The Gospel is that Jesus is Lord, having been raised up to be enthroned at God’s right hand. Thus, the Gospel states that those who believe in Jesus have, through him, sanctuary access. They are throne room people. They are saints.

Incidentally, this term, saints, fits with what Jesus said to Paul on the road to Damascas. He told him he was sending them to the Gentiles to preach “that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” Those already “sanctified by faith” are believing Jews. The convicted Saul of Tarsus would have thought of Jews as having rights to the Land wherein God had placed his Sanctuary. As he understood what the person and work of Jesus meant Saul or Paul would come to understand that Jewish believers were drawn close to God in a new way. But he would have grasped at once from Jesus’ words that Gentiles were now allowed identical privileges, being also “sanctified by faith,” just as the Jews were.

This was also Peter’s conclusion from his experience preaching the Gospel to the Gentile believer Cornelius (Acts 11). He said that God “made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.” Cleansing is what one had to do under the Mosaic covenant when one lost sanctuary access due to ritual impurity. Cleansing ceremonies restored access. They granted the person the right, once again, to approach the holy place.

Some of us might be used to thinking of the language of “sanctification” and “cleansing their hearts” as denoting some sort of ethical transformation in a believer’s character. But that is not the meaning in these passages. It refers to being granted full access to God. We see an example of this in First John 1.9 where “cleanse” refers to the bestowal of complete pardon: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Given the background and meaning of the term “saints,” and the frequency and uniformity of Paul’s use of the word in addressing Christians, it is really odd that Protestant Church have so highly preferred the term “justification by faith alone” rather than “sanctification by faith alone.” We tend to (1) assume that “justification” has more importance to Paul because it comes up for a great deal of discussion in two of his letters, and (2) think of sanctification almost exclusively in terms of transformation of character.

Regarding the firs assumption (1), while Paul uses the term a lot in Galatians and Romans and mentions it elsewhere, he refers to Christians as saints every time he addresses churches. Furthermore, here in Ephesians—quite certainly a generic letter written to more than one church—Paul manages to set out the person and work of Christ and His salvation of sinners without ever referring to “justification” at all. If the term, saints, is tied to “sanctification by faith” then it should arguably be seen as having priority in Paul’s thought. Of course, with the popularity of courtroom dramas, one could argue that the language of justification or vindication is more easily understood in today’s culture.

But this brings us to the second problem (2), which is that we simply think of sanctification wrongly most of the time. While sanctification has behavioral consequences (we who are given access to God ought to live as those who know they are before His face, and in His presence we find his Spirit gives us the power to do so), it refers first of all to a legal status. We are granted access to God’s sanctuary and throne room (bear in mind that gates in the Bible are often selected as the places for judicial courts–the place where entry can be granted or denied). Just as being expelled from the sanctuary in Eden was a legal penalty for sin, so being brought near again is forgiveness and a new standing in God’s sight. Those whom God loves he embraces and calls to himself.

Justification became central to the Church’s thinking about salvation for a variety of healthy reasons, but they were not necessarily reasons that always led us to understand Paul in his own vocabulary. Likewise, the Church’s use of the term “sanctification” as a word referring primarily to behavioral transformation is also something that may require more Biblical reflection. For Paul, the sanctification of Christians—their status as saints—has everything to do with their judicial standing in God’s sight and their salvation by grace through faith.