Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Monday, June 26, 2023
The doctrine of positional sanctification teaches that we are already perfect in the perfectly holy One. While our progressive sanctification is very imperfect in this life, we are assured that God will bring to completion what He began in us because the Son of God became the perfectly sanctified One for us. In Hebrews 7:28 we are told that the Son was “made perfect forever;” then in Heb. 10:14 we learn that “by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.” 

The late Professor John Murray taught the significance of understanding the doctrine of definitive sanctification. As he studied the exegetical statements of the New Testament that spoke of believers having been sanctified through the death of Christ (e.g. 1 Corinthians 1:2; 6:11; Heb. 10:10, etc.), Murray suggested that “it is a fact too frequently overlooked that in the New Testament the most characteristic terms used with reference to sanctification are used not of a process but of a once-for-all definitive act,” and that  “it would be, therefore, a deflection from biblical patterns of language and conception to think of sanctification exclusively in terms of a progressive work.” Still many tend to think of sanctification as something entirely progressive, and, therefore, miss out on understanding one of the richest and most spiritually impacting gospel truths. In order for us to understand why both definitive and positional sanctification are two aspects of the doctrine of sanctification most frequently overlooked, it will help us to consider what they are, why they have frequently been overlooked, and how it ought to impact our Christian lives.  
What is Definitive Sanctification?
As he unfolded the meaning of definitive sanctification, Murray explained that certain portions of Scriptures, such as Romans 6:1-23, teach that “there is a once-for-all definitive and irreversible breach with the realm in which sin reigns in and unto death,” and “that our death to sin and newness of life are effected in our identification with Christ in his death and resurrection.” In further explaining how union with Christ makes definitive sanctification a reality, Murray wrote:
“It is by virtue of our having died with Christ and our being raised with Him in His resurrection from the dead that the decisive breach with sin in its power, control, and defilement had been wrought…Christ in his death and resurrection broke the power of sin, triumphed over the god of this world, the prince of darkness, executed judgment upon the world and its ruler, and by that victory delivered all those who were united to him from the power of darkness and translated them into his own kingdom. So intimate is the union between Christ and his people that they were partakers with him in all these triumphal achievements and therefore died to sin, rose with Christ in the power of his resurrection…”
When the Apostle Paul said of Christ that “the death that He died, He died to sin once for all” (Rom. 6:10) he was referring to something that happened to Jesus in His death, and which subsequently has had an impact on us by virtue of our faith-union with Him. While Jesus knew no personal sin, as our representative He subjected Himself to the guilt and power of sin. When He died, He died to the power of sin’s dominion. This is how we are set free from the power of sin’s dominion in our lives when we are united to Him by faith. Distinct from the blessing of justification–which deals with the guilt of sin–definitive sanctification deals with the power of sin.
Why Has Definitive Sanctification Been Overlooked?
One of the most basic reasons why definitive sanctification isn’t more widely taught and delighted in is that it was formulated and popularized by a professor at a highly academic Reformed seminary (one of the finest in all of church history) in the 20th Century. Additionally, you won’t find this doctrine explicitly taught in our historic creeds or our beloved Reformed confessions. That being so, Professor Murray was not contradicting the Reformed Confessions with his formulation; he was, in a very real sense, building upon what our Reformed forefathers had already said about sanctification–by means of exegetically driven doctrinal refinement. The Reformed church has commonly tended to shy away from doctrinal pioneering (except in the realm of eschatology), for the obvious reason that such pioneering has usually ended in a jeopardizing of the biblical doctrines that we have come to so love and embrace. But this is not the case with definitive sanctification. You will sometimes find hints of the truth of this particular doctrine in the writings of the Puritans and other Reformed theologians of bygone ages–generally placed within the realm of regeneration or progressive sanctification. It may rightly be said to stand at the head of progressive sanctification, as it has a logical priority to our being made more and more into the image of Christ; but, it must be distinguished from progressive sanctification because–like the doctrine of justification–it is a once-for-all decisive act of God.
How Should the Doctrine of Definitive Sanctification Affect Our Lives?
In Romans 6, the Apostle Paul makes two astonishing statements. The first came in the form of a question: “How can we who have died to sin live any longer in it?” The apostle’s rhetorical question could be reworded to give it its proper sense: “How are we who have died to sin able to live any longer in it?” We should understand that it is an impossibility that those who have died with Christ, by virtue of their union with Him, should continue living on in sin. The reality of truth of this doctrine for the Christian is that he or she is no longer a slave of sin. In union with Christ, we too have died, been buried and have risen with Him (Colossians 2:20-3:4). When He died, we died. When He was buried, we were buried. When He rose, we rose with Him. We have died to the dominion of sin, because He died to sin’s dominion. This is something different than that which we get in justification. In justification, we get the guilt of our sin removed, our sins forgiven and Christ’s righteousness imputed to us. In definitive sanctification we undergo a radical breach with sin’s dominion and power. This means that we should not and do not have to go on sinning.
The second astonishing statement is found in verse 11. When we are tempted to sin, we must say to ourselves, “I have died with my Savior and have been raised with Him. I am no longer a slave to sin.
Read More
Related Posts:

He is the One who says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb 13:5). He is the One who says, “”For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed” (Mal 3:6). He is the One who, “does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’ (Dan 4:35). Our God is the Rock!

One of the blessings of the gospel is that we get to know God (John 17:3). He has been so gracious to reveal His nature to us in His word. And He uses so many different examples to communicate things about His nature. Because of our limited understanding, God uses earthly pictures to help us see a glimpse of His awesome, holy nature. These pictures help us to see although only in the mirror dimly because, as A.W. Tozer says, we are forced to think “creature-thoughts” and use “creature-words” to describe One who is uncreated.
He is Our Rock
One of the Bible’s simplest, yet most profound metaphors for God is the rock. Now, to be clear, God is not like a rock in substance or inactivity. Remember, Paul said, “we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone” (Acts 17:29). But what does it mean when Moses says, “For I will proclaim the name of the LORD; ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock, his work is perfect” (Deut 32:3-4)? Or when the Psalmist says, “he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him” (Psalm 92:15)? I believe what God wants to communicate to us is that He is mighty, unchanging, immoveable, and faithful.
Read More
Related Posts:

The subject of father-absence remains taboo among many black activists, even though the rate of father-absence among blacks is horrifying. For these activists, any attempt to discuss black cultural failures is a kind of victim-blaming and a distraction from what really ails the black community—the persistence of white supremacy.When my mother called me in from play one afternoon to meet the man seated in our living room, her introduction was redundant—I immediately knew who he was. And, right off, I did not like him. His absence had been a painful matter in my life. The house that we lived in explained some of it. It was unfit for human tenancy—a decaying hovel with a leaking roof, creaking structures, and a termite infestation. I was ashamed to let anyone other than my closest friends know where I lived.
I was 12 that year of 1956. This was the Jim Crow South where poverty was the default condition of the black masses. Black males were restricted to the lowly crafts of ditch digger, janitor, and farmer, unless they catered directly to the black community, in which case the jobs of preacher, teacher, and shop-owner were also open. Most worked the hardscrabble categories so there was poverty all around, and since my mother was the only breadwinner, our poverty was wretched.
But this is not a story of black victimhood. This is, instead, an essay about a flaw in black culture that is just as uncomfortable for me to speak about as it is for my black brothers and sisters to hear. But a problem must be acknowledged before it can be fixed. And the failure of black fathers is among the worst problems afflicting our community.
My mother was a maid. Since her $25-a-week salary did not go very far, I was a skinny kid with a constant cold, owing to a poor diet and a house that grew Arctic in the winter months. There was a wood stove in the living room and another in the kitchen but their heat did not radiate beyond those rooms. We only ever used the kitchen stove for cooking in order to save fuel. To keep warm during winter, we slept under five blankets. If a glass of water was left out overnight, it had iced over by morning. There was no hot running water.
The poverty programs back then were designed to ensure survival. They were not like those today which help a person through life. Even if programs like those had been available, my mother’s stubborn pride would not have allowed her to use them. I am not criticizing the safety net of our current welfare system. I am a liberal. But my mother’s code of honor was simply part of who she was—a tough lady.
Most devastating for me was the psychological impact of my father’s absence. The most miserable moments of my childhood were when other kids asked me where my father was. In the days before we understood conception, I could just tell them that I just didn’t have one. But after we all learned a bit of biology, the question became so upsetting that on a few occasions I had to walk away from play activities.
I didn’t know what to tell them because my mother refused to speak of this man, even when I asked. He was a forbidden topic in her house, and so I learned to keep my mouth shut. I found out later from an uncle that my father regularly beat my mother which is why she divorced him when I was born. This shows her grit and gumption, for in those days, women could scarcely fend for themselves economically, and so battered wives were condemned to suffer as punching bags. But not my mother.
Growing up without a dad made me feel as though I lacked the full humanity and manhood of my cousins, friends, and classmates. From what I can recall, every other black home seemed to have a father. Southern blacks were already second-class citizens and I felt even lower than those around me. And since I did not have the self-confidence and self-esteem of my male peers, I sought adventures later in life to compensate. In the Army, I volunteered for paratroop units, fought in Vietnam, and was disciplined for insubordination four times. I boxed as an amateur. I drove at 120 miles an hour on the German Autobahn. I ran marathons. I worked as a demolitions specialist and as a long-haul truck driver. And I would hang out with some of the most ferocious males I could find.
Does the criminal behavior of some young black males today owe something to a sense of lost masculinity? I feel sure that this is so. A friend who works as an Army recruiter told me that so many black males have criminal records, the military is no longer the instrument for building machismo that it was when I joined. So, in inner-city communities where viciousness defines manhood, darker paths have become the option.
In 1965, a controversial report entitled “The Negro Family: A Case of National Action” was published by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist working at the Labor Department. Moynihan concluded that a lot of the social problems affecting American blacks owed to the disintegration of the black family. “At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society,” he wrote, “is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time.” He went on:
As a direct result of this high rate of divorce, separation, and desertion, a very large percent of Negro families are headed by females. While the percentage of such families among whites has been dropping since 1940, it has been rising among Negroes.
The percent of nonwhite families headed by a female is more than double the percent for whites. Fatherless nonwhite families increased by a sixth between 1950 and 1960, but held constant for white families.
It has been estimated that only a minority of Negro children reach the age of 18 having lived all their lives with both of their parents.
Once again, this measure of family disorganization is found to be diminishing among white families and increasing among Negro families.
These figures were troubling, but they only offered a hint of what was to come. By the time the “Moynihan Report, Revisited” was published in 2013, 73 percent of black children were born to unmarried mothers. The figure for non-Hispanic white children was 29 percent:

I was stunned. A few months ago, I mentioned this to a black activist who was working on the problem of black violence in a nearby town. He had been trying to figure out why violence seemed to be endemic among their young black males and had reached a dead end. When I suggested that father-absence was not properly socializing black youth and asked him if he had read the Moynihan Report, he told me that the report was written by racist right-wingers determined to condemn blacks for their own misfortunes. I didn’t bring it up with him again. For now, the town’s solution is recreation centers.
It was not the first time I had heard the report dismissed in this way. It was basically the attitude of the black community upon the report’s publication. The backlash from the community was so militant and damning—reviling its author in the process—that the Johnson Administration dropped the issue and turned its attention to the Vietnam War. This reaction was not entirely surprising, given the demonization of blacks by many whites since first contact in the 1400s. Denigration used to justify outrageous and dehumanizing treatment produced a hypersensitivity among blacks that reflexively prevents us from accepting criticism from outsiders. Criticism from insiders has become something like heresy.
Read More