WE return to our look at Positional Truth – now coming to Chapter II titled Justification and Assurance. The author’s opening comments remind us how important it is to understand how God is in control of all things, our past, present, and future in achieving His purpose and design for us in Christ. Gardens just don’t happen, and neither do events in our lives. When significant events occur we often over look or forget all that took place or was needed leading up to that significant moment. The truth is, much of what is born out of those significant events is dependent upon what went on before them, the prep work that set the stage for what happen.
I RECALL experience several years ago, sitting in a second floor rural business office conference room quietly waiting alone for some individuals to arrive, looking out the window at a nearby farm field. I noticed a John Deere tractor pulling a plow back and forth across this large field. It appeared that this was a second plowing, maybe a third or fourth – who knows, because I could see that the field had been plowed before and now it seemed the dirt was being ground a little finer. I watched the rhythmic and artful movement, looked at some of the surrounding fields with differing patterns, some already show tints of green at the crest of furrowed rows, and wondered what would be the eventual crop to rise from all this laborious cultivating of earth. It reminded me of all the preparation, time, and patience required to eventually bring in the harvest that was yet in the future. This memory came to mind as I read below “that God began training us …. before we were born again!”
DAVID said he was known of God even before he was born (Psa. 139:13), going on to say, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” Again, I think about the craft of that farmer atop that green tractor, sweeping back and forth, in clouds of dust, scarring the land with purpose and visions of the lush fruited green landscape to come in due season with its eventual fruit and harvest. Then I think how our heavenly father has prepared and is preparing each of us for the blessings of Christ in abundance, that will come in due season.
Well, with that in mind, let now open our look at the Principle of Position, by Miles Stanford, Chapter 2 – Justification and Assurance.
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Chapter 20—Justification and Assurance
It may help us to see the importance of the principle of position in our Christian life if we consider the fact that God began training us in positional truth before we were born again!
Justification
According to His faithful ministry, the Holy Spirit brought about an initial conviction of sin by revealing our needy condition. Through varied pressures and circumstances, we came to realize our sinful state before God.
Then the Holy Spirit may have used a faithful witness to make clear to us from the Word that we were lost sinners, positionally. We were in the wrong family—we had been born into the fallen, sinful, condemned Adamic line. “…As in Adam all die” (I Cor. 15:22). In our natural birth, we were born “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1). “…By one man’s [Adam’s] offence death reigned…” (Rom. 5:17).
In His perfect love and holiness, God made it possible for us to be removed from our position of death in Adam, and to be eternally born anew into His family through our position in the Lord Jesus Christ. By His grace we were brought to turn from our natural, fallen condition and position, and to believe on His Son as our own personal Savior, our new position before God.
Much of this wonderful transaction and transition, no doubt, was not understood at the time. However, it is all-important that the truths of our new birth and justification become crystal clear if we are to experience the benefits our position in Christ. Superficiality in this foundational step inevitably makes for shallowness and immaturity throughout our subsequent walk. …to be continued
