READING TIME: 3-5 MINUTES
May 12, 2020,
Dave, I’m discipling somebody and it would be helpful to have an overview of the believer’s responsibility in salvation that I can share with this new believer.
Romans 8 is an excellent chapter to answer your question about the believer’s responsibility in salvation.
Before explaining the believer’s relationship to the Holy Spirit in Romans 8, an important principle from Romans 7 must be underscored: God holds the believer responsible for properly exercising his will to walk by faith in the process of sanctification.
In Romans 8, Paul finds spiritual victory by remembering and reckoning on his position in Christ and walking according to the Holy Spirit.
The decisive factor of the believer’s will in the Christian life is a key reason why sanctification is not automatic, inevitable, or guaranteed for everyone who has been justified.
Proponents of the perseverance of the saints often claim that their doctrine magnifies the sovereignty and grace of God by eliminating man’s will entirely from salvation. “Monergism” is often touted (God alone working), as opposed to “synergism” (God and man working together). Calvinism’s strongly deterministic view of election leads to the conclusion that final salvation is guaranteed to God’s elect because it depends entirely upon His will. Logically, since the will of man plays no decisive role in any phase of salvation, then according to Calvinists even “practical sanctification is guaranteed among all who are justified,” for “the God who requires perseverance in faith and holiness gives the very perseverance he requires.”
While it is true, as we will see, that God alone in His grace does the actual work of sanctification, the believer is still responsible to appropriate the grace of God by a walk of faith in order for God’s sanctifying work to be fulfilled (see Philippian 2:12-13).
While God is working in the believer, it is clear that the believer must still comply with God’s work by fulfilling the command to “work out” the salvation that God has already “worked in.” This passage is not teaching believers to “work for” their salvation since no phase of salvation, including sanctification, is accomplished by means of human works. The believer must use his volition to rely on the Lord to do His work in and through the yielded, trusting believer (see John 15:4-5).
In this passage, the Lord Jesus does not tell the disciples to produce fruit; He tells them to bear the fruit that He Himself produces. Rather, since the Lord wants to continually do His supernatural work in and through the believer, the believer must actively and continually trust God to do His sanctifying work.
Dennis Rokser clarifies this point. God wants you to recognize and remember that the Christian life is a supernatural way of life, not lived by self-effort but through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. You must come to realize that the Christian life is to be lived in active dependence upon the Lord resulting in passive production on your part!
Since the believer’s will is actively involved in the sanctification process, this means that God in His sovereignty does not “make” the elect do good works; they are done voluntarily in response to His prompting.
The believer’s specific responsibility in sanctification is recorded in Romans 6 by the key words know, reckon, present/yield, and obey. In order to be practically sanctified, believers are to know the truth about their position in Christ and identification with Him (Rom 6:3, 6, 9) and reckon this to be true (Rom. 6:11). In light of each believer’s new identity in Christ as one who is legally and positionally alive toward God and dead toward sin, the believer is then to exercise his volition in continually choosing to present or yield himself to God instead of the sin nature. As the believer does so, he becomes an instrument of God’s practical righteousness (Rom 6:12-13), resulting in holiness and practical sanctification (Rom. 6:19-20). As the believer walks in yielded dependence upon the Lord in light of his position in Christ, he is filled with the Holy Spirit’s power, enabling him to have practical victory over his flesh, the world, and the Devil (Rom 8:1-4, 13; Gal 5:16; Eph 5:18).
Just as justification requires a step of faith in which a person does not rely on himself or his own good works but trusts solely on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, in just the same way sanctification requires the believer to recognize his own insufficiency and weakness to live the Christian life (2 Cor 1:9-10; 3:5-6) and to take repeated steps of faith—a walk of faith (2 Cor 5:7; Gal 2:20; Col 2:6).
Therefore, sanctification, just like justification, requires the will of man to be exercised in faith while God does the work of justifying and sanctifying.
Sources Used
Rokser, Dennis M. I’m Saved but Struggling with Sin! Is Victory Available? Romans 6‒8 Examined (Duluth, MN: Grace Gospel Press, 2013), 34.
Stegall, Tom. Must Faith Endure for Salvation to Be Sure?: A Biblical Study of the Perseverance versus Preservation of the Saints. Grace Gospel Press, chapter 8.