The Great Commission, Sanctification, and the Christian Life

People often ask, and properly so, why today's church looks so little like the church of the New Testament. I am not talking about doctrine or government, but rather about power. Pentecostals wrongly substitute passion for power, not recognizing that their error merely contributes to the problem.

There are a number of answers to this question. I have discussed them in the past: heresy, pietism, dispensationalism. However, I am going to turn my attention here to something more fundamental.

What is salvation?

Most evangelicals will answer to the effect of being saved from Hell by the atonement of Jesus on the cross. And that is certainly a fundamental aspect of salvation. However, too often the evangelical stops there, as if the Christian faith and life is nothing more than fire insurance. Not only does that deny the great Commission, but it is a sleighting of the cross work of Jesus.

I refer to the Great Commission intentionally. What does Jesus command us to do there? "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). Most evangelicals can quote that from memory, which is completely commendable. The problem is that the Commission doesn't stop with baptism. He continued: "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (verse 20). There is one side of the Commission which involves saving sinners from judgment. However, the commission continues with a command to replace sin with something.

Notice what was said of the coming of Jesus: "You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Not from the punishment of our sins, as important as that is, but from our sins themselves. As much as our justification was purchased on the cross, so was our sanctification. And having lost sight of the truth, Christians are indistinguishable from non-Christians, and the church is too flabby to speak to a culture that is reveling in its wickedness.

"The scriptural meaning of salvation is deliverance from the curse, power, and love of sin. The word, in general, implies deliverance from evil, but it is always, in the Bible, positive as well as negative, and imports the bestowment of a corresponding good" (James Henley Thornwell, "Election and Reprobation," emphasis in the original).