Category: Soteriology

Romans 3:

Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. 21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all [f]and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified [g]freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a [h]propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

60. How are you righteous before God? Only by true faith in Jesus Christ:1 that is, although my conscience accuses me, that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have never kept any of them,2 and am still prone always to all evil;3 yet God, without any merit of mine,4 of mere grace,5 grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction,6 righteousness, and holiness of Christ,7 as if I had never committed nor had any sins, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me;8 if only I accept such benefit with a believing heart.9

[1] Rom. 3:21–25; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8–9; Phil. 3:9. [2] Rom. 3:9–10. [3] Rom. 7:23. [4] Tit. 3:5. [5] Rom. 3:24; Eph. 2:8. [6] 1 Jn. 2:2. [7] 1 Jn. 2:1; Rom. 4:4–5; 2 Cor. 5:19. [8] 2 Cor. 5:21. [9] Jn. 3:18; *Rom. 3:28; *Rom. 10:10.

We can never do justice to the doctrine of Justification. Never. Calvin said of this doctrine “it is the main hinge on which religion turns.” If it is the main hinge we should be conversant with the ins and outs of the doctrine.

With the doctrine of Justification we find the grand divide that still divides the Reformed Church from the rest of what we charitably call “Christendom.” This is the issue of how it is that fallen man can have relationship with God. For us, this doctrine of Justification is a staple but we need to return to it constantly because our enemies and Christ’s enemies are prolific when it comes to how we answer the question how can a fallen sinner have peace with a God that is Holy beyond all naming. This was seen again recently when Tucker Carlson interviewed a blog personality from Eastern Orthodoxy.

The answer to how man can be righteous before God continues to be, as Luther said, the article by which the church stands or falls. On this score there remains a divide between the classical Reformed world and everybody else. The Reformed insist that this being right with God – This justification is God’s legal declaration of God that the faith filled sinner is right with God due to the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ being laid to his account. This is why the Catechism uses the language,

yet God, without any merit of mine,4 of mere grace,5 grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction,6 righteousness, and holiness of Christ,7 as if I had never committed nor had any sins, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me;

And it is why Romans can say,

God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

God is just because our sins that stand in the way of being right with God are penalized in the death of Christ and God is the justifier because He is the judge who raise and lowers the gavel and pronouncing the legal declaration of “not-guilty” upon the sinner in the dock for the sake of Jesus Christ.

This idea of the legal declaration of God that there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus is what the Scripture defines as Justification.

Other options to define Justification exist though…. one is hinted at here in what Paul says in Romans. This non-Biblical option defining Justification is that man can have concourse with God by means of fallen man’s own law keeping. But the Holy Spirit says expressly here;

“by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”

Here the Apostle is referring to what we now call “the first use of the law.” God’s law has several purpose and one purpose is to expose sin. This first use of the law is only purposed to give the knowledge of sin. It’s use does not include the relieving of sin through an impossible to provide obedience as offered up by fallen man.

The law, thus, in its first use can not find man to be right with God and so be justified in God’s sight. All it can do is give the knowledge of and convict of sin.

And yet despite this clear and indisputable statement by the Holy Spirit here the enemies of the Reformed faith … the Christian faith continue to line up to insist that the 1^st use of the law can be obeyed enough so as fallen man can make contribution to being justified in God’s sight.

Recently, this was seen again in a popular Journalism format as Tucker Carlson interviewed an adherent to Eastern Orthodoxy (EO). This chap took several swipes at the Biblical doctrine of Justification / that is the Reformed faith.

Now the essence of this EO chaps complaint is that the Biblical teaching we find here in Romans and summarized in the HC is that the Reformed believe that Justification (being right with God) is not a matter of God’s legal declaration that we are right w/ God for the sake of Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us but rather we are right w/ God because he makes us right. Here Rome and EO agree,

The Catholic Catechism (1992) quotes Trent: “justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.”

We see here that Justification is being re-defined away from what we just read in Romans,

22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all [f]and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified [g]freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

For all non Reformed doctrines of Justification, Justification is defined not as a legal declaration of being righteous with the righteousness of Jesus Christ but rather Justification is synergistic… that is Justification is God and man working together to the end that man eventually becomes righteous so that God can accept man as right with him.

That man must cooperate with God unto the end of finally being in himself Just before God declares him Just is classic religious humanism thought. Consider

The difference between these two definitions of Justification is the difference between Christianity and religious Humanism called Christianity. Non Reformed, that is non-Biblical systems of thought insist that God makes us righteous whereas the Biblical view is that God legally declares us Righteous with the righteousness of Jesus Christ legally placed in our ledger column.

This is why Romans 3 can teach,

24 being justified [g]freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Note the word “freely” there. “Freely” here means that man does not cooperate in Justification. God, by His grace, freely declares us righteous with the righteousness of Jesus Christ that comes through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.

Still the opponents of Scripture vehemently complain even today in 2026. The EO chap interviewed by Tucker Carlson, for example could say on an immensely popular podcast,

(Calvinism) is also Christologically errant in that the whole idea of what salvation is. (Calvinist’s hold) ultimately (to) one’s legal standing in terms of what’s called justification by faith alone or penal substitutionary atonement. This idea that you’re justified by God through a sort of notional acceptance of a set of ideas and then God’s attitude towards you changes. So it’s dispositional but it’s not focused on an actual ontological change in the person. (Eastern Orthodoxy is very different. God’s disposition is based not on purely a legal stance but on your actual ontological change.

Notice that the complaint here is against the Biblical view that justification is defined in terms of legal categories. This chap does not like the idea of legal categories. He does not like that Scripture does not define justification as being based on what God does inside of us (that is what he means by ontological change). He insists that God’s disposition towards former sinners is not about a legal declaration but rather is about our contributing our ontological change with the work of Christ on the cross. This is a not so subtle advocacy for a justification that is not by grace alone, not through faith alone in Christ alone. It is not by a justification that is outside of us. It is by a justification that is relational and is arrived at eventually via our cooperation and via our incremental deification in the case of Eastern Orthodoxy.

This is the testimony of Scripture from beginning to end or as Paul puts in Romans 3 this Justification is

the righteousness of God apart from the law as revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,

Notice that the Holy Spirit is saying there that this Justification of which we speak … this righteousness of God apart from the law has been revealed from Genesis forward. Everywhere it is has been taught that we are right w/ God (justified) by this legal declaration that we are right with the righteousness of Jesus Christ forensically placed to our account.

It’s stamped all over the Scripture. In Galatians we read,

“Know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.” Galatians 2:16

No change inside of us, no cooperating with God’s Spirit, No ontological change, no deification, no time spent in purgatory paying for sin, no amount of sacerdotal mumbo jumbo can find us right with God. Only God’s legal declaration that our sins have been credited to Christ on the Cross and only God’s legal declaration that Christi’s righteousness has erased our debit and so paid in full all previous penalty required by a just God. By such truth God is both Just and Justifier of those who have faith in Jesus.

Now, having said all that emphatically we do not say that justification is all of salvation, as we were accused of during Tucker’s interview. Justification is an element in our salvation but salvation also includes regeneration, sanctification, and glorification. When we talk about sanctification we Biblical Christians, we Calvinists do talk about real inward change. In regeneration we who were once dead in our trespasses and sins are made alive with Christ. In sanctification we are given the Holy Spirit as a Deposit of that which is to come. In sanctification we put off the old man and put on the new man created in Christ Jesus. In Sanctification we are transformed from glory unto glory. In Sanctification we increasingly become in the inner man what we have freely been declared to be as legally justified in Christ Jesus.

So, we Biblical Christians, we Calvinists, we Reformed, do insist that the Christian, because he is being renewed daily unto the image of the firstborn over all creation, are a people who are zealous for good works. But the good works for the Reformed are not contributory to our justification but are the necessary consequence of Justification. We bring our obedience, imperfect as it remains, and we offer it up as a sweet smelling savor before God and He is pleased with our obedience for the sake of Jesus Christ. He is pleased with our obedience because the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to our obedience. We do not, by increasing in sanctification increase in earning God’s favor. Rather, it is because we have God’s favor that we increase in sanctification. And at the end of all our sanctification, we say ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ At the end of our ever increasing sanctification we say with the Apostle Paul, “Here is a trustworthy saying, worthy of full acceptance, ‘Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief.”

So, unlike all religious humanism our obedience is not contributory to a hoped for eventual justification but is the consequence of a heart full of gratitude for a freely given justification. We obey not for what we are still trying to gain, but out of gratitude because of what we have been freely given. Herein is the difference between Christianity and religious humanism. Herein is the difference between the Reformed faith and Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Baptists, Pentecostals, Wesleyans, Nazarenes, Methodists, as well as even many in the Reformed camp such as New Perspective on Paul types, Federal Vision types, and the neo-nomians. In trying to be charitable we may observe that these other expressions are indeed Christianity of a sort but the further they drift away from the article by which the church stands or falls the more diluted their Christianity is.

Another way to contrast these two contending definitions of Justification is to try and be formulaic / Mathematical about it.

The Protestant doctrine insists that: FAITH = JUSTIFICATION + WORKS The RC/EO view is JUSTIFICATION = FAITH + WORKS. The RC/EO view is a false equivalence between justification and sanctification…. it is a fuzzing of the line wherein God does some and we do some. They can not say we are saved freely through grace.

I implore you as your pastor read one good book on Justification this year. I can recommend several. Teach the truth to your children. Point out to them the doctrine in Scripture. Understand and be able to identify the counterfeit offerings. Their name is legion. Read Iron Ink … just put the word “Justification” into the search engine.

There are many truths upon which a Christian minister must speak. One of the more important ones is Justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

37. Q. What do you confess when you say that he suffered?

A. During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.1 Thus, by his suffering, as the only atoning sacrifice,2 he has redeemed our body and soul from everlasting damnation,3 and obtained for us the grace of God, righteousness, and eternal life.4

1 Is 53; 1 Tim 2:6; 1 Pet 2:24; 3:18. 2 Rom 3:25; 1 Cor 5:7; Eph 5:2; Heb 10:14; 1 Jn 2:2; 4:10. 3 Rom 8:1-4; Gal 3:13; Col 1:13; Heb 9:12; 1 Pet 1:18, 19. 4 Jn 3:16; Rom 3:24-26; 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 9:15.

It is during Lent that we find ourselves concentrating on those truths of Christianity that if they are brought up at all are brought up in a light and tertiary manner as if they are secondary issues. Huge Churches are built on the basis of not touching the issues that surround Lent. However, as we learn it is these subjects that often are at the heart of the Christian religion. We have taken up a couple of those truths the last two weeks. We looked at the subject of Repentance and the necessity, that because we are creatures, and because we are never completely free from the effects of Adam’s fall, our leaning into life should be characterized by repentance. We noted that because we always fall short of God’s perfect standard of righteousness in all that we think, do or say, our lives should be characterized as one of repentance.

Last week we considered the Lenten theme of humility. We said that if pride is the mother lode of all other sin then humility is the Round-up that kills pride. We spent some time considering the plethora of Scripture that reminds Christians over and over that God resists the proud by gives grace to the humble…. to the Scriptures that teach we are to clothe ourselves with humility. We insisted that it is only the Christian who ever pursues humility since the non-Christian, by definition, lives with self at the center of his whole existence. We insisted, that like repentance, the Christian life is one of constantly pulling the weed of self.

Most importantly, we noted that the Cross is at the center of repentance and humility. If we are to learn repentance and humility we must be students of the Cross. The Cross exposes our need for repentance reminding us of God’s righteous and holy standard by which sin is judged. If the price of sin was the Cross and if we grow in that understanding, then sorrow for our sin that issues in repentance is the hum of our lives.

Our repentance doesn’t improve our standing with God, but it reflects a growing gratitude for the Cross, and this gratitude demonstrates itself by a lifestyle of repentance and ever-growing obedience.

When we learn the Cross, we also learn humility. It is impossible to carry a proud and haughty mien when we consider the humility that Christ suffered. The Cross teaches that there Christ paid for all our pride, and the Spirit poured out because of the Cross works in God’s people to put to ever increasingly put to death pride, selfishness, and the desire to live with ourselves at the center.

This week we take up the subject of suffering. This is another motif of Lent along with Repentance and humility. This week we will take up the suffering of Christ and next week we will consider the call to our own suffering.

During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ suffered bearing the Wrath of God.

Here we find some surprised that it could be said that Christ suffered during all the time he lived on earth, thinking that the only suffering of Christ would have been restricted to when He entered into His passion … perhaps starting at Gethsemane and continuing on through the Cross. The Catechism teaches here that thinking is not accurate.

Here our Christian theologians introduce the distinction between Christ’s active and passive obedience. Here is a distinction that seeks to not isolate the whole of Christ’s obedience one aspect from another, but rather seeks to give us handles to better understand the suffering of Christ.

When we talk about the active obedience of Christ we mean the obedience Christ offered up during life with regard to His perfect obedience to the requirements of God’s Law. When we speak of the passive obedience of Christ we are referring to the fact that Christ, in spite of His perfect obedience to the Law during His life, Christ received the due penalty for God’s law having been violated.

Now, it is easier to think of Christ’s suffering under the distinction of His passive obedience whereby Christ suffers vicariously in our place for our sins. On the Cross Christ suffers the wrath of God as a sin offering, suffering as our substitute for the sin of the elect. The suffering in his passive obedience is not a suffering He deserves in Himself but a suffering He is required to meet as our representative – as in our place.

This passive substitutionary obedience and suffering is clearly taught in passages like,

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. II Cor. 5:21

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. I Pt. 3:18

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” Gal. 3:13

So, it is easy enough, to trace the suffering of Christ in relation to His passive obedience … In and through His passive obedience Christ suffers the just penalty of the wrath of God against Sin. In His passive obedience Christ on the Cross is the representative sinner vicariously suffering for the sins of the elect.

But now we pause to ask if the Catechism is correct by teaching that Christ suffered during all the time on earth? Scripture here points us in a direction that confirms the Catechism’s teaching when Isaiah writes;

He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (Is. 53:3)

The Scripture teaches here that Christ suffered as despised and rejected. Christ is characterized as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief and for anybody who has knows even a wee bit of sorrows and grief, certainly we understand the suffering of that.

Jesus Himself speaks of His suffering when He teaches;

If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first. / If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. / Remember the word that I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well; if they kept My word, they will keep yours as well.

Here again is that idea of the suffering Messiah. Who would gainsay that universal hatred is indeed suffering – especially when that hatred is completely unjust? Yet, here is Christ testifying to His own suffering… His own persecution.

Now, the Catechism does teach that His suffering was especially at the end but the suffering at the end was of a piece with all the suffering the Lord Christ underwent during His whole life.

So, when we think of the active obedience of Christ wherein He fulfills all the demands of the law in our place we also think of the suffering of our Lord Christ. We are reminded that this suffering in His active obedience was a suffering that was redemptive – that is to say it is suffering in our place and for us. It remains a vicarious suffering.

We are reminded then of the suffering Messiah. We see His suffering as He lived His life in a world that was in unremitting rebellion against His Father. We see His suffering in His tears over the death of His friend Lazarus and in the lament we find Him anguishing over the refusal of Jerusalem to repent. These could not be isolated moments of suffering. Our Lord Christ healed the sick, delivered the possessed, raised the dead but in the doing of all that would He not have suffered seeing the weight of sin’s curse and its effect on creation?

In teasing this out … the suffering found in both the active and passive obedience of Christ we learn that the Catechism is Scripturally correct in putting in our mouths and in our memories the truth that;

“During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against sin”

The Hymn writers teach us the same;

Man of Sorrows
What a name
For the Son of God who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim
Hallelujah, what a Savior

There is something else going on here in the Catechism as it reflects Scripture that is going on here. In the Catechism’s question and answer with its emphasis on the suffering of the Lord Christ is pointing us towards the fact that the Christian faith is definitionally cruciform. By this I mean that the Catechism, when it teaches us about Christ’s suffering, in it’s relating that suffering to Christ and His being the sin-bearer.

There is a subtle point I want us to see here. It is subtle but vitally important all the same. By connecting Christ’s suffering as being related to bearing God’s wrath against sin the Catechizers, following Scripture, teaches us that the heart of the Christian faith is Christus pro me – Christ for me…. or in the corporate … “Christ for us.”

The Christian life though it is definitionally inclusive of “following Christ,” does not find its beating heart in a definition that Christianity means following Jesus.

I bring this out because I heard Tucker Carlson, say this week;

“A Christian is one who follows Jesus.”

Tucker Carlson

We give Carlson some latitude because he is young in the Christian faith. However, this is not the heart of what it means to be a Christian. No … this is the liberal definition of Christian. Liberals are forever asking “What would Jesus Do.” It is the Biblical Christian who promotes instead as the main question; “What did Jesus do.” And the answer to that question is the Gospel … is the primary definition of Christianity. What Jesus did is in the incarnation he added a Human nature, with the purpose of obeying all God’s law perfectly vicariously (in the place of) His people as conjoined with the purpose of suffering the just penalty of God’s wrath against both our sin nature and all our sinful acts that flow from that sin nature.

The proper definition of Christian is one who owns the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ for their sins. That needs be the first thing that is said when someone asks “what is a Christian.” A Christian is someone who confesses;

A. During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.1

Now, let us begin our descent in landing this morning by noting the whole theme of Christ’s suffering being substitutionary. I haven’t used that word yet in this morning though I have frequently used the words “vicarious” and “vicariously.” This is a word, like propitiation, that we seldom use anymore in our communication. As Christians though it needs to be in our vocabulary because it is at the heart of our Christian faith.

Vicarious communicates the idea of substitution and so, vicarious suffering refers to the concept of enduring pain or hardship on behalf of others.

We have heard already the verses that teach that Christ suffered in our place, in our stead, on our behalf, in our place … or simply for us.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, I Peter 3:18

And again,

so also Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him. Hebrew 9:28

Here we are required to bring out the truth that Christ suffers as our representative. He suffers the suffering and death that we deserved. The wrath of God against the Messiah is not a wrath against His person. Scripture gives us the voice of the Father saying twice; “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

So, the suffering of Christ explained as the wrath of God is not against The Lord Jesus Christ in and of Himself. The suffering of Christ is explained by the fact that Christ is in our place. He suffers the suffering that was ours to suffer. He suffers as our Federal Head. All the deserved suffering of the elect in His redeemed church Christ suffers in our stead. He suffers the wrath of God so that we have peace with God.

This explains why every Christian minister of every generation commands all men everywhere to repent. If they will not own this suffering of Christ in their place … if they will not see the love of the Father and Son in His suffering vicariously then the terrible eternal wrath of God remains upon them. Oh, why will you suffer God’s eternal judgment? Why will you continue stiff necked and unrepentant? Why will you curse humility and continue to walk in pride?

So vicarious is the idea of substitution … Christ vicariously suffered in our place, on our behalf, for us. This is the beating heart of our undoubted Christian faith and during a Biblical Lent it is the theme that we are drawn back to over and over again.

And it is this Reformed theme that makes Lent different from the Lent of Rome. By learning the Cross we understand that Christ’s suffering requires no improvement on our part. Our repenting during Lent, our clothing ourselves with humility during Lent, our suffering during Lent are done out of a pursuit for an unsure redemption … a wrestling with God to gain a still uncertain salvation. Our repenting, clothing ourselves with humility, our suffering during Lent is in gratitude for the certainty of the salvation that could not be improved upon because of Christ’s humility and suffering in our place.

Now, there is just one more loose strand to clarify before we close and that is the language used by the catechism can easily confuse some folks. It is this phrase I refer to;

“During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.”

Now, we have learned this morning about the vicarious nature of all this. We have labored to demonstrate the suffering that was found both in Christ’s active and passive obedience. Now we want to clean up that little phrase “the whole human race.”

People will and do easily walk away from this thinking that Christ suffered and died for each and every person who has ever lived. We want to draw out that is not the intent of the Catechizers.

First of all, we note that the Catechism has taught us that we are redeemed by this vicarious suffering of Christ. Now, if we take that idea and marry it to the idea of Christ bearing the wrath of God against the whole human race we would have to conclude that the writers of the Catechism were Universalist. If Christ suffered for the whole human race in the sense of every man who has ever lived than every man who has ever lived would be redeemed. This is Universalism.

The catechism nowhere else teaches this idea.

Now, some will insist that Christ suffered for the sin of every single man but every single man, they will say, has to have faith in Christ and if they don’t have faith in Christ then they will die in their sins. The problem here is found in the fact that a lack of faith is sin and if Christ suffered for the sins of every single person who has ever lived then His suffering paid for the sin that is found in a lack of faith.

So, unless we believe that the Catechism is teaching Universalism we cannot believe that it is teaching that Christ died either literally for each and every person who has ever lived or even hypothetically for each and every person who has ever lived. Saying Christ bore the wrath of God for the whole human race proves too much.

The resolution to this is to understand that the death of Christ is sufficient for the whole human race … that is, that the death of Christ is not lacking in any degree

The Canons of Dordt teach this;

The death of the Son of God is the only and most perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sin, and is of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.

The Canons of Dordt also teaches the particularity of Christ’s death;

For this was the sovereign counsel and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father that the quickening and saving efficacy of the most precious death of His Son should extend to all the elect, for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith, thereby to bring them infallibly to salvation; that is, it was the will of God that Christ by the blood of the cross, whereby He confirmed the new covenant, should effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language, all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given to Him by the Father; that He should confer upon them faith, which, together with all the other saving gifts of the Holy Spirit, He purchased for them by His death; should purge them from all sin, both original and actual, whether committed before or after believing; and having faithfully preserved them even to the end, should at last bring them, free from every spot and blemish, to the enjoyment of glory in His own presence forever.