Justification and Sanctification   The Book of Mormon Lecture 11 by Hyrum Andrus
Channel: Light and Truth
Date: 2016-06-08

Hyrum L Andrus
All rights reserved August 10-12, 1989
Lecture – 11 JUSTIFICATION AND SANCTIFICATION
In this session I would like to discuss with you the subjects of justification and sanctification. And in order to do that, I'm going to have to get our blackboard back over here, because I want to have you see where these sacred doctrines fit in the gospel plan.
You can talk about the gospel from different vantage points, just like you can go and see a house and view it from different vantage points, the back, the sides, the rear, etc. You can describe the same building but do it a little differently or from a different tack or from a different approach. The same thing is true with the gospel. You can talk about faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and repentance and baptism and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, etc., and the blessings they bring into your life, and view things from this vantage point.
There is another vantage point that we don't as often discuss things from, or that view, but that, to me, crystallizes the gospel plan and puts it in a focus that helps broaden understanding and meaning. And this is to view the doctrine in the pattern and program of justification and sanctification. Let me get our little mortal bucket up here on the board in order to see things rightly.
Let's say that this mortal bucket represents us in our mortal state. Here is the presence of God, here we are down here, hugging terra firma. Most of us are hugging it more than others. We are striving to get back into the presence of God. That's the great challenge, to fulfill that program by which, through the atonement and the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ, we can finally move from this level on up through where the next step, like the brother of Jared, is in, and be redeemed from the fall.
If you were to take that program, that pathway along there, from here on up, you can divide it appropriately into two or three major doctrinal areas. One is the doctrine of justification. If you have your Urim and Thummim, you can read that [the chalk board]. And the second thing is the doctrine of sanctification. Then that reaches on up into the higher realms of the gospel of receiving the sacred sealing powers of the holy priesthood and entering back into God's presence. So if you progress in this way of speaking, you start out with the need to meet the requirements of justification. Then you need to know what the idea of justification entails, how it centers in Christ, what your relationship is to the idea, how it pertains to faith and to repentance and to baptism and how it finally relates to the further program of how to be sanctified and how to achieve a relationship in which, through Christ, we can be sanctified, and what sanctification means and how it is to be attained.
Then from there on up as you become pure and holy and filled with faith like the brother of Jared and others, then you get into the upper reaches of the gospel where the Lord himself begins to teach you and where you have the blessings of the gospel opened to you in the living revelations. And they can reach up into the rending of the veil and the penetration of the veil where you see and behold and know that that which you have been teaching is true.
When I was a young boy of 15 years of age, an old Patriarch laid his hands on my head and he said in substance, "The day will come where your spiritual eye will be quickened, and you will see and behold and know." And I want to bear you my testimony that that is a reality. I know the fulfillment of that old patriarch's prophetic statement.
This has to do with some of the upper reaches of gospel life. And you finally learn that God is real, that Christ is the most alive person there is in this universe. But you need to traverse that path, and the Lord in his mercy reaches down and strives with you. We want to discuss today this great challenge of the gospel within this context, and let's start and do it methodically, one idea after another.
Justification and sanctification lead us on up. Here in Section 20 of the Doctrine and Covenants, and this is a marvelous Section in many ways, it gives to us one of the classic statements of the gospel. I don't want to take the time on that as I would like, for we don't have that time. But it talks about the Book of Mormon containing the fulness of the gospel unto the Gentiles and also to the Jews. And then it describes the gospel from verse 9 on down through, involving the doctrine of the fall and the atonement of Christ, the need to be changed and transformed and regenerated. Then at the conclusion of this great statement of gospel concept and doctrine and idea, then in verse 30, the Prophet writes by revelation as follows: He says, "And we know that justification through the grace of our Lord a… Get the full transcription from www.hyrumandrus.com!