The image I am responding to can be found here. This is a diagram of humanity after we fell into sin and then as we are rescued by God. Note the two stages of rescue, justification and sanctification.
Side note: I wish there was a way that one could show that justification is a continual status that believer is in without causing confusion. As the Westminster Confession states:
God doth continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified: and although they can never fall from the state of justification; yet they may, by their sins, fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and not have the light of His countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.
Chapter 9, paragraph 5
But the difference is that being right with God is an ongoing state whereas sanctification is a development over one’s lifetime. One can be more sanctified or less sanctified just as one can be more obedient or less obedient, more sinful or less sinful. One cannot be more justified or less justified any more than one can be more forgiven or less forgiven. You either are justified or you are not; there are no degrees. So only sanctification is portrayed as a horizontal line.
So leave that to the side.
The point I want to make is that humanity, though originally sinless, was not in a “perfect state.” The diagram leaves something out. The point of salvation is not to restore us to our previous state, or even to do so and make it permanent. There’s more to salvation.
A baby may be “perfect” as a baby. But would you describe a baby as a “perfect man” or a “perfect woman.” Even though the baby is fully human (and it’s rights should not be violated as a human), that phrase is weird. The reason for this oddness is a baby has unrealized potential. A baby is meant to grow into an adult.
This is why there are passages describing Jesus’s growth and transformation seem awkward to us.
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers…
Hebrews 2:10–11 ESV
And again:
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him…
Hebrews 5:7–9 ESV
Jesus was (and is) obviously morally perfect all his life from conception onward. But reaching his potential took patient endurance. It require maturation. Indeed, that’s how the ESV translates the exact same word a little later in Hebrews.
About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the MATURE, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
Hebrews 5:11–14 ESV (capitalization added)
So Jesus went through a process by which he became mature or “perfect” and believers need to become mature or “perfect” as well. Notice, by the way, how childishness is contrasted with being “trained” to “distinguish good from evil.” Solomon asked God for wisdom using the same terminology:
And now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?
1 Kings 3:7–9 ESV
Solomon knew, to be the king God wanted him to be, he had some growing up to do. And God made Adam and Eve, and all humanity, to be kings, to “have dominion,” to “fill the earth and subdue it.” They too had some growing up to do.
But they derailed themselves from the track God had put them on. By being impatient and not trusting God’s faithfulness, by acting on the assumption that He was unrighteous and had lied to them to prevent them from becoming wise, humanity became stuck in immaturity.
So Jesus did not only restore what Humanity had lost, but he gained for them what Humanity had failed to become. “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52 ESV). Jesus grew up. He went to the cross “learning obedience through what he suffered.” Thus, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28).
