Today, you have the ability to become my harshest critic, or one of them. I wrote a little thing on sin and sanctification and was wondering if you guys would read it. I know you are all real smart and so I would appreciate some good criticisms. If it is too bad, you can email me your comments and spare me the embarrassment. :·) The following thing (it isn't quite a paper) originally began as an email to somebody. Well, here it goes.

Sin and Sanctification

Question 24 of the Westminster Larger Catechism asks, "What is Sin?" The response is this: "Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature." This answer is both a concise and an accurate definition of sin.

The "want of conformity unto" refers to sins of omission. Sins of omission occur when we do not do something that is asked of us by God. The "transgression of" refers to specific acts that are performed against the law of God. The "reasonable creature" relates both to human and angelic beings—both are capable of reason.

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth and rebuked them for allowing sexual immorality to take place. By reading the text we find that there were actually two sins occurring, the first sin was that of sexual immorality, and the other was the church's toleration of the immorality. The church was guilty because of their sin of omission, failing to take action against the brother that was engrossed in sin. The one guilty of sexual sin was committing a sin of commission because he directly transgressed God's law.

The main verb for "sin" in the Hebrew Old Testament is khata which means "to miss" or "to err from the mark" and which Gesinius—in his lexicon—compares to an archer who misses his target. The word for "sin" in the Greek New Testament is hamartia and is defined as "a departure from either human or divine standards of uprightness" (BDAG). And so whenever we miss the mark of, or depart from, God's standard of uprightness, we have committed a sin.

The first sin was committed by Satan himself and the demons with him. This great angelic rebellion would have occurred after creation for a couple of reasons: (1) they themselves were created and (2) the Lord said with respect to the completed creation that "it is good" (Genesis 1:31). The exact nature of the sin(s) are not given in Scripture. Some believe that the actual sin committed by the devil and his angelic followers was a possession of envy and hatred towards humans because of their future advancement in Christ above the angels. Others believe that the specific sin was pride—that they sought to be like God and were beginning to admire themselves (the created ones) instead of the creator. No detail is given with regard to the order of events, yet, whatever the situation be, the important fact is that Satan, the father of lies, committed the first sin and took a third of the angels down with him. (Revelation 12:4)

Sometime after the fall of the demons, man fell as well. Now God had created the world and everything in it. He placed the first man, Adam, in the garden and told him to eat of every tree but one—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Tasting of it was directly prohibited by God. Then Adam's wife, Eve, had an encounter with a serpent who questioned the very words of God:

He [[the serpent]] said to the woman, "Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Genesis 3:1b-7).

The Scriptures tell us that before we were even born, the sin of Adam has been counted against us. As human beings, Adam is our "federal head," which means that his choice affected us all. Adam's sin has been imputed to us so that when God looks on man He sees the sin of Adam. Because Adam was disobedient in the garden, the results are that we, too, as his offspring, are guilty. Not only that, but we all have been born with a sinful nature. This sinful nature is like a plague that has been passed down through every generation. Romans 5:12 says that "just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned."

Outside of Adam's first trespass, sin remains a reality in every person's life because of man’s sinful nature and corrupted flesh. The apostle John wrote, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). John reiterates the point in saying, "If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" (1 John 1:10). Paul says that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

Thankfully, Christ is the second Adam: "The judgment following one man's trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification" (Romans 5:16). "For as by the one man's [[Adam's]] disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's [[Christ's]] obedience the many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19). Elsewhere, Paul states, "For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:21-22).

So with Christ as the Second Adam, our federal head, we who believe have new life in Him. Christ, in His obedience, paid the price and now we have life in His name. When God looks upon us, He does not see our sin because we have the imputed righteousness of Christ.

After Conversion, we have been delivered from the condemnation of sin, and have put to death the old nature of the unregenerate man (Romans 6:6; Colossians 3:9-10; Ephesians 4:20-24). We are now a new creation in Christ! "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17; cf. Galatians 6:15). This does not mean that we are now incapable of sinning, but that the way of life dominated by sin is longer present because we have been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Jesus and by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Though we have a new nature, we continue to struggle because of the negative influences of our flesh (the body), the world, and the powers demonic. The reason that we are capable of sinning is that our new nature is progressive, meaning that we are to be renewed in the spirit of our minds as Ephesians 4:23 states. Colossians 3:10 clarifies it further by stating that our new self is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. This brings us to the next point.

At the point of our justification we begin a process of sanctification. Paul affirms this, "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life" (Romans 6:19). The word sanctification simply speaks of the manner in which we become more set apart for God in this life. According to Francis Turretin, sanctification is "a real and internal renovation of man by which God delivers the man planted in Christ by faith and justified (by the ministry of the word and the efficacy of the Spirit) more and more from his native depravity and transforms him into his own image" (Institutes, 3:689). This relates to our growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ as we become more like Christ. Sanctification is seen in an exhortation of Paul to the church in Rome:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)

Yet how do we live as a "living sacrifice" and pragmatically keep ourselves free from sin? What are the means of this sanctification? One thing is for sure, we are unable to sanctify ourselves. We may try to sanctify ourselves with our own strength, and even sometimes appear to be strong in the faith, but ultimately nothing good dwells in us. Though we may have a desire to do good, we do not have the ability to carry that desire out (Romans 7:18). So where does our strength come from? The power, or ability, to be sanctified comes from the very God who justifies. According to Paul, God has made Christ our sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30). The Scriptures also speak of the Holy Spirit’s role in our sanctification. Both Peter and Paul write about the sanctification by/from the Spirit (1 Peter 1:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:13). God is our sole source for sanctification. It is His grace that trains us to "renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age" (Titus 2:11-12).

Paul makes it clear that working within ourselves is no way of either being justified or sanctified. He encourages the churches in Galatia to be sanctified by the Spirit. Now, Paul also notes that the reception of the Holy Spirit is by hearing with faith:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"? (Galatians 3:1-6)

As we grow in God’s grace we become more sanctified with the result being that the things of this life grow strangely dim and our hearts become set on our ultimate home of which we are citizens (Philippians 3:20). Yet at the same time as we grow in sanctification and become victorious over certain sins, we realize that there are even more sins hidden deep in our corrupted flesh. We need to discover and overcome sin by the ministry of the word and the power of the Spirit, remembering that "it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). Our goal as Christians now is to press on, as Paul says in Philippians 3:8-16:

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.