Welcome to episode 64 of Grasp the Bible. Today, we are going to be looking at Romans 3:21-26 which contains a lot of big words that are foreign to most of us.
One thing we encounter when we read the Bible is some difficult words that we don’t understand.
I remember when I was a newer Christian, I was told that when I come across a difficult name or a long word that I did not understand, to just skip over it and keep reading. Fine…but is it really helpful? And at some point in our Christian walk, we need to understand what these words mean.
So today, I want to talk about some words used in the Bible that pertain to our salvation.
· Justification is a Christian’s judicial acceptance by God as not guilty because his sins are not counted against him. We encounter this word a lot in Paul’s writings, especially in the Book of Romans. Justification is a one-time event. Once God saves us, we are justified.
But we all have sinned, so how is this possible? That brings us to our next word, which is “righteous.”
· Righteous is conformity to a certain set of expectations, which vary from role to role. Righteousness is the fulfillment of the expectations in any relationship, whether with God or other people.
· Propitiation is turning away of anger by the offering of a gift. Jesus was offered as a propitiation for our sins. Sin is a crime against God and deserves punishment. Sin draws God’s wrath and that wrath must be satisfied. The shed blood of Jesus was the offering that appeased God.
· Sanctification - For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification (1 Thes. 4:7). This is the process whereby God transforms us, through the work of the Holy Spirit, to look more like Jesus.
· Glorification – In Romans 8:18, Paul talks about the glory that awaits us in heaven. Glorification is God’s final removal of sin from the life of the saints so that they stand faultless before Him in glory in eternity.
Here is how these all fit together.
Because we have all sinned and cannot save ourselves, God made a way back to Him (through Jesus) as a means of propitiation. For those who repent of their sins and place their trust in Jesus as savior and lord, God justifies them at the moment of salvation. At the same time, He also sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in us to make the process of sanctification possible. As long as God has us here on this earth, His desire is that we become more and more holy until we die. At that point, we are perfected and enter into a state of glorification, where we dwell for all of eternity with God in the presence of His glory.
I hope this discussion has brought understanding and clarity to these words and to how they relate to one another. Let me encourage our listeners to look up the words you don’t know. Find several different reliable, biblical sources online and read how they define the words. Once we know the meaning, we can understand what God wants us to understand about Himself.
