Three Hints of Sanctification

In the Recovery Version’s outline of the book of Romans, 5:12 marks a major turning point in Paul’s epistle. Before this point, he has laid out the situation of fallen man and then shown God’s righteousness in justifying those who believe the gospel, based on Christ’s redemption. From this point, there is a turn to the matter of sanctification. The footnote on sanctification in 6:19 is important here:

Sanctification (see note 23 in ch. 1) involves not only a change in position, that is, a separation from a common, worldly position to a position for God, as illustrated in Matt. 23:17, 19 and in 1 Tim. 4:3-5; it involves also a transformation in disposition, that is, a transformation from the natural disposition to a spiritual one by Christ as the life-giving Spirit saturating all the inward parts of our being with God’s nature of holiness, as mentioned in 12:2 and 2 Cor. 3:18.

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Short of the Glory

It’s over. Case closed. After cataloging the evidence against men who reject God, and then describing the emptiness of a self-confident attempt to please God, quoting verse after verse from the Old Testament and keenly describing man’s experience, Paul sums things up in Romans 3:23:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

All have sinned. This is basic to our understanding of the good news of God. It is also a basic challenge to the common attitude of simply trying to do the best we can in challenging circumstances. It is so far removed from our daily experience that it is difficult and in some ways awful to contemplate an entirely righteous Being. Either we reject Him, or we attempt to follow methods and practices that manage God for us, making Him understandable and bearable. However, the sentence quoted above is not finished.

Without Excuse

I don’t know a single person who likes to hear what they have done wrong. Our defenses instantly go up: we bristle in indignation, mount a counteroffensive, or perhaps we simply silent disengage. At the same time, we are quick to see the small faults of others, as well as the larger problems of evil and injustice endemic to human society. What he does is inexcusable; what I do is understandable. I may have done this, but at least I have never done that. In Romans 2:1, after speaking of God’s condemnation on those who reject Him, Paul turns the tables on those who are, perhaps, nodding along smugly:

The Truth Held Down

You and I are not meaningless. The universe is not simply a flexing something that came from and will return to nothing. There is God, and His being gives meaning. There is, however, no shortage of vocal deniers of God’s existence. Faith in a revealed and speaking God is increasingly under attack, and even those who do not actively disbelieve often find the entire question of God irrelevant.

This state of affairs is not new. In Romans 1, Paul begins to explain the human condition that causes men to “hold down the truth in unrighteousness” (v. 18). This is not simply telling a lie, or not acknowledging a true thing, but holding down the truth.

Shame and the Gospel

I think it was my freshman year in college when I was asked to go out to preach the gospel. I walked around my campus with a very enthusiastic brother, approaching people and being rejected as soon as they heard we wanted to talk about Jesus. The more we were scoffed at, the happier he seemed to be. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I disliked being approached myself, how I could tell when someone I didn’t know had marked me out to ask for money or a signature on a petition. If only, I thought, it wasn’t so impolite. 

Several years later, a good friend of mine asked me about God. It was late at night, and our conversation had drifted toward the Big Topics of being. He knew that I was a Christian, and admitted that he didn’t know much about the Bible, about Christ, but he wanted to learn. At the time, shadowed as I was by profound doubt, I said something noncommittal and the moment passed. It never returned. The techniques or particulars of preaching weren’t the problem. I was ashamed of the gospel.