Biblical Balance

Pastor Martin draws four practical implications from the doctrine of climactic sanctification. First, the Christian should not live in morbid dread or fear of death, since death's penal sting has been removed by Christ — illustrated by Stephen and Peter. Second, the believer should not give the disembodied state more emphasis than Scripture does, since the predominant biblical hope is the resurrection of the body (Romans 8, 2 Corinthians 5). Third, a biblically instructed Christian should neither deify the body (hedonism, humanistic health and birth theories, body worship) nor demean it (asceticism, fasting as more spiritual than feasting, doctrines of demons of 1 Timothy 4). Fourth, the Christian should not live with crippling discouragement over present imperfection, but with the confident refrain: I am not what I should be, not what I desire to be, not what I once was, and not what I shall be.

Pastor Martin continues his pastoral appendix on justification and sin, reviewing the first two principles and expounding the third: sin in a justified person must be dealt with primarily in terms of God's fatherly displeasure, not judicial wrath. He argues from Matthew 6, 1 Peter 1, 1 John 2, and Hebrews 12 that while God no longer wears the face of an angry judge toward the justified, He does wear the face of a displeased Father. He exposes the antinomian's discomfort with obedience and fear and the legalist's discomfort with filial confidence, and closes with a Murray quote summarizing the change of relation.