Choice:
Foundation, Means, Purpose
1 Peter 1:1–2
“Father, we’re thankful that we have freedom in
this country to gather together to proclaim the truth of Your Word, to study
it, come to understand all of its teaching, all the ramifications and
implications that we can derive from the text. No matter how profound we find
Your Word, there’s always more to learn, more to discover; and there are many
different ways in which the Holy Spirit uses it in our lives to mature us, to
give us wisdom and skill in living and to challenge us to transform our lives
to reflect the character of Jesus Christ. Father, we continue to pray for this
nation and for our president and those in the Supreme Court that are going to
be evaluating issues related to marriage. We pray that You
would give them wisdom and insight and You might continue to protect the divine
institution of marriage in this nation by means of the laws of this nation.
Father, we pray for others in the administration, that you might restrain the
influence of those whose objections are evil and self-destructive and open the
eyes to the reality of the dangers of this world internationally, the dangers
that threaten us from the possibility of a nuclear Iran. Many are self-blinded
to what is happening because they just don’t want to face the reality and the
consequences of war. As horrible as that might be, it pales in comparison to
the horrors of a nuclear terrorist nation. Father, we pray for us that as
believers, we might be relaxed and a beacon of hope and light to those around
us and that we might apply Thy Word in a way that brings honor and glory to You. We pray this is Christ’s name. Amen.”
Okay,
we are in 1 Peter 1, and we are continuing in our study of the opening lines,
the salutation. It’s taking a little longer than it usually would because as
soon as we got into this, we cracked into one of the more challenging doctrines
that’s covered in the Scripture that relates to this
whole area of foreknowledge and election and predestination. These are terms
that have been, as I’ve explained over the last three or four lessons, grossly
misunderstood for a number of different reasons. I know that sometimes I
haven’t been as clear as I should because I’ve been plowing some new ground.
I learned a long time ago listening
to pastors, that if there was a mist in the pulpit or a fog in the pew, it was
because the pastor was plowing some new ground and was working through it just
a few inches ahead of us. That’s true, and I’ve experienced it many times over
my studying that if you’re teaching three times a week, you just don’t have
that kind of time – you have so much to study and so much to read. Even
today, I cracked open an article on the salutation on 1 Peter, and I started
reading through it and thought, “I wish I’d seen this about five weeks ago.”
There’s always something you can learn from a number
of different sources. It’s just a matter for a pastor to constantly have enough
time. Sometimes it’s not a matter of how he spends his time as much as there’s
just not enough time in a finite world to really drill down on everything.
I’m going to try to synthesize this
for you tonight so that we can summarize what’s going on here in these phrases,
and then move right on down the line. We’re going to tie these three things together
in terms of these prepositional clauses in verse 2 today because this is really
setting an orientation for the reader. As a reader would read the opening, it
would give some clues as to some themes that would be brought out in the scope
of the letter of some things the writer wanted to remind the reader of to lay a
foundation prior to what he was going to challenge them with in that particular
letter.
Here we read initially, Peter
identifying himself as the apostle of Jesus Christ, and he’s writing, as we
have it translated in most translations, (although there’s a few that do move
the word “elect” up at the beginning). The word “elect” in the Greek actually
comes prior to the statement of the location of the recipients, so it should
read, “Elect to the pilgrims of the diaspora in
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father by means of the sanctification of the Spirit, for the purpose
of [directional] obedience.” So we are choice ones for a purpose. It’s not just
related to our positional identification with Christ, but it’s for a purpose,
and that purpose is for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
We’ll come back to look at that a little more as we go through that tonight.
Here are the three prepositional
phrases that all modify this adjective “elect”, or “choice ones.” So all are
given equal weight. It’s choice according to the foreknowledge of God. That
gives us the basis, the foundation for His identification of us as choice ones.
It’s in line with a standard, and that standard is what He knew from eternity
past. It’s by means of something. It doesn’t just hang out there in isolation,
but He has identified us as choice ones through a certain activity or by means
of a certain activity which is identified here as the sanctifying ministry of
God the Holy Spirit.
We have to look at that, and then
it’s for a purpose. Just as Paul states in Ephesians 2:10, we have been saved
for “good works”. That’s not morality. We have to distinguish between that.
We’ll come back to talk about that a little bit, but the Christian life isn’t
simply morality. It’s a life that’s lived by the Holy Spirit. That gets us into
experiential sanctification, which is a different issue than what we have here
in the second phrase.
It’s for the purpose of good works,
but those good works are performed as a result of our walk by
the Holy Spirit. We have a volitional decision to walk by the Holy
Spirit, and we also exercise our volition to choose each time we’re obedient,
and to be obedient by means of the Holy Spirit. The Christian life is produced,
it’s energized, it’s empowered by God the Holy Spirit. In many, many Christian
denominations and theological systems, after you’re saved you just go out and obey
the Scripture with no understanding of the role of God the Holy Spirit, no
understanding of what it means to abide in Christ, no understanding of what it
means to walk in the light. As a believer you can either walk in the light, or
walk in the darkness; walk by the Spirit, or walk according to the sin nature;
and learn how to recover. So they never understand these things in those
theological systems. The spiritual life basically becomes a life where you’re
pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. It’s all in terms of human effort
with no understanding that you could be doing it in the power of your sin
nature where it has no eternal value whatsoever, or you can do it by the Holy
Spirit. You have to understand how to recover from sin when you sin, and that’s
the role of 1 John 1:9.
(Slide 5) Just as a reminder, when
we looked at the Greek words, we saw three main Greek words that have to do
with election. First, the verb EKLEGOMAI, the adjective EKLEKTOS,
and the noun EKLOGE. The verb has the idea of choosing out,
or selecting, someone usually for the purpose of commissioning them or
appointing them to a purpose. It’s not just the idea of going “eeny, meeny, miney,
moe.” The point is that they’re being appointed to
something significant.
The word EKLEKTOS is normally translated elect or chosen. It is an
adjective and it actually, as we see, has the idea of being choice or
excellent. It is pointing out the best of something. It’s that qualitative
idea. I’m going to clarify that a little bit more as we go through. It
indicates there is a group of select ones. That’s not
talking about God making a choice. It’s talking about the quality. We looked at
that and saw that is also the idea in the Old Testament in the word that’s
translated elect often, bachir.
It has the idea of the choice, the elect, or the most excellent ones.
I’ve used the illustration of the
Magnum bar, the select almonds; the highest quality of
almonds. This is the same idea we saw in Matthew 22:14. This is foundational I
think: this whole parable that the Lord told about the wedding feast, where he
sends out his messengers to invite everyone, but some are not willing to come.
So that as a result, the father of the groom then sends out the invitations to
more; to everyone, good and bad. There are those that
respond to the invitation. When we next see them, they’re seated at the
banquet, clothed in special clothing. But there’s one there that doesn’t have
on the right kind of clothing, and he is ejected from the banquet. Then it
concludes with this verse, “Many are called [the invitation that goes out to
many] but few are chosen.” The invitation went to many who didn’t come, so all,
in one sense, are chosen in that they’re all invited. The translation of EKLEKTOS here is confusing because it
indicates that the one inviting does the choosing. The only ones stated in the
parable who make a choice are those who are not willing to come. Those who come
are choice because they have on the right clothing, which is tantamount to the
imputation of righteousness.
When we look at this passage and it
talks about “elect according to the foreknowledge of God,” what we learned in
our study of foreknowledge is that this relates to knowledge ahead of time.
It’s sometimes called prescience: to know something beforehand. It doesn’t have
the idea of choosing, or the idea of predetermining, or the idea of
foreordination. It doesn’t have the idea of predestination. It is simply the
idea of knowing something ahead of time.
Back to 1 Peter 1:1–2. That’s
just kind of a summary for us. Peter is writing to the elect; and they’re going
to be defined by those three prepositional clauses. But they’re located in
these areas of what we now call Turkey, what was then referred to by these
regional names. We also call this whole area Asia Minor. It refers to these
five locations: residents of the diaspora in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. Here they are on the map. It runs in a
clockwise direction. Pontus. Then Galatia. I chose this particular map because
the coloring really shows the contrast so you can see where these territories
were located. Pontus is up on the Black Sea. Galatia, as you see, is a rather
large area looking at the green here. When Paul went on his first missionary
journey, he went to Cypress first. Then he came back here to Pamphylia. Then he went to Lystra,
Iconium, and Derbe. He also
went to Antioch and Pisidia up here; and then Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. Then he went back to Antioch, so he was in southern
Galatia.
I believe that’s who
he wrote Galatians to. There’s a big dispute among scholars over whether he
wrote Galatians to northern Galatia, or was writing to the southern Galatians.
This shows you the broad territory that Galatia covered. Cappadocia is over
here in the yellow. To the west you have Asia. The Roman province of Asia is
where, on Paul’s second missionary journey, he was prohibited from going to
Asia or to Bithynia. God the Holy Spirit was leading him to Troas and
eventually over into Europe. Peter is writing to this group. Probably there’s a
significance to the order in that the messenger who is carrying the epistle is
probably taking it first to Pontus, then to Galatia, then to Cappadocia, and
then west to Asia and back up to Bithynia; so that would describe his direction.
They’re identified as resident
aliens in the diaspora. I believe the use of the term
here PAREPIDEMOS is used of the patriarchs, that
even though they were resident aliens who didn’t own the land that was a term
the Scripture uses along with the term diaspora,
which is also used a couple of times in the New Testament; but it always refers
to Jewish people, to ethnic Jews. So Peter is writing to Jewish-background
believers.
That runs counter probably to, and I
won’t put a percentage on it, but there’s a small minority that hold this view.
Most of the commentators hold the view that this was written to Gentiles who
are compared to the Jews in the diaspora. There’s not
comparative language here, and I think that violates the basic rule of literal
interpretation. The other thing you find is those who take this as some sort of
analogy to the diaspora and not really writing
primarily to Jews, but writing to Gentiles, Church Age believers, and just
comparing them to the scattering of the Jews in the Old Testament; but Peter
also talks about greetings from Babylon, so they tend to take that as a
long-literal term and as a code word for Rome. I don’t believe that. I think
Babylon means Babylon.
Peter was the apostle to the Jews,
and Babylon was the second largest area of Jewish habitation in the diaspora. It had a huge, huge Jewish population, second
only to the population in Judea and Jerusalem. That again supports the idea
that he’s writing to primarily a Jewish background audience. First thing we
learn is that the residents of the diaspora are Jews
who had trusted in Jesus as Messiah. The second thing we learn is that the term elect as a translation of the Greek adjective EKLEKTOI has as its primary meaning, an
emphasis on quality. I can’t express that enough. It’s
not saying “you’re chosen and you’re not” but it’s a focus on the quality of
these individuals. They are choice ones, or excellent ones.
We saw from Matthew 22 that that
choice is related to their possession of the right garments, that they have
imputed righteousness, the perfect righteousness of Christ, which is the basis
for justification. Another thing we ought to say about this word elect is to
remember that there’s also an overtone with this word in terms of the Old
Testament choice God made of Abraham and his descendants. That’s his choice
nation, Israel, from the Old Testament. So the question we ought to ask is if
this is written to Jewish background believers, does this idea of calling them
elect or choice ones have any overtones related to the Old Testament?
They are choice ones by virtue of
every Jew, saved, unsaved, atheist, Buddhist, secular; every Jew is choice
because they are descendants of Abraham, and therefore heirs of the Abrahamic
covenant. That doesn’t mean they’re saved. It just means that in terms of God’s
plan of choosing Israel, that they are set apart or appointed for a purpose.
That fits within the idea of EKLEKTOI. Some people have raised that as a possibility, but I don’t think it
has anything to do with the Abrahamic covenant.
Under the third point, another thing
we can say about the use of this word is that it’s not in reference to Jewish
background believers exclusively in terms of their relation to their creator
and the covenant. We know this because of the second two phrases, “by means of
the sanctification of the Holy Spirit.” See, that didn’t happen in the Old
Testament. That’s not something that’s related to God’s plan for Israel in the
Age of Israel, or under the Dispensation of the Patriarchs, or the Mosaic Law.
You didn’t have the sanctification of the Holy Spirit at that time. That indicates
this is talking about church age believers, and is applied to church age
believers, and doesn’t have any overtone of being related to the Abrahamic
covenant and their Jewish ethnicity.
The second line, that it’s “for
obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,” certainly doesn’t
apply in the Old Testament because in the Old Testament the sprinkling of the
blood was of the bulls and the goats. It was ritual sacrifice; so both of these
phrases tell us that Peter is addressing church age believers. They may be
Jewish background, but that’s really not coming into play when we read this
word EKLEKTOI.
Now the fourth thing I want to say
about this is that the excellence or quality we have here is further defined
for us. It’s not just hanging out there in isolation. Why does Peter say you’re
choice and say three things about it? The first thing he says is about this
choiceness of “according to the foreknowledge of God.” In studying that over
the last couple of weeks, we’ve pointed out several times that first of all,
foreknowledge is defined as knowledge beforehand. It does not refer to
something elect, foreordination, predetermination or any of the other definitions
you usually find in the Reformed camps. It simply means to know something ahead
of time.
The next thing we learn is that
God’s identification of them as choice is according to a standard. The
preposition in the Greek is the word KATA. We see a parallel in 2 Thessalonians 2:9 in talking about the
Antichrist. Paul writes, “Whose coming is according to, KATA…” That’s the same preposition in
the Greek. “According to the working of Satan.” KATA communicates that something is according to a
particular standard or may be on the basis of something. The Antichrist coming
is on the basis of Satan’s work, or it’s because of Satan’s work. Those three
phrases sort of help us define what “according to” means.
We see that this foreknowledge,
God’s prescience, identifies us as choice ones, and it’s according to something
that is known ahead of time by God; that in eternity past, God knew who would
possess perfect righteousness. So this quality is due to, or it’s because of,
or it’s based upon God’s knowledge from eternity past.
We wrap this up with four things.
First of all, in eternity past God, in His omniscience, knew who would respond
to the invitation to trust in Christ as Savior. He’s not being arbitrary. You
don’t have God just saying, “Okay, I’m going to create ten people. Four of them
I’m going to designate will be saved, and six of them will not be saved.” Even
if you expand it and say that the four who will be saved will be saved through
faith, God is still picking who will be saved and who won’t be saved, and it’s
not predicated upon any responsibility on their part.
We’re not told anywhere in Scripture
what the criteria or condition is for God’s choosing. In Calvinism, it’s
expressed as unconditional election, meaning that God chooses them on the basis
of no condition, which makes it very arbitrary. God is just saying, “I’m going
to select you but not you.” They exclude the idea of God’s prescience, His
foreknowledge, His knowledge of future things from that decision.
In Calvinist theology God can’t know
something unless He’s already determined it. According to them, God does not
know the alternatives, the hypotheticals, or what
philosophers call the counterfactuals - the things that coulda,
shoulda, woulda happen, but
didn’t happen. They say God just knows what will happen. He doesn’t know what
might happen. We see that in eternity past, part of what goes into God’s
thinking is His knowledge of future contingent events and what will actually
take place.
So we graph it this way. The outer circle
represents all the knowledge that God has. He is omniscient. There never was a
time when God did not know all of the knowable. He immediately precedes it for
all time. It is a direct knowledge that God has. He never learns anything. He
never acquires knowledge or loses knowledge. He always knows everything. That
includes all of the possible as well as all of the actual. Foreknowledge
relates to what God knows in advance will happen. That goes into His decision-making
as He makes this selection.
The choiceness is a result that in
His plan, those who trust in Christ will receive imputed righteousness, and
those who trust in Christ will be the choice ones, and that is the
determination of His plan. He is not individually determining who will and who won’t.
He is saying that those who trust in Christ, those who respond to the
invitation, are the ones who are clothed with the right garments at the
banquet. They’re the ones who have imputed righteousness. Those are the ones
who have the quality. They are the choice ones.
That is point 2. Those who respond
in faith alone receive the imputation of perfect righteousness from God and are
declared righteousness. So they are choice because they have something they
didn’t earn. They have Christ’s righteousness. They have not merited it,
because the merit is at the cross. It is Christ’s righteousness. It’s not
faith. In theology everybody seems to want to put merit somewhere. Calvinists
often say faith is a gift. They mean that faith in Christ is a gift. It’s different
from the faith you had this morning when you were running late and ran out to
your car to put the key in, and it started, you believed it would start. If it
didn’t, then you were surprised because you believed it would start. That’s the
issue. It’s the same kind of faith in Christ. A Calvinist will say no, it’s not;
because they say it’s not saving faith; it’s not the
right kind of faith.
The Bible says that it’s the object
of faith. Anyone can believe. A perfect picture is the Lord’s Table. Anyone can
eat. Anyone can drink. That is a picture of accepting or receiving Christ into
our life. Anyone can do it. It’s based upon their decision. It’s not based on
God’s decision. He’s not choosing who will and who won’t. It’s the object of
faith, the work of Christ that gives the merit to the individual from the
imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Those who respond in faith alone receive
the imputation of perfect righteousness from God, and are declared righteous.
They’re the ones who possess that quality. They become choice ones because they
possess perfect righteousness.
Third, we see from this that God’s
knowledge beforehand, his prior knowledge, or prescience, perceives who will
believe and who will not. On that basis of knowing that these will believe and
receive imputed righteousness, they are the choice ones. This idea of being
choice or select ones, when you look through all of the word study literature,
goes back to concepts in the ancient world, especially in ancient Greece in the
democracy of Athens: that those who were elected or chosen in the election,
were appointed to a responsibility. The focus is not on the process of
choosing, but the focus is on the responsibility of being appointed to a
responsibility. That’s also sort of a nuance that’s part of this concept - that
those who are choice receive the perfect righteousness of Christ so they can
fulfill the responsibility God has given them.
This leads to the second of the
three prepositional phrases that we have. They are sanctified
by the Holy Spirit. They’re set apart by the Holy Spirit. This idea of
being choice is related to a quality that every believer has: the perfect
righteousness of Christ. How do we receive that? We receive that by our
identification with Christ in our death, burial, and resurrection. In that
identification with Christ, we are set apart, so these are all tightly, closely
related concepts between being choice ones, receiving imputed righteousness,
and being set apart positionally by God the Holy Spirit.
The fourth thing I’ve noted is that
inclusion in this group is not because of faith. The phrase “because of faith”
would be expressed in Greek with a preposition DIA with an accusative case. It would indicate that faith
was the cause of a person’s salvation but the Bible says we’re saved through
faith. Faith is simply a means by which something is accomplished. It’s not the
cause. The cause is the love of God. He is the One who provides salvation. So
inclusion in this group is not because of faith. That makes faith meritorious.
The merit or the value is the death of Christ, not the kind of faith that a
person has. That helps us understand that first phrase, “We are choice ones
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” It doesn’t stop there. It’s
not a period. It’s not even a semi-colon. It’s a comma because there’s a second
prepositional phrase that qualifies and helps us understand the basis for being
choice ones.
It is by means of the sanctification
of the Spirit. This is an extremely important doctrine, and the term
“sanctification” actually has three senses to it in the New Testament. It’s
pictured through the sacrifices in the Old Testament. First of all let’s look
at the word group that’s used. These words, HAGIASMOS, HAGIOS, HAGIAZO, and HAGIASMOS represent the words in the Greek text, all related to
one another. The word that’s used here in this verse is the noun HAGIASMOS. It’s used ten times, and it’s
typically translated holiness, sanctification, or consecration.
Words like holiness, sanctification,
and consecration are words that you hear teenagers tweeting all the time.
Right? Everyone knows these words. You use them when you’re at the grocery
store, right? These words have basically become marginalized and antiquated in
the English language. Most people don’t know what they mean. A lot of
Christians don’t have any idea what they mean; and especially if they’re
reading some of the “dumbed-down” translations, they
don’t have a clue what these words mean.
They were great words when the Bible
was translated into English, and they communicated to people because after the
Protestant Reformation, people were educated in the local church and were
taught what these words mean. They were chosen because they were words that
were part of the vocabulary of the population in England. I’m thinking about
the King James Bible. These were words that could communicate. They were
understood. Not so much anymore.
The noun that we’re often very
familiar with is HAGIOS.
This is the noun that is usually translated “holy” or “sacred.” It’s also
translated “saint” in some places. Anyone who is a believer in the Lord Jesus
Christ is called a saint, a sanctified one. There aren’t just the Biblical
saints. This term refers to every single believer because it’s a reflection of
the doctrine I’m teaching here which is called positional sanctification, or
positional truth - that we were positionally, legally set apart unto God at the
instant of our salvation. That’s the idea of HAGIOS. It means something that is holy or sacred. That’s
how it’s usually translated. The idea is that something is set apart to the
service of God. That’s the core meaning for this whole word group. The verb
means something holy, or to consecrate something, or to sanctify it.
Basically it means to set something
aside to the service of God. In the Bible you have a lot of different things
that are set apart for the service of God. You have people, sacrifices, places
(such as the Temple or the Tabernacle or an altar), that are sanctified.
They’re made holy. When most of us think of the word holy, what do we think of?
We think of the contrast between good and bad, between evil and good, that
something holy is pure, morally pure. If something is holy, it is something
that is good and righteous.
We often think of the word holy as a
synonym for righteous. If you go back into the Old Testament, the core verb
translated holy is qadosh. It’s interesting that in Hebrew when
you are saying a prayer, a certain kind of prayer, it’s called a qiddish. You hear
the same consonants in there, q, d, s, h. Those are the consonants in that
word. A qiddish
is a prayer, a prayer of sanctification, basically. You’re praying for
something to be sanctified or set apart to God in some way in a prayer. You say
qiddish at
a funeral when someone has died, when you’re sitting shiva for someone, you’re saying
a qiddish.
It’s that idea of something set apart for God.
One form of that noun was used in a
masculine and feminine form to refer to the temple prostitutes at the fertility
religions for the worship of Baal and the Asherah. So
the temple prostitutes, temple hookers, the temple whores that were working
there in the various fertility rites were called qadeshim. Now how in the world
can they be morally pure? They’re not. But they’re set apart to the service of
their god. That’s the core thing. You talk about an altar. How can an altar be
morally pure? How can the utensils that are used in the sacrifice, in the
butchering of the animals of the sacrifice be morally pure? How can they be
immoral? They can’t. Rocks and wood and metal can be neither morally pure nor
morally impure, but they are set apart to the service of God. This is very
important for us to understand.
Believers and unbelievers just have
a hard time understanding the fact that you can be sanctified and consecrated
to God, and holy, and be out of fellowship. There are a lot of Christians who
believe that if you commit certain kinds of sins, either you weren’t saved, or
you’ve lost your salvation because they don’t understand this important
doctrine of positional sanctification: that we’re declared legally righteous
and we’re set apart to God at the point of our salvation, and we can’t lose
that. It doesn’t have anything to do with who we are or what we’ve done. It has
everything to do with who Jesus Christ is and what He did on the cross.
So we have the noun HAGIOS, the verb HAGIAZO, and another noun HAGIASMOS describing the quality of holiness or consecration or
sanctification. That is the word that we have here, HAGIASMOS. When we look at what the Bible teaches about
sanctification, I use this chart, a time-honored chart. This is one of the best
charts I’ve ever seen to help people visualize what we’re talking about.
There are two areas of our
relationship to God. One is our Eternal Realities [on the left] and the one on
the right has to do with Temporal Realities. At the instant that we trust in
Christ as Savior we are identified by God the Holy Spirit; that’s what baptism
signifies: an identification [Romans 6:3–6]. We’re identified with Christ
in His death, burial, and resurrection; and we’re identified with Christ so
that we are placed in Christ. We are sanctified, set apart forever and ever in
Christ. We are no longer what we were before we were saved. We are now new
creatures in Christ. Everything is different.
Also, a
reminder on this chart, Three Stages or Phases of Salvation. Phase one has to do with
justification. When you trust in Christ as Savior, God imputes, or credits to
your account, the perfect righteousness of Christ, and He legally declares you
righteous. Does that make you righteous? No. When the judge declared that O.J.
Simpson was not guilty, did that make him righteous? No. Did it make him not
guilty? No. It made him not guilty legally and that’s it. It’s a legal
definition, a legal concept. That’s what it is for us. We’re legally declared
righteous because we possess something - the perfect righteousness of Christ.
Then after we’re saved, the issue is
our spiritual growth, our spiritual life. Then when we die, we’re absent from
the body and face-to-face with the Lord. We also talk about these three areas
(justification, our spiritual life, and glorification) in terms of positional
sanctification. That’s what happens at the instant we’re justified. We’re
positionally sanctified. Experiential sanctification refers to our ongoing
spiritual growth.
When we die, we’re now free from the
sin nature, and we are sanctified. When we’re justified, we’re free from the
penalty of sin. We’re not going to go to the Lake of Fire. We’re no longer
spiritually dead. We’re now spiritually alive. We’re free from the power of sin
as we grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then we’re
ultimately free from the presence of the sin nature when we are glorified.
I want you to turn in your Bible to
Leviticus 21. Going all the way back into the Old Testament, to the third book:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, chapter 21. Leviticus 21
is I think one of the more interesting passages in the Old Testament because
there are some things we never quite get right when we talk about the Old
Testament ritual. Here we have regulations for the priests. I want to pick up
the context, so go back to verse 1. The Lord says to Moses, “Speak to the
priests, the sons of Aaron and say to them, ‘None shall defile himself for the
dead among his people.’” This has to do with ritual defilement. If they’re
ritually defiled, they can’t go into the Temple, and they can’t serve the Lord.
They’ve already been set apart positionally as priests.
When they were inaugurated as
priests, they were anointed, or sprinkled. That sets them apart as priests for
the rest of their lives. When they’re the right age, they can start serving in
the Tabernacle or Temples as a priest, but they can defile themselves. This is
talking about experiential sanctification. “None shall defile himself for the
dead among his people.” In other words, not touching a corpse. If you touched a
corpse, you would be ritually defiled. Is that a sin? Not at
all. Ritual defilement is not the same as a sin. Ritual defilement is
whenever you eat the wrong thing, or you go to the wrong place, or a woman
gives birth, different things like that would ritually defile a person.
If you examine these things, what you
discover is that the food that was unclean usually involved a scavenger of some
sort. Something that involves death. Why do we have
death? We have death because of Adam’s sin, because of the Fall.
So God is giving a visual lesson here that you are to avoid certain things that
were there because of sin. He’s teaching about the iniquitousness of sin. He’s
saying someone can’t defile himself by touching the dead, except for his
relatives that are nearest to him: his mother, his father, his son, his daughter,
and his brother. Also his virgin sister is near to him who has had no husband,
for he may defile himself. If any of his close relatives die, it’s okay to
touch their bodies. But anyone else, no.
Verse 4, “Otherwise he shall not
defile himself for each [leader among his people] to profane himself. They
shall not make any bald place on their head…” All of these things have to do
with what the pagan priests would do. “They should not make a bald place on
their heads” is almost like the tonsure that Roman Catholic priests in the
Middle Ages would have - same kind of thing. “Nor shall they shave the edges of
their beards.” In other words, there was a certain way they could not trim
their beard because that’s how pagan priests did it. “Nor make any cuttings in
their flesh.” They couldn’t do any self-scarification because that was also
part of pagan priestly practice.
Then verse 6 says, “They shall be
holy.” There is that word qadosh. “They
shall be holy or set apart to their God and not profane the name of their God.”
So there we see a contrast, set apart to honor Him; and they’re not going to
make God something that is common or profane. “For they offer the offerings of
the Lord made by fire and the bread of their God; therefore, they shall be
holy.” This is a command. They shall be set apart to God’s service and follow
certain regulations. “They shall not take a wife who is a harlot or a defiled
woman nor shall they take a woman divorced from her husband for the priest is
holy to his God.” He’s set apart to His God. There’s regulations who he could
marry and who he couldn’t.
Where does it say he has to believe
the Messianic hope? That he has to be regenerate? That he has to be justified?
Are there any spiritual qualifications here? None at all.
That’s one of the most fascinating things to discover: is that they didn’t have
to be saved. They just had to fit certain physical qualifications in order to
be a priest, because ritual is not the same thing as reality. Ritual is just
depicting certain things about reality. A priest could serve God and not be
saved, but he still went through the ritual; and it depicts certain spiritual
truths.
Then we come to the verse I want to
go to which is Leviticus 21:8, “Therefore you shall consecrate him.” That’s
positional sanctification. He is set apart at the beginning of his service as a
priest. He is positionally set apart to serve God. “Therefore you shall set him
apart [that’s the idea there] for he offers the bread of your God. He shall be
holy to you. He shall be treated distinctively and uniquely by you for I, the
Lord, who sanctifies him” [set him apart, but it doesn’t mean he’s saved; it
means God sets him apart to serve Him] because he’s a descendant of Aaron. He’s
a Levite, not because he has trusted in the Messianic hope.
“I, the Lord, who sanctify you am
holy. I am unique.” That’s how I would translate that. He’s holy. Part of what
makes God unique is all of His attributes, including His righteousness and His
justice. So that gives a little insight into the Old Testament background and
Old Testament meaning.
There are a couple of other passages
I want to look at in the New Testament that emphasize this idea of positional
sanctification. This is the use of the noun that we’re looking at: HAGIASMOS. It’s found in 2 Thessalonians 2:13
where Paul says, “But we should also give thanks to God for you brethren,
beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for
salvation through sanctification.” I chose this verse because of that language.
That word there is the preposition EN, by means of sanctification of the Spirit. God didn’t just choose you.
There’s not just this selection process, but it’s through sanctification by the
Holy Spirit. There has to be faith in Christ, and God the Holy Spirit then
identifies you with Christ, and you are sanctified.
This is the use of the verb that has
a different idea than the noun. Here it focuses a little more on God Who makes
the selection process. But what’s the standard? The standard is Romans
8:28–29 and 1 Peter 1:2, and it’s according to the foreknowledge of God,
from the beginning of salvation, for salvation through sanctification by the
Spirit and faith in the truth. So this is positional at this point. It’s
talking about what happens at the instant of salvation.
Acts 26:18 is
another place where the noun is used in the sense of positional sanctification.
Paul is talking about those who have trusted in Jesus. He says God is going to
open their eyes so they may turn from darkness to light, from the dominion of
Satan to God so they may receive forgiveness of sin and an inheritance among
who? Those who have been sanctified. It’s a perfect
tense participle. Perfect tense always means action that’s not just in the
past. It’s that action was completed in the past so that their sanctification
is complete in the past. This isn’t talking about experiential sanctification,
which is ongoing through our life; and it’s not talking about ultimate
sanctification, which only happens when we die. It’s talking about that which
has been fully, totally completed, and that is positional sanctification. How
does that occur? By faith in Christ. You trust in Him,
and we are positionally sanctified.
We have to distinguish this from
passages such as Romans 6:19. (Slide 28) where Paul says, “I’m speaking in
human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Just as you presented your
members [your body] as slaves to impurity and lawlessness [that was when they
were unbelievers] resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members
to slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification.” Now they’re already
saved and sanctified positionally. Now he’s telling them they need to walk in
obedience and righteousness, and that will result in experiential sanctification,
your spiritual growth and spiritual maturity.
Romans 6:22 says, “Now having been
freed from sin [completed action in the past] and enslaved to God you derived
your benefit resulting in sanctification and the outcome, eternal life.” So
that’s talking about sanctification, experientially and the result is ultimate
sanctification, eternal life.
Another use of the term in terms of
experiential sanctification is the verb in John 17:17. Jesus prays to the
Father, “Sanctify them in truth. Thy Word is truth.” He’s talking about His
disciples. Are they already positionally sanctified? Yes. Here it’s talking
about experiential sanctification, their experiential growth.
In 1 Corinthians 1:2, this is one of
the clearest passages because Paul is addressing a bunch of really confused,
disobedient Christians living in Corinth. They were involved in all kinds of
sins. They were divisive. They were arrogant. They were licentious. They were
overlooking some sins. They were taking other Christians in the congregation to
court. They were suing each other. There were all kinds of problems. They were
getting drunk and being gluttonous at the Lord’s Table. All of these things
were going on. They were so carnal that that’s the picture we always have of
the concept of carnality in the Bible. Paul addressed them and said, “To the
Church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified.” Again,
it’s a perfect tense use of the verb. It’s completed action. “To those who have
been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling.” So all these carnal
Corinthians who are involved in all these different sins are saints - not
because they have such a morally pure life, but because they’ve been set apart
in Christ; and they have imputed righteousness. They’re saints by calling, "with
all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord
and ours". This is a great passage emphasizing positional sanctification.
One last verse on this: Hebrews
9:13, “For with the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer
sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the
flesh.” Now those sacrifices were for sin offerings, trespass offerings. And
whenever they would become ritually defiled, they would have to bring a
sacrifice. It was the sprinkling of that blood on the altar that would restore
them to ritual fellowship with God and make them fit to once again worship in
the Temple.
So this brings us to the Doctrine of
Positional Sanctification. This is the idea that we are identified with Christ
and become legally and positionally set apart to God at the instant of
salvation. So, in terms of the first point, the believer is united with Christ
in His death, burial, and resurrection according to Romans 6:3–6. I’ve
stated that several times.
Second, this act sets Christians
apart. We are set apart in Christ. It’s that position of being in Christ that
sets us apart from the world. It makes us distinct from others. That’s 1
Corinthians 1:2. The third thing we’ve seen is that sanctification is
accomplished through the death of Christ. Hebrews 13:12, “Therefore, Jesus,
also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood [His work] suffered
outside the gate.” So Christ’s death is the basis for sanctification. Hebrews
10:10, “By that will we have been sanctified [perfect tense] through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all.” That’s positional
sanctification. It’s been completed.
The fourth point, Acts 26:18 tells us
that this sanctification is applied at the instant of faith in Christ. “We have
been sanctified by faith in Him.” It’s that last line, perfect participle
again; it’s completed action. Why is this doctrine so important? One reason
it’s so important is that this is an absolute reality that can never be
destroyed by any sin or act that we’re engaged in. We did nothing to be
sanctified, and we can do nothing to lose our sanctification. You did nothing
to be saved, so you can do nothing to lose your salvation. That’s something you
can tweet, if you’re into tweeting. I don’t think anyone here is. That’s the
point. If you are listening to someone and they say that somebody can lose
their salvation, it doesn’t matter how well you thought they had a grace gospel,
if they say there’s something you can do to lose your salvation, there’s
something in the woodpile that says you can do something to get your salvation.
You can’t do something to lose it unless you’re doing something to get it and
that’s always the clue. There’s nothing we can do.
That’s great comfort because we all
sin. At times we even shock ourselves with some of our sins. It doesn’t shock
or surprise God because in His omniscience He knew every sin we would ever
commit. He says, “I imputed it to Christ on the Cross and Christ paid the
penalty.” So the second reason it’s important is that every one of us is
righteous because we possess Christ’s righteousness. It’s not because we’re
moral. It’s not because we behave correctly. There’s that little bumper sticker
that says it’s not that Christians are better, it’s just that they’re forgiven.
That captures it. We’re not better than anyone else. We’re just forgiven. We’ve
realized that forgiveness in terms of positional sanctification.
That means we can relax. We don’t
have to be concerned about our future. We know that if we die tonight or
tomorrow, we’re going to be “absent from the body, face-to-face with the Lord”.
We can be sure of that. We need to make sure that every one of our children and
grandchildren clearly understand. They’re never too young to start
communicating the gospel to kids.
The third reason this is important
is that we realize that every one of us is perfectly sanctified even though we
commit a lot of nasty sins. We’re still set apart because it doesn’t have
anything to do with us. It has everything to do with Christ. Experiential
sanctification has to do with our spiritual growth. Positional sanctification
has to do with our relationship with Christ that cannot be lost.
Now the last thing we see in 1 Peter
1:2 is that it talks about the fact we’re choice “according to God’s
foreknowledge by the sanctification of the Holy Spirit and for the purpose of
obedience and sprinkling of the blood.” I’ll come back and say a little bit more
about that next week.
Look at Hebrews 10:22 before we
close. The writer of Hebrews says, “Let us draw near with a true heart and full
assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our
bodies washed with pure water.” That’s the idea. This is post-salvation
cleansing. That’s what was depicted in the Old Testament. The Old Testament
sacrificial system pictured sprinkling in relation to the consecration of a
priest or a high priest. The word is most often used for ongoing sin offerings.
When someone sinned, they would have to bring a sacrifice and be cleansed of
that sin so they could worship at the Temple.
That’s what Peter is talking about
here, reminding them at the end, that your choice according to the foreknowledge
of God, by means of the sanctification of the Holy Spirit [relates to the
imputation of Christ’s righteousness but it doesn’t stop there.] That’s what
Paul says. You’re a new creature. You once were bond slaves to sin. Now you’re
a slave to righteousness. Live like you’re a slave to righteousness. That’s
what Peter says here. All of this was done for the purpose that we would be
obedient to God. Sometimes we’re not, so we have to recover through confession
of sin. That’s this sprinkling, the application of the death of Christ. 1 John
1:7. We are cleansed continuously by the blood of Christ.
Every time we confess our sins,
there’s a sprinkling, a cleansing as it were, from the fact that Christ died
for our sins. This is stated over and over again and gives us great confidence.
We don’t need to focus on our failures. We need to focus on the cross and the
grace of God so that every time we stumble, we can confess, pick ourselves up,
and keep going forward. Everybody runs into these problems. Too many people
just get overwhelmed with guilt in the Christian life, which is like
handicapping yourself terribly in terms of spiritual growth. It’s a great
doctrine that we just continue to go forward because of Christ’s death on the
cross. We realize forgiveness every time we confess sin.
“Father, thank you for this time
we’ve had to study this evening and to focus on these important doctrines - to
be reminded that we are choice, not because of what we’ve done but because of
what Christ did for us on the cross. We have received His righteousness. You
have imputed or reconciled it to our account, and that is the basis for our
relationship with You, not anything we have done. But
all of that was for a purpose, that we might obey You,
walk in obedience which means to walk by the Spirit and apply the death of Your
Son through confession of sin every single time that we commit sin. We
recognize afresh that forgiveness of sin that we have in Christ. We pray this
in His name. Amen.”