Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7073. Positional sanctification describes where you stand before God; practical sanctification describes how you are getting on. Both are scriptural, both matter, and a great many discouraged Christians are discouraged precisely because they have been measuring the first by the second. If you have ever wondered how Paul could call the Corinthians saints with…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7071. Religious legalism is the instinct to add something of our own to what Jesus has already finished, and it is remarkably persistent in the human heart. I have never met a Christian who was entirely free of it, including the one writing this. We know that we are saved by grace, we say…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07064 Cheap grace is a phrase coined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer to describe grace that has been stripped of any consequence, and costly grace is his term for the real thing. The distinction is genuinely useful, and it also needs handling carefully, because it can be pushed until it turns grace into a purchase. Let…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07061 Christian re-dedication is not being saved again, and the difference matters more than it might sound. Salvation happens once and cannot be repeated, because the new birth is not the kind of thing that can be undone and redone. Re-dedication is the renewal of a commitment that has gone cold, and that can…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07060 A backsliding Christian is a believer who has drifted away from close fellowship with God, and yes, they can come back. In fact the whole of Scripture is arranged to tell them so, and I have never yet met a returning believer whom God turned away at the door. The word backslider is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07055 There is always a moment of salvation, even when nobody can identify it. That is the short answer, and it holds two things together that people often set against each other: the instantaneous nature of what God does, and the very gradual experience many believers have of coming to realise it. This question…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07051 True repentance is one of those words the church uses constantly and explains rarely, which is a pity, because a great deal of unnecessary misery grows in that gap. Some people think it means grovelling. Some think it means getting your life sorted before God will have you. Some have been told it…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07018. God’s grace is favour shown to people who have earned the opposite, and that definition is worth memorising because almost every popular version of it is softer than the real thing. Grace is not God being lenient. Leniency overlooks the offence. Grace deals with the offence at enormous cost and then treats the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07015. Sanctification means being set apart, and if you grasp that one idea you have the doctrine in your hand. The word group behind it in Hebrew and Greek does not primarily mean to become morally impressive. It means to be marked off for a particular use, taken out of general circulation and reserved…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07007. Paul’s command to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling has frightened more Christians than almost any other sentence he wrote, and the fright is entirely unnecessary once you see where the sentence sits. Read on its own it sounds as though salvation is a project we complete under threat. Read…