Progressive Sanctification
This we have in 1 Thessalonians 5:23. “And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Also in Hebrews 12:14 we read, “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”
We do not follow after holiness to get it, but because we have the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24).
It is the character of the new life, which we are exhorted to display. The measure and character of it is Christ in glory. It is by faith, for it looks to Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the power of it.
We enjoy the position of being sanctified in Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 1:2) in the measure in which we walk practically in the truth.
May the precious love of Christ constrain our hearts to walk in the path of obedience to His Word in holy separation from every form of evil!
Propitiation
Propitiation means meeting the claims of God’s holy nature. In Romans 3:25 we get Christ presented as the One who has made propitiation through His blood. We come into the blessing of it through faith.
“Whom God hath set forth” tells of the precious fact that it was the heart of God in grace that provided the sacrifice.
In 1 John 2:2 we find that the work of propitiation was for the whole world, so that any of Adam’s race can come to Christ and be saved.
God was never revealed as a “Saviour God” for the whole world until the New Testament was written. May we glorify Him for His mercy and sing unto His name (Rom. 15:9)!
Redemption
Redemption means deliverance by price out of our state of bondage into freedom. The true knowledge of redemption brings one into perfect peace, into true and constant dependence on the Redeemer.
The Israelites were redeemed out of Egypt when they crossed the Red Sea; then they sang. So we “joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:11).
We wait the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:23). That will be when the Lord comes for us and provides the dead and living with glorified bodies (1 Cor. 15:51-54; Phil. 3:21).
Then we look for the redemption of the purchased possession, which will bring the new creation into the blessedness of deliverance (Rom. 8:19-22; Eph. 1:14).
The unbelieving are not redeemed, but they will bow and own Christ as Lord before being cast out into outer darkness (Isa. 45:23; Rom. 14:11; Phil. 2:10).
H. E. Hayhoe (Present Truth for Christians)