Biblical Sanctification
What Does The Bible Say? • Sermon • Submitted
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· 5 viewsGod's and our role in Sanctification
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Biblical Sanctification: God’s Plan for Us
Text: , (Page 1201, 1253)
Intro. The Bible addresses the issue of sanctification in so many places it made it difficult to discern which one God wanted for today.
The one verse that lays out why our sanctification is vital is found in . The many other passages address what is meant by sanctificatioin and the role that both God and we play in it.
As I said last week, many churches and Christians in America are becoming more and more worldly. Obscene language, immoral activities, and various forms of ungodliness are not only practiced by Christians, many churches and denominations openly condone and even honor certain sexually immoral activities with ceremonies and the ordaining of those who practice such activities.
Last Sunday I said the reasons behind this sinful accommodation by churches and Christians involve certain key aspects of Christianity. It has to do with salvation or the lack thereof, sanctification or the lack thereof, and biblical decision making or the lack thereof.
The unsaved will live ungodly and impure lives, for that’s their nature, but what we often fail to realize is that true Christians, who have never grown in the Lord, may resemble the unsaved at times. They may still embrace certain worldly attitudes and actions. They may still resemble the same old person they were before they were saved.
Such carnal Christians might even boldly say, “Well that’s just the way I am and I’m never going to change.”
On the other hand, true Christians, who do have the Holy Spirit living within them, but have never grown in the Lord, may resemble the unsaved at times. They may still embrace certain worldly attitudes and actions. They may still resemble the same old person they were before they were saved. They may say, “well that’s just the way I am and I’m never going to change.”
But such a statement cannot be true for a Christian. For if we have the power that raised Jesus from the dead residing within us, there is nothing we can’t do. There is no change we can’t make for the glory of God. There is no addiction we can’t break. There is no attitude we can’t transform and no habit we can’t stop. The problem is not a lack of power, but a failure to allow God to sanctify us, to wash us with His Word.
The word “sanctify” means to be set apart for a special use. The idea of sanctification is the process of making us separate from the world, so we can be used by a holy God while living in an unholy world.
The sad state of Christianity today, no doubt can be traced to the fact that most Christians don’t realize we have a huge responsibility to grow in Christ, to grow in our understanding of Christ—our understanding of what it means to be a Christian, our understanding of the sanctification process and the role that God and we must play in it.
Do you think that we as Christians understand that we have a huge responsibility to grow in our understanding of Christ—our understanding of what it means to be a Christian, our understanding of how to become
The song “Sanctify me Oh God” clearly expresses the Biblical view of Sanctification. Listen to it’s words: Play Song
Did you listen to it closely? It said,
Sanctify me oh God
Cleanse my body, mind, and soul--Purify me and make me whole
Cleanse my body, mind, and soul. Purify me and make me whole. Sanctify me Oh God. Help me to put off my old self. Corrupted by all its sinful desires.
(That’s God’s part. He cleanses and purifies us.)
Purify me and make me whole
The song continues with our part:
Sanctify me Oh God--Help me to put off my old self
Help me to put off my old self
Corrupted by all its deceitful desires--Create me a new, in your likeness O Lord
Create me a new, in your likeness O Lord
Make me righteous and holy--Sanctify me oh God
Sanctify me oh God
Let me not confirm any longer--to the pattern, set by the ways of this world.
o the pattern, set by the ways of this world
to the pattern, set by the ways of this world.
May I offer myself as a living sacrifice--that is holy and pleasing
that is holy and pleasing
Strengthen me with power through your Spirit
Transform me Christ, in the fullness of your love. (God’s part).
God expects, no He requires, the sanctification of all believers.
Look at our text. We begin with Romans 8:29
There’s no past, present, or future with God. He sees it all as one, so He foreknew who will and who will not be saved. Those He foreknew would be saved, He predestined them to become like His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.
So if you are one of those that will one day walk into heaven, you are also one who God is working on to make you like Christ.
Remember the children’s song, God is still working on me. The chorus goes like this, He's still working on me
To make me what I need to be
It took him just a week to make the moon and stars
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars
How loving and patient He must be
'Cause He's still workin' on me.
God doesn’t give up on us. The problem is that we give up on God or fail to hook up with God. We stop believing God can do the impossible, or we try to do the impossible without God’s help.
The first thing we need to know and rejoice in is that God has a plan for us.
I. God’s Plan For Us
God has a plan for us. It’s a good plan. The prophet Jeremiah says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” ().
lays out His plan for us. Although it’s God’s plan to save us first, which is our justification, Paul is dealing with the aspect of sanctification here, so he takes us first to the sanctification part of God’s plan, then the justification or saving part, and lastly to the glorification, the new resurrected body part.
But our focus today is our sanctification.
A. Our Sanctification
Sanctification is the process of making us like Jesus. If we are God’s children, we need to look like God’s children, which means we should resemble Christ. We should be obedient to God the way Christ was. We should be humble like Christ. We should be holy like Christ. We should be loving like Christ. We should seek to serve, and not be served like Christ.
We will look more at the role God and we play in this sanctification process later on, but we must acknowledge that God’s plan first includes our salvation, our justification.
B. Our Justification
There can be no sanctification until we’ve experienced God’s justification. Salvation must come before sanctification. Only the saved can be sanctified. We can no more become like Christ, without first having Christ in us, than we can have electricity without having voltage. Just as voltage is needed to push the electrons through the power lines, so we must have Christ in the form of the Holy Spirit pushing us to become like Christ. The desire to be like Christ, the desire to be holy in an unholy world, comes only from a heart that has been regenerated—only the saved have a desire to be sanctified.
We are justified by God through Jesus Christ. He was totally holy and righteous whereas we were totally depraved and sinful. He died in our place and when we put our complete trust in Him and what He did on the cross, God applies our sin to Christ and applies Christ’s righteousness to us.
Consequently, we are considered just in God’s eyes. We’ve been justified by Christ. We have our standing before God restored. We are no longer the target of God’s wrath, for Christ’s death has appeased it.
After our justification, we must go through the sanctification and then to our glorification.
C. Our Glorification
Our glorification is the climax of our sanctification. It’s when the final touch is applied to make us like Christ. It’s when we get our glorified bodies. It’s when we finally rid ourselves of these sin plagued bodies.
However, before we are glorified, we must be sanctified. But how does this sanctification take place? Whose responsibility is it? God, of course, plays a major role in our sanctification.
II. God’s Role
What is God’s role? It’s His plan. It’s His requirement. It’s only possible through His power and presence. & 20 state: “I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power 20 that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.”
The power to be holy, the power to be free, the power to be Christ-like comes from God. It is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. This power is available to every Christian, but it is useless if it is not accessed or tapped into. We must tap into this unlimited, life-changing power.
But we too have a role to play. The Holy Spirit is called our comforter in the King James translation and our advocate in the ESV translation. The Greek word, however, that these words are translated from means to come along side. The Holy Spirit is to come along side of us to help us accomplish God’s will in our lives. He is there to empower us to do that which we don’t have the power to accomplished on our own.
We must depend on God for the power to change. This power is manifested when we walk by faith.
But what is our role?
III. Our Role
We have to have a want to. We have to have a desire to be like Christ. This desire comes from having the Holy Spirit in us. Only the saved desires to obey Christ, honor Christ, and live for Christ.
Before we go to the next point, is this true of you? Do have such a desire to obey and honor the Savior who died for you? If not, search your heart. Ask yourself, do I have Christ in me, or am I just a little religious, but still lost?
I say this because the next few points are meaningless to an unsaved person. But for the saved, our role in sanctification is to put off the old and put on the new.
Turn to or page 1253 in our pew Bibles.
READ
Did you notice how the passage begin, “If”? If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above… If you have been raised with Christ, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. It then tells us why we are to do this, because we have died, and our life is hidden with Christ in God.
Spiritually speaking, we are to be dead to self and alive to God. We have Christ in us and His righteousness is on us. But in our flesh we have habits and attitudes that need to be changed to match the Spirit of Christ that is within us. This why we are told in verse 5, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
A. We Are to Put Off the Old
Our text here says to put to death the earthly. In we are told to “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self... But how? How do we put off the old self and put on the new self?
How can we do a major overall, when we can’t even control our appetites, our temper, our tongues, our fears, our worries, and our attitudes? The Answer is Jesus. However, it must start with a dissatisfaction with who we are. In our day of self-image boosting, we need some self-image reflection.
Until we reach the point of total dissatisfied with the things in our lives that should not be there, we will never get rid of them, we will never put them off. The faith and power we need to change, to put off the off way of life, will be made available when we are desperate to change.
We must abide in Christ and His Word must abide in us.
I’m sure all of us have at some time eaten and discovered later, either by way of a mirror or the comments of someone, that we have some food on part of our face or our clothes. Before realizing this we did nothing to correct it. But on discovery of it, we seek to remove it. If it’s on our clothes we might need a stain remover to get it out.
When I was in Bible college, I had a purple tie that I wore often with a particular shirt. The guys were required to wear ties to class. One morning at breakfast I used my fork to cut a link sausage. When I did, the front end of the sausage angled up and grease squirted out and onto my shirt and tie.
I tried wiping the tie off, but to no avail. I took it to the cleaners and they ran it through their cleaning process, not one, not two, but three times, but to no avail. I did all I could do, but there was not a means on earth that could get that grease out of my tie, so I had to throw it away.
But I’m thankful that this is not the case with God. If we want to put off the old, if we want to stop hurting people with our tongue, if we want to stop being inconsiderate of others, if we want to stop using bad language, stop viewing pornography, stop the drug addiction, stop the alcohol consumption, stop the gossip, the lying, and the cheating, we can through Christ.
Christ has the power that no clothes cleaners has. He can clean us up. He can get the stains of the world out of us.
But we have to see the stains for what they are. We have to see how hurtful they are to us, to others, and to God.
My mom and I both suffered from allergies and asthma when I was growing up. My dad smoke cigarettes to the tune of five packs a day. He knew it was bad for us, so he tried quitting numerous times. He bought over the counter tablets that were suppose to make the cigarettes taste bad, only to smoke a cigarette to get the bad taste out of his mouth. But then something happened when he went to work one morning. He arrived at the power plant and noticed that his working buddy didn’t return from vacation as expected. When he asked about him, he discovered that friend, who also smoked five packs a day, was in the hospital. During his vacation my dad’s friend discovered that his lungs were eat up with cancer.
That day dad didn’t just want to quit smoking, he decided to quit. He gave his cigarette lighter away, threw his cigarettes away and never smoked again.
God’s grace is available to all believers, but it can only be assessed when we, by faith, commit ourselves totally and completely to a task that is God pleasing.
The apostle Peter didn’t experience God’s enabling power to walk on water until he first stepped out of the boat.
It’s all about dying to self. It’s all about giving up control of our lives. It’s all about being dissatisfied with the old self that enables us to put off the old self.
We will never see a great revival in our country until Christians begin to get dissatisfied with the old self that is still alive an well in their lives.
Before I go on to the next point, please don’t ever say something like this, “Well that’s just the way I am, and I’m never going to change.” If a Christian says something like this, it’s either because he or she has listened to a lie straight from the pits of hell, or he or she doesn’t truly want to change or really dosen’t see a need to change, which means Satan has them where he wants them.
B. We Are to Put On the New
Notice the how Paul describes the kinds of sins that should never be a part of a Christian’s life. Look at verses 5-10 (Page 1253 pew bibles). The things we are to put to death are sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is the same as idolatry. In verses 8 & 9 we are told to put away anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, and lying. Put away sinful passions or desires such as sexual immorality, impurity, passion, and covetousness. Put away sinful emotions or attitudes such as anger, wrath, and malice. And put away sins of the tongue such as slander, obscene talk, and lying.
But getting the garbage out of our lives is not enough, we are to be new people. The man or woman is gone, but in Christ we must become a new man and woman.
B. We Are to Put On the New
Verses 12-15 says we are to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and most of all love. In addition to these traits, we are to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts.
The key here is the peace of Christ ruling our hearts. If we are at peace with God, we will be at peace with ourselves.
I believe it was a Christian Counselor that said, “People who hurt people, are hurting people.” I’ve always tried to remember this principle in dealing with people. People who are at peace, people who have had their hurts healed, are people who are peaceable, kind, gentle, loving, and merciful.
Those who commit horrendous crimes are people filled with hurt, anger, or fear.
But how do we get our hurts healed? How do we experience the peace of Christ? And how do we put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and most of all love. If only they were like a clothes that we can put on and put off.
The key to putting off the old self and putting on the new self is found in verse 16. It reads, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
I didn’t include it in my outline, but there should be one more point,
C. We are to Let the Word of Christ Dwell in Us
There is no other way to be like Christ. Sunday School and church attendance won’t do it. Listening to gospel music and good preaching won’t do it. There is no other way to put off the old and put on the new. It takes the power of God working through the Word of God. The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to cleanse us and equip us.
The Bible says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
The word of God convicts us. It acts like a sword that cuts to the heart of our sin. It makes us take notice of a tongue that’s not tamed, an attitude that’s not right, or a heart that’s hard and cold.
The Word also cleanses us. It washes away the old man or woman. state, 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
English Standard Version Chapter 5
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish
Christ loves the church. He loves the saints that make up the church. He wants the church to be spotless when He takes it out of this world to be with Him throughout eternity. And it is the Word of God that He uses to cleanse the church.
But for this to happen, we must be in it daily. We must meditate on it. We must digest it. And we must handle it correctly. :!5 says, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”
A sharp knife is useless unless you know how to use it. Holding by the blade will do you harm, instead of good. Using the dull side to try to cut will get you nowhere. When we handle the Word of God incorrectly, we get no benefit out of it. Specific passages must be applied to specific areas of our lives.
Conclusion: If your long range plans includes going to Heaven, this message is vital to you. Sanctification is a necessary step before getting there. So I ask you, is God working on you? Are you working on you? Are you in the Word daily? Are you handling the Word Rightly? If not, confess it to Christ and depend on Him to help you.