2. In 1 Corinthi ans 1:2 and 6:11, for example, all believers are said to be sanctified.
The Certainty of Judgement
elements of salvation. God will not declare a person righ teous without also making him or her righ teous. Salvation includes all God's work on our behalf, from His foreknowledge of us before the foundation of the world to our ultimate glorification in eternity future (Rom. 8:29 – 30). One cannot pick and choose, accepting eternal life while rejecting holiness and obedience. When God justifies people He also sanctifies them.2
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, "Do we realize that if we truly understand the doctrine of justification by faith we have already grasped the essence and the nerve of the New Testament teaching about holiness and sanctification? Have we realized that to be justified by faith guarantees our sanctification, and that therefore we must never think of sanctification as a separate and subsequent experience?" (emphasis added).3
Scripture challenges those who define salvation as a purely judicial act with no practical consequences. Hebrews 12:14 speaks of "the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord." The King James Version renders Hebrews 12:14: "Follow . . . holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." That verse does not make holiness a prerequisite for justification, but it recognizes it as the sure result. In other words, sanctification is a characteristic of all who are redeemed, not a condition for their receiving salvation. Those whose faith is authentic are certain to become holy, and those who lack true faith can never be holy. They have no hope of seeing God, except to stand before Him in judgment.
Many who think they are saved but live unholy lives will be shocked to discover in the final judgment that heaven is not their destiny. It is hard to picture a more horrifying scene than that described by Jesus in Matthew 7:21 – 23: "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.' "
Those who think of salvation as merely a legal transaction, a reckoning apart from practical righ teous ness, will have a difficult time with this warning of Jesus. It puts salvation in very practical terms. It reiterates the key statement of the Sermon on the Mount: "I say to you, that unless your righ teous ness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:20).
2. In 1 Co rin thi ans 1:2 and 6:11, for example, all believers are said to be sanctifi ed. 3. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans: Th e New Man (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 190.