Moments of Eternal Glory (3): The Son's Role

Part 3. See Part 1: Moments of Eternal Glory: Sanctification and Glory and Part 2: The Father's Role.

Pernicious behaviors, deceitful desires we detest, clinging habits, cravings and clutchings can sometimes cloud our view of God’s working in our life. Particularly for me right now, doubts, fears, feeling like I deserve my rights, all sap my forward walk. Do I, do we really know all that he has provided for our sanctification? For our walk? For our success? He desires victory for us! His glory, his name, after all, is reflected.

Not only does the Father provide for our sanctification, but the Son as well (1). I am not alone in this walk, in this journey. I see my failings, but I am not alone nor left. It is our union with Christ and the resultant justification that form the grounds for sanctification. In him, we have his very righteousness imputed to us! Peace and rest flood with this thought. As John Murray gloriously declares, “So intimate is the union between Christ and his people that they were partakers with him in all [his] triumphal achievements” (2). Not only is it an objective transaction, but it also provides the motivation—to become what we are in him out of love and gratitude.

But the implications of our glorious union with him does not stop there—not only do we have his imputed righteousness, but his life is now being lived out in us; his life is now our life (3). We have new hearts and new desires that are being transformed into his. John Piper points out that “our destiny to be like Christ is ultimately about being prepared and enabled to see and savor the glory of his superiority. We must have his character and likeness in order to know him and see him and love him and admire him the way we ought….We become like him not merely to be his brothers—which is true and wonderful—but mainly to have a nature that is fully able to be in awe of him as the one who has ‘first place in everything’ (Col. 1:18, NASB)” (4). In awe of him.

Not only is this union positive, but it is also “negative.” Christ is the earner of our sanctification through his conquering of sin, death, and Satan, which is then communicated to the believer in union. His victory is our victory. What is this victory? Another whole book, but I need not be afraid in the present nor in the future, nor of my past. 

 “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him” 1 John 5:4, 18.

 Like the Father, Christ is also spoken of as the pattern for our sanctification. We see his life, his abundant life, lived out in the Gospels. We see how he lived. Praise be to him, we are not left guessing or wondering what a sanctified life looks like.

Furthermore, Christ intercedes for our faith to stand firm, to protect us—he is interceding for us! This is portrayed, especially in Hebrews 7:25, as the grounds for believers’ perseverance and bringing each to God’s desired end for them.

 In summary, though, the overarching biblical theme is the definitive work of Christ; he sanctified himself so that believers might be sanctified.

“And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth” (Jn. 17:19).

NOTES

(1) Jn. 17:19; 1 Cor. 1:2; 1 Cor. 6:11; Heb. 2:11; Heb. 10:10; Heb. 10:14; Heb. 10:29; Heb. 13:12; 1 Cor. 1:30; 1 Pet. 1:2; 1 Cor. 1:2; Eph. 2:21; Eph. 5:26-27; Col. 1:22; 1 Thes. 3:13; 2 Tim. 1:9; 1 Pet. 2:5.

(2) Murray, John. “Definitive Sanctification.” Calvin Theological Journal 2, no. 1 (1967): 5-21, p. 16.

(3) Col. 3:4; Gal. 2:21; 1 John 2:6, 5:11.

(4) John Piper, God is the Gospel: Mediations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself  (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2011), 151.