Spirituality, Sanctification, and Life!!!
Romans 6:1 (Overview)
Romans Lesson #065
July 12, 2012
www.deanbibleministries.org

Romans 6, 7, and 8 is the strongest and possibly the most in depth exposition of spirituality and the spiritual life from the hand of Paul. But so much of Scripture really does relate to the spiritual life. Every passage of Scripture is talking about one of two things: how to become righteous before God, and then everything else relates to spiritual growth, sanctification. It relates to somehow learning about who God is and what His plan and purposes are in history, learning how to think, how to live, how to relate to one another, and so many different ways that we reflect on our life the character of Jesus Christ.

This whole concept of spirituality today is really confusing for so many people because people come into the Christian life with a lot of baggage. There hasn’t been that process of Romans 12:2, that we are to not let our minds be conformed to the world but to be transformed by the renovation of our thinking. It takes time to have our thinking renovated and some people are more resistant to that than other people. We live in a world today where there is so much confusion. There is a lot of confusion outside of the biblically sound evangelical churches. Then when we get into the “biblically sound” evangelical churches and there is a lot of confusion there. How important it is to clearly understand other views and other ways in which these ideas are taught, because you never know who is in your congregation who just walked in and what their background is.

If we go back and look at how church was done fifty or sixty years ago it wasn’t different from how it was done 150 years ago, 250 years ago or 350 years ago; but it was radically transformed coming out of the 1960s. That ought to awaken us to the fact that maybe that is not right. If the church is basically focused on the Word as the centerpiece of everything that is done in the church—not in word, because there are a lot of churches who say they do in word but it is not so in deed, and they have changed everything. If a person who was going to church in 1935 in the United States and was plopped down in a church today he would be shocked, appalled at the transformation that has taken place. This transformation primarily occurred coming out of the sixties because a lot of people came into the church with all of the cultural baggage. A church used to be a place where the family of God came to meet to learn how to be effective in taking the Word out to the world—which is the biblical pattern. Jesus said to go, and as you go (going out) make disciples of all nations.

Today we have a church philosophy that has swept evangelical churches over the last forty or fifty years where you do what you do in church where unbelievers can feel comfortable coming to church. An unbeliever should never feel comfortable coming to church. He shouldn’t hear things that make him feel comfortable because there should be a radical confrontation between divine viewpoint and human viewpoint. He should be aware that the culture of the Christian family is not the culture of the pagan family. Yet when the culture of the local church is made to adapt in such a way that unchurched Harry can feel comfortable then we have a major problem.

As a result of that we have so many people come in from different backgrounds. They come from good denomination backgrounds perhaps, or weak independent or non-denominational church backgrounds, dispensational backgrounds, Reformed backgrounds, or from no background whatsoever. But they all have in their head an idea of what the spiritual life is, of what it means to be spiritual.

So it is important to answer these questions: What is spirituality? What does it mean to be spiritually alive or to have a spiritual life? Learning how to acquire a spiritual life, that the Bible actually teaches that you are born spiritually dead but physically alive; there is no spiritual life there. And yet even among self-identified evangelicals surveys indicate that they think there is a spiritual life prior to trusting in Christ—the vast majority. Obviously they haven’t read the Bible, or been taught anything in the Bible. But that is because of the influence of the world; that is that baggage that they bring with them that hasn’t been dumped yet. They still have thinking that is conformed to the world; it hasn’t yet been transformed by the renewing of their minds/thinking.

We have to lean how that spiritual life is matured and what their new goals are for the spiritual life, how that life is nourished, what the means of spiritual growth are, what the methods are of spirituality. One of the confusing things is that over 2,000 years of Christianity there is just a smorgasbord of ideas that promise that if you do this you too can be spiritual. If you follow this method you can have victory in your Christian life. And it has become even more complicated and distracting in the last 150 years because of various forms of psychology that have been merged with various theological forms to morph into just an innumerable amount of false choices at the spirituality smorgasbord. So it is hard sometimes for people to really get into the Word and to understand some things because we all have this tendency to read something in light of our own frame of reference rather than to read something in light of the author’s frame of reference. We want to fit what he says into what we already understand rather than letting what he says challenge and shape what we think.

That is the purpose of Scripture according to 2 Timothy 3:16, 17. The Word of God is breathed out by God and is profitable for, first of all, doctrine or teaching, instruction, correction and instruction in righteousness. We are to be corrected, rebuked in our thinking by our confrontation with the Word of God. But we live in a world today where people don’t really want that. They don’t want to go some place and be corrected; they just want to go some place and have their ideas, their values, validated and affirmed.

Romans 6, 7, and 8 is about how the justified believer is supposed to live. Romans 6 focuses on understanding the foundation for that spiritual life. And that foundation is what happened in that instant when we trusted in Christ as savior, when we were identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, and that just changes everything. The main command coming out of that section is that we are no longer to live under the authority of the sin nature but are to live under the authority of God and are to pursue righteousness.

That raises another question: How do we pursue righteousness? Do we do that just by going out and being moral? Do we do that by just taking the ideas in the Mosaic Law and working really hard at doing the right thing? Is that the same as being spiritual? This is where the apostle Paul is absolutely brilliant in Romans chapter 7 because he knew the Mosaic Law inside and out. He had thorough training in the Mosaic Law as a rabbinical student and no one knew the Law more than Saul of Tarsus, and no one attempted to observe it in its minutia more consistently than Saul of Tarsus. In his conclusion of Romans 7 he basically says that even though the Law is good all it did was expose the fact that I was a sinner and I could not obey the Law.

What is interesting is that is essentially what his conclusion was regarding the Law towards the end of Romans chapter 5. Romans 5:20 ^NASB “The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” It is not that people became more sinful but in the explanation of sin and the identification of sin people became more aware of how sin pervaded every aspect of their thinking and being. So if there is this biblically robust idea of what sin is then you can’t ever come up with the idea that we can somehow completely expunge it from our life. In Romans chapter 7 Paul said that no matter how hard he tried to obey the Law he basically came to realize that he was carnal—v. 14, “sold into bondage to sin.” But in the whole flow of Romans 6 and 7 there is one missing element and that is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not mentioned until we get to chapter eight, and the Holy Spirit is the key to understanding the spiritual life of the believer in this age. Because only in this age is every believer indwelt by God the Holy Spirit; only in this age is every believer potentially empowered by God the Holy Spirit; only in this age are believers commanded to walk by the Spirit; only in this age are we led by the Spirit; only in this age does the Spirit make the difference between the believer who is progressing and the believer who is regressing. So when we get to chapter eight we get the answer that is important for understanding the Christian life.

But Romans 6 helps to understand what we are to know as the basis and it is really important to understand some vocabulary. One of the first of these is the idea of death. We have the comparison and contrast between death and life all through the Scripture but we have it in Romans 6, 7, 8.

At the conclusion of Romans chapter 5 Paul talks about the Law coming so that by further revelation there is a greater understanding of what sin is and how pervasive sin is in the life of the individual. The arrogance of our sin nature always seeks to rationalize sin. We are professional self-justifiers when it comes to anything that we do that isn’t right, and we figure out some way to justify it and make it right. This goes all the way back to Adam after the fall. He told God immediately it wasn’t his fault, it’s her fault; also your fault because you gave her to me. What Paul is saying here is that under the Law we became tremendously aware of sin and its abundance and pervasiveness. In verse 21 he said that sin reigned over everything in our life and everything in the world is dead.

We have this semblance of life. There is technology, a tremendous amount of entertainment, things that we can do for fun and enjoyment, things that challenge us to great achievement, but everything isn’t what we think it is. No matter what we do or no matter what we buy, everything eventually falls apart, it breaks down, it has to be painted, repaired, and nothing provides us the measure of joy that we think it should. And it shouldn’t, because we live in a fallen world. Everything has been corrupted by sin. Sin reigned in death, but what happened with Christ is that sin is overwhelmed by grace. In terms of the personal application of this our life is that when we trust Christ as savior and we have been justified sin is so overwhelmed by the grace of God in our life that its whole tyrannical dominion over our soul is completely, finally and totally broken. It is not removed, but it is broken so that we no longer have to sin. Prior to salvation we are compelled to sin, we only have one choice but to sin. Paul puts it in Romans 6 as being slaves to sin.

In contrast to this sin and death grace brings the opportunity to produce righteousness and eternal life. Not just eternal life in terms of after death but life here and now. So this brings up another category, which is life. Physical life is talked about in the Bible, and spiritual life is talked about in the Bible. There is also eternal life, i.e. life without end, a quantitative view of eternal life. Then eternal life is used in some contexts to refer to not just life everlasting but to the richness and fullness of life that we have today. Then we also have positional life as seen in Romans chapter six because we are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection—that newness of life that we have in Christ.

There are different words in the Greek for life. One of them is “soul” (PSUCHE) and this was a sort of idiom in Greek in the first century. Talking about a person’s life and sometimes the word “soul” is used—don’t lose your life or don’t lose your soul. It stood for the entirety of the person. Your soul is who you are, and so it became a metaphor for the wholeness of a person’s life. We find examples of that use not only in the New Testament but also in secular literature.

There is the word HELIKIAN, used in Matthew 6:27—no matter how much you worry you can’t add a span to your life. It is a measurement term so it is talking about life span. God has determined the length of our life.

The most common word used for life is ZOE. In the Greek world it referred to life as that which is animated—animal life and human life, not plant life. You determine where you will go, what you will do, things of that nature, and it is used to describe life in a lot of different ways. This is the word that is often used with eternal life. You have to look at the context to see what the nuance is of this word.

Another word that is found only eleven times in the New Testament is the word BIOS from which we get our words biology and biosphere. This a word that is really used more in Greek by the first century to refer to a person’s way of life, manner of life, or their living—how they make their living, how they conduct their life/living.

The word we usually find for life in Romans 6 is ZOE, or some form of it.

When we talk about the spiritual life there are about four major groups of words we should be aware of that we find in Romans 6–8. The first two are life and death, Life is used three times in Romans 6 (all ZOE), eight times in chapters 6–8. So this is a significant concentration focusing on that word. Death is used seven times in Romans 6 and 14 times in chapters 6–8. The words “holiness” or “sanctification,” is not verbiage that is easily understood in our world today. They are commonly used in churches and by Christians but even most Christians don’t understand these words today. The KJV and NKJV usually translate HAGIOSMOS as holiness, and in the NASB it is sanctification. The word is used twice in Romans 6, three times in Romans 6–9. Righteousness is mentioned 5 times in Romans 6 and only one more time outside of that chapter through chapter eight. So righteousness is a major factor in Romans 6—that we are to live for righteousness.

Some of the key words that are used biblically that we need to become familiar with are, for example, the Hebrew word qaddash. This is the verb form and it is usually translated “holy” or to be made holy, or to be sanctified or consecrated. It has various uses and word forms that have developed from it. It basically has the idea of being set apart for the service of God. When we think of holiness we include in that word the idea of moral purity, but that has nothing to do with the word “holy.” In the ancient world the same word was applied to the priests and priestesses in the fertility religions, so they were basically cultic prostitutes and not morally pure but they were referred to by this same word group. So these were priests and priestesses who indulged in all manner of sexual perversion as part of the fertility religion. The word just means to be set apart to the use of God. Vessels in the temple were holy; they were set apart to the use of God. In the development of Jewish thought this word is also used in a couple of different forms to refer to prayer.

The Greek word HAGIAZO is used 28 times in the New Testament and it has the same idea of something set apart to the use of God, set apart to the service of God. When we talk about a Christian being positionally sanctified what we are really saying is that at the moment of salvation we enter into a new relationship with God so that by virtue of that new relationship we are set apart for the purpose of serving God. We are saved from God’s perspective to serve Him in this life. That means we have to be not only positionally set apart to Him but also personally and experientially. Usually this word is translated with words such as consecrate, dedicate, sanctify; but basically all those words simply mean to be set apart to the service of God.

The noun form that we find in Romans 6 is HAGIASMOS. It is used ten times in the New Testament and it is the idea of holiness, sanctification, consecration. It is use primarily for the process [the MOS ending] of how we become sanctified experientially. The experiential part is a process, not positional.

Then there is the word HAGIOSUNE which relates to a quality or an attribute, and HAGIOSUNE refers to someone who possess the attribute of holiness or sanctification. Thus, if we are a believer in Jesus Christ you are positionally sanctified (HAGIOSUNE) and therefore you are a HAGIOS, the word for a saint. So anyone who is a believer in Jesus Christ is a saint.

Another form of this word is HAGIOTES, translated “sanctity,” and then there is the noun HAGIOS, which is used many times, mostly to modify PNEUMA in terms of the Holy Spirit, but also to refer to the believers as saints, some 61 times.

A different word is HOSIOS, and adjective referring to someone in terms of their practice, their application. It is related to experiential sanctification.

A word that is quite different is EUSEBEIA, which is used 15 times in the New Testament. It is usually translated “godliness,” an antiquated English word. When we read a word with “liness” in it in English that is really likeness, an abbreviation, a contraction of the idea of likeness. So godliness was originally God-likeness, and holiness is like holy-likeness. A lot of people in the church don’t understand what godliness is, but it is someone who is manifesting the attributes and character of Christ in them. And that is the fruit of the Spirit. So it is someone who is growing to spiritual maturity. Greek dictionary: “Behavior reflecting correct religious beliefs and attitudes (we would modify that and say it is behavior that reflects correct biblical beliefs and attitudes and application), thus the believer’s spiritual life.” So they understand EUSEBEIA to be basically a synonym for the spiritual life.

Those are our key words: death and life, righteousness, holiness, and understanding some of these different words built off of that for the spiritual life. We are positionally set apart for God’s service because we are in the family of God but we haven’t learned enough to be useful yet. We have to grow and mature, be trained, educated, and that the process of taking our position and learning how to develop it experientially. Positionally we are set apart to serve God but that doesn’t mean we can do it right away. We haven’t gone through that Romans 12:2 process of being transformed by the renewing of our mind and learning how to truly serve God. That is the process referred to in the Bible as sanctification, also what we would call spiritual growth or the spiritual life.

Sanctification is a word used of three different stages in the believer’s spiritual life. But the primary way in which we use it here and most of the time is in the area of the second stage which is also referred to as experiential sanctification and sometimes progressive sanctification. The word “progressive” is perhaps not a preferable term because there is a hidden meaning there that often goes with the word, that it is automatic and that you will automatically progress. And that goes along with Lordship salvation, the idea that of you are truly a believer you are going to manifest it in certain ways. But you only manifest it if you grow. If you don’t eat the right food you don’t grow in a healthy manner, and so spiritual growth is not automatic.

There are three phases in sanctification. Phase one is positional sanctification—instantaneous (justification). Phase two is experiential sanctification, the spiritual life—progressive, growth time when we are going to grow from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity. It is very important to understand that that becomes your goal at the instant of salvation. When we were a child we didn’t want to be treated like children, we wanted to be treated like an adult. But in the spiritual life most Christians want to stay children. They don’t want to do anything necessary to grow up, they want God to treat them like a spiritual diaper baby all of their life. They don’t want to grow up and they don’t grow up.

Dr Earl Radmacher, Chancellor of Western Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary once said: “The greatest nursery in the world is the evangelical church. Most nursery workers (pastors, Sunday School teachers) don’t know how to get the babies out of diapers.”

Most pastors are so busy trying to teach the babies in the church that nobody else can grow because if all you are doing is teaching babies then you are not providing the kind of nourishment that the teenagers and the adults need to grow. In fact, nobody is going to become an adolescent or an adult because they are still needing baby food. The only way you can get the babies to grow up is to teach the adults, and the babies will learn to feed on what they can feed on—and they do. People will always rise to the level expected of them. If you expect the congregation to only function at the level of infancy then that is where they will stay. If you expect them to grow and mature and really know the Word then they are going to get on board with it or go somewhere else.

The last phase of sanctification is also instantaneous but it lasts forever, it is glorification when we are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord. So we refer to phase one as positional sanctification, phase two as progressive or experiential sanctification, and phase three as ultimate sanctification. In phase one we are free from the penalty of sin. In phase two we have to learn how to be free from the power of sin. We are free from the power of sin but we have to implement that in terms of our experiential growth. In phase three we are free from the presence of sin.

Sanctification, then, is the technical term used to describe the spiritual life which is the process of the believer’s growth from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity. As the believer grows more and more of his life is set apart for the service of God. That is the goal: serving God in and through our life.

Often spirituality or sanctification is confused with a closely associated idea which is morality or ethical living. This is where people have trouble because obviously there is morality and ethics in the Christian life. But morality and ethics alone is not the basis for spiritual growth. That is what Romans 7 is all about. It says you can’t get to spiritual maturity by being moral and ethical, because something is being left out. What is being left out is the role of God the Holy Spirit. The Christian life isn’t morality or ethics, it is learning to walk with the Holy Spirit and to let the Holy Spirit develop character in our life. Morality is a system of right and wrong often based on a number of different factors that can be related to culture, social and religious factors. Ethical systems can differ also from culture to culture. For the most part they agree on the basics but it is something that anybody, believer and unbeliever, can do. And it is not going to get us anywhere.

The highest ethical code revealed to man is what is in the Mosaic Law and it was for the whole nation of Israel, believer and unbeliever alike. So it wasn’t related to spirituality, it was related to the order of the nation.

Morality in its highest form is designed as a system of ethics for believer and unbeliever to provide stability in government and society, and to protect freedom, property and life. That is the function of morality and ethics. An outgrowth of that is understanding good manners and etiquette. Etiquette is designed to put a social control on our normal self-absorption. That is why people need to teach their children good manners and order. It provides them with a means of structure and self-discipline so that when they’re in society with other people they can function without everything being all about them.

If an unbeliever can produce a moral life then it is not based on the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 64:6 ^NASB “… And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment.” Galatians 5:16–19 talks about walking in the Spirit, being led by the Spirit, and that is essential for spiritual growth. You can be moral but if you are not walking by the Spirit it is just morality.

The Christian view of the spiritual life is a system of ethics and virtue based on the work of God the Holy Spirit and uniquely dependent upon Him. He is the critical factor.

On the other hand, arrogance destroys morality into a system of works designed to impress God or gain divine approval. Arrogance manifests itself in lots of different ways but eventually it gets exposed. Biblical spirituality is grounded upon the realization that Christ has done everything for us and on the basis of received, imputed or credited righteousness under the filling ministry of God the Holy Spirit the believer advances to spiritual maturity. It is all about walking by the Spirit; that is the essential element.

We must distinguish between systems of good works, high ethics and morality which can be performed by any unbeliever, and biblical spirituality. There are many systems of spirituality in Christianity that ignore the Holy Spirit. One of these is the Reformed model of spirituality which is usually associated with forms of Calvinism, and up until the late 19^th and early 20^th century there were not any of the major works on the Holy Spirit that even discussed walking by the Spirit, the filling of the Spirit or being led by the Spirit. The Spirit was virtually ignored in these works when it came to the spiritual life. When it came to the Christian life it was all about doing the right thing, being moral and ethical; there was no mention of the role of the Holy Spirit.