What happens after salvation?

After being justified by faith, evangelical Protestants believe they enter the process of sanctification, the progressive work of growing in Christ and becoming a mature Christian (see John 17:15‑19; 1 Cor. 1:1,2). Sanctification begins the moment we are saved (washed by regeneration and renewed in the Holy Spirit‑see Titus 3:5). The New Testament is full of admonitions, commands and instructions on how Christians are to live and grow in Christ. Most branches of evangelical Protestants believe that sanctification is "a process that continues throughout our Christian lives" as we work out our salvation while God works within (see Phil. 2:2‑13).

I learn that we are sanctified, or set apart to God, by God the Father, through the offering of Jesus Christ once for all, and by the operation and power of the Holy Ghost through the truth, so that all Christians are saints,14 and that in our practical state we have to follow after holiness,15 and grow up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, being changed into His image, to whom we are to be perfectly conformed in glory.16

Holiness in life is the consequence of salvation. "He hath saved us and called us with a holy calling." "Being made free from sin and become servants to God, we have our fruit unto holiness." I admit that being born of God, and having received Christ as life, the principle of holiness is there; as all human nature is in a child of an hour old, but its conscious development and practical exercise is when the question of justification is settled. Desires there will be before, but ending in sorrow of heart, because the desire is not satisfied, the heart is really under law; we must be holy, we feel, and we are not.

Salvation is a free gift. Holiness also is a gift; none could possess it if God did not bestow it. But our salvation expresses the new and blessed relationship into which we are brought once and forever to God. Holiness is both a gift and a moral quality, and being a quality admits of development and progression, and being a moral quality, it is not impressed upon us by the simple "fiat" of God, but He works in us to will and to do.

This is true practical sanctification. It is not any attempt at the improvement of our old nature. It is not a vain effort to reconstruct an irretrievable ruin. No; it is simply the Holy Ghost, by the powerful application of "the truth," enabling the new man to live, and move, and have his being in that sphere to which he belongs. Here there will, undoubtedly, be progress. There will be growth in the moral power of this precious truth — growth in spiritual ability to subdue and keep under all that pertains to nature — a growing power of separation from the evil around us — a growing meetness for that heaven to which we belong, and toward which we are journeying — a growing capacity for the enjoyment of its holy exercises. All this there will be, through the gracious ministry of the Holy Ghost, who uses the word of God to unfold to our souls the truth as to our standing in Christ, and as to the walk which comports with that standing. But let it be clearly understood that the work of the Holy Ghost in practical sanctification, day by day, is founded upon the fact that believers "are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once." (Heb. 10:10) The object of the Holy Ghost is to lead us into the knowledge, the experience, and the practical exhibition of that which was true of us in Christ the very moment we believed. As regards this, there is progress; but our standing in Christ is eternally complete.

The apostle goes on, therefore, to insist upon this word of God, to which we owe everything, as still being the essential need for us, that we may "grow up by it," as the expression is here, "unto salvation." It is a strange expression apparently, as we first think of it — a growth unto salvation; but the salvation here is, of course, that final salvation of which he has already spoken, as what is ready to be revealed in its fulness in the last time. There is a salvation which the gospel brings, and with which we begin; but salvation is needed also all along the road; and as long as we are in the body, by that very fact, we need salvation still. "We look for the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who shall change our body of humiliation into the likeness of His own glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue even all things to Himself." But still, a growth unto salvation deserves serious consideration. Growth is that which is proper to life. The accretion of matter in a stone, for instance, is not "growth." Salvation, in the thought which we are getting of it here, is, in fact, more and more known as we grow in the apprehension of the things which are revealed to us, and which separate us more and more, therefore, from everything that is inconsistent with them. Thus, at the outset we are called to lay aside "all malice and all guile, and hypocrisies and envies and all evil-speakings" — things which cannot possibly consist with the enjoyment and pursuit of the truth; and we are always to be, as to the word of God, like babes just born, who crave, as the one thing necessary to them, the milk which God has provided for them. Here we must remember that we are not in the line of that which Paul says to the Corinthians, where he reproaches them as being such that have need of milk only, in opposition to solid food. The Corinthians were babes indeed, but they were babes when they ought to have been far beyond this. They were babes because growth was stunted with them through their carnality. A true babe is not "carnal," and can never be; but here we are to be only in one character like babes, and, indeed, babes "new-born." Even the Corinthians were not babes "new-born." That was the evil of it, that they were babes that were not new-born; but we are to be always, "as new-born babes," just in the simplicity of our craving for that which as milk God has provided for us in His own precious Word, to sustain a growth which is continual in one who is the possessor of eternal life. While we are here, if Christians and in a right condition, we are continually growing. We have to grow up, all of us, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Which of us has attained it? In this sense we are, after all, all of us but as babes "new-born;" and in this character God has provided for us, in His word, that which has all the elements proper for nourishment in it, as milk has. The Word, the whole of it, the deepest things in it, is thus pure milk, and only milk. There is nothing to be rejected; there is only that which enters into the constitution of the Christian — as we may say, becomes really part of himself. How beautiful in that way this figure of milk, and how earnest the craving which is here implied, and which we are exhorted to, for that which can thus minister to all the necessities of our nature! Let us desire it earnestly, says the apostle, if we have tasted that the Lord is good. Have we tasted this? If so, can we make light of the precious Word, which is indeed the provision which God has made, in His goodness, for our souls?*

Thus it may be seen that salvation, as Peter was given to view it, is not regarded (as in Eph. 2:8, 2 Tim. 1:9, and Titus 3:5) as complete in Christ, but rather a process going on to the end of the journey through the desert (as also in the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Philippians, Hebrews, etc.). They are distinct aspects of the truth, and one as true though not so elevated as the other, but both highly important to hold fast and discriminate. For it is our privilege as full-grown, or in that sense "perfect," Christians to enjoy the unclouded certainty and comfort of a salvation so complete, that we are not only quickened together with Christ, but risen together, and seated down together in the heavenlies in Him. For this we must turn to the later Epistles of the apostle Paul. Yet none the less are we, as full grown also, to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that works in us both to will and to work for His good pleasure, with the prize in view, and at the goal of His coming as Saviour to conform our body of humiliation unto His body of glory (Phil. 2, 3).

There are two sides to every truth. Believers are saved and saved for ever. We are the sheep of Christ, and we have our Lord’s own word that we shall never perish. On the other hand we are in this world, pilgrims on the heavenly journey, and this is where responsibility comes in. We are therefore exhorted to steadfastness and continuance in well doing. This is why the Spirit is given, the Holy Spirit of God, the Power by which believers are enabled to walk to God’s glory, and answer to their responsibility on this earth. This is where the “if” comes in as a salutary challenge, since continuance in the faith is the most conclusive proof of the reality of conversion. This is especially seen in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the believers are exhorted to run the race set before them with patience (Heb. 12:1), and to look off unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of faith. And then we are told how God disciplines His children to help them on their heavenly way, to wean them from wrong ways and hindrances in the race.

When the soul really enters into all that is meant by the death of Christ, it makes a mighty difference in the life. You eat of the roast lamb with unleavened bread, that is to say, the sinner—who knows what sin cost his blessed Saviour in His agonies on the cross, in the hiding of God’s face from Him—and his sin part company, there is a desire in his heart for righteousness, there is a turning from his wicked ways. If he were a drunkard before conversion, he will turn sober, there will be no unleavened bread in his mouth, there will be no more drinking—there will be no more tippling, or secret drinking. There is that young lady who used to read novels at the midnight hour, she will say good-bye to them. That pleasure-loving girl, when she is converted, will bid adieu to her parties and balls. That godless young man, now converted, will say good-bye to the football-field, will say good-bye to its swearing, gambling, godless crew. There will be a turning round. The eating of the roast lamb with unleavened bread will show itself in a practical way. Conversion is a real thing, a turning right-about, a turning to God from idols, a serving of the living and true God. That makes up the history of the true Christian, turning, serving, waiting—turning to God, serving the living and true God, waiting for His Son from heaven. Oh! it will make a mighty difference in your life.

He told us the next evening that God was very good to him, for He had found suitable work early in the day, and at this he stuck well, and soon showed the result of his conversion in a decidedly changed appearance. Some time afterwards a friend of ours met him, but did not at first recognize him, so altered was he from the dissipated wreck that he was when first we made his acquaintance. "You see," he explained to our friend, "when the Lord took me in hand He made a good job of me. He not only saved my soul, but He washed and brushed me up." We were very glad to know that he had been washed and brushed up; we should not have believed in the reality of has conversion if these things had not accompanied it, but that was not the end that the Lord had in view when He took him in hand. God does not save men to make their lives more respectable, or their homes happier, though these things will surely be amongst the results produced by His grace wherever it is received, for the grace of God which brings salvation teaches men how to behave; but that is not the great end that He has in view when He saves them. He saves them that they might be a people separated from the world and ready for the coming again of Christ, that they might, as the Scripture says, "serve the living and true God; and wait for His Son from heaven" (1 Thess. 1:9-10). The main purpose of the gospel is to gather out of this world a people for Christ, who in self-forgetful devotion to Him shall earnestly look for His coming again.