SANCTIFICATION THE ESTABLISHING GRACE

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: through whom also we have had our access (by faith) into this grace wherein we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God" (Rom. 5:1, 2).

This is the beginning of one of the most difficult passages in the Bible to interpret. It has been for centuries the battleground of theologians. But its purpose is plain. It is designed to exhibit the benefits of the gospel plan of salvation. The apostle has fully established in the preceding chapters:

1.That men were under condemnation for sin;

2. That this involved alike both Jews and Gentiles;

3.That there was no escape now for any but by pardon, not by merit but by grace;

4. That this plan was fully made known by the gospel of Christ; and

5. That this is no new doctrine, but was the way in which both Abraham and David had been accepted before God.

Thus we have here the shining way set forth, that leads from the gross darkness of heathenism in the first chapter to the glorious life of holiness depicted in the twelfth chapter.

There are two blessings named in the text. The first verse sets forth the one: the second verse begins the description of the other. The first is called "Justification by Faith": the second is called "Sanctification by Faith." We cannot change the order of these blessings. The second cannot come first to the heart. Nor are they simultaneous. There are necessary and essential reasons why they are successive experiences. The first is for repentant sinners the second is only for the sons of God.

So He always pleads with sinners to repent and be pardoned: but He is always solicitous for Christians that they should be sanctified.

We will therefore discuss the texts in the natural and divine order.

I. Consider the First Blessing-

Justification By Faith

This is the truth of the Reformation, the great foundation principle of Protestantism, the blessed hope of a fallen world. No more tyranny of priesthoods now. No more prescribed ceremonials. No more penances, and pilgrimages to shrines, or sacrifices of vain oblations, or useless works to merit salvation. "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us through the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which He poured out upon us richly, through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

Jesus took our place, honored the government we had dishonored, obeyed the law that we had broken. As a governmental expedient, He, the Governor of the universe Himself, suffered vicariously as we deserved to suffer, and now He can be just and yet offer salvation on proper terms to all offenders. This He freely does. He takes a solemn oath before the universe that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and that it is not His will that any should perish. He longs to save all, and the atonement He has made makes it now proper and possible for Him, consistently with the interests of His government, and His own honor, and the well-being of all His subjects, to save all who will comply with the simple conditions of salvation.

1. And These Conditions Are Fully And Plainly Made Known.

They are as follows:

(1) Negatively. Not by any rite or ceremony, as baptism, or partaking of the Sacrament, or by confirmation, or going to the church, or joining it, or by reading the Bible, or by cultivating morality or by self-reformation. Any or all of these may be good in their place, but none of them is a condition of salvation, and all of them together cannot bring it about.

(2) Positively. The conditions are:

(a) Repentance of sin. Sin has been the cause of all the trouble in the moral universe. It is a wilful rebellion against God. It is an assault upon His holiness and the character of His government. It is a revolt against the authority of the Most High. It is a wanton attempt to subvert and defeat all the holy purposes of God for the good of moral beings. As such, sin must be fully confessed and heartily forsaken. This is the primal condition of any peace with God. All the forces of the divine government must be forever arrayed against that malignant evil that is destroying the happiness of the beings He loves and created for His glory. Repentance means to abhor, and confess, and renounce all sin, as the first step toward reconciliation, the first condition of abiding peace.

(b) The other essential condition is faith. And that faith is not merely, as some suppose, a mere intellectual assent to doctrine, or a mental apprehension of truth. The action of all the faculties of the moral nature is involved. Faith is that belief of the intellect, that consent of the affections, and that act of the will by which the soul commits itself to Christ Jesus for salvation. Saving faith apprehends the atoning work of Christ as the divine remedy for sin, trusts directly therein, and receives forgiveness as the immediate gift of God.

2. Notice The Results

(1) "We are justified," says the text. Justification is that judicial act of God by which, on condition of the sinner's repentance of sin and faith in the atoning Saviour, He pardons his sins, remits the penalty, restores him to the divine favor, and treats him as if he had never sinned.

(2) "We have peace with God's law and government." We have now consented to them, and admitted that they were always righteous. We have fallen in with God's plan of reconciliation, and His indignation is no longer kindled against us. No more do thunderbolts of divine wrath hang over us. Hell no longer yawns for our advancing feet. The divine government recognizes us now as the sons of God. We have received the divine life into our souls, and are born again into the family of God.

(3) This settles the sin-question. Sin had to be forsaken to get this blessing of sonship, and it costs as much to keep the blessing as it did to get it. "We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not." When professors of religion sport with sin, they are backslidden and have lost their experience.

II. Notice the blessing of the second verse

"Through whom also." "Also" means something in addition. There is, in other words, a second epochal experience, after regeneration, which God has for the soul, and invites us all to obtain, in this epistle. It is called in the next chapter "sanctification." It is described as being "free from the sin." The Century Dictionary defines sanctification as "The act of God's grace by which the affections of men are purified, and the soul is cleansed from sin," bringing "conformity of heart and life to the will of God." The Standard Dictionary defines it as "The gracious work of the Holy Spirit whereby the believer is freed from sin, and exalted to holiness of heart and life." Notice, it is only the "believer" -- the man already a Christian -- who can receive this blessing: and it is wrought "by the Holy Spirit."

1. Notice That It Is Described In This Verse As "The Grace Wherein We Stand." It has been well called "the standing grace," for it makes it easier to keep our religious experience, and "to stand" against the wiles of the devil, and not "fall" or "backslide." And this is most manifestly true, because:

(1) It removes abnormal physical appetites. I have heard literally thousands testify to having lost their appetites for tobacco and intoxicants and drugs, and the passion for gambling, in a moment of time.

(2) It removes the abnormal out of the natural appetites that are in themselves perfectly innocent, and are divinely provided as essential to our very being. It is then easier to make them submissive to reason.

(3) It cleanses from the depraved propensity to sin, the disordered condition of all our sensibilities that produces a sad proclivity to evil. When this is accomplished by sanctifying grace, temptations are no longer internal, but external, and have less power over the soul. The proneness to wander from God is displaced by a sweet attraction for God. The heart is spoiled for the world, and finds a charm in heavenly things. For all these and many more reasons to be given, it is easier to "stand" in sanctification than in the justified experience.

2. It Is Further Described As The "Joy-Giving" Grace. "We also rejoice in our tribulations." Few unsanctified Christians ever do that. The carnal the sin frets and chafes and complains under trials. It naturally murmurs under afflictions, and questions the wisdom of God's providences and the allotments of His grace. But the sanctified heart, cleansed from the spirit of repining, and fortified by a larger faith, sings in the prison of tribulation, knowing that a divine purpose planned it and that all is well.

People are scared away from this second blessing by the notion that it will rob them of all their joys. But it only weans them from the hollow and deceptive pleasures of the world, while it satisfies them with the perennial joys of heaven. They exchange the unrewarded and cruel tasks of Egypt for the love-service of Canaan: they trade leeks and garlics for Eshcol clusters; they yield up the insipid waters of the Nile, and gain the springs and streams of the Promised Land and the bountiful rains from heaven; they surrender barrenness and receive fruitfulness; they lose the drudgery of legal service and are rewarded with the gladness of pleasing God.

3. It Is Described As An Experience Of "Hope And Love." "Tribulation worketh patience (constancy); and patience, probation (approved character -- Lange); and approval, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost, who was given unto us." Here is the glorious fruition of this blessed second work of grace. Joyless, despondent Christians are not fair samples of what God can make of sinful men. We may have an unclouded hope, confirmed by God's own testimony shed abroad in our hearts by the incoming, sanctifying Holy Ghost -- the testimony of a consciousness of God's love for us, awakening in us a reciprocal love for God. This is the holy life of perfect love which the gospel requires and makes provision for in our experience.

An illustration will be in place here. Mrs. Jonathan Edwards received the Holy Spirit baptism in 1742, and she writes: "I cannot find language to express how certain the everlasting love of God appeared; the everlasting mountains and hills were but shadows to it. My safety, and happiness, and eternal enjoyment of God's immutable love seemed as durable and unchangeable as God himself. Melted and overcome by the sweetness of this assurance, I fell into a great flow of tears, and could not forbear weeping aloud. The presence of God was so near and real that I seemed scarcely conscious of anything else. At night my soul seemed to be filled with an inexpressibly sweet and pure love to God and to the children of God, with a refreshing consolation and solace of soul which made me willing to lie on the earth at the feet of the servants of God, to declare His gracious dealings with me, and breathe forth before them my gratitude and love and praise. All night I continued in a constant, clear, and lively sense of the heavenly sweetness of Christ's excellent and transcendent love, and of His nearness to me and of my dearness to Him, with an inexpressibly sweet calmness of soul in an entire rest in Him." The above is this passage of Scripture in actual experience.