Law and Gospel - Part 5

Does God's opinion of us change as we live our lives? Does God only view us through the lens of our justification? How does sanctification fit into this discussion? Jonty Rhodes continues to offer his insights:

But when I remember that God also sees my sanctification, suddenly things make sense. God will assess how serious I have been about trying to be faithful to his covenant: repenting, believing, battling sin, walking in holiness. If I start to ignore him, then has every right to come and discipline. Equally, if I'm faithful, I can genuinely please him and he will reward me - most likely in eternity, but possibly in the short term as well. These rewards differ between believers, a sure sign that God will take account of how faithfully we have walked. Sure, every Christian ends up in heaven, but our experiences of heaven will differ. We'll all be happy and satisfied, yet some even more so than others. It's a bit like filling an eggcup, a wine glass, and a bucket with water. They're all full, but the bucket is also in a sense fuller than the others.

To put it another way, it is possible to be a covenant-keeper in the primary sense, a person of faith who it going to heaven, while at a secondary level be wandering off-course into paths of covenant disobedience. As we saw earlier with the Israelites and Solomon, God often intervenes in his people's lives to discipline them long before judgment day. If he sees us wandering from covenant faithfulness, he might give us a little taste of what complete disobedience would bring, in order to bring us back to our senses. Many of the seven churches in the book of Revelation experience just such warnings. If I or my church begin to suffer these kinds of warning signs, we need to wake up and return to God.

We'll conclude this series on law and gospel tomorrow.