The Christian's Sanctification and Eternal Security. Jude 1-2
Sanctified is a word that
means to be set apart to the service of God, and in that sense it is similar to
the English word “consecrated,” to be set apart for a specific purpose. In Jude’s
opening verse he uses this word referring to believers who are called, and that
idea of calling has to do with the fact that God has a purpose for us. That
calling is then further defined by the two phrases “sanctified by God the
Father” and “preserved [kept] by Jesus Christ.”
We have seen that there is a
textual problem where some MSS have the word “sanctified” and others have “beloved.”
“Beloved” comes from the word agape
[a)gaph] and “sanctified”
comes from the word hagiazo [a(giazw], both of which begin with an “a” and a “g” and in a
perfect tense form there is a similarity in the ending as well so that it would
be easy for a copyist to simply make an error of transmission and substitute
one word for the other. Doctrinally—although the content of the idea of
sanctification verses beloved are distinct—both concepts are taught in the New
Testament, so it doesn’t affect any doctrine to have one word versus the other
word.
The various forms of hagiazo emphasize being set apart to the
service of God. Most people when they think of these words, especially in light
of the English word “holy,” think that they have the idea of being morally
pure. But we have forms of the Hebrew word used to apply to the male and female
cultic prostitutes in the worship of Baal and the Asherah
and there is nothing morally pure about that, it has to do with the fact that
they are set apart for the service of their god. So the essential meaning of
the word “sanctify” or “holy” is to be set apart for the serviced of God. There
are three ways in which we are set apart for the service of God. We think of
these in a temporal sense but they have to do with different stages or phases
of our Christian life. We can also think of experiential sanctification just
simply as the spiritual life, how we grow as Christians.
There are three phases or
stages to salvation. Phase one is justification. When a believers
believes in Jesus Christ as savior and at that
instant a number of things happen—non-experientially, we don’t know about them
until afterward. God the Father imputes to our account the perfect righteousness
of Christ. Simultaneously, as God sees that we have that perfect righteousness
He declares that we are judicially righteous, we are justified, and because of
this we are considered to be positionally sanctified.
Because of our identification with Christ through the baptism of the Holy
Spirit we are said to be “in Christ.” That is our new position. This is
positional truth, the reality of our identity in Christ. This means that we are
now slaves to Christ as opposed to slaves to the sin nature. The power of the
sin nature is broken at this time and we are no longer slaves to the sin
nature. We are free from the penalty of sin but the power of the sin nature is
also broken. Because of that we can grow spiritually. It is a progress, not
something that happens instantaneously—a misconception that was very popular in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries known as the higher life
teaching, related to Keswick theology, holiness theology which was the
background for much of Charismatic and Pentecostal theology. It simply means
that we are freed from the power of sin and the authority and dominion of the
sin nature, and therefore we can grow and advance spiritually as we walk by
means of the Holy Spirit in obedience to the Word of God. We grow and mature so
that we can serve God more effectively, we are experientially set apart to His
service. As we walk by the Spirit and according to the Word of God we are
experientially sanctified and experiential righteousness is produced in us. Then
at the time of death we have final or ultimate sanctification, we are absent from
the body and face to face with the Lord, we are freed from the presence of the
sin nature.
Verses
Phase one, 1 Corinthians 1:2 NASB “To
the
1 Corinthians
2 Thessalonians 2:13 NASB “But
we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord,
because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through
sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.” This is not talking about
election, that God in eternity past decided He was going to save you and you
and you but not you. That is not the idea here, it is
that “I will save you through positional sanctification.” It is the choice of a
method here, not of an individual. Those who believe in Christ trust in Him,
they are chosen by God because that is the method He chose for salvation—“through
[or, by means of] sanctification.” The translation “by the Spirit” is really a
genitive here, indicating of or from the Spirit, indicating that sanctification
the primary responsibility of God the Holy Spirit.
1 Peter 1:2 NASB “[elect] according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father …” That has to do with the knowledge of
God beforehand that God in His omniscience knows all of the knowable—everything
that could happen or would happen or might have happened, as well as what will
happen—and on the basis of His omniscience He knows who will respond to the
gospel and who will not. Those who believe in the gospel are the elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. “… by [means of] the
sanctifying work of the Spirit…” This emphasizes the role of God the Holy
Spirit in our positional sanctification as well as our experiential
sanctification.
Hebrews
Don’t confuse or correlate phase one with
phase two. This is the problem historically in Roman Catholic theology, i.e.
that justification and sanctification are experiential so that they happen over
time and you never know when you have enough to be sanctified; you get a little
grace each time you participate in one of the sacraments and so it is not an
instant in time, you are not declared justified or positionally
sanctified, there is just this progress that you have. There is also this
problem in a little bit different sense with Lordship salvation, because you
don’t really know if you are a hundred per cent saved. You can’t say, well I
trusted Christ here therefore I know I am saved, the only way you know you are
saved in Lordship salvation is if you can point back in your life to “fruit” and
you have seen a progress of sanctification. If you don’t see that progress of
sanctification then you didn’t have the right kind of faith. John MacAthur, pastor of
Then we come to phase
two: progressive sanctification. There is a little bit of a problem with that
term, only because within a Lordship context they believe that if you are
truly, genuinely saved there is an automatic progression. The term is fine as
long as it is not understood as automatic because it is not necessarily so.
Just because you are justified doesn’t mean you will automatically progress in
your spiritual life (which is a Lordship idea). The word “experiential” is
better.
John
Hebrews
2 Corinthians 7:1 NASB “Therefore,
having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of
flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” We are to be
cleansed experientially from sin. 1 John 1:9 states it more clearly: “If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So it is not just the sins that we know
but the sins that we don’t know—the sins that we have forgotten about, the sins
that we are unaware of. We cannot grow spiritually if we are out of fellowship.
Some people have said in criticising that view of 1 John 1:9, thus: What you
are saying is that the Holy Spirit isn’t doing anything in the Christian life.
That is not what we have said. The Holy Spirit has a number of ministries in
the believer’s life, one of which is convicting us of sin—bringing sin to our
consciousness so that we confess it. When we are out of fellowship He is still
involved, but He is involved in getting us back on track, not moving us down
the track. So we have to recognize that when we sin it shuts down our forward
momentum. It shuts down the growth process but it doesn’t shut down the role of
the Holy Spirit, He is just not able to produce growth. He is instead involved
in getting us to recover, confess sin and then once we are back in fellowship
to go forward. 2 Corinthians 7:1 talks about this, and
“perfecting holiness” there isn’t the idea of becoming perfect, it is the idea
of moving towards an end goal of maturity. We could translate it “maturing
sanctification in the fear of God.”
Hebrews
2 Peter
Ultimate sanctification or phase three is
also seen in several verses. Ephesians 5:27 NASB “that He might
present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or
any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.” This is phase three
where the church will be glorified.
Jude 24 NASB “Now to Him who is
able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His
glory blameless with great joy.”
Romans 8:29 NASB “For those
whom He foreknew, He also predestined {to become} conformed to the image of His
Son…” That is our destiny, which means sinlessness, impeccability,
without sin.
1 John 3:1, 2 NASB “See how
great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of
God; and {such} we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it
did not know Him.
So Jude begins this epistle by reminding
his readers that they are called, i.e. God has called them through the
proclamation of the gospel and at their response to that gospel they have
become sanctified—positional sanctification. He is emphasizing their identity in
Christ, who they are in Christ, that they are set
apart positionally for the service of God, relating
it back to the idea of being a slave that he alludes to in terms of himself. We
are all at the instant of faith alone in Christ alone slaves of Christ positionally.
“and kept [preserved]
for [in] Jesus Christ.” We are preserved or kept in Jesus Christ. This is an
extremely important word in the Greek, tereo
[threw] which
means to keep, preserve. Sometimes it is that is frequently used for “obey.” It
is a perfect passive participle here, indicating completed action, not ongoing.
The results go on forever. It si completed, we are preserved, kept, it is
final. This is a great verse for understanding eternal security. Eternal security
is a doctrine that is not believed by a number of different people within the
history of Christianity, and it shows that they have an extremely anaemic,
impoverished view of salvation. Just as with sanctification Jude frames or
brackets this epistle with an introduction and a conclusion that focuses on
security. He uses two synonyms, tereo
and phulasso [fulassw],
that latter frequently used in passages as a very close synonym for tereo. “Now to Him who is able to keep
you” (v. 24) is an aorist active infinitive emphasizing results. He is able to
keep us, to preserve us, to protect us from stumbling, i.e. from losing
salvation. We cannot lose salvation. He will present us blameless/faultless
before the throne because in this life we never get away from the sin nature.
The doctrine of eternal security (Once
saved, always saved)
We have to understand what “saved” means,
and the more we understand what happens at salvation the more we realize how
that cannot be undone. It is so complex and so profound that we cannot imagine
that it could be reversed in any way. There are a lot of different Christians
who reject the idea of eternal security. There is no eternal security for a
Roman Catholic because they don’t even know if they ever got enough grace to be
saved. This is not to say that if you are a Roman Catholic you are not
eternally secure. Such pastors and such theologically systems consistently have
a low view of God and a high view of man. For example, in
Arminian theology, in a number of Pentecostal/Charismatic denominations (though
not all). And there is a lot of similarity between the Arminian view and
the Lordship view. The Arminian view says you can do something to lose your
salvation.
Remember this. If anyone says there is something
you can do to lose salvation then somewhere in their theological system works
gets them saved. They may not say this in an extreme
way but if you can do something to lose salvation then you are doing something
to get it or to keep it and that is always works. To the degree that we can do
something to lose our salvation to that same degree our works are part of our salvation.
The problem that the Lordship crowd has is
that if they look at a person and it doesn’t seem to them that they are living
like a Christian should they have really bought into Lordship salvation at that
point because they are trying to determine that person’s spiritual status on the
basis of what you perceive their outer works to be. We can’t see the
heart, we can’t see what they trusted in, and many Christians who have trusted
in Christ as savior have done many evil, sinful,
horrible things but they are still saved. If you said you once trusted Christ
as your savior but there’s no fruit—in their terms:
no evidence of you going to church, reading your Bible, praying, or growing as
a Christian—then you weren’t ever saved. They connect justification with experiential
sanctification so that you know you are justified by your experiential
sanctification, and that is a form of Roman Catholic heresy. That is a basic
problem with Lordship, and it is the problem with John Piper up in
1.
Definition:
Eternal security is the work of God. God is the one who secures us and keeps us
and preserves us, not us. It is the work of God toward the believer at the
instant of faith alone in Christ alone, which guarantees that God’s free gift
of salvation is eternal and cannot be lost, terminated, abrogated, nullified or
reversed by any thought act or change of belief in the person saved. In other
words, our salvation isn’t dependent at any point on what we think, say, or do,
it is based completely and exclusively on Jesus Christ. There is no merit in
belief, the only merit is in the object of belief, and it is in Christ alone. God
saves us and keeps us, the only thing that comes from us is that we believe and
trust in God to save us.
2.
The Problem. It
is expressed in one or two ways. There is the problem of eternal security versus
perseverance. In the Lordship problem, which is a manifestation of certain
forms of Calvinism, perseverance is expressed in terms of the individual
perseverance in obedience to Christ and this is why he knows he is saved. Others
will say no, it is not just the individual that perseveres,
it is Christ who perseveres in keeping us. This was L. S. Chafer’s definition
of perseverance. That is biblically accurate and what is known as eternal
security. But eternal security does not necessarily equal perseverance in the
Calvinistic sense. On the other side of the story, the Arminian or Pelagian problem, they say there is no eternal security.
That means there is no real salvation, you can’t ever be sure of your
salvation. It is really just a superficial salvation.
3.
Examples: The
Westminster Confession of Faith was written in the mid-seventeenth century by
the Calvinists within the Anglican church. This is the
standard doctrinal statement found in most conservative Presbyterian churches.
It states: “They whom God hath accepted in His beloved, effectually called and
sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the
state of grace.” In other words, as someone who once trusted in Christ as savior can you say you don’t believe in Jesus anymore, He
is not God, He didn’t rise from the dead, you reject
everything about Christianity and say it just isn’t true. That is what they
mean by totally falling away. They do make a little room for the fact that you
can have doubts, you can have an extended period of carnality, but you will
always come back to Christianity before the end of your life if you were truly
saved. Another view is stated by Louis Berkhof: “The
doctrine is perseverance requires careful statement, especially in view of the
fact that the term perseverance of the saints is liable to misunderstanding. We
should guard against the possible misunderstanding that this perseverance is
regarded as an inherent property of the believer or as a continuous activity of
man by means of which he perseveres in the way of salvation.” The way he states
it there is that he is trying to get away from saying that this is something that
the individual does. So he is on the more correct side of the Calvinist
equation. Charles Hodge: “The devoted apostle considered himself as engaged in
a life struggle of his salvation.” That was his comment on 1 Corinthians 9:27. That
is the bad side, the Lordship end of Calvinistic salvation—Paul was never sure,
he was in a life struggle to maintain salvation. In his Systematic Theology
Hodge defines perseverance as “perseverance and holiness, therefore, in
opposition to our weakness and temptations is the only sure evidence of the
genuineness of past experience, of the validity of our confidence as to our
future salvation.” So assurance of salvation is based on works so that you can
see that you have persevered. He is on the negative side of perseverance. So to
the Arminian side. Robert Shank: “There is no saving faith apart from obedience.
There is no valid assurance of election or final salvation for any man apart
from deliberate perseverance and faith.” He is Arminian, so how does what he
says differ from the Calvinist? The worst statement comes from A.W. Pink who
one time was a dispensationalist then went Covenant: “God preserves His people
in this world through their perseverance.” This is a dominant view out there.
People just can’t let God be God and grace be grace
and that God does all the work. To understand this as we go through it is to
see that there is a Trinitarian role to eternal security. There are aspects
that belong to God the Father, aspects that belong to God the Son, and aspects
that belong to God the Holy Spirit. It is the triune God that keeps us secure
in our salvation. He saves us; we do nothing to save ourselves.
4.
The biblical
teaching. The purpose of God, stated in Romans 8:29, 30 NASB “For
those whom He foreknew, He also predestined {to become} conformed to the image
of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;
5.
Our security is
based upon the power of God. Jude