Plantinga "Redemption"

We now have reached the most beautiful part of the Christian understanding of God; Redemption. God from the foundations of time has called and elected believers to himself not on merit, but on Grace. Those chosen elect were redeemed by God. In his redemption God both justified and sanctified them. Romans 8:30 “Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” There are many powerful terms touched on in this passage of scripture. Plantinga focuses mainly on the term justification in this chapter, as well as the word sanctification. Justification is a term that can be thought of as the debt being paid for. Since all elect were originally dead in sin and destined to suffer eternally for their sin, God willing to show that he was not only mercy full but just, sent Christ to pay, “justify”, that debt. A common idea I like to think of which explains justification is that through Christ death is was just-if-I- had never sinned before the face of God. The term sanctify is the second part of Calvin’s twofold regeneration. Sanctification is the idea that after the death of Christ we are now in Gods eye workers for his glory, and all our actions are seen through the blood of Christ as beautiful sacrifices of praise. We do these actions out of a love for God, not as any form of repayment, for that is impossible.
The only thing that I become skeptical on in Plantinga’s evaluation of redemption is his idea of regeneration. Plantinga states that God has called us in this world to regenerate everything back to perfection. Personally I would have to disagree with such an idea. We are in this world to show the glory of God despite the sinful world around us, not to try to make this world perfect, for we obviously have no power to regenerate anything, only Christ has such a power. Sadly scripture states that this world’s sin, will not be regenerated, but in fact will continue to fill its cup of iniquity until the final Day of Judgment. Now I would agree that it is our duty to work at displaying the greatness and goodness of God in every part of our life, however I believe we do this not with the idea of being able to restore it to perfection, but out of thanks to God we desire to obey him and spread his love throughout this ever increasingly sinful world and to continue to grow in knowledge and understanding of Him. This world will be destroyed and remade into its new perfection at the second coming of Christ, we do not work to redeem to perfection, for that is Christ alone, we work to show God and reflect his grace in our lives not only because we desire to be thankful to God, but because we are commanded to.