Hank's Bible Study Resources

There are two ditches a believer can fall into when he tries to think about his own holiness.

The first ditch is despair. He looks at the gap between who he is in Christ and who he is on a Tuesday afternoon, and he cannot reconcile it. He concludes that either the gospel is not really true of him, or he is too far gone for the gospel to reach. He stops praying because prayer feels like lying. He stops going to church because church feels like a costume.

The second ditch is arrogance. He decides that since he has been declared righteous, he must already be righteous in every operational sense, and therefore the patterns he still struggles with do not matter, or they are someone else’s fault, or they are just how he is wired. He stops examining himself because there is nothing left to examine.

Both ditches come from the same mistake. The believer has confused two doctrines that the New Testament holds together but never collapses into one.

Justification and sanctification.

What is settled. What is becoming.

If you can see the difference between these two, the rest of the Christian life makes a lot more sense.

What Justification Is

The Greek noun is dikaiōsis (δικαίωσις, G1347). The verb is dikaioō (δικαιόω, G1344). The lexical meaning is to declare righteous, to render a verdict of not guilty, to count as just. It is courtroom language. A judge looks at the defendant and pronounces him righteous in the eyes of the law.

Paul argues in Romans 3 through 5 and again in Galatians 2 and 3 that this is exactly what happens at the moment of saving faith. God, the righteous Judge, looks at a sinner who has trusted in Christ, and declares him righteous. Not because the sinner has produced any righteousness of his own. Because the righteousness of Christ has been counted to him.

The bedrock verse is 2 Corinthians 5:21.

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Look at the trade. Christ takes our sin. We take His righteousness. In Him. The phrase is doing what it always does. Union with Christ is the place where the trade happens.

That declaration is not a process. It is a single verdict, handed down once, that does not get renegotiated. Paul is emphatic about this in Romans 8:1.

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

Notice the word now. Not eventually. Not on a good day. Not when you finally get it together. Now. Because the verdict has been entered.

That is justification. It is past tense, completed action, not subject to revision.

What Sanctification Is

Sanctification is a different word and a different doctrine. The Greek is hagiasmos (ἁγιασμός, G38), from hagios (G40), holy or set apart. It is the process by which a person who has been declared righteous is gradually made righteous in the actual texture of his life. The character of Christ being formed in the heart, the mind, the body, the relationships of a believer over time.

Paul teaches sanctification in passages like 1 Thessalonians 4:3 (this is the will of God, your sanctification), Romans 6 and 8, Galatians 5:16-25, and the practical sections of nearly every letter he wrote. He does not separate it from justification. He builds sanctification on justification, the way you build a house on a foundation.

Watch how he does it in Philippians.

Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Phil 1:6)

Begun. Will complete. Past tense start, future tense finish. The work between is sanctification. And here is the part most readers miss. The progress is not yours to guarantee. The same God who began it will complete it. He is not waiting on you to be impressive. He is conforming you to the image of His Son (Rom 8:29) on a timeline He has already worked out.

Three tenses of one salvation. Same Savior. Same union. Different stages of the same work.

Why Confusing Them Wrecks the Christian Life

Almost every pastoral problem I have run into in thirty years of teaching can be traced back to a confusion between these two.

If a believer thinks justification is gradual, he never has any peace. Every sin is a possible disqualification. Every weakness is a wobble in his standing. He treats God like a boss who might fire him. He cannot rest, because resting feels like presumption.

If a believer thinks sanctification has already happened in full, he becomes either fake or numb. He cannot acknowledge his struggles, because struggles do not fit the script. He starts performing instead of repenting. He grows hard.

The healthy middle is not a compromise. It is the New Testament teaching. You are righteous in Christ. You are also being made righteous, day by day, in the actual texture of your life. Both. At the same time.

Settled at the root. Becoming on the surface.

The Pictures Paul Uses

Paul uses different pictures for these two realities, and noticing them helps.

For justification he reaches for legal pictures. Verdict. Imputation. Counting. The accountant’s ledger of Romans 4. The courtroom of Romans 8. Logizomai again, the bookkeeping word from Romans 6, applied here to the righteousness counted to Abraham apart from works (Rom 4:3).

For sanctification he reaches for organic pictures. Growth. Fruit. Branch in a vine (John 15, though that is John, but Paul mirrors the metaphor). Putting off the old man and putting on the new (Eph 4:22-24). Walking. Running. Building. The patient slow work of becoming.

You can hear the difference. The legal pictures freeze a moment in time. The organic pictures stretch across years.

Both are true of you. The freeze frame and the long shot. In Him.

What This Looks Like on a Tuesday

Here is how this lands in the working week.

You lose your temper at your wife or your kids. You feel the heat of it for hours afterward. The voice in your head starts whispering that you must not really be saved, that the gospel cannot be true of someone who keeps doing this.

That voice is making the first mistake. It is treating your justification as if it were sanctification. It is reading your behavior as evidence about your standing. The Bible reads it the other way around.

Your standing is settled. No condemnation (Rom 8:1). The lost temper does not undo the verdict. The verdict was based on Christ’s righteousness, not yours, and Christ’s righteousness has not changed since this morning.

But your sanctification is real. The lost temper is a sign that the old patterns have not all been put off. There is work to be done. So you confess (we will get to confession in a later post). You repent. You go and ask forgiveness from the people you wounded. You ask the Spirit to do something underneath the pattern that you cannot reach with willpower. You pray Romans 6:11 and reckon yourself dead to that old reflex. You go to bed humbler than you woke up.

That is healthy Christian life. Not perfection. Not despair. Settled at the root. Growing on the surface.

A Word to the Reader

If you have been measuring your justification by your sanctification, stop. You have been doing the math wrong.

Your behavior tells you about your formation. It tells you where the Spirit is still working. It tells you which patterns Christ has not yet conquered in your daily reflexes. It does not tell you about your standing. Your standing is not in your daily reflexes. Your standing is in Christ.

Read 2 Corinthians 5:21 every morning this week. Read Romans 8:1 right after it. Then read Philippians 1:6 to set your eyes on the road ahead.

Already righteous. Still becoming. Both are true. The same Christ secures both.

Next post we go to a doctrine the average Christian believes and the average Christian does not live in. The Spirit. He is not a force. He is not a feeling. He is a Person, and He has taken up residence inside of you.