Good morning.
First, I’d like to say happy birthday to Alan. Happy birthday, brother. And Brian Blanchard, huh? Two young pups.
I’d like to read a few scriptures, starting with Romans 1:16.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
For therein is revealed the righteousness of God from faith unto faith: as it is written, But the righteous shall live by faith.
Then I’d like us to look at 1 Corinthians 1:30.
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.
Then, going back to Acts—two places in Acts—Acts 13:2.
And as they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.
And then Acts 9:15.
But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel.
I just want to read a verse from Exodus and part of a verse from Psalms. This is very short, and it is repeated a number of times.
Exodus 8:1 says:
And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let My people go, that they may serve Me.
And then I just want to repeat two words from Psalm 51:12. Those two words are: “Thy salvation.”
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we want to thank Thee this morning for Your grace to us. We thank You that You have not left us to ourselves. You have not even left it to us to try to reach You, but You have come down to us and brought us to Yourself. For this, we want to give You our thanks and praise.
And Lord, as we come to Your Word today, we do not want to be left to just the thoughts of man, or just the reading of Scriptures and a comment here or there. But Father, as we touch Your gospel, we are asking that it would be Your Holy Spirit that opens the Word to us, and Your Holy Spirit that would anoint and give meaning and give revelation from the Word, so that we might see what is ours. And in seeing, Lord, we might pursue it and have it forever.
We ask this in Thy name. Amen.
The last couple of times, I’ve been speaking about the gospel, and I want to continue in it. I was really touched last week by something Bobby Mueller did in the opening. If you remember, he brought up the lame man who was begging when Peter and John went by.
This is what caught me about this beggar. Bobby said that the highest expectation of this beggar was that he would receive a few coins, but that he would remain the same as he was. The few coins would be all that he was looking for.
And it made me think: what is our expectation from God? You know, what do we expect from Him? I think sometimes we think He is just so stingy that you have to pry things out of Him. We are satisfied with so little because we expect so little of Him.
And I looked and said, “Isn’t that how we view the gospel?” I mean, we look at the gospel as giving us a few coins, but we stay in the same state that we are in. It is as if we are just satisfied with having our sins forgiven, but having them forgiven while remaining in that same place—just begging, not able to walk, but just sitting there.
But it says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. The reason I chose those two little words from Psalm 51 is that, if you know the psalm, it is the one David wrote after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba.
There is a song we sing: “Create in me a clean heart, O Lord.” When I was young, singing it, I did not read it right. I would always say, “Restore unto me the joy of my salvation.” But that is not what it says. It says, “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation.”
I think the missing part—the thing that gets me, or keeps me in the place I am at—is being satisfied with so little and not seeing what His salvation really has, what His salvation really is, how big and how great His salvation is.
If I would see that, I would not be satisfied with a couple of coins. I would not be satisfied just with having my sins forgiven, as great as that is. Please, do not think I am saying that is not a great thing. It is a great and wonderful thing. It is something we celebrated this morning. But, like Jack said, it is life.
It is life—not just forgiveness of sin that has been given. It is life. And that life is what He wants for us.
This morning, I really want to talk about the gospel as the power of God unto salvation. What is the power of God unto salvation? The first time, we looked at being put before God’s standard and seeing that we are lacking. Last time, we looked at justification.
Justification is not just the covering of our sins. One of the songs we sang this morning said that the wrath of God was satisfied because it was poured out and our sins were judged. We can say, in truth, that we were judged on that cross. All our sins were judged on that cross. The penalty for our sins has been spent.
We now have this standing before God. But the standing is not just to say, “Oh, this is wonderful.” The standing is meant for us to act on it. What do we do? That was the question I left with: what do we do with this justification? It is for us to enter in.
Sometimes, I think we look at salvation, since we are saved by grace, as though everything is done for us. In a sense, that is true. Everything has been given to us, and everything is done for us. But we look at salvation as an escalator. We stand on it, and it just carries us up.
You know, we can look around and say, “Hey, how you doing?” But we stand there, and we are going up. But it is not an escalator; it is a set of stairs.
We are to ascend on the flight of stairs. But as we ascend, it is not that we are ascending by our own strength. As the Lord shows us, we are able, by His Spirit, to say, “I can put my foot up here.” Then I can rest all my weight on it, and I am lifted to that level.
Then we come to the next one, and we see by faith. By faith, we take the next step, and we find that we are able to put our full weight on it and go up from there, until finally we get to the place where God wants us to be.
Yes, He has done everything, but we have climbed the stairs by faith in Him, by faith in what He is doing, and by faith in that life that is in us.
It is not as though we shall be carried on a bed of ease, with beds of roses carrying us up. No. Even when the Israelites came into the promised land, there were kings, there were giants, and there were enemies. People did not just fall over dead for them. That is the way the Lord has made it for us.
This morning, I want to look at this idea of sanctification. Boy, this is a word that we can really play mind games with.
I want to look at it not as the way we usually look at it. We think, “I need to be sanctified.” Brothers and sisters, we are sanctified. I want to look at how God has sanctified us, because we read that verse in 1 Corinthians: God has put us in Christ, who has become for us sanctification.
Kenny, you should have spoken next week, because sanctification, I think, is the doorway into consecration. If we try to consecrate ourselves without seeing how God has set us apart, a lot of times we just do it in ourselves. We do not have the “therefore.”
Like Romans 12, which Kenny was speaking about last week: there is a “therefore,” and you have to go back to everything else that has been spoken. But a lot of times we just pick up consecration and try to do it ourselves. That is like raking leaves.
Now, I like to rake leaves. It is therapeutic. It is aerobic. Do not ask me to come and rake yours, though. I like to rake my leaves.
But I have raked twice now in the last two weeks. Last Saturday, I raked the lawn and got it all clean. By Tuesday, it was all covered. That is consecration by the flesh. Do you understand what I am saying?
The leaves are not all dead yet, and they just keep falling down. Then we just keep raking. You would think some of us would just leave it until all the leaves are gone and then rake one time, but we are just not that smart.
It is the same with us spiritually speaking. For some reason, we like to rake.
I am saying that we like to do stuff like that, and we do not see what God has done for us. That is what we want to look at. I want to look at this idea that we have been sanctified. What does it mean that God has sanctified us, and what should be the outcome of that?
If we do not see, then we just spin our wheels and stay in the same place. But if we see, we take another step up the stairs. That is what God is after. God is not saying, “I am hiding this from you because I do not want you to find out.” He is saying, “I have this for you. I want you to have it.”
We have looked at the gospel as justification, and now we want to look at sanctification.
The other day, John Blanchard mentioned in the prayer meeting that brother so-and-so had been speaking on this, brother so-and-so had been speaking on that, and Jim had been speaking on the fundamentals. My flesh said, “Oh, I am doing baby stuff.” Now, that was my flesh.
Then the Lord said, “You know what, Jim? You cannot do algebra if you do not know number value. You cannot add if you do not know number value. You cannot subtract. If you cannot add and subtract, then you cannot multiply and divide. If you cannot multiply and divide with number value, then you cannot do fractions and decimals.”
Before you can do algebra, you have to know all the other stuff, because that is what is applied. So the Lord just said, “Do not worry about it. What is the matter with you? You just do what I have given you to do.” And so that is what I am doing.
It is like saying that the first hymn you teach your little children is not “The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Our Lord.” Even if they can mimic the words, they have no idea what it means. What do we start with? “Jesus Loves Me,” because they not only know the words, but they can understand that Jesus loves them.
Brothers and sisters, the gospel is the foundation. There is no church without the gospel. There is no recovery without the gospel. There is no glorification without the gospel. And there is no sanctification without the gospel.
Sanctification has two sides. I am saying that just for my own purposes. Kenny talked about consecration last week, and he said the word consecration is not really used in the New Testament. But there is a word that is used many times: sanctification.
What is sanctification? I am going to look at it this way. I do not know if you are going to agree with this or not, but I am going to use it this way: I look at sanctification as what God does. I look at consecration as what we do.
By what we do in consecration, I mean our response to God’s sanctifying us. It is something we do, but it is a response.
On God’s side, sanctification is a setting apart—not just to Himself, but a setting us apart that we might serve Him and His purposes. That is what God is doing. It says that we have been sanctified. God has taken us and set us apart for His use.
Consecration, then, is our response to His setting us apart.
Sanctification is placing us, whether we be things or persons, into a state of purity to serve Him. As He sets us apart, He is putting us into a state of purity to serve Him.
How, then, are we sanctified? That is really what I am after today. We know what sanctification is; now, how does the Lord go about sanctifying us? There are three ways He does it.
You have to see the whole thing. You cannot stop with one of them. If you stop with one of them, you do not have what the Lord has done. Our problem is that we stop with one of them, and then we try to do the rest. But that is not what the Lord has done.
This is how the Lord has separated us to Himself for His purposes. I want to make an analogy with the children of Israel in the Exodus, because you can see it played out there.
First of all, He has separated us by blood.
If we look in Exodus 12, when they are talking about the Passover, verses 5 through 7 say:
Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old: ye shall take it from the sheep, or from the goats.
And ye shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month; and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at even.
And they shall take of the blood, and put it on the two side-posts and upon the lintel, upon the houses wherein they shall eat it.
The first way God separates us is by blood, and that is the judgment of our sins. Our sins are judged. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.
We who have been separated unto God for His purpose have all come by the cross of Jesus Christ. We have all had that blood applied to us. But not only have we had that blood applied to us—we have applied that blood.
That is really, really important: that we apply the blood. We take that blood before the Lord. The Lord Jesus has taken His blood, but every day when we come to the Lord, we apply that blood. We take that blood and say, “Here it is. This is my access to You.”
And the Lord says, “It is your acceptance. I will accept you on the basis of this blood.” Our introduction into His sanctification—into our being set apart—is that our sins have to be dealt with. And they have been dealt with in Christ Jesus.
So we are separated by blood. Our sin is atoned for. We have been brought into a right standing.
After they had applied the blood and the death angel had come through, they were not supposed to remain in Egypt. They were not supposed to stay there. “Let My people go.”
There is something to having the punishment for sin taken away, but if they remained in Egypt, what would have happened? We know Pharaoh came after them. He wanted them back. Remember when they were going through the Red Sea? He was coming after them.
Someone who has had dominion over us is not going to give it up. He might play around with you and say, “Yeah, okay, you can go,” but he is coming back with a fury.
Yes, we are set apart by blood, but we are not supposed to remain in that same place. We are supposed to go. That brings up the second point: we are separated by baptism.
Now, I am not talking about the actual act of me going underwater. I am not talking about that literal baptism.
It says in 1 Corinthians 10:1-2:
Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
Pharaoh came after them to reclaim them, to reclaim his power over them. Going through the Red Sea freed them from the power of Pharaoh.
What do I mean by baptism, then? Let us look at Romans 6:3.
Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
We were buried therefore with Him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection;
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away, so that we should no longer be in bondage to sin;
for he that hath died is justified from sin.
But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him;
knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over Him.
For the death that He died, He died unto sin once for all: but the life that He liveth, He liveth unto God.
Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
All Christians, when they believe, are baptized into Christ Jesus. What that means is that we are put into Him. As soon as we believe, we are put into Him, just as I put this piece of paper in this book. We have been put into Him. We have been immersed into Him. We are in Christ.
I told some of you kids: you have heard that all the time, and you need to find out what that means. You need to see the reality of what it means that we are in Christ. This is some of what it means.
God has identified us with His Son to the point that when Christ died, we died. When Christ was crucified, we were crucified. That is how far He has identified us with Him. But not only that: when He raised Christ up, we also were raised up.
As we are raised up with Him, just as the power of sin could not hold Him in the grave, so the power of sin no longer can hold us. That is deep stuff.
The cross of Christ has separated us, because God can have nothing to do with sin. That is important. God can have nothing to do with sin, so He made it so that sin no longer has power over us.
Sin has not been destroyed. I mean, I know I still sin. But the power has been broken. It is like the hymn we sang before I came up here: “He breaks the power of cancelled sin.”
We know what it is like to have our sins forgiven, but we also know how much we are trapped by those sins. It seems like we are caught over and over in those sins. But what God has done is that He has broken that power.
We are to walk in that newness of life that has power over that sin.
Now, I know this is hard. You are looking at this, but let me put it another way. If I am dead, it cancels all my obligations. That would not be too bad right now, because if I was dead, I would not have to grade all these projects. I would no longer be obligated to grade these things anymore.
If I was dead, I would not be obligated to write the four tests I have to write this week. I would not be obligated to pay my taxes. That is a pretty good deal. I like that.
But a lot of times, what we do is get to the place where it is not that we are dead to sin, but we try to become dead to sin by obeying the law. We say, “Okay, the Lord has cleansed me from my sin. Now I have to obey the law.” And so we try to obey the law. That is when we really find out that sin has power over us.
But if I am dead, even the law does not have power over me. What laws do they have about dead people? Have you ever thought of that? “Well, you know, it is illegal to have rigor mortis. We are going to have to arrest you and bring you down.” What are they going to do with you? They cannot do anything with you. You are dead.
In the same way, we need to understand spiritually that we are dead to sin and dead to the law. It says, “Reckon yourselves.” It does not mean think really hard and pretend that you are. It means count on it. Count on it that you are.
We come to this place and say, “I do not see it. I cannot do it.” That is fine, because Paul came to that place too. That is what Romans 7 is about. He wrote Romans 6, but he had to write Romans 7 too. He had talked about the victory of how sin no longer has dominion over him, and then he came to Romans 7 and said, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me?”
There has to be a way around it. When Jesus raised Lazarus, think about this. In John 11:44, after He raised Lazarus and said, “Lazarus, come forth,” do you remember how Lazarus came forth? He came forth hopping out of the grave. Why was he hopping?
Because he was wrapped up in his grave clothes.
The Lord did not say, “Well, Lazarus, you are resurrected. Have a go at getting out of those bandages.” But He said, “Loose him.”
That is a wonderful statement, because, brothers and sisters, not only have our sins been forgiven, but the Lord says, “Loose them from the power.”
That is part of our sanctification. That is what God has done for us in setting us apart. He has not just forgiven our sins, but He has said, “I want you loose from the power of sin, because you have to be loose if you are going to serve.”
Can you imagine somebody in grave clothes like Lazarus, hopping out? In John 12, there is a dinner in Lazarus’s honor. Mary is there, Martha is there, and Lazarus is sitting at the table. Can you imagine if he was still in his grave clothes? How could he enjoy any of that? He could not even enjoy fellowship with the Lord Jesus, who raised him from the dead, because he would be all wrapped up in his grave clothes.
A lot of us are like that. We had a brother once at Pointy Valley. He came in one day during the opening, bringing a bunch of chains, and he just plopped them down there. He said, “How many of you have brought your chains with you?”
Christ has unlocked the chains. Christ has freed us from the chains. We need to understand that. It is such a freeing thing to think that I do not have to please God.
What am I saying? You do not have to please God. Christ has pleased Him. Walk in that. Walk in what Christ has done. That is where the liberty is. That is where the freedom is. That is what Christ has done for me.
God has made it that way. He has not said, “Oh, get out of your grave clothes yourself, man.” He said, “Loose him,” because if you are going to serve Me, you need to be loosed. And I have made provision for that.
I will take no other service. I will not take the service of one who is still bound up. I have provided much more for you. Do not be satisfied with the coins. Rise up and walk.
Isn’t it interesting that, as they took the lame man’s hand, his ankles were strengthened? We do not find out by book learning. It is all going to be just book learning until the Lord says, “Here is My hand. Let us get up.”
That is when we say, “Oh no, Lord, I just cannot do it. I am just too bad.” We have all the excuses. We are like the man in John 5: “I would get up, but nobody helps me.” And the Lord says, “Do you want to walk? Get up.”
So, I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live. We are dead to the power of sin, but now we are alive to God. It is not that we feel alive, because this is not about feeling. But it is a reality. It is a reality in God’s eyes.
We are to walk not by sight, but by faith. That is what pleases God. That is the way into this salvation: faith.
The last way that we are sanctified is that we are given a life. That is what Jack was talking about this morning. We are given a life.
Doesn’t it say that we are born again? Do you know how many Christians do not know what “born again” is? At the beginning of every year, when I introduce myself to my students, I tell them that I am a born-again Christian. I cannot tell you how many kids say, “What is that?”
Remember in the sixties and seventies? That was the thing: born again. Everybody knew what born again was. Today, nobody does. Why is that?
But we are born again. We have been born with a life that is incorruptible. That is what 1 Peter says: incorruptible. In other words, sin does not have a hold on it.
To sin, our life is like a greased pole. Our flesh is like one of those things that a cat can scratch on. Cats get their claws stuck in it. That is where sin has a hold on us: in the flesh. It does not go for the spirit; it goes for the flesh. That is where it can get its claws in.
But we have been born again. In correlation to the Exodus, when they crossed the Red Sea, they were not left to themselves. They had the pillar of cloud and fire to lead them to where they were going.
The analogy stops there, because we do not have something physical outside that we see and say, “Okay, I am going to follow that.” We have that pillar of cloud and fire in us. We have the life in us.
Many of us do not know that, because we show it by trying to do what we think we have to do. We try to figure out what God wants instead of being led by His Spirit, who is in us.
The pillar of fire led them exactly to the place that God had promised them and where they wanted to be. The life that has been given to us does the same thing. It brings us to the very place that God wants us to be: complete in Him.
They went to a land flowing with milk and honey. Everything there was provision for everything. In the life that we have, there is provision for everything. Every trial we come into, there is provision in that life.
When they came to the land, there were giants, kings, and other things there. Do not think that it is going to be smooth sailing into this life. It is not, because we are dealing with the flesh.
Do you not think we have kingdoms in our flesh? Do you not think we have walled cities in our flesh that have to come down? But it is not for us to take them down. It is not for us in our own strength to take them down, because we cannot.
It is like when you have a hole and you say, “I will stop it right here,” and all of a sudden it pops up somewhere else. You go there, and now you have two hands going, but it pops up somewhere else. You use a foot, and it pops up somewhere else. Now what do you do? You are out of limbs.
Brothers and sisters, we have been given a life—a life that overcomes. This is part of how the Lord has separated us. He has given us this life.
What separates us from all the earth is the life in us. It is not the doctrines that we have. It is not that we are good moral people. It is the life of Christ in us that separates us from every other creature on the earth. It makes us different.
We are to walk by that life, by the power of that life, and nothing less. We look at Him and say, “I cannot do it.” But Caleb said, “We are well able,” not because of strength in ourselves, but because God has promised it. God has given it to us. God has given us this land. God has given us His Spirit.
We do not have to ask God, “Oh, please give us the Spirit, because we really need it.” No, that is part of our salvation. It is in our salvation. Do you believe that?
We are born again. When Christ died, when He was crucified, we died. When He was raised from the dead, we were made alive again. That is why Romans 5:10 says:
For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.
It does not say, “saved by our works,” does it? By what? His life. His life in us.
There was an Ian somebody—an English guy—who wrote a little book, The Saving Life of Christ. It is almost like The Normal Christian Life. It talks about how it is the life of Christ that saves us: the life of Christ living in us.
Really, this is Romans 8. This part of our salvation is Romans 8. Bear with me as I read a little bit.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace:
because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be:
and they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.
But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.
And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness.
But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you.
So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh:
for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
Brothers and sisters, we have been given this life. In being born again, we are a triune being: body, soul, and spirit.
If we were looking at a pyramid—not in the sense of foundation, but in the sense of head and tail—when we are dead to sin, it is body, soul, and spirit, and the spirit is dead. What rules? The body. The body has rule over the soul, the emotions, the will, and everything.
The body says, “I need this,” and the soul—the mind and everything—says, “Yeah, we have got to get this.” When my body says, “Jim, I am really hungry,” man, my mind is going for food. “Where is the food?” I am like a bear before hibernation. “Where is it? Let us go.”
When I need rest, it is, “Where is the couch?” But when we are born again, instead of the head being the body, the head is now the spirit. The soul remains in that second place, but the body takes the last seat.
Brothers and sisters, this is the salvation of the soul. When the spirit rules, the soul is saved. When the spirit has control, the soul is saved because the soul falls into line.
That is the only time we can really deny the flesh. Do you understand that? The only time we can deny the flesh is when the spirit rules.
If we leave the spirit out of there and try to do it on our own soul, our own willpower, the body takes over again, and we sin. But when the spirit is in control, we are able to deny the flesh.
Christ has become our righteousness by the blood. He has become our sanctification and all these things. In the end, He becomes our redemption because He becomes everything to us, and we become like Him.
This is God’s salvation. It is more than forgiveness of sins. It is our being released from the power of sin, but not only being released from the power of sin and told, “Go do what you want.” We are also given a life that is able to please God.
This is the new covenant. If you look in Ezekiel 36, all of these things are the new covenant. Ezekiel 36:24 says:
For I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land.
And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep Mine ordinances, and do them.
That is our sanctification.
Now, in closing, why has God sanctified us? It is not enough to know that all these things are true and real and so forth and so on. That is just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Worse than that, it is spiritual blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The reason we have been sanctified is so that we can be consecrated. If we read Romans 6:12-13, this is what I want to close with.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof:
neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
Here is the whole thing. Now that we have been freed, what do we do with ourselves? Shall we go out and sin? Some of us are going to fall, but should that be our lifestyle? Should we just go out and say, “We are free. God has paid for it all. I do not have to worry about anything. I can just go and sin and live my life because I am going to be saved”?
No, because then you miss the purpose of God. The purpose of God for your lives is to serve Him. We have been saved to serve God.
One of the interesting things—I think it is in the Book of Common Prayer—says that the purpose of our salvation is that we serve God and enjoy Him the rest of our lives, which is forever.
We think of service as drudgery. But notice how that prayer says, “To serve Him and enjoy Him all our days.” There is no bond-service unless you see what God has done for you.
You cannot just go on and say, “I am going to serve God,” because you are going to fail. We are sinners by nature. But once you see what God has done for you, this is what Romans 6 is saying: once you see what God has done for you, then you can make a choice.
It says you can present your members to sin, to serve sin; or you can present yourself as alive to God, to serve God.
“I have set before you life and death. Choose life.” That is a simple decision, isn’t it? Now, it is hard.
The thing is, we will go home and do whatever we do. But when I teach at school, I hope I always give the kids something when they leave my class. They leave thinking. They leave thinking about what we talked about or what they had done.
I have not done a good job explaining how all this is, but I cannot. God can show you.
The thing is, if you have listened and sat there and said, “Is this true?” then you go home and start thinking about it. You start praying about it: “Lord, You show me these things.” That is what He is after.
But if you just go home and say, “Okay, well, now I know this,” it is nothing. Anything that is set up here is nothing unless we learn to take hold of it.
We have to take hold. We have to come to the Lord and say, “Lord, is this so? If this is so, I want it. If this is what You bought for me, I want it.”
You might say, “The power of sin is too great for me.” In Mark 5, there was a man possessed by demons, and he said his name was Legion. Do you know how many were in a Roman legion? Somewhere between four thousand and six thousand soldiers.
Imagine a man with an actual legion of demons in him. Demons are supernatural. And this man—the Lord, with a word, said, “Come out.”
If He, with a word, can say to four to six thousand demons, “Come out,” how much more can His very life in us overcome? And that is what we have.
Let’s pray.
Lord, I want to confess that so often I am like that lame man, begging and satisfied with so little. For that, I ask forgiveness. I am sorry. I am sorry I think like that. I want to be changed. I want to be changed and have my mind renewed.
I pray for all of us, Lord, that we would see how it is not that we consecrate ourselves and try to serve You, but that first You have sanctified us. You have already set us apart in these ways so that now we can consecrate ourselves.
It is not really a work of the flesh, but it is just following the lead of the life that is in us. Oh Lord, please show that to us. Please show us what is ours. Please show us how free we are, what You have really done, so that we can walk in newness of life.
Lord, we have walked in oldness. We have walked in the flesh. We have done all those things, and we know things do not work. But Lord, it is to Your glory that You saved us, and it is to Your glory that You have sanctified us.
Lord, we want to see You glorified in our lives by walking in the sanctification that You have purchased for us through Jesus Christ. We ask for this in Jesus’ name. Amen.