Down and Dirty

Sin soils us. Sin contaminates us. It makes us dirty, and dirtiness brings us down. It will even bring us down to Hell if we let it. But everyone who is in Christ is lifted up. All of us were previously sinners. All of us come from different backgrounds of sin, so we all have a problem: we're not clean.

There is no one righteous, not even one (Romans 3:10).

… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

Paul reminded the members of the church in Corinth that they had come from sinful backgrounds. Some of them had been sexually immoral, others had been idolaters, or adulterers. Others had been homosexuals or thieves. Some had been greedy, had been drunks, had been dirty-mouthed, or even swindlers!

... neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor those habitually drunk, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:10; NASB).

Then Paul changed the subject. He reminded the Corinthians that they had been washed, sanctified, and justified. Whew! I'm sure that was a relief for them to hear. Look at what Paul told them:

And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:11; NASB).

The Washing of Regeneration

Paul presents the order of the salvation experience in his exhortation to the Corinthians. You’ll notice that the salvation experience starts with washing, then it goes to sanctifying, then to justifying. Note that washing is prior to justification!

Paul does not explain salvation with our being justified before our being washed. Contrary to the opinion of those who evangelize with the “prayer of faith,” you are not forgiven of your sins until you are baptized. The "prayer of faith" will not make you righteous in God's eyes. Nobody will become justified until they are first washed in water.

The terms Paul employs here lay out an order we can’t ignore. They are three steps for salvation. Observe that washing brings about sanctification. Then, sanctification leads to justification. There are three steps towards the salvation experience.

Since the washing is baptism, baptism sets you apart. You're not set apart until you've first been washed of your sins.

We must take the washing in 1 Corinthians 6:11 to mean the same thing Paul called the washing of regeneration in Titus 3:5. Why? Because it is the same man speaking. Paul had his own set of terms just like anyone else, and with the term washing Paul means the cleansing of sins in baptism.

Paul first learned the meaning of the term washing from Ananias, the man who evangelized Paul with these words:

Get up, be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name (Acts 22:16; LEB).

Sanctification

So, after a person has been forgiven of their sins in the washing of baptism, they are set apart for God. Jesus won a great victory on the Cross and we’re his trophies!

Imagine that we are trophies and Jesus has won us in a contest. He places us on a special shelf in his house, the Church, where he aims to keep us free from clutter and dust. Trophies that are found in special places are set apart. And so Jesus does with us, he sets us apart, and we are sanctified.

We did not become baptized so that we would go back to worldly ways. We are destined for the Kingdom. We serve Christ, not the Prince of this World, the Devil. We are set apart. That's what sanctification is.

Justification

Being sanctified opens the way for being justified. We are not only set apart, we are set apart to be made like Christ. Think of dishwashing. When you put plates in a sink, first you scrub them with soap in water (they are washed). Then you set them on the rack to dry and place them in the cupboard (they are sanctified). After that, you remove them from the rack to use them for dinner—the plates are justified at dinnertime. That's when it becomes evident that they have become useful.

Plates are eventually used for their intended purpose. They are justified when they fulfill their purpose. So it is with us when we are born again. We are justified when we finally do what we’re supposed to do--God's will. When our life is finally a testimony to God's forgiveness and grace, we have been justified. That won't take long if we let the Holy Spirit lead us to a new life of love, joy, peace, and righteousness.

Only at the moment of justification are we finally counted righteous by God. That is, a Christian becomes one of "the righteous" when he starts living in righteousness, love, and holiness. How does he start that new life? With the power of the Holy Spirit! With the Holy Spirit in his heart, he has Christ in him, and thus he is justified with the righteousness of God. He is not justified by his own righteousness, but by faith in Jesus, a living faith which transforms his actions.

... now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been revealed... the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe (Romans 3:21-22; NASB).

But what happens if we sin after our justification? There’s little doubt we will stumble into sin again. But that's no problem. We remain in Christ if we confess. When we commit sins, we can still maintain our righteousness of God through confession. After we confess our sins, we continue to live by faith in Christ.

Baptized in Water Once

Let’s return to the illustration of the plate. A polite person at the dinner table will keep their plate clean while they are sitting at the table by either pushing their food with a fork or wiping the plate with bread. Nobody uses water to clean their plate in the middle of a meal. It would be absurd for someone to run their plate under the faucet before they have finished eating.

Thus, after we've been baptized (washed), we organize our life like we organize a dinner plate at the dinner table. We keep our activities on it like we keep food on a plate, and don't make a mess. There is no need to wash our lives with water again--that is, to be rebaptized.

In the same way that it's enough to move the food around with a fork or bread on a plate, it's enough for us to make an effort to keep our lives in order. That effort, as we explained, is in seeking to follow the Holy Spirit, and by confessing our sins once we're aware of them.

One thing we don’t do with a dinner plate is to clean it with water during a meal. Likewise, nobody should be baptized a second time. The exception to that rule is if a person's first baptism was infant baptism.

In the case of people who were baptized as babies, their baptism as an adult counts in the eyes of God as their first baptism. Why? Because baptism can only be performed on a sinner (and children are not sinners). Furthermore, baptism can only be performed on someone who understands the commitment they are acquiring. Children are incapable of understanding the life commitment we make in baptism.