Dear fellow believer: This is heavy but important. So, put your thinking caps on and bear with me. At salvation we are given a new position, namely, that of being placed IN CHRIST JESUS. (Actually this was determined before the foundation of the world but made personal to us in this life time when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, Ephesians 1:4.) Now, God no longer counts our sins against us! Hallelujah! Christ received our condemnation at the Cross and by faith alone we are thereby freed from the "law of sin and death." In fact, at salvation, He additionally credits (imputes) to us His righteousness and thereby justifies us or declares us absolutely righteous for time and eternity. This is our privileged position IN CHRIST JESUS, by grace alone, through faith, plus nothing. . How GLORIOUS!
But, further, and practically speaking, for the sake of His glory and the fashioning of each of us into Christ's image in this life time, His grace continues to work on us. The Apostle said, "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son" (Romans 8:29). He will then, BY CHRIST and through the Holy Spirit, continually deal with us about our daily sins. Those He loves, He chastens (child trains) and "scourges every son whom He receives" (Hebrews 12:6). And so, though grace forgives and makes us perfect in Christ at salvation, it continues to discipline us towards Christ-likeness. This is a kind of on-going grace. We are to "grow in the grace and knowlege of Christ Jesus." This discipline of grace can be severe. Those whom He loves, He chastens. If such doesn't bring us around, He will scourge. This can really hurt. Do read Hebrews 12:4-13. This process in no way impinges upon the justification we have IN CHRIST. That is a constant! But this day by day sanctifying work BY CHRIST is for the purpose of making us in the here-and-now more and more like Jesus. Paul said to the Philippians, "For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (1:6). Our loving God is doing this in the life of every true believer!
Why am I saying all this? Because, generally speaking, I sense an imbalance in today's Evangelical world between, on the one hand, a glorying in God's saving and forgiving grace (which makes us immediately perfect IN CHRIST at salvation), and, on the other hand, the necessary daily growth in the "grace and knowledge" of Christ. The first is frequently mentioned. The second rarely so. We must freely preach salvation by grace alone and the immediate blotting out of all sin at the moment of salvation in the eyes of GOD THE JUDGE, but must then loudly teach the New Testament emphasis of an on-going sanctifying GRACE in the life of every believer in the eyes of GOD, the sinner's newly found FATHER. We must BEWARE of the age-long danger of Antinomianism, or, the habit of so reveling exclusively in saving grace as to excuse and consider trivial our daily sins and God's on-going work of sanctifying grace. Perceptively, the Apostle Paul anticipated this in the first century when he said, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:1). It is possible to so gloat in saving grace, to the exclusion of sanctifying grace, that we glory in the precious truth of 'grace alone' BUT use it to assuage or mollify our consciences into a care-free and reckless continuance in our present sins?
Is it even possible for a truly saved person to entertain such an imbalance? Apparently so or the Apostle would not have warned the Roman believers of the danger thereof. So, let us heed the heads-up Paul gives us and reject a lop-sided view of grace that produces emaciated and worldly Christians. I speak out of concern and in love, burdened for the health of Christ's twenty-first century Church.
-Dick Christen, D.D.
