The Christian Life: Sanctification

How Can I Be 'Holy and Without Blame' Before God (Ephesians 1:4) When I Am Still So Sinful?

By Paul M. Elliott
The answer won't be found in your highly variable feelings or spiritual ups and downs, but only in God's unchanging Word.

From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

The key thing we must remember is that the answer will not be found in our highly variable feelings, or our spiritual ups and downs. The answer is found only in God's unchanging Word.

It's Not About How You Feel

The passage to which our questioner refers is found at the beginning of Paul's letter to the Ephesians:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:3-6)

This passage tells us that we are, in one sense, holy and without blame before God right now. A literal rendering would read, "He chose us...to be holy ones and blameless." The verb in the Greek is a present active infinitive. It indicates present and continual reality. Yet we understand from the whole of Scripture that we are, in another sense, still being made holy and without blame at the present time. Each of us is still a work in process.

On a day-to-day basis, do you feel holy or blameless? If we are honest before God and our own selves, we must admit that we do not. We know that we are polluted by this world, and furthermore we know, as Paul did (Romans 7) that the will to sin, and the outworking of that sinful will, is still very strong within us.

How, then, can both things be true? Is this a paradox in the Word of God? As we carefully study the Scriptures, we find that there is no paradox. It's not about how we feel, or our spiritual ups and downs. Those things vary from day to day and even moment to moment. It's all about what God's unchanging Word tells us is true.

What We Are Now Positionally

Here at the beginning of Ephesians, God's Word tells us that regardless of how we feel about it, we have that standing before God, right here, right now - "holy and without blame before Him." This has nothing to do with us. It has everything - and only - to do with Christ. We are justified - we are declared righteous - through the merits of Christ, His death and resurrection on our behalf. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). And nothing, no one, can take that full pardon away from us.

That is what we might call the positional aspect of being "holy and without blame before Him." We are completely holy and without blame from God the Father's point of view. We have been clothed in the righteousness of Christ, so that when we approach the Father's throne He sees not our sinfulness but His Son's righteousness. That is how we have access to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:14-16).

What We're Becoming Progressively

But there is also a progressive aspect. God owns us. God indwells us. Paul asks the Corinthians, "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

God has set us apart for clean use. As Paul writes in 2 Timothy chapter 2, " 'The Lord knows those who are His," and, 'Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.' But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor. Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work."

God wants us to be set apart for clean use. If you have ever had surgery, aren't you glad that the doctor didn't stop on the way to the operating room and borrow the janitor's gloves to do the job? No, he used sterile gloves. Gloves that were as free as possible of disease and bacteria and pollution of any kind, specially made for the purpose, set aside and prepared for clean use. We have been specially made for God's purposes in this world. But to be useful to the Master in the way He desires, we must be clean vessels.

Part of God's purpose in redeeming us is to work through us to accomplish His purposes in this world. What a high yet humbling calling we have. God wants us to strive, by the application of His Word and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to become more and more like Christ, our perfect substitute who is "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Hebrews 7:26). God does not command this of us and do this work within us in order that we may be saved, but because we are already His.

But because we are still in this world and in this flesh, we will continue to fall short. You see, our problem is not only the sins we commit, but the fact that we are sinners. Both problems must be dealt with. And Christ has dealt with them both. He has not only caused our sins to be forgiven, but He has caused us to be given a new nature that will have the ultimate victory over sin.

Right now, as Paul tells us in Romans 7, there is a constant warfare going on in us between our old and new natures. But God assures us that He is at work. "He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Christ" (Philippians 1:6) conforming us more and more to the image of Christ, the perfect servant of the Father. And one day, Paul tells us later in Ephesians, Christ will present us to Himself, "a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing...holy and without blemish" (5:27). He will do it!

How God Does It

And how does God do it? Just as God brings us to saving faith through His Word (Romans 10:8-17), He also sets us apart for clean use - in this present life and for the life to come - through His Word. Look at Ephesians 5:27 in context: "...Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish" (5:25-27). And this is why the Lord Jesus, in His high priestly prayer, asked of the Father, "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth" (John 17:17).

As your feelings vary, and as you go through the spiritual victories and defeats of life in a world under the curse, rest upon God's inspired, infallible, inerrant Word alone for comfort, assurance, encouragement, and sanctification. Don't let your wavering feelings, or Satan's whispers of doubt, rob you of the blessings of all that is yours both now and in the life to come because of Christ.

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