Good morning, saints.
I often greet everybody by calling you saints, because that is what the Word says we are. The word saints is derived from the word sanctified, or holy.
What is on our heart this morning—the burden on our heart—is to share on the subject of sanctification.
This burden came about some time ago. The last time I opened, when our group was on, I shared about Christ as our sanctification—how He sanctified Himself. Out of that came this burden, what we want to share this morning.
So, let us start by reading a couple of Scriptures together—very familiar ones for most of us—beginning in 1 Thessalonians 4.
We will just read the beginning of 1 Thessalonians 4:3. I am going to read out of the NASB for the most part. If I read any other version, I will let you know what it is.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification.
And just go forward a little bit in this book to 1 Thessalonians 5:23a.
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely.
Then 1 Thessalonians 5:24 says:
Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.
Let us just have a word of prayer.
Lord, we do want to commit this time into Your hands. Lord, as always, we are aware that apart from You, we can do nothing.
Whether it is speaking, Lord, or whether it is hearing, it is all dependent on You. It is all dependent on Your Holy Spirit to reveal Christ to us.
And Lord, that is our desire: that we would see Christ. We would see Him afresh in this way. So we commit this time, Lord, into Your hands.
We pray You use this weak vessel somehow to impart something of the truth of Thy Word. We pray in Your name. Amen.
So, as we said, we want to share on this subject of sanctification. But before we do that, we want to mention two pitfalls regarding this subject.
Before I do that, I want to make it clear that the motive for sanctification in the life of the believer is never to gain or retain our acceptance before God.
Our acceptance before God, our redemption from the penalty of sin, and our status as a child of God are based entirely on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.
The believer, having been justified by faith through the work of Christ, is secure eternally. You need to know this.
This is because included in justification by faith is the receiving of the life of God, which, once given, is irrevocable, as all of God’s gifts are.
In fact, the justification of the believer is a great motivation toward sanctification. That is one reason why Paul, when he mentions sanctification in the Scriptures, never does so without first mentioning justification.
But we find today some confusion regarding sanctification within Christendom, and much time can be lost by pursuing a wrong path.
For sure, sanctification can be confusing. The reason for it is because we lean toward being deceived or going to extremes, and this is because we are slow to accept the truth.
Many conceive that after one is justified by faith, somehow they are to work out their own sanctification.
There is, and there should be, a desire within the heart of every believer to want to be holy before God. But often we find that believers, when challenged with Scripture such as, “Be ye holy; for I am holy,” set out to suppress or to try and change themselves.
Sometimes they even torture themselves in the pursuit of this thing called sanctification. They believe that by some kind of unique spiritual grooming, they can remodel, repair, and change themselves into becoming holy, with the help of the Lord.
They believe somehow they are able to change this old man, this fallen nature they have inherited from Adam, and make themselves holy.
They fail to see and believe that God is entirely done with this old man—that he has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
God by no means wants to fix or restore what is broken beyond repair. They fail to see that the old man is irreparable and is only good for death, for being put away.
Thus, these would set about to pray, fast, and quote the Scriptures, expecting that somehow a change will occur in them.
You know, it is not unlike the many self-help programs that we find in the world today. They believe that through some gradual, inconsistent applying of some self-induced spiritual program, they can make themselves holy.
Do we not have examples of ones through history who have applied many measures, including separating themselves altogether from the world, unbeknown to them that wherever they go, and whatever they try, they still have this old man within them that refuses to be changed and become holy?
Somehow, they believe that the Holy Spirit has been sent to do a work of sanctifying the flesh, of changing them into being holy.
You know, Scripture plainly states in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that the natural man does not accept, and he cannot understand, the things of the Spirit of God. Thus, how could our fallen nature become sanctified by the Holy Spirit?
Scripture also states in Galatians 5:17 that the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to each other.
No, the Holy Spirit has not come to improve the flesh through some kind of gradual improvement program. The Holy Spirit knows that there is no good thing in the flesh, that the only answer for the flesh is the cross.
Christ, as our substitute, not only took our sins upon Himself, but He also took us to the cross. There, the old man—the nature which we inherited from Adam, which was beyond any repair—was crucified with Him.
But in the truth of the old man having been crucified with Christ, there has come about some other confusion of a different sort.
There is a teaching that says when Christ took the old man to the cross to be crucified, the old man was destroyed there—completely annihilated.
This teaching is based on Romans 6:6, which says in the King James Version:
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him,
that the body of sin might be destroyed,
that henceforth we should not serve sin.
This teaching points out that this verse says the body of sin has been destroyed, and thus the believer no longer has the old nature within them. They believe that the sin nature in the believer has been eradicated and that they no longer have to deal with it.
Now, I think if any believer is honest with themselves, they know and experience that this cannot be true.
What we find is that those who believe in this teaching fail to see that the same Greek word translated destroyed here in Romans 6:6 is also found in Hebrews 2:14.
You can read this in the NASB:
Since then the children share in flesh and blood,
He Himself likewise also partook of the same,
that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.
This verse states that through death Christ destroyed the devil. But we know the devil is not destroyed; he is very much alive.
This word translated destroy in the King James Version, in both Romans 6:6 and Hebrews 2:14, should really be translated made ineffective or made useless—or, as we translate it, rendered inoperative.
Thus, at the cross of Calvary, through the death of Christ, the old man and the devil were both rendered inoperative. They still exist; they are not removed, but they are made ineffective by the victory of the cross.
But such a teaching of the eradication of the sin nature is further amplified by a translation of 1 John 3:9, which says, again in the King James Version:
Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin;
for His seed remaineth in him:
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
This teaching states that this verse further proves that if one is born of God, they cannot sin because God’s seed is in them.
But they overlook that 1 John 3:6 says:
No one who abides in Him sins.
The possibility for the believer to sin still exists, or Romans 6:12 would not exhort us not to let sin reign in your mortal body.
The sin nature is still in the believer, as 1 John 1:8 states. Am I going too fast for you?
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Yes, the believer still has the sin nature in them, but the Holy Spirit is in the believer to enable them to put to death the deeds of the body. That is Romans 8:13. It is based on the fact that we have been identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
Now, some versions translate 1 John 3:9 as, “No one who is born of God practices sin.” These loosen it a little, rather than, “Whosoever is born of God does not sin, because His seed abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.”
This translation helps, but the reality is that a believer can fall into habitual sin, as Hebrews 10:26 warns us against. We call this apostasy.
What we find is that what is born of God in the believer cannot sin. The new nature, or seed, received from God is incapable of sinning, but the old nature, which can only sin, still remains in the believer.
Thus, it is only by abiding in Christ that we can overcome sin and be holy.
You know, our brother Stephen, in his messages on spiritual exercise, put before us the question: Whose life are you living by? Whose life are you living by?
If we choose the self-life, sanctification will evade us. If we submit to the Christ-life, we will experience true sanctification, as He alone is the One who was sanctified, holy unto God.
These are the two major pitfalls to be avoided by the believer in this matter of sanctification.
Our heart does weep for such ones who, upon believing in the Lord, think that somehow they must attain sanctification through their own self-effort, through some kind of reparation of the old man.
Likewise, we also weep for those who believe that God’s remedy to holiness is to eradicate sin out of the life of the believer.
Yes, thank God, there is a day coming when the old nature will be removed from the believer, when we receive the redemption of our body. But until that time, it remains in the believer.
So we find both of these thoughts travel down a road of deception, in each case not understanding the truth about ourselves and God’s true provision in this matter of sanctification.
Now, having said all that, let us define sanctification. Then we are going to touch a little bit on this subject, and finally we want to share a few quotes from a few brothers on sanctification.
When a person or thing is separated unto a specific purpose it was made for, it is sanctified.
A hat is sanctified when it is on someone’s head. A shoe is sanctified when it is on your foot. Your clothes are sanctified when they are on your body.
So, for the believer to be sanctified means to be set apart for God’s possession and use. Another word for sanctification could be separation.
In sanctification, the believer is separated from all that is contrary to God—sin, the flesh, the devil, and the world—and they are separated unto God.
We find in the Old Testament that cleansing precedes sanctification. A person or an object had to be cleansed before it could be sanctified to God.
Thus, we find also in Ephesians 5:25-26:
Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
so that He might sanctify her,
having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.
Now, of course, the Lord Jesus Himself, in being sanctified to the Father, did not require any previous cleansing.
So now we have mentioned that sanctification is not a work we try to accomplish through some form of self-effort, to try and change ourselves or repair the old man. Nor is it that sin is eradicated out of the life of the believer so that we can no longer sin.
Scripture makes it quite clear what true sanctification is. Simply put, sanctification is a Person—even our Lord Jesus Christ.
If we look at 1 Corinthians 1:30, it says:
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus,
who became to us wisdom from God,
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
That is, by God’s doing, you are in Christ Jesus. If you are a believer here this morning, listen to these words. These are more true to you than anything else.
First of all, we notice in this verse that God has put the believer into Christ. It is all of God’s doing that the believer is in Christ.
Christ becomes the believer’s new identity, their new address, and their new source. As such, He has become our sanctification.
Notice, it does not say in this verse that He is becoming our sanctification, but that He has become our sanctification, even as He has become our righteousness.
You know, we do not have a problem saying He is our righteousness. We have given up the struggle to try and attain to some sort of self-righteousness before God.
We realize there is no amount of self-effort, no amount of so-called religious practice we can do through the flesh to attain righteousness before God.
We have come to the place of believing what Scripture says: Christ has been made our righteousness before God, and we receive that by faith.
But I think often when we come to this matter of sanctification, we somehow think we must work out our own sanctification. We put ourselves on the holiness treadmill, attempting through our own strength and self-effort to attain it.
Listen very carefully to this verse: Christ has become our sanctification. Past tense.
How so? In the very same way that Christ has become your righteousness.
How did He become your righteousness? By faith.
God has set forth in His Word that there is absolutely no righteousness in us and that we could never attain it through any sort of work on our part. But He has set Christ before us as the righteousness of God, available to all who believe.
Romans 4:5 says:
But to the one who does not work,
but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is credited as righteousness.
So, even as Christ has become our righteousness through faith, in the same way He is to become our sanctification through faith.
Now we know the basis of sanctification is Christ’s sanctification. For He said in John 17:19:
For their sakes I sanctify Myself,
that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
Christ is the One who is sanctified. He is holy, and that holy life was poured out for us by the will of God that we might be sanctified.
Hebrews 10:10 says:
By this will we have been sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
So Christ has dealt with all that is contrary to God, and He now is separated unto God in newness of life.
Because Christ is sanctified, and all believers are in Christ by God’s doing, what does that mean to us? It means that we have become sanctified.
Even the weakest and youngest believer spiritually shares the same sanctification as the strongest and oldest believer. All who have believed on the Lord Jesus have been sanctified.
Now, let us look at a couple of verses to really pound that nail into the ground.
Paul, in writing to the church at Corinth, addressed them as saints, as it says in 1 Corinthians 1:2:
To the church of God which is at Corinth,
to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.
Notice, it says, “to those who have been sanctified”—past tense. He said this to ones whom he later called fleshly because of jealousy and strife among them.
Paul went on in 1 Corinthians 6:11. After stating several conditions which would exclude ones from the kingdom of God, he said to these Corinthian believers:
Such were some of you;
but you were washed,
but you were sanctified.
These believers in Corinth, through their union with Christ, were sanctified. It does not say they were being sanctified.
Now, I know some of you are thinking, “Wait a minute, Steve.”
Now, I think most of us know this is speaking of our positional sanctification.
We find in Scripture there is a positional and an experiential, or conditional, side to truth. Or we may say it another way: there is an objective or subjective side to truth.
We have said that all believers are sanctified in Christ, and this is based on the completed work of the Lord Jesus on the cross. Even as He has secured righteousness for us, He likewise has secured sanctification for us.
This becomes ours in position through our union—our identification—with Him.
Nothing can alter this position before God. It has totally been secured for us through Another, and we receive it by faith.
This is the positional, or objective, truth of sanctification. All believers share equally in this aspect of sanctification.
But there is an experiential, or conditional, or subjective side to sanctification. We find believers do differ in this according to their spiritual understanding and knowledge, as well as their experience of that completed sanctification accomplished for us in Christ.
Now, as we mentioned earlier, we receive sanctification by faith. This is true whether speaking in terms of positional or experiential sanctification.
We find in Acts 26:18, where the Lord Jesus revealed to Paul the work he would do among the Gentiles:
To open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light,
and from the dominion of Satan to God,
that they may receive forgiveness of sins
and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.
So we see here that positional sanctification is received by faith. But likewise, in subjective sanctification, it is also received by faith.
In 2 Thessalonians 2:13, it says:
But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord,
because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation
through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.
This verse is speaking of sanctification in all its distinctions, if we can put it that way, which includes the experiential side also.
So sanctification is received by faith. If sanctification could be accomplished by us, there would be no need of faith.
But as we have already pointed out, we in ourselves do not have the ability or the power to attain unto sanctification. Thus, it can only be accomplished within us through Another, which is the Lord Jesus, who is sanctified.
So we have talked about faith as the conduit to receive sanctification, but what is the agent whereby we enter into sanctification experientially?
1 Peter 1:1b says:
Who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,
by the sanctifying work of the Spirit.
We find here that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring about experiential sanctification in the life of the believer. But how does this happen? How does this occur?
The Holy Spirit brings about the believer’s experiential sanctification on the ground of Christ’s accomplished work by revealing to us the truth in the Word of Christ as our sanctification.
Would you like me to say that again?
The Holy Spirit brings about the believer’s experiential sanctification on the ground of Christ’s accomplished work by revealing to us the truth in the Word of Christ as our sanctification.
We see in John 17:17 the connection between the Word and sanctification. Jesus said:
Sanctify them in the truth;
Your word is truth.
So the Holy Spirit uses the Word as the basis to carry out His work of sanctification in the life of the believer.
Let us look at a couple of verses in John’s Gospel to amplify this. In John 15:26, Jesus says:
When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father,
that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father,
He will testify about Me.
He will testify about Me.
Also, in John 16:13-14, Jesus says:
But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes,
He will guide you into all the truth;
for He will not speak on His own initiative,
but whatever He hears, He will speak;
and He will disclose to you what is to come.
He will glorify Me;
for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.
So then again, we find in these verses that the Holy Spirit reveals the truth concerning Christ to us.
All the Holy Spirit’s work in the life of the believer in this matter of sanctification is based on the truth that we have been sanctified in Christ.
When the Holy Spirit illuminates the Word concerning Christ as our sanctification, and we appropriate by faith this truth, the Holy Spirit is able to make real in our condition what is true of us in our position.
Let me say that again.
When the Holy Spirit illuminates the Word concerning Christ as our sanctification, and we appropriate by faith this truth, the Holy Spirit is able to make real in our condition what is true of us in our position.
The Holy Spirit never works in the life of the believer apart from the truth of the Word, which speaks of our identification with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
The Holy Spirit is the One who reveals and applies the truth of our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ. The Holy Spirit is the One who brings us into experiential sanctification—that is, separation unto our Father.
But we need to be careful. Because as the Holy Spirit begins to work practical sanctification into our lives, we must be careful not to get sidetracked and begin to look for the outworking of the fruit of sanctification in our lives. That will be the easiest way to miss it.
We must continually keep our eyes on Christ, the Author and Finisher of our faith.
So what is required of us in this matter of sanctification is faith. Our faith, then again, is based on the truth of Christ as our sanctification, even as He is our righteousness before God.
In the outworking of living faith in Christ as our sanctification, we will present ourselves to God, even as Christ presented Himself to God and was separated fully unto God’s will.
Our presenting ourselves to God is critical. Our presenting ourselves to God is the preparation ground for the Holy Spirit to be able to work Christ’s sanctification—His holiness—into our lives.
We need to remember that sanctification is not a formula. It is not a method. It is not just some academic teaching. It is a Person, even the Lord Jesus.
We need to see Christ as our sanctification. It is the Holy Spirit’s good pleasure to reveal Christ to us as the One who is dead to sin, dead to unrighteousness—which speaks of everything contrary to God’s will—and alive unto God.
He is totally separated unto God to do His will, and we are in Him.
Being united to Him in His death to sin and in His life unto God, if we see that we are now alive unto God in Him and not in ourselves, that we are slaves unto righteousness and no longer slaves to sin, we will present ourselves to God.
We will present ourselves because we see that we no longer belong unto ourselves, but we belong unto God. We are His possession. We are for His use.
Out of this ground, the Holy Spirit has the liberty to work practical sanctification into the life of the believer.
If we do not present ourselves to God, the Holy Spirit will be unable to work Christ as our sanctification into our life.
Consider these couple of verses in Romans. Romans 6:19 says:
For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness,
resulting in further lawlessness,
so now present your members as slaves to righteousness,
resulting in sanctification.
This verse shows us that our presenting, our cooperating, and our consenting are critical in this matter of sanctification.
But once again, our presenting comes out of our knowing that we are united to Christ in His death to sin, in His being alive and separated unto God.
Look at Romans 6:22:
But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God,
you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification,