Perfective or Ultimate Sanctification

Please turn in your Bibles to First Thessalonians 4:13.

“Perfective sanctification” is the perfection of the church age believer’s spiritual life at the Rapture, i.e. resurrection of the church, which is the completion of the plan of God for the church age believer (1 Cor. 15:53-54; Gal. 6:8; 1 Pet. 5:10; John 6:40).

It is the guarantee of a resurrection body and will be experienced by every believer regardless of their response in time to what God has done for them at salvation.

The rapture of the church completes the believer’s sanctification.

The “rapture” is a technical theological term for the resurrection of the church, which is imminent, and will be invisible to the world, and will terminate the church age dispensation.

It will take place in the earth’s atmosphere when the Lord Jesus Christ will suddenly and forcefully remove the church from planet earth in order to deliver her from the Tribulation period.

Now we must remember that like the term “Trinity,” the term “rapture” is not found in the original languages of Scripture but rather is taken from the Latin term rapio, “caught up” that is used to translate the Greek verb harpazo, “caught up,” which appears in 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

Like the term “Trinity” the term “rapture” is used by theologians to describe a doctrine that is taught in the Bible.

The rapture is taught in John 14:1-3, 1 Corinthians 1:7, 15:50-57, Philippians 3:20-21, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 and Titus 2:13.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of {the} archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. (NASB95)

The resurrection or rapture of the church was a mystery that was not known to Old Testament saints.

1 Corinthians 15:50 Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (NASB95)

In our study of the subject of sanctification, we have learned that this subject speaks of the Christian being set apart by God to love and serve Him exclusively.

It is a part of God’s plan to conform the Christian into the image of His Son so that the Christian reflects His holiness through the process of sanctification.

This process is accomplished in three stages.

First of all, the Christian as an eternal spiritual truth is sanctified in a positional sense through the baptism of the Spirit.

Through the baptism of the Spirit, God views the Christian as being identified with His Son.

The believer is identified with Christ in His crucifixion, physical and spiritual deaths, burial, resurrection and session in a positional sense.

This means that God views the Christian as having been crucified with His Son, having died and been buried with Him as well as raised and seated with Him because of the baptism of the Spirit.

The baptism of the Spirit guarantees that the Christian at the rapture of the church will be perfected.

This means that the believer will permanently experience sanctification at the rapture of the church.

In fact, when the Christian receives their resurrection body at that time, they will forever experience sanctification.

There will never again be any time when they won’t experience sanctification.

Also, the baptism of the Spirit sets up the potential for the Christian to experience their sanctification now in time before the rapture takes place or their physical death.

The Christian experiences their sanctification by staying in fellowship with God, which is accomplished by appropriating by faith their position in Christ and identification with Him.

This faith results in obedience and executing the Father’s will.

When the believer commits a mental, verbal or overt act of sin they do not experience sanctification.

However, when they confess their sins, they are restored to fellowship with God and they maintain that fellowship by obedience to the Word of God, which is the result of exercising faith in the Word of God.

Thus, the process of experiencing sanctification is resumed when the Christian is in fellowship with God.

The Lord will discipline the Christian if they refuse to confess their sins and obey Him in order to resume this process of experiencing sanctification.

He will also discipline the Christian in the sense that He will train the Christian through undeserved suffering in order to advance this process of sanctification and conform the Christian into the image of Christ.

Salvation and sanctification are two sides of the same coin in the sense that they speak of the Christian’s relationship to the Trinity from different perspectives.

The former speaks of the Christian’s relationship with the Trinity from the perspective that the Christian is delivered from the sin nature, personal sins, condemnation from the Law, spiritual and physical death, Satan and his cosmic system and eternal condemnation.

Like sanctification, this deliverance is also accomplished in three stages.

The latter speaks of the Christian’s relationship with the Trinity from the perspective that the Christian is set apart by God to serve Him exclusively.

However, sanctification and salvation are unlike justification which is not accomplished in three stages but is accomplished once and for all at conversion when the believer exercises faith alone in Christ alone.

By way of definition, justification is a judicial act of God whereby He declares a person to be righteous as a result of crediting or imputing to that person His righteousness the moment they exercised faith in His Son Jesus Christ.

Consequently, God accepts that person and enters that person into a relationship with Himself since they now possess His righteousness.

The mechanics of justification are as follows: (1) God condemns the sinner, which qualifies them to receive His grace. (2) The sinner believes in Jesus Christ as His Savior. (3) God imputes or credits Christ’s righteousness to the believer. (4) God declares that person as righteous as a result of acknowledging His Son’s righteousness in that person.

Justification is God declaring a person to be righteous as a result of acknowledging or recognizing His righteousness in that person, and which righteousness He imputed to that person as a result of their faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Justification causes no one to be righteous but rather is the recognition and declaration by God that one is righteous as He is.

It is a once and for all declaration, which never changes and never can be rescinded since God is a perfect Judge who because He is immutable, always makes perfect decisions.

It takes places exclusively at the moment of conversion and is not a process like salvation and sanctification.