What is Sanctification Part 2
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· 6 viewsGrowth in Grace is the test of genuine Christianty
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5. A Continual Growth in Godly Character
5. A Continual Growth in Godly Character
vs. 5-8
-Faith: is the taproot of the Christian life. None of these are possible without a reliance upon God. My trust is in you God, even while I work, I depend on you.
-moral excellence: virtue, a disposition that is good and that tends to lead to what is good..
- knowledge: understanding, familiarity, experiential working knowledge
-self-control: restraint exercised over one's own impulses, emotions, or desires
-perseverance: the ability to continue or withstand
-godliness: piety or to live a life like God
-brotherly kindness: special love between believers
-love: the chief of all virtues and encompasses all the others
We cannot pride ourselves on yesterday’s victories. Sanctification is a continual growth in character.
When I speak of “growth in grace” I only mean increase in the degree, size, strength, vigour, and power of the graces which the Holy Spirit plants in a believer’s heart. I hold that every one of those graces admits of growth, progress, and increase. I hold that repentance, faith, hope, love, humility, zeal, courage, and the like, may be little or great, strong or weak, vigorous or feeble, and may vary greatly in the same man at different periods of his life. When I speak of a man “growing in grace,” I mean simply this,—that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual-mindedness more marked. He feels more of the power of godliness in his own heart. He manifests more of it in his life. He is going on from strength to strength, from faith to faith, and from grace to grace.
6. The Means of Gaining Assurance
6. The Means of Gaining Assurance
vs. 10
Sanctification or growth in grace is the means of gaining assurance! Some people conclude they are Christians because of a past experience or emotional event in the past. (Judas worked miracles)
Biblically speaking, you know you are a christian by your progress in Christianity.
Illustration
How do you know that you are alive?
You are growing, breathing, moving, and active.
How do you know that you’re Christianity is genuine and alive?
It’s growing, it’s living, and active.
It’s growing, it’s living, and active.
Proof Verses
knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you; for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit,
1 Thessalonians 1:4-
This is why the scripture admonishes us to examine ourselves.
1 John
Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him
Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?
This doesn’t mean that we become morbidly introspective about ourselves or that someone has to be perfect in order to have assurance!
It’s about progression, not perfection!
We are to humbly examine ourselves to test the genuineness of our faith.
The opposite of this
is to presume that everything is alright and to base my confidence on experiences or emotions or my own understanding.
Application
This is why we need the preaching of the word continually. As God’s word is opened we are all humbly examining ourselves to see if what the word says about a Christian is true of me!
Hebrews 3:17-4:
And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.
7. The Pathway to Enter Eternal Life
7. The Pathway to Enter Eternal Life
vs. 11
For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.
Revelation 21:
“He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”