“And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who
became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”
Our life in Christ operates in two scriptural modes. One is grace, the other is faith. Grace is God’s love to us and faith is our response. It is God’s power that makes both effective.
We have been drilling down the terms in 1Corintihinas 1:30 since they give us an In Christ Jesus focus. We considered wisdom from a human point of view, i.e., being able to discern God’s truth. Then, we considered righteousness, the vital union a 2Corinthinas 5:17 Christian has with God. Righteousness is God the Father’s nature birthed into each of His adopted children.
We opened the sanctification door last week and separated it from Justification. Sanctification does not lead to justification, justification enables sanctification. For us to be “in Christ” and for “Christ to be in us”, which is literally true, means our risen Lord made us righteous like Himself. We could not be the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit contaminated with self in our essential nature. We are created new in Christ Jesus spiritually, the old is passed away. Righteousness is our nature because we have born a second time spiritually alive in Christ Jesus. This is possible, as we have seen, because sin no longer has power to hold us hostage; it has been put to death. Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit within the newly born Christian making us holy.
Sanctification has a couple meanings, but here it means our essential nature, who we are in Christ. Our spirit has been joined to God’s Spirit but our soul and body have not. Our will to choose has become the intermediary between our spirit/Spirit in Christ and our body and soul which have not yet been redeemed. A radical change will be seen in our soul and body after we have been placed in Christ Jesus.
Some of our reformed mentors argue our soul is divided into two parts, the mind joined to the Spirit while the “heart” is joined to the fleshly body. I’m sympathetic to this suggestion but there is not enough scriptural evidence to make it a compelling argument. I still have a will to choose regardless if it is an organic love choice or structural reason choice.
The other prominent meaning is rooted in the Old Testament. Here sanctification means to be separated for a special or divine purpose. The sanctification section of your Grace Vocabulary will have these references broken out (when you get it). Things and people had to be separated and cleansed before being used in temple worship and holy ceremony. Sin pollutes and contaminates so that things needed to be purified before being put to holy use.
God is outside the realm of earthly sin. Righteousness is an antecedent to who God is. He is outside the contamination of our worldly system. It is important our approach to God acknowledges this separation between our polluted, corrupted environment and God’s Holy, pure righteousness defining His nature. Ceremony and rituals reminded Israel of the incongruity between Creator and His creation after sin occurred.
Sanctification, in its second meaning, as we are using it here, is the application of our nature in Christ into our whole mind, heart and body so that we, as a tri-part being, become Holy as He is Holy (1Peter 1:15-16). He has made us holy through His Spirit’s union with our spirit, so that, His power working in us can make our soul and body as pure as He is pure (2Corinthians 4:11). Sanctification will not be completed, in this meaning, until we have been given a resurrection body like Christ’s (Philippians 3:20-21).
Remember when God called Moses from the fire that did not consume the burning bush, Moses had to take off His shoes because he was standing on “holy ground” (Exodus 3:5). An alter of sacrifice could not be made with cut stones or shaped by the hand of man (Exodus 20:25). Mount Sinai become holy and set apart because it was the site of God’s visitation to His people (Exodus 19:12). Touching the border of this mountain meant death. A servant attempting to keep the Ark of the Covenant from falling off of a run away cart was killed because he touched the holy Ark of the Covenant (2Samuel 6:6-7). Vessels for sacramental use in the Tabernacle had to be “sanctified” by cleansing before use. People who wanted to be set apart for God took the vow of a Nazirite (Numbers 6:1ff) as a means of sanctification. These external practices kept before the people the reality of sin contrasted to the true righteous holiness of our Father God.
This meaning for sanctification is the common understanding we are likely to hear from the pulpit. It is the setting apart, or separating something or someone for God’s Holy purpose. This Old Testament theme is carried out under the new covenant (Hebrews 8:8 cf.) in the New Testament. It has to do with the external, visible things representing God or an extension of His attributes. Under the new covenant the emphasis shifts from physical objects to the external things of those in Christ Jesus, in other words, those things visibly revealing God’s righteous within us.
The Tabernacle and Temple were the dwelling places of God. All the things associated with worship and sacrifice were part of a ritual ceremony because of God’s holiness. Under the new covenant we have become the dwelling place of God the Holy Spirit.
Sanctification speaks to our inherent holiness in Christ Jesus making the house we live in a sacrament of holiness as well. The house we live in is our body and soul. The scriptures speaks to both our holy nature in Christ Jesus and it addresses our earthly character and behavior reflecting our spiritual nature through our mind, heart and will. So, it has to do with both our inherent nature in Christ as well as the manifestation of that nature in our visible corrupted flesh.
Holiness through New Birth. The first verse we should refer is our text, 1Corinrthinas 1:30, “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” The best way to comment on this verse might be to quote Thomas Edwards on verses 30 and 31 combined.
“It is of God’s free choice and through God’s power that ye are in Christ Jesus. Boast, therefore, not in yourselves, but in Christ Jesus, your wisdom, and in God, who united you in his Son.”
Taking each Greek term separately, Edwards shows righteousness, sanctification and redemption flow out of God uniting the believer in Christ.
Hebrews is a rich source for this truth; Hebrews 2:11, For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source; Hebrews 9:13-14, For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God; Hebrews 10:14, For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified; Hebrews 13:12, So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.
Holiness through Death of Self. My go to verse here is Romans 6:11, “So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Peter put it this way, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds we have been healed (1Peter 2:24).” We would be remiss if we did not quote Romans 12:1-2, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. So not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” We have to include Romans 8, “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:10-11).”
The reason we are saved is so the righteousness of the law can be fulfilled in us (Romans 8:4). The law was given to God’s chosen people exposing the righteousness standard for a relationship with their Creator. People could only access God’s through sacrifice because the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Jesus took care of this death payment for us and created His righteousness in us (1Peter 2:24). Having done that, those who are in Christ Jesus are no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit (Romans 8:9).
There is a song I learned in high school that goes like this:
I’m his because he made me,
I’m his because he bought me,
I’m his because I gave my heart and life to him.
When He bought me on the cross (redemption), I was sanctified by God through Christ. When I gave my heart and life to Him, I began sanctifying my physical self by putting self to death, just as did Jesus for me on the cross, giving me His eternal sanctification.
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” – Romans 6:12-14.
In summary, we have been sanctified by Jesus Christ because we are in Him, but at the same time, we have to sanctify our body and soul through the power of God working within us (Phil. 2:13).
Our life in Christ operates in two scriptural modes. One is grace, the other is faith. Grace is God’s love to us and faith is our response. It is God’s power that makes both effective.
It is God’s grace motived by His love enabling us to respond to Him in faith. Ultimately, it is love driving salvation and sanctification to its completeness. So it is that Paul writes in 1Corinthians 13 at the end of the chapter, “So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
We need to remind ourselves, as we consider these great truths, God is the sum total of all truth and while we are considering sanctification, it is only one small element in the totality of who we are in Christ.
“Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” –Romans 11:33.
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.” – Phil. 3:20-4:1