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This passage is does not teach about incremental
sanctification. Many theologians and false preachers have taught, "Those
who believe in Jesus will change gradually and will become completely
sanctified in the flesh and the spirit," and many have believed it.
We can only become righteous when we have no way out from sin by ourselves. Because Jesus washed away all our sins with His baptism and sacrificed Himself to pay for them Himself, we owe our righteousness solely to the baptism and blood of Jesus. We become righteous through faith in the fact that Jesus took all our sins onto Himself. The word 'sanctification' means 'to become holy.' Trying to become sanctified by oneself is not to believe in the truth, but to be persuaded by one's own weak flesh. Hope for gradual sanctification also comes from our own spiritual desires. Each religion has its own word of sanctification, but we who believe in Jesus should never place importance on the word itself. We do not become sanctified gradually by believing in Jesus; we become righteous once and for all by believing in the baptism and blood of Jesus, the gospel of spiritual circumcision. The truly righteous are those who have been born of the faith in the gospel of the baptism and the blood of Jesus. |