Justification 1

Grace Through the Spirit

The regeneration of believers is a process of being born again and subsequent “growth in

Christian love,” (Migliore, 2004, p. 239). Justification declares one legally innocent before God

but it also offers the individual freedom to grow in love for God and fellow humans.

Regeneration is instantaneous while sanctification is an instantaneous impartation of God’s

holiness as well as a process of “working out our salvation with fear and trembling” after having

been born again (Phil 2:12). Regeneration is first of all a gift of grace from God upon our

justification but with this gift comes the responsibility of a disciplined life where one must

constantly choose to be led by the Spirit or by the flesh.

The doctrines of justification, regeneration and adoption hinge upon man’s response to

the wooing of God’s grace toward salvation. As humankind obediently responds in faith to the

grace being offered through the gospel a supernatural translation occurs. The individual is

removed from the headship of Satan, the fleshly nature is crucified and the person is brought into

the Lordship of Christ. This event is a mutual working of God and humanity. God possesses all

the means necessary to save and is willing to release those means as the individual places their

faith in the available means. It can be illustrated as a set of shared responses: God draws by His

effective and convicting grace; men respond, by faith, through obedience to the gospel; through

obedience to the gospel the person is justified and God responds by regenerating, sanctifying and

adopting him or her into the family.

God has graciously provided all that is necessary to secure the making of a new creature.

The mutual responsibility, however, does not end at this point. The individual has answered the

call of grace but now come the responsibility of living in his or her newfound freedom by

cooperating with Spirit; who is empowering the Christian to set his or her mind upon the things
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that please God and rejecting the acts of the sinful nature (Rom 6:11; 8:5-8). The decision to put

one’s faith in the work of Calvary for salvation is only the first struggle faced in order to walk

with God. The second, and probably longest struggle is that of continually walking in the Spirit

and not yielding to the desires of the sinful nature.

Paul characterizes the Spirit-led life as one that is free from condemnation and acts as an

emancipator from the “law of sin and death” (Rom 8:1-2). The lynch pin, according to Paul, in

humanities liberation is Jesus Christ who willingly sacrificed His own life (Rom 8:3b). By

offering His life as a ransom for the sins of many (Mat 20:28) Christ accomplished two things

that humankind could not. First, he “condemned sin in sinful man” and secondly, He made it

possible for humanity to fulfill the righteousness of the law (Rom 8:3b-4). The end result of what

Christ has done is that the Christian can now be free from the condemnation that was inherent in

the Law of Moses.

The law was a pedagogical revealer of what sin is. The problem though is that once sin

was revealed the pedagogue was impotent to provide the necessary power to overcome sin.

Therefore, sin took advantage of the vacuum left by the command to trick humanity into being

attracted to the stuff of the sinful nature. In the end, the powerlessness of the law combined with

the sin nature of humankind brought him to death instead of life. Death was not merely confined

to the physical. Because the law revealed sin but was powerless it only brought about

condemnation leading men to despair. Condemnation shoved humanity into the proverbial corner

with no hope of being able to punch out. Christ, on the other hand, stepped into the ring of

humanities weakness and did what neither the law or humankind could do: remove the

condemnation by fulfilling the law and offering abundant life in the Spirit (John 10:10). Life in

the Spirit requires a disposition whereby the new creature stands confident in what Christ has
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done, counts his or her sinful nature to be crucified with Christ, and then acts according to the

desires of the Spirit (Rom 8:5b). Osborne (2004) rightly says, “In him we are free from the

power of sin as we give ourselves over to God in obedience and right living” (p. 193).

Although grace to live the Spirit-led life is offered in a multitude of ways and on a

multitude of levels it is still only an offer. Do not think the previous statement infers an offer that

is somehow lacking. Quite the contrary it is an offer that is sufficient to remove sinful humanity

from the mire and provide a firm place to stand (Ps. 40:2). The offer of grace to fallen humanity

does not lack, rather the lack lies in the “recalcitrant responses to grace” by humankind (Oden,

1993, p. 207). The grace of God “has appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11) but not all men are

looking. This purposeful looking away from grace leads those who have been born again to live

out the flesh-led life.

Instead of setting one’s mind on things of the Spirit the person who fails to recognize

God’s grace sets his or her mind on things of the sinful nature (Rom 8:5a). It seems the act of

turning one’s minds from God’s grace is to acknowledge nothing good lives inside but

surrendering to the hopelessness instead of to Christ who offers hope (Rom 7:18a). When an

individual succumbs to the hopelessness of their own sinful condition the acts of the sinful nature

begin to manifest themselves. Why? To be led by the Spirit is to be led away from things that

bring life. Being led away from life has the resultant consequence of death; the very thing that

Christ has come to freely give. Therefore, yielding to natural man puts the individual back into

the same position he or she had been set free from, and worse yet, back under condemnation.

This is not the life Christ intended for those who He has justified, regenerated, sanctified and

adopted.
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References

Migliore, D. (2004). Faith seeking understanding. An introduction to Christian theology. 2nd

Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Erdmans Publishing Co.
Osborne, G. (2004). Romans. Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press