11. What is involved in the experience of salvation?

The salvation experience can be broken into five components: repent, confess, forgiveness, justification, and sanctification. Let’s briefly define each. Repentance is a gift of God. It includes sorrow for our sin, and turning away from that sin, motivated by Christ’s love demonstrated at Calvary. The Holy Spirit points out to us specific sins in our lives and leads us to confess those sins to God and to those we have harmed. In Christ, we’re not only pardoned and forgiven but we are completely acquitted! This experience is called justification. This pardon and our justification are simultaneous. Through faith in Jesus, we are justified by His grace. This simply means we are made righteous through the divine act of God, and then the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, or makes us holy, so that we continue to become more like Jesus every day. Though justification can happen in a moment, sanctification is the work of a lifetime. Justification is our title to heaven—what God does for us, while sanctification is our fitness for heaven—what God does in us. Neither are due to our merit, rather both are due to Christ’s grace. [NOTE: These topics will be discussed in greater detail in subsequent guides.]JTL3 5.1