In this post, I will discuss salvation, sanctification, the difference between the two and the dangers of getting them confused.
In Romans 5:1, the apostle Paul writes:
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And in Romans 3:28, he writes:
For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.
Finally, in Galatians 3:24, it says:
Therefore the Law has become our guardian to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.
As a student of God’s Word and a Calvinist, I fully affirm the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone (in Latin, sola fide). And what does this doctrine communicate? In plain language, justification by faith alone asserts that a person is saved—or declared righteous—based not upon anything that they do, but rather upon what Christ has done. By faith means we trust completely in what Someone else does for us, not in what we can do for ourselves. Sola fide communicates the article upon which the Church stands or falls. That is, if justification by faith alone is not true, then you don’t have the gospel, and if you don’t have the gospel, then the Church has no reason to exist. Without sola fide, the Church ceases to be a church and falls into apostasy. Why? Because sola fide is the article that answers the question, “What must I do to be saved?” You see, “justification” is a word that comes from the legal world and is primarily a forensic declaration. This declaration has validity based upon what Christ did in His death (atoning for all your sins) and His life (fulfilling the law). Salvation is thus simple for us because God already did all the heavy lifting.
Accordingly, in Christ the Lord, Rod Rosenbladt explains justification as taught by the Reformers:
“In this transaction [of justification], we the guilty party stand before the judge who is righteous and are declared to be not only innocent, but perfectly righteous. (Notice how the popular phrase “just as if I’d never sinned” tells only half the story. We are not only forgiven; we are also credited with Christ’s complete righteousness as though we had kept the law perfectly through the course of our lives.) The Reformers did not believe that this justification was an empirical change in the human heart; rather, it was external.”
The reason why the gospel is good news is that all the good stuff doesn’t reside in me or you. Martin Luther famously wrote that the “whole gospel is outside of us” because the second any person begins to navel-gaze and consider their own works—if they are being honest in contemplation of a holy God—the inevitable conclusion is morbid introspection and despair because no one (other than God) can meet God’s standard. And this is the point. All the good stuff is outside of us, and thus a Christian has faith in Someone who is not them: a perfect God who did everything perfectly for us. The good news is that God’s promise is to the ungodly as ungodly (Romans 4:5), and thus the reason why anyone is saved is not based upon moral renewal or any individual’s ability to see growth or improvement. That is to say, you don’t “get yourself together” and then become qualified to go to Christ. By no means, for Jesus said:
I have not come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners. (Luke 5:32)
He also said:
It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. (Matthew 9:12)
Truly, the second any person takes their eyes off Christ and begins to look for proof of salvation based upon themselves or their progress in their “Christian walk” is the moment that person takes the first step toward spiritual depression. Indeed, the assertion that the “whole gospel is outside of us” is never an invitation to sin but rather a shock to jolt anyone from just looking in the mirror to realizing that their own true righteousness is external to them.
Let me be sure to make a clear distinction between salvation and sanctification. Salvation refers to God taking people out of bondage to sin and into the kingdom of the Lord. Within the broader category of salvation exists the doctrine of justification by faith alone, which address how a person is saved. Sanctification refers to the incremental process toward holiness once a person is already saved. Sanctification inevitably follows salvation, but to conflate the former with the latter is a disastrous theological error because it confuses law (“do”) and gospel (“done”). As Martin Luther once wrote:
“For the Law is an extractor, requiring of us that we should work and give; in a word, it wants to have from us. But the Gospel exacts nothing of us; it gives freely and enjoins us to hold out our hands and take what it offers.”
And as Michael Horton writes in Christ the Lord:
“In our conversion we are passive: acted upon rather than active, as Luther put it. We are justified through receiving what someone else has earned for us. But we grow in sanctification through living out what someone else has earned for us. Both are gifts we inherit from someone else, but the former is passively received and the second is actively pursued … If sanctification is confused with justification, it will lose the tension, reality and rigor necessary for the battles of the Christian life; if justification is confused with sanctification, the product will be of no redemptive value.”
This confusion between salvation and sanctification manifests in many different forms, but the core driving principle is the same: justification by faith alone (gospel) is not good enough to save someone; what they need in addition is repentance, submission and obedience (law). Conflation of sanctification with justification inevitably leads to the conclusion that present discipleship is what saves. Sadly, when the law is used in this manner, it undermines confidence in the gospel. And this position denies the reality that for the regenerate, while the law still guides, it can never make threats.
The born again are given new life because of God, yet the good works that flow from that new life do not contribute one iota to a person’s salvation. The good news of the gospel is that once God saves a person, that person will always be saved regardless of works. Ephesians 2:8-10 says:
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
And Romans 8:29-30 says:
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 brothers and sisters; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
So, although God’s grace is external and bestowed on a person, that grace is never stagnant; rather, grace is living, active, always effectual and ends up changing you. And thus, it is after you are justified by grace through faith that the same grace will begin to change you incrementally toward Christ-likeness. Saved people are “new creations” (II Corinthians 5:17), and new people are not characterized by their old self. Again, grace changing you is not what saves you. A changed person results in a changed life, but we ought not to confuse the fruits with the root. Good works are done out of gratitude of the heart of the person who is already saved, not by a person who is trying to get saved.
Now, why am I going to such great lengths to parse out the biblical doctrine of justification and to distinguish it from sanctification? Because it is only when a genuine Christian begins to ignore the biblical gospel that they can—either willfully or inadvertently—turn faith into unbelief. Meaning, they neglect that “all the good stuff” is outside of them and begin to think that their salvation (or specifically, the maintenance of it) is dependent on themselves. They thus begin to evaluate their standing with God based on performance, not on Christ. They thus begin to think that grace is a type of substance infused in them to lead a God-pleasing life. What is the result of such thinking? That their salvation is based upon their faithfulness, transforming the gospel into an anti-gospel of works. Faith in self demands a distrust of God. Truly, all of these phony conclusions are contrary to what the Bible says. Grace is not a substance or power infused in us; rather, it is an attribute and a disposition of God and is independent of us: by definition, grace is unmerited favor. Hence, grace starts with God, and its effect is to draw a person’s eyes back to the Lord, giving Him all the glory.
As fallen human beings, we are all Pelagians at heart, and so our pride nudges us to think we really are okay on the inside. At times, we are prone to think that our works can actually do something for God, as if He needed anything. I have also come to realize that repeatedly using the phrase “justification by faith alone” has the potential to be dangerous if the one using it fails to understand that it is an abbreviated way of saying that we are saved by Christ alone, by grace alone through faith alone. That is to say, if one is not careful, they may be tempted to think their faith is causal in salvation (i.e., “I am saved by my faith alone”), which is yet another example of how faith can become unbelief. The biblical reality is that our faith itself has no virtue; what makes our faith legitimate is the value of the object grasped, Jesus.
I will quote William Hordern, who speaks to this subtle dilemma in his book Living by Grace:
“The doctrine is properly called “justification by grace alone through faith alone.” Through the years, a kind of shorthand has risen whereby we have spoken of “justification by faith alone.” In and of itself this is innocent enough and it avoids having to keep repeating the full formula. But the trouble with this abbreviation is that it can give a quite mistaken view of what the doctrine is really saying. When “by grace alone” is dropped from the phrase the impression is that faith is the primary element in justification. But then faith begins to appear as something that we must perform. And so, ironically, the term “justification by faith” leads to a new doctrine of works. Faith comes to be seen as a work that we must accomplish in order to save ourselves.”
The perverse transformation of faith into unbelief happens whenever a Christian forgets that Christ is of first importance and—for whatever reason—they are persuaded to look inward, not outward. Allow me to illustrate a hypothetical example. John Doe Christian is a member of his local Bible-teaching, gospel-preaching church. His faithful, godly pastor exposits the text week after week, and at the end of his sermons, he always lists applications of the text. On the surface, the applications are meant to answer “How do I apply God’s truth to my life?” but invariably they are things that John ought to do in order to actualize God’s Word. Week after week, John hears that “If you truly believe this, then do this,” or “If you are saved, these are the things you ought to do, and if you aren’t doing these things, then you probably aren’t saved.” “These things” tend to be arbitrary standards to which exact conformity is expected: for example, how loudly you sing in church, how much time you spend doing church activities outside of Sunday service, or obedience as a prerequisite for taking the Lord’s supper. (Note that these questions tend not to answer, “How am I saved?” but rather, “How do I know that I’m saved?”) Yet, for all of these performance requirements, John has no way of measuring whether his discipleship is good enough to allow remedy with Christ’s shed blood at Calvary in the case of disobedience. Consequently, John’s inevitable failure is “proof” that he is not truly willing to obey, and his lack of faithfulness now becomes a tyrannical principle that drives him further and further into despondency.
In fact, this hypothetical situation exposes one of the greatest dangers to the well-being of the Church: the toxic combination of antinomianism and moralism (or, rejecting divine law for your pastor’s/congregation’s/denomination’s own taboos). Consequently, with the repeated emphasis on self-examination (as opposed to Christ-glorification), over time John begins to doubt his faith and question whether he really is saved. The more he looks at himself and what he is doing (or not), the more reasons he finds to doubt.
Let us be mindful that the law does have a role when it does what it is designed to do: condemn people. That is what drives them to Christ, who then becomes the object of their faith, not works. Even more, if you want a person to feel their desperate need for the gospel, preach the law and its impossible demands. After all, a man can never rejoice in the gospel if he does not first mourn over his own sin. Those who have never felt condemned in their own righteousness will never flee to Jesus and be justified by His death and life. However, faith becomes unbelief once the Church preaches the law, the gospel, and then the law again in order to validate one’s salvation. This is where moralism comes in and rears its ugly head by telling justified people, “You can’t really be sure you’re saved unless you adhere to these preferences.” Theologian Kim Riddlebarger coined the term neonomianism, which refers to the unbiblical idea of a new legalism wherein obedience, repentance and submission all acquire a new status that is a direct challenge to sola fide. Oftentimes, those who preach a “gospel” of neonomianism may seem very pious and biblical. Their conflation of law and gospel is so subtle, it may not even be detected. And that’s the point, for as Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, discernment is not telling the difference between right and wrong; it’s the ability to tell the difference between right and almost right.
The tendency to condition justification on moral transformation is Roman Catholicism, not biblical Christianity. Justification by Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone is a summation of the gospel according to God. In contrast, according to the gospel of men, I have to trust in how much I have cleaned up my life.
Truly, faith is neither repentance nor obedience, nor does it include them as its component parts; rather, these are the effects of faith. Hence, what hypocrites need is the law to crush their spiritual pride. Yet for those who despair—like the hypothetical John Doe Christian—the good news God has for him is that he is not justified by faith alone and then later on assured by his works. Assurance is based on an unconditional promise, and thus, those who are not assured are those who are not trusting. God is so good that He gives a free gift to people who don’t merit it; faith therefore carries with it the assurance that God’s promise is true for you even though your faith and assurance are weak. Praise be to God that the cause of your salvation is Christ and not your faith. Christ is the answer to our guilt and condemnation through justification. Christ is also the answer to our bondage and corruption through sanctification. What I would thus tell John Doe is that the very fact of his inner conflict over sin is itself a mark of being regenerate (Romans 7). That is, concern over and struggle with sin (not sinlessness) is a mark of grace. It is only if there is no battle with disobedience and rebellion that there is reason to doubt if one is saved. As Michael Horton again writes in Christ the Lord:
“While the regenerate do not cease sinning, they also do not cease hating their sin and struggling to eradicate it. The believer loves God’s law because it is written on his or her heart (Jeremiah 31:33-34), but it is his or her inability to conform perfectly to it that creates this tension in the Christian life, this war within.”
Only those who make being under grace an excuse for carelessness about sin (Romans 6:15) indicate that they are not really under grace. These folks have no inner conflict because they are serving their own interests, not God’s. Romans 7 makes clear to us that the Christian life is characterized by a conflict of two natures. In fact, as the Puritan Thomas Goodwin once wrote:
“The best Christians are most suspicious of themselves, and none fuller of doubts and fears than those that have least cause to fear or doubt that their estates are broken and bad.”
Indeed, grace is not a license to do wrong. But the glorious news for John Doe is that, yes, Christ died for all the sins of Christians as well, and his growth in grace is not through how well he performs, because the law has no power. The good news for John is that his sanctification is through the power of the Holy Spirit by Christ’s Resurrection; thus, in love God will provide the righteousness He demands. The good news for John is that as a Christian, he can no longer be condemned by the law, because he is already in Christ.
Therefore there is now no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)
With Christ and the gospel in mind, John now sees that holiness is not optional, it’s a requirement. To deny growth in grace would be to reject what God says, for we know that God’s will is your sanctification (I Thessalonians 4:3). But God doesn’t threaten His child and say, “Be holy or else.” Rather, a loving Father promises to finish the work that He started (Philippians 1:6) and sanctify those who are already His (I Corinthians 1:30). Hence, preach Christ and the result is faith and sanctification. Preach works and all you end up with is unbelief, despair and frustration.
The one thing I wish not to be accused of is asserting “easy believism,” meaning that once a person is saved by grace, they may simply do as they please without a consideration of holiness or of what it cost a holy God to redeem sinners. May it never be! As Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said, grace is free but it is not cheap. Anyone who truly understands grace will never lean on “cheap grace,” and if they do, they don’t understand grace. Let us remember that grace is a disposition of an omnipotent God. Therefore, if God bestows His effectual grace to save you, that same grace will also be 100% effectual to sanctify you. A justified sinner can’t help but be sanctified because holy omnipotence is the causal force behind that change. To deny inevitable sanctification after justification would be to deny that a log must get hot when placed in the flame. The log may start off at room temperature the moment it’s put into the fire, but after time, it is certain it will be scorching hot. Let the Christian, then, never think like a worldly person after they have been set free by Christ. Free men cannot adhere to the rules they lived under while in prison. But, all the more, when a Christian is redeemed, they do not become a free agent to do as they please. They are set free to serve God. As it says in Romans 6:11:
So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
We are set free from bondage to sin so that we may fulfill our God-given design to live for His glory.
The same grace that begets faith will transform us to be more like Christ step-by-step and day-by-day. Faith becomes even greater faith when we learn how to depend on Christ all the more; peace and contentment will naturally flow from Him as we simultaneously embrace self-forgetfulness. In fact, to drive the biblical doctrine of sanctification home, allow me to read all of Romans 6 (the New Testament chapter on sanctification), which does not primarily speak of moral renewal but rather focuses on Jesus. At the end of Romans 5, the apostle Paul explains that the law existed to expose our sinfulness. And because the law revealed how sinful we actually are, grace had to abound all the more to redeem us. The apostle then continues and says:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Far from it! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for the one who has died is freed from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all time; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore sin is not to reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and your body’s parts as instruments of righteousness for God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace.
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under the Law but under grace? Far from it! Do you not know that the one to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of that same one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and after being freed from sin, you became slaves to righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented the parts of your body as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your body’s parts as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in relation to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
One of the powerful insights that Romans 6 gives to us is why the person who is justified will inevitably be sanctified: because divine grace continues to act for them and on them. As alluded to before, God never saves a person and then leaves them alone to figure it out. Rather, those who—through baptism—have been buried with Christ are also united to Him in His Resurrection so that they can walk in newness of life, not continue in sin.
Now, what does the apostle mean when he says that believers have “died with Christ” and that our body of sin might be “done away with”? Well, it certainly does not mean that it is impossible for genuine Christians to sin. It also does not mean that Christians will cease from sin in their day-to-day lives. The legacy of saints in the Bible, real life and Romans 7 all refute these false ideas. In Romans 6:10, Paul writes that for Christ:
The death that He died, He died to sin once for all time.
Thus, when the apostle refers to death, he is speaking about death as the ultimate punishment for sin, “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Death is the pinnacle of the law because in it you get what you earned. Of course, Christ was sinless but died as our substitute. This, of course, was the entire reason why Jesus went to the Cross: to pay for the sins of the elect (see Matthew 1:21, 20:28, 26:28; John 10:15, 17:9; Hebrews 2:9; I John 2:2). Accordingly, in Romans 6, our being dead to sin refers to the reality that for all those in union with Jesus, He already paid the ultimate penalty for our sin through His death. Sin therefore no longer has power over us both because we cannot be condemned by it and because the Spirit progressively matures us to walk in the light, not the darkness. Sin may attempt to control us, but although it can bark, it can never bite. It may attempt to extract monies from us, but the debt has already been paid. Why are these things true? Because in God’s eyes, the born again are no longer guilty but justified. Again, Romans 8:1-2 says:
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)
The law of sin says that you must die for what you have done. The law of grace says Christ already died for your sins, so you are now free to live for the One who redeemed you.
Who will bring charges against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. (Romans 8:33)
What a marvelous, Christ-exalting and hope-infusing truth this is.
The greatest weapon of the law and sin is death. But Christ forever disarmed them both at Calvary.
Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Corinthians 15:55-57)
Faith becomes unbelief when a Christian begins to look inside and to consider what they have done. That is living under the law, which says you must atone. But when a Christian thinks about Christ more and themselves less, they see that grace does two things: it doesn’t give what you do deserve (death), and it does give you what you don’t deserve (redemption). And all of this is because of Christ, who begets gratitude in the mind, love in the heart, and activation of the will. The law can therefore never threaten a Christian, who will still be weary about the sin they continue to commit. And even when they do sin, they still have hope, because when they continuously flee to Jesus, He will forgive them:
Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (I John 2:1-2)
Christ is of first importance. Consequently, the goal of the Christian life is to be more like Christ. I don’t think there is much debate with that statement. The question now becomes, how does a Christian become more like Christ? What is the way in which God prescribes that people become more like His Son? These are important questions to consider because in the same way we can misunderstand how people are justified, we can also think unbiblically about how God has designed our sanctification. Biblical sanctification starts with a novel, Christ-centered identity where a person is no longer defined by who they are or their works; they are defined by being in union with Christ. A crucial key, then, for living the sanctified life is to remember who you are: a child of God and an heir of the kingdom. Your former identity is erased and replaced with One in which you are in union with Christ. Accordingly, in Romans 6, verses 11 and 14 the text says:
So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus … For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace.
The born again are 100% forgiven, and there is nothing they could ever do that would spoil their salvation. This is why in I John 1:12-14, the apostle separates those who are already saved into three (spiritual) categories: little children, young men and fathers. And what characterizes those who are babes in Christ? That they are forgiven on account of Christ (I John 1:12). And what characterizes the young men? That they have overcome the evil one (I John 1:13), meaning they have overcome those sins that held them in bondage. The fathers are the ones who know the Lord or who have a deep intimacy with Him. They are the ones who best exemplify “walking in the light” (I John 1:5-7). The point is that when talking about sanctification according to God, the process starts because you are now a new creation: that is, because of Christ, the justified sinner is forgiven, imputed with Jesus’s righteousness, liberated, adopted and loved and cherished by God. And because of His present grace, He is also currently working to free you from the power of sin. Ultimately, it is not your effort but His power that brings His will to pass. These things are what saturate the mind of a justified sinner, and this transformed thinking is what drives them down the life-long road of sanctification, which involve active and responsible choices. This is God’s plan. Yet, moralism and behavior modification don’t work because that is not God’s plan. Every Christian who has become more like Christ has done so by focusing on Christ. This follows the biblical principle that we become what we worship (Psalm 115:8).
The bad news is that there is a doom cycle of condemnation for those outside of Christ: because of the law, they will be condemned forever (penalty) because of their sin. They are enslaved to sin now (power), and they will continue in sin in eternity (pollution). The good news of Christ is that the believer lives under grace, is justified and is thus freed from the penalty of sin. They are also liberated from the power of sin now, and in glory will have the inner pollution of sin removed forever.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
In Matthew 11:28, Christ invites His sheep to find rest in Him. The Lord invites those who will hear to Himself because He knows that if anyone is to have rest, they will find it in Him alone. As Stephen Charnock writes in The Existence and Attributes of God:
“God is holy, happy, wise, good by his essence; angels and men are made holy, wise, happy, strong, and good by qualities and graces.”
Specifically, we find true happiness for our souls and fuel for our faith in Christ because God is sovereign. Simply put, divine sovereignty refers to the exercise of the Lord’s supremacy. According to Charles Haddon Spurgeon (preaching on Matthew 20:15):
“There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God’s sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all … It is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon His throne whom we trust.”
Because God is sovereign, everything is under His rule and control; consequently, He works not just some things but all things according to the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11). And for His elect, it is His will to see them persevere until glory. It is His will that His elect are justified, and His will that all His children are sanctified. God is also immutable in His sovereignty, and so He will always exercise His supremacy for the good of His people. All other things are like shifting sands, but Jesus remains fixed and immoveable. The same tender-hearted Shepherd who showed compassion and kindness on the bruised and broken back then stands ready to do the same for you now.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)
Things that change don’t endure, and things that endure don’t change. Everything other than God is mutable and therefore is an invalid object of our faith. Consider: what comfort would it be to pray to a God that changed moment to moment? What hope would we have if God’s mercy right now changed into wrath later on? That Christ does not change is one of the strongest anchors of our faith. He is unchangeable in His love and His truth; herein lies the strength of all His promises. Again, Charnock writes:
“His goodness could not be distrusted, if his unchangeableness were well apprehended and considered: all distrust would fly before it as darkness before the sun; it only gets advantage of us, when we are not well grounded in his name.”
The great hope for all Christians is that the foundation upon which we stand is a perfect One: Christ the Lord. Because of Him, nothing can be added and nothing can be taken away (Ecclesiastes 3:14). Beloved, faith becomes unbelief whenever we take our eyes off Christ. Faith begets more faith the more we refuse to look upon anyone else other than Jesus. Truly, we are justified by faith alone, yet faith is the root that begets the fruits of sanctification. So then, let us open our eyes each and every day to God’s truth and promises so that we may behold Christ. Let us also pray that God would surgically remove any hindrances to our faith both inward and outward.
Trust in the Lord forever, for in God the Lord, we have an everlasting Rock. (Isaiah 26:4)
Dr. C. H. E. Sadaphal