Sanctification is about people with a new identity in Jesus Christ! It is about applying righteousness to soul and body, in resurrection power. Its about choosing between living Life or living death!
Sanctification is choosing Jesus after he has already chosen us!
Believers are a group of redeemed people who have chosen to accept the Life of our risen Jesus as our personal salvation from the plight of depraved humanity. Having received His divine gift, from our creator God, we may choose to grow grace in this new spiritual Life or we may choose to cherish it in our heart, while indulging the pleasures of the flesh at the same time, for a season.
Sanctification is the process of applying new spiritual resurrection power to the old familiar flesh culture which we are all too familiar. Sanctification is applying to soul and body what God created in our own spirit after accepting His offer of new Life and being “born again” by God Himself.
We now have the means, with resurrection power, to bring our soul into compliance with what God has done Spiritually via a loving culture of grace. We become Spiritual persons purchased by God, created in love, so that, we can be who we were intended to be! It means living in God’s love culture of grace!
“The Lord knoweth them that are His!” He knows us with profound love! God sanctified us; now we must choose to sanctify ourselves in His love.
We can’t be who God has made us unless we will in our hearts to love Him. This is how we begin penetrating who we really are in Christ Jesus; we are a new supernatural identity ready to explore and exploit a spiritual Life in Christ.
We begin understanding how glorious and complete we are created in Christ Jesus when we cultivate height and depth, the width and the power of God’s marvelous love and grace. We begin tasting God’s glory in our Spiritual reality plus what is prepared beyond since our journey in heaven has already begun on earth. We have already received within us a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
It has begun because we are now born new in the presence of His glory; now, while still crawling or perhaps walking in shoe leather, He dwells within us, literally! This is our Life even during spiritual apathy. He is loving us now, even while we are not loving Him back!
Sanctification is used in scripture speaking to the glory and riches belonging to us in heaven because we have been set apart by God but it also speaks of the power we now exercise because we are children of The Almighty Father God. Our resurrection power is spiritual. It is Jesus continuing His work on earth in us, using our shoes for walking. What a glory is ours and we have little or no clue!
Sanctification is about enabling us to do what God has already done. He enables us to do His work, in His power, thru us. It speaks to our heavenly resources being applied in our flesh and life by us choosing to task His work. We are having His work being completed in us as we also work to reach out to others in our space.
Sanctification is a cloudy issue if we merely believe it. The passion of grasping it and making it our personal possession is too often missing. Accepting it in our mind while understanding it with our reason is not enough. Well, actually it is adequate for getting us there; just be prepared to enter heaven as a spiritual pauper!
Sanctification has to do with putting on our “new man,” that is, putting on those robes of righteousness given to us in Christ Jesus. It is up to us to wear them into town!
When we stand before Jesus as His bride, we will be wearing a garment created out of the righteous deeds of our life in Christ.
God’s Love produces Redemption for us.
Jesus’ Life paid for our Righteousness in us.
The Holy Spirit shines Light in us for Sanctification to shine from us.
Redemption: is the doctrine of God’s love.
Righteousness: is the doctrine of justification.
Sanctification: Being set apart for holiness and choosing righteousness. The doctrine of completing in our soul God’s love and justification with resurrection power to make seen the unseen.
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. - 1Corinthians 1:30.
A. Eternal Sanctification.
Scripture reveals sanctification in two perspectives. First, in the eternal perspective, it is completed even though it has not been processed in time. In other words, what is determined is already accomplished. This eternal reality is expressed in Greek grammar as the aorist form of a verb. We see it in 1Thessalonians 5:23:
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, …
“Sanctify” in the Greek aorist tense coveys a completed event combining past, present and future sequencing into a single whole oneness without regard to time. Scripture declares we are already sanctified in Christ Jesus. We are already eternal, already members of God’s family, already heirs of Jesus Christ. “It’s a done deal!”
Being born of God means we are Spiritually created in God’s likeness, in true righteousness and holiness, This is completed for those who are created new in Christ Jesus. We now are, in the present tense, while still wearing flesh, eternally redeemed, righteous and sanctified. We already are “transferred” out of the kingdom of darkness and staked into Christ Jesus’ eternal kingdom of light.
Even though we feel life’s worldly concerns and pressures of the flesh, our new created identity is Spiritual. This new reality, ours now, continues into eternity! We are personally placed into the eternality of God’s grace culture because we now belong to Jesus Christ, the Son of Man! Our sanctification is within God’s culture of grace.
We are making this point emphatically because many believers “in Christ” view our relationship symbolically or philosophically even though it is literal fact. We have been spiritually birthed by God into a new Spiritual existence. We are literally born into God’s family, becoming heirs, with a capacity to glorify Jesus in our own self while wearing flesh. Jesus said it best, “You in me, and I in you.”
B. Temporal Sanctification
This second perspective is made possible because we are already sanctified eternally. We are called to personally participate by faith in God’s grace. Spiritually exercising our will to consume God’s grace enables our faith to grow. We begin experiencing Jesus intimately!
We learn Spiritually from what God temporally created. God uses things we see to teach us spiritual things not seen. The Holy Spirit uses the life of Jesus and the written Word of scripture to reveal truth so we can choose to believe. Our believing unlocks the dynamic of His life and Word in us so we can employ His truth in our experience. In other words, we participate by sanctifying our temporal soul with an eternally sanctified Spirit. Temporal sanctification is washing our heart, mind and will with righteous truth and agape love.
We are stewards of God’s spiritual gifts to us. The biggest gift is life itself. We need to master this gift inside our own self so that we have it to give to others. As we teach others, we teach our own self. The best student we have is our own soul. Our carnal soul requires spiritual training through loving, listening learning and teaching. Practice discerning choices for your own mind and emotions. Steadfastly choose to love the One who loves you. Leverage grace into more grace, “grace upon grace.”
It is a process of:
a. Knowing who we are in Christ.
b. Accepting God in us.
c. Employing resurrection power into Spiritual work experience.
But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
-1Peter 1:15-16. (sanctification and holy are the same Greek root word)
We could say sanctification is “He is risen” theology. This was the common greeting among early Christians expressing to each other what was in their heart. Sanctification is you and I experiencing the risen Jesus in us, in our hearts just as did the early Church! It is the result of Jesus’ victory over death by His resurrection. We are His benefactors, but there is a condition. Just as Jesus, the man, died, so we too must submit to death in order to receive His risen holiness working thru us in resurrection power.
The measure of His Life in us is proportionate to the level of our death. Our eternal salvation is secure but our life qualitatively depends on temporal participation in His death so that we enjoy His living presence. Our temporal soul is dependent on Spiritual participation in His resurrected Life. “Reckon yourselves dead to sin,” says Paul, “and alive to God in Christ Jesus,” Romans 6:11. It is our choice to love Him and be holy. This is how we will be wearing robes of righteous deeds at the wedding! … there is going to be a wedding!
Eternal Sanctification is God’s provision for us to enter into His glory by participating in His resurrection life from our flesh. He is our resource, our guarantee for eternal completeness in His love and righteousness. We bring His eternal sanctification into our soul’s temporal experience so that we grow faith thru His grace culture.
Why would He do all of this for us? Why would He enter into such a severe relationship with us, His creatures? Why redeem us in the first place? ANSWER HERE: ____________________.
“In Him was Life and the Life is the Light of men.” Jesus is our logos Life and Light. He is the source for our sanctification but His love raises us up to participate in His Light and Life. This culture of grace is an expression of this great, rich love He offers freely to us. We must choose what we will do with what He makes available.
It can be a process in isolation as a private matter; but fellowship of believers working together in common self-ministries is what was referred to as “BodyLife” in a Palo Alto church many years ago. A body of believers together form the “Body of Christ.” Sanctification includes sharing and cultivating love to and from God but we are also called to love each other.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” -John 13:34.
Sanctification is about new people with new identity in Jesus Christ! It is about applying agape love to soul and body in resurrection power. Its about choosing between living Life or living death! Choosing Life is choosing Love!