The Bible presents the Christian experience in three important stages. The terms used to refer to these stages are justification, sanctification and glorification. Previously, we have looked at the first two of these.
First, several weeks ago we noted that justification is that divine act whereby God declares a sinner to be righteous or acceptable in His sight because of the sinner’s faith in Christ Jesus. That declaration occurs at the moment a sinner places faith in the atoning work of Jesus in His perfect life, substitutionary death and victorious resurrection.
Second, sanctification describes the process in which believers are set apart from the rest of humanity unto God for a process by which Christians are made holy in thought, word and deed. This stage is progressive and depends on obedience to the will and Word of God. We think of this process as growing in the Lord and gaining spiritual maturity and may express it as growing in Christlikeness.
Removal of sin
If justification is the beginning point of the Christian life (and it is) and sanctification is the progression of that life (and it is), then glorification is its goal. Glorification is God’s final removal of sin from the life of His spiritual child so that each one of us will stand before Him in glory throughout eternity.
Romans 8:18 says, “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” In the meantime, we can “rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2).
We might express it by saying that justification is a one-time event, sanctification is a present process and glorification is a future event.
God’s grace
As Christians we are guaranteed all three truths: We are forever justified, we are being sanctified and we will certainly be glorified. The whole process is dependent on God’s grace. We cannot earn our justification; we cannot achieve our sanctification; we cannot merit our glorification. God works all three of these aspects of salvation out of His love for each of us.
The whole process has been summarized in the confession that we have been delivered from the penalty of sin, we are being delivered from the power of sin and we shall be delivered from the presence of sin.
Another way of summarizing this process says that Christians’ ultimate destiny involves being in a place and being like Christ. In the language of Hebrews 12:23, the ultimate destiny of all believers is to be “just men made perfect.”
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