Last modified: Saturday, January 11, 2014
1. (Clark 1992, 1):
"... In plain English, salvation is a broad term that includes regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. The present study concerns sanctification."
"Regeneration is an act of God. By it he instantaneously produces an effect in man, a change in which man is totally passive. Jeremiah 13:23 puts it rather picturesquely: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" Co-temporaneously God does something else that is not a change in man at all. Justification is an instantaneous judicial act of acquittal. Sanctification, however, is neither instantaneous, nor is a man passive therein. It is not instantaneous because it is a time-consuming, subjective, life-long process. Nor is it an act of God alone. It is indeed dependent on the continuous power of God, but it is also the activity of the regenerated man. Both God and man are active. Sanctification is the Christian life."
2. (Clark 1992, 3): "If, now, one wishes to examine what is simultaneous, or what the logical relations are, one could say that repentance itself, more commonly connected with aversion from sin than with the belief in the Trinity, is an act of, and a part of, faith. Believing is indeed an act of the human self, caused by God to be sure, and totally impossible except for regeneration and God's gift; but it is nonetheless a human volition. It is a first act in a Christian life. Dead bones cannot believe; but when clothed with flesh they live, and they live a life of faith. By means of this volition God justifies the sinner on the ground of Christ's merits. This judicial pronouncement inevitably, if some people do not care to say automatically, sets in motion the life-long process of sanctification. The purpose of justification, or at least one of the purposes, and the immediate one, is to produce sanctification. The earliest stage of this is conversion, so early that it might be identified with the first act of faith itself."
Repentance is an act of, and a part of, faith.
Believing is an act of human volition.
Believing is the first act in a Christian life.
By means of believing, God justifies the sinner on the ground of Christ's merits.
Justification inevitably sets in motion the life-long process of sanctification.
One purpose of justification is to produce sanctification.
The earliest stage of sanctification is conversion.
Conversion might be identified with the first act of faith itself.
Reference:
Clark, Gordon H. 1992. Sanctification. Jefferson, Maryland: The Trinity Foundation.
End.
