Things are not what they seem…Part II
For Things are not what they seem… Part 1 please click here
When Paul wrote his first letter to the church at Corinth, he opened his letter with these words:
‘To the church, which is at Corinth, to those having been (hagiazo) sanctified in Christ Jesus, called (hagiois) saints…grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’
The church at Corinth was riven with divisions and barely coping with a pastoral issue following a case of sexual misconduct and yet Paul addresses them as ‘sanctified’ and ‘saints’ – not, as we might expect, ‘needing sanctification’ and ‘called to be saints’ as some translators have inserted into the Greek text.
Paul goes on to address the problems in the church as products of spiritual immaturity rather than castigate them for their lack of holiness. More of that later. Holiness, by the way, is of the same family of Greek words hagios.
At first sight, this may produce in the reader the thought that Paul got this wrong; even to evangelical readers, who consider the bible to be the word of God. Indeed, those translators who have inserted ‘to be’ into the text were all evangelical and yet felt the need to correct the apostle!
The reason for this, I suggest, is a clue that there is something missing in the fundamental presentation of the gospel in many churches.
Many churches – and therefore their ministers, priests, vicars, pastors who may all have attended bible colleges, seminaries, theological colleges, and the like – correctly preach the substitutionary death of Chris but not the inclusive death of Christ.
A symptom of this one-legged gospel is a false view of sainthood and sanctification – and therefore holiness.
The gospel – the ‘good news’ of the kingdom of God – is both substitutionary and inclusive.
To use the prophecy in Isaiah 53 ‘He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows…He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities…the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all…He bore the sin of many’ the death of Christ on the cross was substitutionary and we, the guilty, are ‘acquitted’ and declared ‘justified’, ‘not guilty’, to use the language of Paul in the opening chapters of Romans and elsewhere.
This wonderful substitutionary aspect of the gospel secures our forgiveness and opens us to the love of God. Our ‘sins’ are dealt with but not the ‘sinner’.
If you have believed the gospel and understood the substitutionary sacrifice of the cross, you will use phrases like ‘I am a forgiven sinner’ and believe that, now, through a process called ‘sanctification’ you will progressively be changed into His likeness; the ‘old man’ progressively dies as the ‘new man’ is formed within. In the resurrection, in the ‘twinkling of an eye’ somehow the process will have reached its fulfilment, and you will be transformed from corruption into incorruption and enter a permanent state of glory (see 1 Cor 15 v50f).
But this is not what the New Testament teaches and I hope to show how understanding the inclusive death of Christ enabled Paul to address the Corinthians as ‘saints’ and ‘having been sanctified’ – and, if there’s time, to understand how Paul can use the present tense when saying that we have been glorified (Romans 8 v30).
The inclusive death of Christ.
In terms of Paul’s letter to the Romans, the substitutionary aspects of the death of Christ will get as far as chapter 5 but no further. Romans 6 will be a fog, as will be chapter 7, and so chapters 8 onwards will be forced to conform to the one-legged ‘chapters 1-5 gospel’ with some inevitable doctrinal consequences.
Romans 6 v 6 ‘knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him…’
Galatians 2 v 20 ‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me’
Col 3 v3 ‘For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God’
2 Cor 5v17 ‘…if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new’
It is clear from the above verses that Paul understood that God has, in the death of Christ, included us by virtue of the fact that we have been placed ‘in Christ’ and, in so doing, has dealt a death blow to the ‘sinner’ as well as dealing with our ‘sins’.
In the Old Testament, this dual aspect of the death of Christ was prefigured on the Day of Atonement when two, not one, goats were sacrificed. One, the scapegoat, carried the sins of the people far away – just like John the Baptist announced, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world’. That’s the substitutionary aspect of the death of Christ. But the other ram was killed in front of the altar as a burnt offering, never more to live. That’s the death of Christ that includes us:
‘Do you not know that as many of us that have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too should walk in newness of life’ Romans 6 v 3,4
Sanctification, therefore has nothing to do with improving the ‘old man’ or the ‘old creation, or the ‘in Adam’ you – the ‘old man’ has been crucified, dead and buried. A ‘new man’ a ‘new creation’ has taken his place in Christ.
The mystics may teach the experiential side of this but it is important to ‘know’ that the work has been completed not because of our attempts to become holy but because God has placed us ‘in Christ’ and therefore we share in all that has achieved on our behalf.
‘But it is of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption’ 1 Cor 1 v 30
Sanctification, therefore has been achieved not is being achieved through our increasing spiritual maturity. In order to shift focus on sanctification as being a life-long process to something included in the death of Christ just like justification, salvation, redemption, and righteousness we need to understand what the word means.
Sanctification means to set apart for a particular purpose. A ‘saint’ is someone who has been set apart, in Christ, for a particular purpose therefore this includes all believers; not just those who have reached whatever level of spiritual maturity. To use an everyday analogy, when you buy a car you buy it with a particular function in mind – to get you and others from A to B. You might, after purchasing it, fill it with plants and use it as a greenhouse, but that doesn’t alter the original purpose for which it has been set apart. All you have to do to rediscover the purpose for which it was set apart or sanctified (or consecrated) is to remove the plants, clean it up, and start driving: it didn’t become a greenhouse by using it as a greenhouse, it was still a car meant to be driven from A to B.
So it is for all believers, for those in Christ Jesus.
We are made holy, saints, sanctified, set apart when God places us in Christ. Through the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus He has forgiven us our sins and given us the gift of righteousness and justified us. Through the inclusive death of Jesus we have been crucified with Him and now we are new creations in Christ, saints, with a holy sanctified purpose.
That’s the starting point. From then on sanctification is permanent and eternal and so Paul writes to the Corinthians – who have, to use the above analogy, filled the car with plants – and reminds them that they ‘have been sanctified’ and are ‘holy’ or ‘saints’ in Christ Jesus and sets about calling them back to fulfilling their original purpose.
In doing so he analyses why they have got themselves into such a mess – seemingly a contradiction of the status conferred on them due to the death of Christ.
Having laid the spiritual foundations in the first two chapters together with an outline of the divisions in the church, Paul addresses the problems in Chapter 3:
‘I could not speak to you as spiritual but fleshly (carnal), as to babies in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food for, until now, you were not ready to receive it. Even now you are still carnal! Are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? 1 Cor 3 v 1-3
Paul is painting a picture of all mankind. First, there are ‘mere men’, then there are immature ‘carnal’ or ‘fleshly’ believers, then there are the mature ‘spiritual’ believers.
Mere men – are simply men and women who do not believe in Christ, either because they haven’t heard the gospel or they have rejected it.
A fleshly or carnal believer is almost indistinguishable from ‘mere men’ because they are operating from their own resources, their souls – the mind, the emotions, and the will. Because they have believed they are trying to live the Christ-like life but failing because they are attempting to do so with their own abilities.
The mature, spiritual, believer is one that has given up trying to do the impossible, to live the life only Christ Jesus can live, and has ‘ceased from his works’ (Heb 4v10) or, to use an Old Testament scripture has learnt not to ‘lean on his own understanding’ to live life from his own resources. To repeat Gal 2v20: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me’
The mature are ‘spiritual’ that is they are living from the new resources of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, being poured out within.
So, whatever failures the believer may experience does not contradict the justification and sanctification the believers won for them by Christ Jesus at the cross.
Paul’s perspective, when writing to the demoralised church in Corinth, weighed down with troubles, was to remind them of the truth and start from there. As Jesus said: ‘If you are my disciples you will continue in My word and know the truth and the truth will set you free’.
It was a painful time for the church in Corinth. As it is for us when we act in carnal or fleshly ways: when we rely on our own thinking, or our emotions, or our determination to get from A to B and forget that we, as children of God, are ‘led by the Spirit’ not by the flesh. Learning to walk by the Spirit is not sanctification, as if the ‘old man’ has to diminish and let the ‘new man’ gradually take over but it is the eternal working out of the sanctification that is true for us in Christ as the Holy Spirit takes the word and ‘implants the word in humble hearts’ James 1 v 21. It’s the ‘entrance’ of the word that gives light not its existence!
Under the terms of the New Covenant, or New Testament, our hearts of stone are replaced with hearts of flesh. We are given a new spirit. AND the Holy Spirit is given to us Who sets about writing the law of God on our hearts so that we are enabled to walk in His ways (See Jeremiah 31 v 31 and Ezekiel 36 v 26f)
To conclude: things are not always as they seem. The Corinthians’ problem was attempting to live the Christian life as ‘carnal’ or ‘fleshly’ believers relying on their own resources. It had, inevitably, led them astray and they had filled their lives with division and sexual wrong-doing. It was the accumulation of the ‘plants in the car’ to use the above analogy, that had reached Paul’s ears so he writes to them reminding them what was won for them in Christ Jesus and calling then back to the truth:
‘To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those already sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints…grace to you…’
We need to stand on both legs of the gospel and see ourselves as the fruit of the sufferings of Christ on the cross which was substitutionary and inclusive.
Once we ‘get it’ our vocabulary will change; we will no longer be bale to say ‘I am a sinner saved by grace’ we will, not boastfully but humbly, have accepted that we were included in His death and therefore we can say ‘Thank you Lord, now I am a saint, I have been sanctified, set apart as your son in Christ’ and grow into spiritual maturity from that point.
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Additional note: for a future post but the inclusive nature of the death of Christ on the cross irons out the apparent wrinkle in Romans 8v30 where Paul makes another mistake and puts ‘glorification’ alongside other attributes in the past tense: ‘Those He called He also justified and those He justified, these He also glorified.’ Well, no. Paul made no mistake the mistake is seeing glorification as a future-only event.