Sinclair Ferguson

It underscores for us there is only one God and Lord.

And that was important in the ancient world where people believed there were different gods who did different things.

The same God who brought creation into being is one and the same God who brought redemption into being.

And what's so significant about that is this.

that if it's God the Redeemer who brought creation into being and God the Creator who brought redemption into being, then what at the end of the day redemption is going to mean is restoration to what God originally intended us to be in our creation.

And it's not possible, I think, to overemphasize that today, that redemption is the restoration of humanity.

Think about that in terms, for example, of modern-day humanism.

What the Bible teaches us is that modern-day humanism is on the high road to confusion because it's lost sight of what makes us truly human.

It's God who makes us truly human.

It's God the Creator who makes us truly human.

And it's also a very significant indication of how the Bible will unfold, what it means to be sanctified.

People have all kinds of ideas of what sanctification means.

In its essence, sanctification means that we are actually now being made truly human.

That's a very important principle for us, I think, to grasp in the church, isn't it?

We have people in the church who have all kinds of ideas of what sanctification means.

And sometimes they're very metallic ideas of what sanctification means.

But when someone is sanctified, one of the things that we notice about them is an increase in a beautiful and attractive humanity.

And now we could have learned that, of course, from the gospels and the epistles because this is what is true of Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect man.

But it also helps us to understand that the whole process of redemption from beginning to end is a process in which God is restoring us to what we were created to be by his redemption and then transforming us