has called us and redeemed us to sit in heavenly places in Christ. Are we not holy to Him? Does not the Bible call us saints and His beloved children? And it is true that if you go through the New Testament, you will find that the people of God are very infrequently called sinners. Now Paul calls himself a sinner, and among the worst sinners. But from God's perspective, He always calls us good things. He might tell us that we need to repent, but He does not call us names necessarily to make us feel bad.

So the question is, Are we saints or are we sinners? What are we to consider ourselves when we look upon our state, our condition? Are we always full of sin? Are we not capable of goodness and righteousness? Did Jesus lie to us when He tells us there in Matthew that we should be perfect like His Father in heaven is perfect? Did He give us an impossible goal to reach? Because we have said from the pulpit that we will never in this life be as righteous as Jesus Christ. We will never be able to totally slough off our humanity in this life and be truly righteous like God is. So how could we be perfect like He is?

So, are we good or bad? Are we holy or profane? Are we saints or sinners?

Now, what we have just taken a few steps wading into is what is called the Christian paradox among theologians. In his February 13, 2023 "Ask Pastor John" article titled "Sinners or Saints? How Should We Speak of Christians?", American theologian John Piper asserts that not only is it the Christian paradox, it is the glorious paradox of the Christian life—his words. And here is how he explains it. This is just one paragraph taken from that article.

You have put off the old self, namely, the self that was in its essential identity a sinner. That's what you put off. That self has died with Christ. Now you are a new self. Put it on, put on what you are. That is, cleanse out the old leaven because you are unleavened.

I read that actually several times when I was going through this article and I came to the conclusion that I am not sure how helpful that is. In essence, what he is saying is that sinner and saint are identities. That is a buzzword these days, is it not? Everyone is concerned about his or her identity, what they are. Now we could say, as he alluded to here in this paragraph, that Paul calls these identities the old man, that is, the sinner, and the new man, that is, the saint. And John Piper argues that because we have died with Christ and been raised to new life with Him, or in Him, the old identity of sinner no longer applies—at all. That is the way John Piper looks at it. So, he concludes then that our new identity is saint. That is, child of God in Christ. We are no longer sinners, and since we are no longer sinners, our lives have no place for sin so we should not sin. That is what he said.

Notice. I will read this again from John Piper. "Now you are a new self. Put it on, put on what you are. That is, cleanse out the old leaven because you are unleavened." That is pretty much the totality of what he says to do.

Now, to my mind, his explanation is a mite unsatisfying, to put it mildly. It is almost flippant from a theologian. I mean, this guy has a ThD. He has been a long time pastor of a congregation up there in New York City and very well liked across evangelical and reformed circles, so he knows a bit. But in this response, it is almost like, Okay, you were baptized, you are now a saint. You should not sin, do not worry about it. I mean, that is almost how it comes across. Because you are a saint, sin has no part with you, and so, do not sin. You should not sin.

To me, his response vastly underestimates the ubiquity and the corruption of sin. How bad it is, how present it is, how insidious it is, how we deceive ourselves about sin, and how much it controls us. And it also, which is kind of a slap in the face of those of us who believe that sin is a terrible thing and that we should get it out of our lives and spend a great deal of effort in doing so, he minimizes the terrible difficulty most of us have in overcoming it. That is why I said it was flippant. "Oh, you're a saint now. You shouldn't sin. It's not a part of who you are." That was his basic reply. I look at it, his explanation, and I mentally envision him shrugging his shoulders and saying, "You're no longer a sinner. It's not who you are any longer. So just stop sinning."

We could put it another way. If you just identify deeply enough as a chosen, holy, beloved of God individual, you will put off sin and put on Christ. Really? You know what that sounds like? You are a Christian now. You are a child of God, so wish righteousness into existence. Just believe that you are righteous and you will be righteous. That is what it sounds like to me. It sounds like a kind of "Abracadabra! You're a Christian now, righteous, holy, beloved of God saint forever."

But it is not that easy, is it? Any of us who have tried to face our sins, mortify them, get rid of them, find out that you stamp on one and 16 others show up. That is the way sin is. Or you stamp on one and feel your foot going through the floor and find out that there is an absolute hell of sins under all of that, if you will. Something we buried and find out that there is a lot of corruption in that little sin you thought was there. It is like pulling up the little plant, the little weed, and you find out that the root is this long.

But think about it. What Piper said about kind of wishing it into existence, is like I am going to identify as the best shortstop that Major League Baseball has ever seen. Am I going to be the GOAT of shortstops just because I am trying to think of myself that way? Oh, if I really, really identify as a maestro violinist, I will just "voila!" become one. (Ask Jackson Mimms how much he has to practice.) Or anybody who plays a musical instrument. It just does not happen like that. It takes lots of practice, hours and hours and hours, you know, the proverbial 10,000 hours to become proficient at it. Here is one, all of us would like this. Let us just earnestly identify as a multi-billionaire and "poof!" well, we have become Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.

Nah. That is not how it happens. And this is why (just as a kind of a side point here), the world's huge emphasis on identity will come to nothing. It is the same with LGBTQ+ and the rest of the alphabet soup. Just because they imagine themselves or identify themselves in some way does not make them that. And you know, Trump in his inaugural speech saying there is only two genders, male and female, probably hit a lot of them right between their eyes because they imagined that there were hundreds of them.

But the truth hurts sometime. It brings us into reality. Because all of this identity stuff, except for the most basic of thinking, is pure fiction. It is wishful thinking that one can just think they are something and they become that. It does not work.

Now, maybe this would come as a surprise to John Piper, but Christianity does not run on the engine of identity. It is certainly part of things, but just the wish of being something is not going to make anything happen. One cannot just believe himself into Christlikeness. It takes work, it takes effort, it takes struggle. We find in another place we will go during the sermon, it is suffering to become like Christ. And that is the only way that it happens. If we are kind of scooting by and nothing bad ever happens, we are probably not growing very much. Now, I am not saying that you can never grow in good times, but usually the most growth happens during tough times when you have to make those tough decisions, you have to sacrifice, you have to show love to others when you would more likely show love to oneself. That is just the way it works.

And work is the key word here. Grace, belief, hope—these all get us started, get us moving. They are motivators and there are necessary, very necessary initial steps. But without substantive follow through, without faithful works and cooperation with God, we go nowhere. We fail to grow. And we will eventually—sorry, John—end up a sinner! No longer a saint. Because we are like that one who in the parable was given a talent and buried it and did nothing. And what does Jesus call that person? Wicked. He is the wicked servant who did evil. Because he was given so much, whatever that talent is supposed to represent, and he did nothing with it. He buried it in the ground. And Jesus says, why did you not at least try to make some money off it by interest? Give it to the bankers, let them use it. But no, he did nothing and there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

That tells you how important it is that we do something with what God has given us because as we will see here in just a few minutes, when we are baptized, we agree to follow Christ in all the obligations of the covenant. And that is basically all we do. We believe and we agree and He says, "OK, here's the keys to the car. Go!" if you understand my metaphor there.

Now, this thing that I am talking about is a big problem for Protestant theology. A huge problem. Sidelining law and works, that is, obedience, overcoming growth, service, and relying only on justification by faith and identity as Christians, has stifled true maturation in righteousness and transformation into the image of Christ.

It is a good thing that most of those Protestants have probably not been called, probably not been given the Holy Spirit, because the whole theology is based on that parable that I just mentioned, where they dig a hole and place their talents in the ground and do nothing. They do not believe that they have to do anything. That Christ did it all for them and their justification at the beginning when they are baptized is forever. And so they do not have anything to worry about. They are saved. They were saved at baptism, and so they are always saved. This is the doctrine of eternal security, once saved, always saved.

They have stifled all the growth and sanctification through works and they rely on belief and identity, and that will only get one so far. It barely gets you started. I mean, it could be good for getting one started if you take the next steps. But if you do not take any steps, you are done, right? You do not get anywhere.

So we are going in this sermon to lay the foundation for this Christian paradox idea. And it is a true idea. That there is a paradox in the way things have been set up by God in this way of life. Because, as we will see, we are holy. We are saved. We are children of God. But sorry, we are also sinners. We have lots of faults. We are not by any means like Christ, not in reality, if you know what I mean. So we are going to lay the groundwork for this to go over what is happening in our lives. And depending on our individual personalities, we tend to come down on one side or the other on this spiritual dichotomy. If you are an optimist, you will tend to champion your sainthood. Meaning, yes, God is pleased with me, He called me; and you emphasize all the blessings and good things about it. But if you are a pessimist, you will tend to focus on your sinfulness and how bad you are and how much you lack and how you have not grown enough and you know, time is short and you are way behind.

Now, all of this may be true. We should not get depressed about it. But some people do tend to emphasize one side or the other and that is why we probably need a sermon so that we can understand what is going on. So instead of being just an optimist, or instead of being just a pessimist about our Christian lives, let us become realists about our walk with God that, first, acknowledges our past, the way we were, and the fact that God, in the past, showed us grace and ushered us into this life. But we also must deal with the present, the way we are now, our still very human condition. Because we are very human, are we not? We still have a great many faults.

But also we need to reach forward and have that wonderful hope of a glorious future and the understanding, the acknowledgement, and the feeling of triumph and victory because it is not up to us in the main to get us there. It is God and His sovereignty and His power, His strength that is going to drag us across the finish line, if you will. I am kind of exaggerating things trying to help you to understand that there are elements to this that are wonderful and we do not have to do so much because God is gracious in giving us these things. But on the other hand, there are elements to all of this that are so difficult that we feel like we have to give every ounce of strength and courage just to do one of them.

So this is our lives, so be a realist. Face facts. Understand that we have this paradox, this dichotomy I have called it, this balance of forces that is going on in our lives and we need to make sure that we do not emphasize one in opposition to the other. Because we really need to look at this in a realistic way, knowing that God has our back and that He will get us through all this and He will bring us into the glorious future that He has promised. But it is good and bad, good and bad, good and bad, as we look at it from our human point of view.

Let us go to Ephesians 2. This is the classic text of grace and faith and salvation. We are going to be reading verses 4 through 10. Just listen to Paul's argument here, listen to how Paul speaks about all this.

Ephesians 2:4-10 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Like I said, this is the classic text and Protestant theologians always rush back here to say, "You have been saved by grace, not of works." And we say, "Yeah, that's great. That's the way it works, that's the way it is. And we agree 100% that our salvation comes by God's grace. Absolutely. We have no argument there."

Now, in verses 5 and 6 here, Paul tells us that God has given us a new life. The old life was one of sin, but He has given us a new life by raising us up. That is why we go through baptism. The water of baptism is a grave, and we are raised up out of that grave in likeness to Jesus being raised from the dead. And so it shows a correspondence between Jesus' life, let us name His first, and our new life. So we have new life in Christ. You remember He said, "Let the dead bury the dead." He was talking about people who had not been awakened to the truth, who had not been called, they are spiritually dead in the way He is talking about them. But because He has called us and given us grace and justified us because of our belief in His power to do so and in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, well, we have been made alive, spiritually.

So, He has raised us up together (notice how many times he says together here), and he will go on and talk about the fact that it is both Jews and Gentiles, and there are no distinctions in any wise about who he calls. He will call male and female, slave, free. It does not matter. We have all been made new together. One big happy family, right? And He has promoted us. He has raised us up into heavenly places. Before, spiritually dead, we were scrounging around in the dirt of this world, all the grime of sin, but He has raised us up, clean now from our baptism justified, and He has put us not only into a cleaner version of this world, He has raised us up into the heavenly places.

Remember Solomon: under the sun, over the sun. We have been taken out of the world, if you will, and made to be spiritual residents of heaven. We are citizens of heaven. We have been translated, as it says in Colossians 1, into the Kingdom of His beloved Son. So it is a great promotion from scrubbing around in the dirt, the sin of this world, to being able to sit with Christ even while we are still in the flesh.

Now, keep that in mind, this idea that this is a spiritual promotion. We are still in the flesh. But He looks at us spiritually in this way. That we are there with His Son in heaven. Just keep that in the back of your mind. In this way, since we are covered by Christ's blood, and we have His righteousness imputed to us because we have no righteousness of our own at this point when we are baptized, that He sees us in a way that we are not.

Let me say that again. Because of what has happened in terms of our justification: we have had our sins forgiven, we have been made upright, the blood of Christ has cleansed us from all sin, and has covered us—now when the Father looks at us, He sees us as Christ. Not difficult to understand because that is the covering that we now have being in Christ. Colossians 3:3 says that "our life is hidden with Christ in God." And so it is like the word there actually has to do with being covered or wrapped up and hidden so you cannot be seen. Have we not been put into the Body of Christ? It is just like our identity is now obscured because we identify as Christ or as Christ's brothers and sisters, as children of God like Christ is.

So Paul is telling us here all these wonderful things that have happened to us through justification, through that step in the process, and it is wonderful. It is great that we can say that Jesus Christ is our Elder Brother, that God is our Father, that we are a child of God. That He looks at us and sees Christ. He sees our potential in Christ. And that we can come before His throne and say, "Father, I've messed up again. I've sinned, I've done this and that. I need Your help." And He says, "Sure, I understand. This is a long process. I forgive you on the basis of My Son's life. Let's move forward." That is what God does. He clears us of these sins so that we can continue to live and continue to grow.

What happens at baptism is that we are slotted, if you will, into a completely different category of creature. This category is a heavenly or a spiritual one, where we are set apart. Set apart; let us think about that. You have a bunch of marbles, you take the ones that you think you will be able to use, you put them in a different pile. The marble has just been set apart for a different use. That is what God does to us, but it is not just we are marbles anymore because we were put in the new pile. We are special marbles! And we may not have very many in our head, at least not the right kind.

So, He has justified us by His grace, our sins are forgiven and borne away, not to be remembered anymore, and now we are spiritually alive. Being given His Spirit, able to see the truth, understand the truth, act on the truth. And that is really one of the great things that makes us different because without that gift of God's Spirit, none of this is really possible to do. You can do a little bit of that, but you do not understand the fullness of it, and it does not produce what God wants to produce. So, yes, we do have a new status at that point, a new identity in Christ. Our identity is in Him.

Now, the next part in Ephesians 2 here is better known. Salvation happens by God's grace. Both the grace and the faith are God's gifts, because if they were ours, it would indicate that we earned that salvation. But it is not, it is all Him. I mean, essentially we are passive receivers of it. As a matter of fact, in just about, if not every case, talking about our role in these things, we are always in the passive. You know, God does this to us rather than we do something to achieve it. (We will see that in a few minutes.) Our part in this process at this point is not much more than agreeing to God's deliverance of us from our sins and our agreement also that we will subsequently do what He says. We give our permission, if you will, that we are going to follow along in this way of life. I mean, when we are first baptized, we are no great shakes. We do not have much spirituality to boast of.

So God is the one that is initiating all these things. He is creating the circumstances where He can give us a little bit of faith, a little bit of knowledge, and our minds start to open. And then at that point we do start believing because this is all through our belief in Jesus Christ, belief in what He is doing, and that is what makes us come to the decision or the conclusion that we want to be baptized, we want to be saved. So we do have a small part to play. But it is God that has been pushing all the buttons and making everything happen so that we go the way He wants us to go. Our part in this is minimal.

Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship [We are His workmanship. We are not working on ourselves at this point.], created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

He has got everything set up, He has got everything lined up, and He puts us into that, into the process where He is going to develop us. And He created us for good works. Remember, I talked about just a minute ago that we agreed to the obligation of doing what He says? Well, our obligation is good works. Our obligation, once we have this salvation, is to do what He says, to get with the program that He is prepared for us.

But we do not do them alone, thank God—and truly thank God. He is the one that is with us at every point because He plays a major role in preparing us to walk in these good works. In fact, He does almost everything, even in this, because the good works that we do are a minuscule part of the whole process of salvation. It would be probably astounding, we would probably fall flat on our faces if we could peel back the curtain and try to figure out what God has done versus what we have done in our salvation and see all the things at work going on that we have no idea are happening in order to produce salvation for us.

Notice in this paragraph that God's salvation is mentioned twice. "By grace you have been saved" in verse 5, and "For by grace you have been saved through faith" in verse 8. And in both cases, the verb is a passive perfect participle. (English was a long time ago, right? Grammar?) What a passive perfect participle means is something was done to the subject of the sentence in the past. By grace you have been saved. This is something that happened at our baptism. For all of us here who are baptized, this is in the past. You have been saved by God. He did it to you in the past. That is basically all that means.

So God saved us by giving us grace and, as I said, this happened at baptism. He raised us from spiritual death. He justified us and made us spiritually alive in Christ and set us apart at that time. All that happened in the past. But we know that our spiritual lives did not end there. We know things are happening. We know other things have happened since then. There is so much more going on. Let us go to I Corinthians 1, verse 18. Paul writes there,

I Corinthians 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

If you want to, you can jot down II Corinthians 2:15 because the same thing about being saved is mentioned there. "For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing." So very similar verses there.

Now here back in I Corinthians 1, Paul is speaking of the gospel message as being a power, an energy, a force, a mighty means to accomplish some sort of aim or goal, or bring us to a certain end. The verb phrase is "are being saved." We are people who are being saved. This is a passive present participle. Remember, the other one was a passive past participle. This one is a passive present participle indicating that salvation is happening. It is ongoing. It is happening in the present. You are being saved right now. It indicates that what God did in saving us at baptism initiated a process. That is, we have been saved and the "have been saved" is an initiation of something that is ongoing, it is still happening, that continues throughout a Christian's life. It is not just one and done. It is not that is it, we are done, nothing further is necessary. Nope, it is not that. There is a great deal more to it. Salvation continues.

So there is something that is done in the past that is called salvation. But its purpose is to begin things. And there is salvation that is happening right now. It is a little bit different. And it has to be ongoing as long as we draw breath. Because God wants to make efficient use of the time for us to grow.

Let us go to Philippians 2, and we will see a little bit how this works.

Philippians 2:12-13 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now 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 do for His good pleasure.

In both cases, the word work here is in the present tense. Work out your own salvation because God works in you. It is happening right now. It is happening in your attitude toward this sermon or what have you. God is using every situation in your life to help you grow in the mind of Christ. He wants you to be as much like Christ as possible, so He gives us a lifetime full of tests and challenges and other things, and just plain experiences so that we can learn to grow. And He also gives us instruction and all those things that we need. But that is part of salvation.

So, Paul tells us here that salvation must be worked out. It is the Greek word katergazomai. It is Strong's #2716 and it means "to affect or to produce," "to bring out as a result," or "to accomplish." I like the last one best of those four because he is telling us to accomplish our salvation, to bring about the product that God has started us producing, to bring it to an end, to finish it. And what we have here is the idea that salvation is a process designed to produce a result through the combined cooperative effort of God and the Christian. It is a project; we are both doing this project. We both have different jobs in getting the project done.

That is what a covenant does. A covenant is made so that you could produce, these two parties can produce something that is mutually beneficial to the both of them. And God has said that salvation of His people is going to be mutually beneficial to both Him and to the church. Or the individual and the church—and the world, and the universe, and everything! And so He says, "I want you, you, you, you, you, you, you. We are going to do this project together. And this is your part. Learn this, do this, overcome that. Don't do this. Make sure you finish this." It is all part of the big project, and we call it salvation.

We work out, Paul says here, indicating we manifest godliness. It comes out. We show that we are doing God's will. And then God works in us giving us inside the will and the energy and all the necessary whatnots that we need to do the job. To get the product made, to get to complete the program, to reach the end, to finish. There is a lot of other words I could use. To mature, to become perfect. Those are all parts of the project that He has chosen us to work with Him in finishing. We do our part and He works in us so that we have what it takes to do our part and finish the job.

So, what we see here is that salvation is not a past completed act, even though scriptures seem to indicate that it is: Ephesians 2:5 and verse 8. If we had just that in the Bible, we could say our salvation was complete at baptism. But it does not say that everywhere in the Bible. Other places in the Bible say, well, there is a present element of it as well. What happened at baptism was justification. That is the better word for that part of salvation. We were made upright. That is what justification means. We were made upright by God's grace, our sins were forgiven, our slate cleared. And at that point, this was a merciful, loving, legal act on God's part. He is the divine Judge and He decided, He evaluated the situation, He made a judgment that we should be cleared of sin due to Christ's awesome payment in His own death and our belief then in that sacrifice that He made. And that we ask God to please cover us with that so that we can join the program, so we can be saved. And God making that decision says, "OK, fine, My Son's blood will cover you and I will impute His righteousness to you so that we can have communion or we can have fellowship, we can have a way that we can talk to one another. And then He gives us, He installs the telephone line, if you will, the Holy Spirit. It is by this that we are connected. "Through the Spirit you can talk to Me. I can talk to you. I can tell you you're doing something wrong, give you indication, and you can come to Me for help, and you can praise Me and glorify Me," and come to understand how great and sovereign God is. And then have the right attitude at that point to do what is right and good.

There is all kinds of things that He does for us through the Holy Spirit, by this means of communication that work salvation in us, that move us a little further along in developing the mind of Christ. And without that justification and the giving of the Holy Spirit and the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, otherwise, we might as well not even get started because we do not have the tools. But God supplies all of those tools. That is what justification, that is why that initial act at baptism is so important because it gets the ball rolling and gives us enough of what we need to start everything off.

That imputation of Christ's righteousness covers us, covered us then, it covers us now, while we remain in good standing under the New Covenant. Remember, we are hidden with Christ in God. We are part of the Body of Christ. He lives in us. And so because of that, we are, in the Father's mind, like Him, like Christ. He sees us that way. We have not earned the right, if you will, to stand on our own. He has given us the right to stand before Him through Christ. Maybe I am not putting it that way, but it does say that we were given the authority to become His sons.

So, just chew on that for a while. Without Christ, we are nothing. As a matter of fact, if we would go back to Ephesians 1:23, it gets to one of those "all in all" statements and Christ, he says, is our everything. It is Christ is all in all for us. So without Him, as it says in John 15, we can do nothing. And a big part of it is that imputation of Christ's righteousness. And all the other things too. I mean, I could go on and on about the gifts of God that He has given us that allows us to live this life and to stay in good standing in this life. I mean, He really is trying to take nothing and make it into something. And we need all the help we can get, and that help is Jesus Christ.

Another little bit about that imputation of Christ's righteousness. It allows us to continue to ask forgiveness for our sins. Because without the imputation of Christ's righteousness and God seeing us in Christ, we could not come before Him to ask for any kind of forgiveness. So when we mess up, when we miss the mark, when we do not reach the standard of God, we can crawl on our knees back to the Father and ask for forgiveness.

Now, these are all things that were done to get us to this point, but we have learned that salvation has a present aspect too, and that is what the Bible calls sanctification. That is the process of making us holy in fact. We are holy right now through justification because God says so. Because God made, as I said, a legal determination for us to come under the blood of Christ. And so He says, "You're holy," and He set us apart. Those are all acts of holiness and sanctification. But He does not want us always to be covered by the blood of Christ. Ultimately, He wants us to be holy like He is holy. Now this is probably not going to happen in this life unless you are just the super Christian that I think probably no one is. But He wants us to be righteous and holy, and that is why I say that sanctification is the process of making us holy in fact, in reality, in who we are. This is what we reach for. It is the complete perfection of God.

In this life, God is content with our progress and the projection of what we would be with the power of God as a spirit being. And so we can die at a certain point and God says, "Well done, good and faithful servant." And in the resurrection, then, we will be given what we need to complete the holiness and be perfect. I mean, God's grace is fantastic.

So this present aspect of salvation is the overcoming, the growing, the producing fruit stage when we gradually, by fits and starts and a lot of stumbling, begin to develop the mind of Christ and live godly in this present age.

Most of you probably know that adverbs are words that have, most of them, "ly" at the end. "Ly" is a shrinking of the original word that was put on the end of words to make them adverbs. And that is the word "like." So when I say that we begin to develop the mind of Christ and live godly in this present age, I am really saying that we live God-like in this present age. And I kind of make this point because we are not God in this present age. We cannot truly live as God in this present age, but we can live God-like. We can make a good attempt to live like God in this present age.

I am going through this because a lot of times we think living godly is doing it perfectly. And I am here to tell you that we will probably never do it perfectly. But we can live God-like. We could make that attempt to live like God in this present age, and we do that through the process that God puts us through in sanctification. He shows us what it looks like and tries to move us in that direction. But because we are human, because we are still having this problem with human nature and sin and the Devil's temptations, and what have you, lots of distractions, we do not get it right. But we can get close. We can try to do these things in a way that is good and right and pleasing to God. I am not excusing bad behavior by any means. I am trying to be a realist in this, helping you to understand that your best efforts to be like God are always going to fall short. You could never come to the perfection of God in this life. You can try. I want us all to try. We may do, maybe in our whole life, do one or two things perfectly. I do not know.

Maybe I am underestimating. I hope I am underestimating. But I am trying to get us to be realistic about this in our sanctification. That we should not get too down on ourselves because what God is asking us to do is to scale the highest cliffs that ever were. And if we only get 10 feet off the ground but we do it in a way that is faithful and true, God makes up the rest. So we should not get down on ourselves too much, but we should always be seeking to do more, to climb higher, if you will, so that we can be perfect when we are glorified.

Now this does not mean that we should be satisfied with only 10% of doing things right or 20% or 50%. It means we should always strive to do everything perfectly. But if you are thinking that you are going to be perfect, you are going to be disappointed. So, understand your limitations. The only one without limitations is God. But do not let your limitations hold you back. God wants us to move forward. Paul says in several places that he urges us to press forward toward the Kingdom. And we can. And thank God we can fall back on Jesus Christ for help. Because He knows our frame. He knows what we are made of. He knows that we are weak, and He will give us the help that we need.

But we have got to keep moving, pressing, surging forward; learning, growing, producing the fruit. Just do not get down on yourself as you fail. I mean, do not get down on yourself to the point where you want to quit. That is what I am saying. Get up. (I was going to say, pull yourself up but that was the wrong thing to say.) Ask God to help get you off the ground. Remember that we went through that little bit in Psalm 51 where David said, "Uphold me by Your generous Spirit." He was at the point where he was terribly disappointed with himself. He thought that his eternal life hung by a thread, and he had to beseech God for help even to get off the ground and stand. And then once he was able to do that, then he could move forward.

That started the second half of the psalm where he said, "OK, now that I'm standing again, I can do this for You and this and this." And so David had the right attitude. After he had sinned, after he had beaten himself up about it, after he had gotten God's forgiveness, he said, "God, I need You to help me to stand and to take those steps and walk." And he did. So that is how we have to face this. We have to face it realistically, that we are not perfect, we will probably never be perfect, but we have got to strive for perfection.

So, with the Holy Spirit in us we can then keep God's commands. We can show love, we can witness Christian maturity to others, both in the church and to the world, and be a good example for others. And thus the Christian shows God's imputation of holiness was justified. (And the pun is intended.) At justification, he imputed holiness and righteousness to us, and that once we start actually doing it, it was justified. (Bad attempt at humor.)

Let us go to Matthew 10, verse 22. We are just coming into the middle of this.

Matthew 10:22 "You will be hated [speaking to His disciples] by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved."

Uh oh, different tense.

Let us move on to chapter 24, verse 12 which says the exact same thing.

Matthew 24:12-13 "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved."

Finally,

I Corinthians 3:15 If anyone's work is burned [he is meaning a person in the church going through the sanctification process], he will suffer loss; but he himself be will be saved, yet so as through fire.

Here we have three occasions where the verbal construction is passive future indicative. And this is great, this is really great. It means that the action will be done, that is the indicative part, to the subject, that is the passive part, at some later time. That is the future part. What I really thought was neat was the indicative. It will be done. So he who endures to the end will be saved—in the future by God. And the same with this here in I Corinthians 3, where a person goes through a great deal and he fails, but he is still faithful. All this is burned by fire, it says, but he will be saved.

These verses signify that salvation has a future aspect as well, which we call glorification. So we had justification, sanctification, and glorification. They are three parts of the salvation process. And glorification is where the process becomes complete. It ends. The product is made, has been produced, and the Christian at that point is changed to spirit in the resurrection. When Christ comes in His glory, that is when the saints will rise and that process is then complete. They are glorified in Christ and share in His glory. If you want to, all of that is I Corinthians 15; I John 3; and Revelation 14 and 20. In Revelation it is like the first five verses of those two chapters.

Let us go to Romans 8.

Romans 8:14-17 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. [A very positive statement. If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you are a child of God.] For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father." The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God [Again, very positive, we are children of God.], and if children [not just children], then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ [ah, a condition], if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

So Paul teaches here something very positive. That God's gift of the Holy Spirit adopts us, if you will, into the God Family. And when we receive it, we become not only children of God, but also heirs with Christ of the Kingdom and all things. We are joint heirs with Christ. Whatever Christ inherits, we inherit with Him. Fantastic! What a wonderful hope!

But at the end, Paul mentions that we become like Him through suffering. We do not get the prize at the end without going through the same process that He went through to be the heir of all things. If we suffer like Him, that is, for living godly in this world of sin—it does not say necessarily that we have to go through the same things that He went through or to the extent that He went through, but it does say that we have to suffer for being a righteous person or a person trying to be righteous and live righteously in this world. And so if we do, if we suffer with Him, then we will be glorified with Him. That is the program that we have joined and need to graduate from. That is the goal. The glorification is the goal because we have gone through all of this sanctification to be like Christ. And Paul puts the road or all the process into one simple word: suffering. Fantastic, right?

Romans 8:28-30 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. [This is what He has called us for, to finish this program.] For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son [through suffering], that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified [He started them off on the program]; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

Notice the positivity here. When God calls and justifies us and puts us into the program of sanctification, He fully intends to see the process through all the way to glorification. It is a commitment so firm from God that Paul puts it in the past tense. "Whom He justified. . ." That we know, we saw it, that happened in the past at our baptism, right? "These He also glorified," also past tense. God is so positive that He can do with His power, that He can bring us to glorification from justification through that whole thing, He puts it as if it has already occurred.

Remember Jesus said, "No one can snatch them from My hand." That is kind of the same thing. He is so certain of what He can accomplish through His process of sanctification beginning with justification, that He says, "I will finish My job all the way to glorification." We know though, that glorification occurs at the first resurrection when Christ returns. That is when we shall be like Him. That is when we know from I John 3:2 that we will see Him as He is. And that is in the future, but God speaks about it as if it is in the past. It is done.

So salvation, then, is a process with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has a past, it has a present, it has a future. It is justification. It is sanctification. It is glorification. God promises to be with us, guiding and helping us all along the way. And He speaks of it as a done deal. But we know that we are the weak link in all of this. We are the ones that could bring the process grinding to a halt because of our own stupidity and bad decisions. And the Bible does say, contrast to what the Protestants teach, that we can fall away if we reject Him completely, and willfully return to a life of sin. You will find that in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10.

Now, we have just gone through a lot. Understanding this process, what I have gone over today, is the key to understanding that Christian paradox that we started with. We need to get this, have this understanding in mind. I will go over it in the next sermon.

But if you will, go chase out Romans 4:17. I will tell you what it says. It tells us that God calls those things which do not exist as though they did. And we will start there the next time (in two weeks) so that we can understand God's perspective and the way things are put in the Bible that modern Protestantism has gotten wrong. Because they missed the timing of these things.

So beyond that, in two weeks, we will go into Part Two of this. Hopefully, we will finish it, and we will concentrate then on the spiritual conflict that this Christian paradox creates.