Justification and sanctification go hand in hand. Justification is the believers gift declaration of righteousness. Sanctification is how that judicial degree of righteousness is achieved. Every believer is set apart by God as being holy at the point of that believers belief. God is the one who is performing the setting apart. God accomplishes this sanctification by joining all who believe to his son. Saint is God’s word for a believer. God sets every believer apart, sanctification is about that issue. Paul even called the carnal believers at Corinth saints or set apart ones because even though they were carnal, they had believed Paul’s good news message. Paul was not only first in line when it came to dispensing the Grace of God, Paul was also foremost in crime when it came to murdering the saints of the earthly kingdom program and the blasphemy associated with God’s ministry at Pentecost. 


God has set the believer apart and he calls them righteous based not upon what they do or what they abstain from doing where God’s concerned, but on Jesus’ righteousness and their faith in Jesus’ faithfulness on their behalf, because it’s at that point of their belief that God set them apart. God alters the believers identity by removing them judicially in God’s mind from an identification with Adam number 1 and now they are judicially identified with Adam number 2. But, throughout human history, people have refused to accept the finality that death brings to life. Death brings an unacceptable, sudden interruption to one’s work, plans, and relationships. After all, the death rate is still one per person. The serpent’s lie, you will not die, has lived on throughout human history to our time. 


Jesus’ victory over death affects the believer’s understanding of physical and eternal death. The believer can face physical death with the confidence that Jesus has swallowed up death in victory, because Paul was eagerly awaiting God’s purpose for Paul. The glory that Paul knew would be revealed in him at the manifestation of the sons of God when the sons of God receive their glorified bodies when the believers meet Jesus in the air (not on the earth). For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.