Romans 27: From Justification to Sanctification

[Rebbe]

PAUL'S LETTER TO THE ROMAN CHRISTIANS (27)
Analytical Commentary on Romans

FROM JUSTIFICATION TO SANCTIFICATION

Copyright © BRI 2017 All Rights Reserved Worldwide by Les Aron Gosling,
Messianic Lecturer (BRI/IMCF)

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"To those who preach and teach, let me say to you that if you are never accused of two things, be absolutely certain you are not preaching or teaching the Gospel. These two things are, 'You are making void the law' and 'You are saying that you can sin and get away with it.' If you're never accused of those things, you're not preaching the Gospel" -- Defrocked SDA minister and lecturer Des Ford.

"The fact is, truth and error often run very close to each other. The truth is that we are not under the law as a method of salvation, though we are under it as a standard. Nothing can ever change the fact that lying and stealing and impurity and adultery and idolatry are wrong. The cross didn't change that.  Those things are forever wrong. Christians are free from the law as a method because we've all broken it. It's too late to use the law as a method of salvation. You can't put your confidence in something you've smashed to smithereens. It's a broken-down horse. It can't help you onwards" (Des Ford, Right With God Right Now, 1999, 93).

"That mystic glass,
Seizing the fiery-winged element,
Unravels all its lines of blended light,
And to the studious eye their several glow,
Holds steadily:- So deals the Mind with Thought"
-- Frontspiece of The Prism of Thought by the Baroness De Calabrella (1843)

THE TEXT
"What then are we to say? Should we habitually continue in an attitude of friendship with the sinful nature in order that Grace may abound? Absolutely not! How can we who have been separated once and for all time from our lower human nature go on living in its clutches?

"Are you so ignorant in not realising that all of us who have been immersed into Messiah Yeshua were actually immersed into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by immersion into death, so that, just as the Messiah was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might order our steps in newness of life. For if we have been united permanently by identity with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united permanently with him in a resurrection like his.

"We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the entire body with its sinful propensities [N.B., the yetzer ha'ra] might be annulled, and we might no longer be habitually enslaved to the sinful nature. For whoever has died is justified from sin. But if we have died once for all with Messiah, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Messiah, being raised from among the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to the sinful nature and alive to God in union with Messiah Yeshua. Therefore, do not let the sinful nature exercise its reign as king in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their desires.

"No longer present your members to the sinful nature as weapons of unrighteousness, but make your mind up once and for all to present yourselves at the disposal of God as those who have been brought from death to resurrection life, and present your members to God as weapons of righteousness. As a consequence, sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under legalism but under Grace.

"What conclusion can we come to? Can we occasionally sin because we are not under legalism but under Grace? Absolutely not! Are you ignorant of the fact that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of the sinful nature, have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from the sinful nature, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations [or, perhaps better, your human nature]. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness which leads to being set apart for God -- sanctification. When you were slaves of the sinful nature, you were free in regard to your relationship with righteousness.

"So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end result of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end ushers in eternal life. For what you earn in the form of a dole payment from your own sinful nature is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Messiah Yeshua our Lord" (Romans 6 Tentative BRI/IMCF Version).

THE THREE RESURRECTIONS TO SPIRIT
In our previous lecture we discussed Paul's progressive revelation concerning God's purpose of reconciling the world, saving the world, uniting "all things" -- in Greek this means the universe --  in Christ. We detailed that unveiling of God's intention beginning in 1 Corinthians and progressing to his Epistle to the Roman Christians, and culminated the lecture with a focus on his later letters to Messianic assemblies (better, synagogues) which explained the entire process in startling terms. One of the fascinating subjects on which we touched was Paul's belief in the existence of three actual resurrections to SPIRIT.

The FIRST was Yeshua's resurrection to SPIRIT as the firstfruits: inasmuch as Christ must always and invariably "have the preeminence" (Col 1.18).

The SECOND resurrection to SPIRIT will occur when those who belong to the Lord Yeshua the Messiah will constitute/inherit "the GLORY OF GOD" at his return in the skies above Jerusalem, and the THIRD will be at the conclusion of the aeon known to us as "The Great White Throne Judgment" period.

How long this age will endure is unknown to any of us but it will entail the living out before the Great White Throne of salvation and Grace of resurrected lives of those constituting "the dead" -- those "lost" possibly numbering up to 140,000,000,000 spiritually remiss souls, having died without a saving knowledge of "the One Name under the heavens given among men by which we can be saved" (Acts 4.12) and of those never having been called in the first place. Most Christians fail to see the significance of the mere mention of the Scroll of LIFE (Rev 20.12) which is opened during that same lengthy period.

This particular resurrection to PHYSICAL or MATERIAL existence is called by academics and others "the second resurrection" and it occurs at the end of the Millennium and introduces the oncoming aeon of the Great White Throne. But it is not to be confused with the THIRD resurrection to SPIRIT which brings the entirety of the human race into a resurrection to SPIRIT IN Christ at the immediate conclusion of that same age or aeon. Paul speaks of this entire mass of ordinary humanity -- men, women and children --  as constituting the "remainder" (telos) who come up the rear in the salvation procession in 1 Corinthians 15.

But HOW did Paul come to an understanding that there will be actually three resurrections only to SPIRIT as God is Spirit?

The solution to this question is presented in the Gospel of Matthew. According to the Aramaic Bible, "Yeshua told them another parable: The Kingdom of the heavens is likened to leaven which a woman took AND HID IN THREE MEASURES OF MEAL until all of it had fermented" (Mt 13.33).

Or as Young's Literal Translation had put it: "Another simile spake he to them: The reign of the heavens is like to leaven [or, yeast], which a woman having taken, hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened."

Note please that the THREE measures of yeast was in reality HIDDEN from the eyes of the population. Nobody knew anything about this process in which God was engaged. The destiny of humankind was the GREAT SECRET or MYSTERY of the ages. Israel as a people have observed the agricultural festival system for millennia -- and especially celebrated the Last Great Day in the Leviticus 23 schema with accompanied dancing and singing rejoicing in the UNITY OF GOD in relation to His blueprint (blueprint, think Torah) yet in total ignorance. They have been without any comprehension as to what it all represented in God's scheme of things. It takes a New Covenant understanding to reveal the hidden truth of God's intention for the universe.

The angel told Daniel to seal up his words of the scroll he was writing, for the day would come at the conclusion of the age when knowledge would of necessity become available to all in the world with intelligence and a desire to know and understand God.

Notice it now: "But you, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the Book until the time of the end. [Then] many shall run to and fro and search anxiously [through the Book], and knowledge [of God's purposes as revealed by His prophets] shall be increased and become great" (Daniel 12.4 AMPC).

The Living Bible interprets the verse as: "But Daniel, keep this prophecy a secret; seal it up so that it will not be understood until the end times, when travel and education shall be vastly increased!"  

That Yeshua taught a "double doctrine" -- one teaching in simplified form given to the gathered multitudes in order to dull the understanding of the world, and another form aimed at a right understanding among his authentic disciples. He stated on a number of occasions,

"To you [students] has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside [the pagan multitudes, including Greeks which at one time desired to see Yeshua] everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear, and not understand" (Mk 4.11). "With many such parables he spoke the word to them [the multitudes] as they were able to hear it, he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything" (Mk 4.33,34).

The apostle Paul followed Yeshua in this practice even modifying his message to Greek converts who were still largely carnal-minded. He delivered the mysteries of the Kingdom of God just as Yeshua did before him, on two levels. Some very early Christian teachers, like Dionysius the Areopagite, who warned his students in his writings against disclosing his beliefs to "the uninitiated."

In Paul's opinion his converts did not deserve to be served with the insights God had granted him. Paul saw the fruits of their carnality, in their running after this man or that man. They were looking to men and not to the ONE MAN who mattered -- their Lord Yeshua.

"I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Messiah. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men? For when one says, 'I am of Paul,' and another, 'I belong to Apollos,' are you not merely men?" (1 Cor 3.1-4).

This is why we today can readily enough grasp the secret (and largely unexplained) parable from Yeshua's own lips regarding the (until this century and the latter decades of the 20th century now behind us) three secret resurrections of human beings to SPIRIT as God is Spirit. Paul and the priestly John (his rival colleague) lay it all out before us -- and in this instance Paul's and John's writings must be taken together -- but it takes the initial prompting of the Ruach HaKodesh to actively engage in our understanding to bring us comprehension as to its remarkable revelation. For only by God's Spirit can we understand spiritual revelations.

In a sense we are already in "the first resurrection." Now, RIGHT NOW, in fact. We are already raised together into "heavenly offices" as far as God the FatherMother is concerned. God SEES all things as they are in His mind. As far as God is concerned we are sitting NOW at God's right hand IN Christ. When God looks at His Son He sees US.

We are JUSTIFIED -- declared RIGHTEOUS. We have already, in the sense I have been describing, been resurrected to SPIRIT and we see Him in our mind's eye as He is (Jn 3.1-3).

PAUL MOVES INTO SANCTIFICATION
Paul has spent five chapters writing in Romans about our justification. Now, in Romans 6 Paul brings to a successful conclusion what has gone before and introduces the idea of being set apart for God in what is left of our life on earth. And this idea of being set apart for God is called SANCTIFICATION.   A.E. Knoch communicates the conclusion of the fifth chapter expressly. "Just as Adam's sin was against God's expressed command, and thus was a personal affront to God as well as a misdeed bringing harm on his own head, so those under the law, by sinning against light, greatly increased the sinfulness of sin. Obedience to the law would have banished sin and death. Disobedience enhanced their power.  But Grace not only exceeds the effects of sin, but superexceeds the offenses of those under law, so that now, Grace has dethroned Sin" (A.E. Knoch, Concordant Commentary on the New Testament, 1968, 235 Italic emphasis his own).

Grace has dethroned sin. And so it has. If only Christians today would give their assent to this proposition. Paul in this next chapter of Romans 6 now begins to argue the "absolute despotism of Grace" and assures his readership "that if we should be persisting in sin, Grace would increase. While [Paul's] following argument is against persistence in sin, it confirms the sovereignty of Grace. Let us not deny this marvelous doctrine. It will give us rich, exultant liberty, ridding us of the thralldom of Sin, and giving us power to avoid the very sins which unnatural logic supposes we would eagerly follow, now that there is no condemnation even if we should sin" (Knoch, ibid).

It has been said, and I agree wholeheartedly with this proposition, that GRACE is the most dangerous doctrine in the entirety of the Bible.

The word Tertullian gave us, "sanctification," is from a Greek word hagiasmos meaning to set apart, to process into a state of becoming -- progressively -- holy. There is a condition (a sanctification) we experience now (i.e, character) by our being set apart or consecrated by God's holy Spirit, but we are not considered morally whole at this juncture. Rather we grow into a transformed STATE OF BEING holy.

BUT CAN WE TRULY DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN JUSTIFICATION AND SANCTIFICATION?
I must emphasise that Rome never quite grasped what the difference was between justification and sanctification. While the one (justification) was legal and external -- extrinsically worked out by Mashiach on our behalf on the bloodied tree of Golgoleth -- the other (sanctification) was an inward working out of our salvation which was begun intrinsically by the holy Spirit upon our (actual) conception or begettal by God. But can we differentiate the two in terms of ACTUALISED REALITY? This is a question I have put to ministers of many denominations in private talks with them (especially during my tenure as a token Jew with the largest international missionary radio ministry on earth). Very few ministers, elders, rectors, and pastors were "game" to make an official statement on the issue.

Astute theologian and lecturer Alva McClain notes, "Justification cannot [in real terms] be separated from sanctification, except for the purposes of study. No man can experience sanctification unless he has first been justified in the sight of God. Our human minds can only deal with one aspect at a time, but God never works that way. Justification and sanctification are two aspects of the one work of God in saving men."

Now as much as some of us may baulk at McClain's logic, he is right. McClain has also refused to give in to the temptation to divide God in his thought of UNITY. But his "rightness" in this matter is still highly explosive. It's one step away from Rome. Yet, having said this, consider Barth scholar Peter J. Leithart's view on Barth's contribution to the theology of justification (https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2014/11/barth-on-justification). This theologian and President of the Theopolis Institute for Biblical Liturgical and Cultural Studies in Alabama writes:  

"Barth's is an utterly, manically theocentric account of justification... One of the most striking indications of this is the way he deals with the question of the temporal distance between the cross/resurrection and the lives of sinners saved by Christ: How is that temporal distance to be bridged? Barth acknowledges it's a real question, and one that has plagued modern theology, but then he pushes deeper: The real issue, he thinks, is not the temporal distance but the sheer fact of the cross and resurrection.  

"We have to ask whether our whole concern about our temporal distance from Jesus Christ, our indirect relationship to Him, is not a genuine problem only in the sense that it represents a movement of flight from this encounter. Are we not putting up a technical difficulty, knowing all the time, that it is not this difficulty that oppresses us, but rather the concern that this difficulty is not so great that it cannot be removed? -- Isn't the real problem, Barth asks, our resistance to the notion that God occupies the same time and space that we occupy? Isn't this really a question of us trying to protect ourselves and our space from God?" (Church Dogmatics, IV.1, 290-1).

"Barth's theocentricity also comes out in his emphasis on the fact that justification is first and foremost the justification of God, which He describes not only in terms of the demonstration of God's righteousness but in terms of the assertion of God's rights. God is Creator and has elected man as covenant-partner with Him. Human beings resist this right and want to assert their autonomy. Human rebellion and sin is a challenge to God's right. In justification, God asserts His claim as Creator: "This right of God is compromised by sin, by the existence of man as the man of sin, by the fact of his pride and fall. We have described this fact as the invasion by chaos of the cosmos of God's creating, as the blot on his creation. Is God the Creator and Lord in relation to this blot on the cosmos and man, or is He not? Is He the Creator and Lord if this invasion is possible or tolerable, if evil can sustain and make good its claim to actuality? The justification of man is plainly God's decision that this claim is empty, that this invasion and blot is impossible and intolerable, that it cannot be suffered. It is God's contradiction of the contradiction raised against Himself." God said "Let there be light," not "let there be darkness," and justification is His intervention against the darkness (562).

"Barth's doctrine of justification is also remarkable for the way he integrates resurrection into justification. Justification is God's condemnation of the man of sin... His assertion of His right and His justice against human rebellion. But it is not only an assertion of right as Judge against man as sinner, whose place Christ takes, but an assertion of His determination to make and elect man as His covenant-partner. Without resurrection of the new man, the judgment passed on the old man is incomplete. Justification is simply not accomplished at all unless the mortificatio of the flesh at the cross is followed by the vivificatio at the resurrection. And this means too that justification cannot be a bare verdict that leaves man existentially in the same position he was before justification. Justification in the lives of sinners means the reception of the condemnation (cross) and justification (resurrection) that occurred in Jesus. It means being reconstituted as a new human being, with a past now dead and gone, with a new future of life.

"As Barth puts it, the pardon of God does not mean that "something is said concerning us, or, as it were, pasted on us, but that a fact is created, a human situation which is basically altered... The divine pardon that takes place in Jesus Christ has a binding force. It speaks of a being and possession of the man to whom it applied" (570). Note: a being and a possession" end quote.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING TO THINK TRANSCENDENTALLY
Because God is ONE and God has always existed in some way outside, above and beyond our finite mind's ability to perceive of no-space and no-time -- and only through an intense meditation during which we surrender all conceptualisations of the entire field of opposites can any of us ever hope to understand God AS GOD IS -- we can intellectually translate into a realisation that God never worked in eternity but rather eternally works in a never-ending-ongoing "process" of activity ("My Father works incessantly..." Jn 5.17) and therefore as the Creative Genius of SpaceTime God never uttered words but rather WORD. God's acts and His intentions are ONE and the same. We are dealing with God, not man. Space and Time were created by God (brought into being and an existence) and therefore in some way unknown to our limited impermanent minds God was "before" (I am again with regret caught in the transient language of dualism) any thought of time and space yet largely as captives to the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" we cannot but seem to "hold" God in the bind/prison/anthropomorphism of those artificially constructed and restrictive thoughtforms. Captives of Genesis 3 we are to the degree that we realise that we are captives. Yet the God who is transcendent is also very much immanent. There is no where where God is not. But God functions through individual CONSCIOUSNESS and THAT becomes our CONSCIOUSNESS when we have learned to "be still and know that I am God" (Ps 46.10). It has become my personal belief (and I share this admission with you all) that Spirit is never working for us, and never has. Rather the Ruach HaKodesh works IN us and THROUGH us as we generate humility and yield ourselves (even in our thoughts and thought-processess) so that the Almighty God can take over completely and entirely in His Free Will. That must be our personal goal and objective. In other words to "seek first the Kingdom (Government) of God and His righteousness" (Mt 6.33). Only in this way can any of us break the burdensome shackles of such a strong delusion as this present created illusory order, this present Dream Image, seems to present to us.

But along with this prime understanding one must keep in mind -- ALL-WAYS -- that our Salvific safe-keeping in God is founded and grounded in the ONE act of Christ in justifying us at the cross. I say we must keep such a thought in the forefront of our consciousness for the prime reason that we are legalists -- all of us! As Des Ford puts it:

"Justification and sanctification are like two railroad lines that run side by side all the way, all the days of your life. They may look as though they merge and join on the horizon. The fact is they run parallel, side by side, all the way. In other words, every minute of your stand before God does not depend on how you are doing, but how Christ has done. That's the good news of the Gospel. The New Testament talks about being justified by faith. It's a constant thing -- being justified. The moment I believe, the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next.  Even when I fail as a Christian, I'm justified by faith.

"You see, we're all born legalists. When we do something wrong, we feel condemned. Then we are prone to put our sin up on a pedestal and be miserable for three days. When we think we've punished ourselves enough with remorse, then we say, "God, now I'll accept forgiveness. Thank you."

"That's not how justification works. It's justification by faith. "Being justified by faith." "Being justified by faith."

"If you are looking to Jesus, justification is never repeated in the sense of a new justification. Justification is over you all the time... Your status is always the same in Christ -- perfect. Your state [on the other hand] is up and down, in and out, a mess. Anyone honestly looking within themselves cannot but be discouraged... So, its very important to distinguished BUT NOT SEPARATE these two things: justification and sanctification. One adheres on the outside, the other adheres on the inside. One is based on what Christ did for me. The other is based on what Christ does in me. The first is perfect, complete and 100 percent. The second isn't, because God is doing it in me, and that's miserable terrain to work in" (Des Ford, Right With God Right Now, 1999, 20ff).

Alva McClain (Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches) and Des Ford (Seventh Day Adventism) may have approached the entire issue of justification and sanctification from entirely different points on the theological compass, and their terminology may seem to connect with the undercurrent of Roman Catholic dogma, but their perspective is undeniably biblical in this matter of the ONE God's loving ACT of GRACE in Yeshua the Messiah. Justification and sanctification are two faces of the ONE coin.

Caught still in the midst of a seemingly real world of immense contrasts and differences we are learning daily by the indwelling of the Ruach HaKodesh to keep certain issues distinct that must never be separate.

"Distinguish but don't separate. Otherwise, you won't be able to see the glory of Christ in his finished work on the cross. This work was for us, and gives us a perfect standing with God in a moment. That's justification. The fruit of justification, of being declared righteous in Christ, is the coming of the Holy Spirit into your life. This is sanctification, which always follows justification" (Ford., ibid, 38).

"Sh'ma Yisrael! Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad." "Hear O Israel! The LORD our gods the LORD is ONE." O how our thinking must change.

In our next lecture we shall treat Romans 6.2 in the King James Version and its daughters -- KJ21, BRG, CEV, DRA, ERV, GNV, JUB, NLV and others -- with the contempt it deserves.

THIS CONCLUDES LECTURE 27

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