This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Clothed with Christ written byBrian W. Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available for preorder.
Like most young children, I wore the clothes my parents provided, with little say in the matter. Being frugal, my mother would often purchase shirts, pants, and shoes a size too big, knowing that I was still growing. When I would complain that something didn’t fit, she replied with the typical mom cliché: “You’ll grow into them.” So it is with the wedding dress that our Bridegroom provides.
God doesn’t wait to pronounce us righteous until we have cleaned up our act or met some threshold of spiritual progress. Instead, he justifies us while we are still sinners (Rom 5:8). And this side of heaven, we are both—simultaneously saint and sinner. Thus, we live out our new life in Christ Jesus by “growing into” the righteous status he has bestowed by his efficacious promise. The Bible refers to this as “sanctification.”
The encouragement toward holiness in the Bible is always grounded in God’s grace, taking the literary form: “Because of this, do that.”
To be sanctified is to be “set apart” by God for God. It is both definitive and developmental. Sanctification is therefore the fruit of being justified. The external declaration of righteousness is complemented with the internal work of the Holy Spirit to become what God has already declared us to be. Gerhard Forde defines this process as “getting used to being justified totally by faith.” [7] Said differently, it is coming to grips with being Christ’s immortal beloved. “Only God is holy,” Forde continues, “and what He says and speaks and does is holy.” [8] Therefore, he not only invites us to participate in the eternal life of his kingdom as his bride but grants us a share of his holiness.
It will take a lifetime to get used to being in the royal family when you formerly “walked the streets for money.” [9] This privileged position brings a new identity but also new- found expectations. After all, a princess does not behave like a prostitute, nor would she want to.
When we stop to reflect upon the royal nature of our vocation as Christ’s bride, we may at times feel a lot of pressure. Our former way of life did not exactly prepare us for this. But if we are not careful, we will soon be tempted to locate the source of our identity in what we do instead of what Christ has already done. When this happens, we are swapping our wedding dress for fig leaves, falling right back into the hole of self-justification by assuming that our worth is measured by our performance.
The encouragement toward holiness in the Bible is always grounded in God’s grace, taking the literary form: “Because of this, do that.” Scholars refer to this as the indicatives and imperatives of scriptural ethics. The indicatives tell us what God has done (gospel); the imperatives tell us how we should respond (law). For example, St. Peter provides the following indicatives related to God’s call:
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
It is only after locating our identity in Christ that he brings the imperative:
“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11).
In other words, darkness signifies our past. We are now people called into his marvelous light. Therefore, we walk as in daylight—open, transparent, unashamed—because we are called to abstain from the kinds of things we once did under the cover of darkness.
The nature of this “become what you already are” is remarkably counter-cultural as it defies decades of spiritual self-help messaging.
Because Christ’s beloved has been showered with such undeserved grace and unconditional love, it produces a heart filled with gratitude and reciprocal love. Grace is the foundation of salvation, and gratitude is the category for a virtuous life. In other words, grace begets gratitude.
The nature of this “become what you already are” is remarkably counter-cultural as it defies decades of spiritual self-help messaging. We must be careful readers of the Bible lest we turn the indicatives into imperatives. Our ability to carry out the imperatives of our sanctified life depends entirely on the indicatives of our new status as those who are now Christ’s beloved bride.
We do not do what is holy in order to become holy. Rather, we who already are holy through faith in Christ will consequently do what is holy for the sake of our neighbor. This may sound like something Yoda would say, but it is true nonetheless: holy does as holy is. [10]
Welcome to the wonderful world of being all dressed in the white wedding gown of the world’s rightful King.
[8] Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 59.
[9] Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, 1978. Roxanne. The Police. Outlandos d’Amour. [Vinyl]. England: A&M Records.
[10] For an in-depth treatment of this topic in St. Paul’s writing, see Paul E. Deterding, Colossians (St. Louis: CPH, 2003), 137–60.
