4. Salvation & Sanctification: God’s restoration of human being

At its heart, Christianity is about salvation. The sin that defines and distorts every human being represents a mortal problem we are powerless to solve ourselves. We need intervention. Romans 7:25 tells us that in Christ, God has done just that.

To be delivered from sin is to be saved from both its power and effect. But because sin is more than just a moral problem (that is, it’s more than just the bad things we do and the good things we don’t do), to be saved from it requires much more than just a set of moralistic laws. In fact, the whole argument of Romans up to chapter 7 seeks to make this very point. We need a reform of our entire nature, our entire being. We need God to rewire and rewrite us into his image again.

God does this by grafting us into the perfection of his Son through faith. The Bible’s language of being “in Christ” articulates this precious truth. As you hear the message of the gospel – that Jesus Christ died for sin and was raised to new life to bring you to God – and when you entrust yourself to him – God’s perfect Son, who was like us in every way yet was without sin – then God incorporates you into his perfect being. This means all his benefits flow to us as all our baggage flows to him. The Reformers of the 16th century referred to this as “the Great Exchange”, and it is how God rewrites us: by grafting us into his Son by faith.

The Bible uses various metaphors to talk about this. We have been crucified with Christ; we have been raised with Christ; we are baptised into Christ; our old self has been buried with Christ; we’re born again; we’re given new birth into a living hope. Salvation is about receiving a new life in Christ. In addition, God equips our new life with his Spirit to conform us more and more to the image of his Son. This growing into our new life in Christ is traditionally referred to as sanctification and is primarily characterised by an increasing outworking of love in the believer’s life. As their being is reformed, their actions follow suit. The process of salvation and sanctification in Christ clearly demonstrates the being-before-doing pattern we see in the Scriptures.