Both - And

Has this ever happened to you? I'm muddling about, trying to find answers to a question. Maybe it's "What should I do about ___?" or (more likely) "What does this mean?" or other possibilities. Then, without working at it, I open my Bible to read and ... POP ... there it is.

I posted a couple days ago about the need for sanctified Christians here followed here with a post about my confusion on the question. We have this dichotomy. It appears that Scripture is abundantly clear that we are not saved by works. It seems that Scripture is abundantly clear that if there is no change in the person, they are not saved. So what am I to make of it?

Well, I've been reading through Paul's letters in sequence, and inevitably I come across this:

But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth (2 Thess. 2:13).

Paul is not ambivalent here. He is not unclear. Paul affirms Election ("God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation"). And Paul makes this amazing claim ... that we are to be saved through sanctification. Oh, okay, now it's clear. Hodges is wrong; MacArthur is right. Salvation is by sanctification -- the process of becoming Christ-like. No, it's not so clear. This sanctification occurs "by the Spirit and faith in the truth."

And, of course, since I am reading through Paul's letters sequentially, I just read this:

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it (1 Thess. 5:23-24).

There it is again -- sanctification. Sanctification is the process by which we cooperate with God to be made into the image of Christ. But Paul here says that God Himself will sanctify us completely. Then, in a typical Hebraism, he reiterates "He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it." In other words, He will sanctify us completely, He will sanctify us completely. You can count on it.

Again, it looks like a contradiction. It's not. It's a paradox. A contradiction is a violation of logic; a paradox is an apparent contradiction ... which may or may not be an actual contradiction. What we're seeing here is two sides of the same coin. One -- the one I've expressed here -- is God's perspective. He will do it. We are sanctified by the Spirit. He will surely do it ... completely. One side of the coin. The other side is our perspective: Work!!

It is the same two-sided perspective offered in Phil. 2.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13).

So ... is it my job to work out my salvation, or God's? Yes. No, no, you don't understand ... Do I work? Yes. Oh, okay, so it's not God's work but mine. No. Oh, then it's God's work. Yes. So it's not my work; it's God's. No. The answer is work because God is at work in you. The answer is that we always act on what we truly believe, so if you truly believe that Jesus is Lord, you will necessarily submit to Him ... because God is at work in you. The answer is that a person who is born of God will not make a practice of sin (my work) because God's seed abides in him (God's work) (1 John 3:9).

Do we work out our salvation? Yes. We need to work as if it's all up to us. Does that save us? No!!! Then ...? We work because God is the one at work in us, enabling us to do the work and giving us the will to do the work and, ultimately, accomplishing the work in us. Since He enables both the will and the power to do it and carries it through to its conclusion, we cannot say we earned anything. We can say we worked at it.

The question is primarily one of assurance. Does our assurance come from our work or our faith? MacArthur seems to say it comes from our work. Hodges seems to say it comes from our faith. Clearly, work and faith are at work. Clearly God is at work and the believer will work. Assurance, then, comes from faith. We can know we have eternal life (assurance) if we believe. The alarm being raised about "test yourself" and "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" and "faith, if it has no works, is dead" is this. Your assurance comes from faith. However, if there is no works, no change of the person, then there is reason to question your faith.