Sanctification, What We Believe, Part 32

The instant someone's regenerated, they're instantly adopted into God's family, the

Holy Spirit indwells them, they're justified, they're sanctified positionally.

All of these things happen immediately. It is difficult for us to wrap our heads around because we think everything in a cause -effect type of way.

And yet there's these things that just occur because God does them instantaneously and simultaneously because he decides to regenerate us.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity Ministries and the

Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member. I am joined by the husband and wife team from Religionless Christianity.

Spencer and Nikki, they're going to be the and as I said last episode, we're going to be you're going to hear a lot of different co -host voices because we're going to try to get you to hear all of the different hosts and co -hosts at the

Christian podcast community. So welcome, Spencer and Nikki. How are you guys doing today? Doing good. Thank you for having us again.

Yeah, we're doing great. Honored to be here again with you. And we're not talking news, so we don't have to go into the, you know, the have the scream of your podcast when you get into the news section.

And no, we're talking about good stuff here. We're not talking about a horror show. That is our news media. I'm a little more relaxed.

Yeah. Yeah. So that becomes a question, Nikki, which one do you prefer more now? Which podcast are you going to take? Maybe you can convince him to do more theology and less news.

Well, I would love to do it. I'm just not smart enough yet. So we have to talk in areas that I can actually be somewhat intelligent in.

That's why we're on sitting here trying to talk and learn with you along the way. Oh, you're supposed to do like I do.

You just fake it till you make it. Isn't that what it's called? Or yeah, I mean, that's we just edit multiple times.

Cut out all the mistakes. Yeah, that's what we do. Well, we're going to talk to we're going to talk today about a doctrine that every

Christian experiences. And yet, unfortunately, a lot of Christians don't know, don't study.

And so this may be a new topic for those of you who are in churches that don't kind of cover these things.

But we're going to talk about the doctrine of sanctification. And so that is some people will say, oh, that that sounds like someone's becoming a saint.

Well, yes, that's actually exactly what it means. I'm glad you think that because that's the idea of being sanctified is to be a saint, which,

OK, right off the bat, we have to start being a saint doesn't mean what the Roman Catholic Church says a saint is.

I was going to say, you have to clarify that, because it gets a bad rap from the Roman Catholic Church, I would say.

Was that a pun on the rap report? A bad rap? Just saying. All right. Right. There you go. But what we end up seeing is that in Scripture, we are considered to be saints.

But the Catholic Church has corrupted that term. And so the Catholic Church has the idea that someone is a saint.

They've done some I think they have to do at least one miracle, because I remember when when Teresa, they call

Mother Teresa, was they were making her a saint and they had to figure out a miracle she did.

Like, I'm just going, OK. So they have like these criteria. What makes a saint? The sad thing in Catholicism is then you have people who probably lived godly lives that were made into saints.

And now people pray to them and they're not hearing it. I've always said that about the

Virgin Mary. I'm like, she was a holy and righteous woman. And we've sullied her good name with all of this, you know, pray to Mary talk.

It's really a shame in Mary's honor. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say, like, Mary can't hear the prayers because she's not

God, even though like you think about it. They say, oh, Mary's listening to prayers of everyone everywhere.

Really? Hmm. Almost sounds like she must be God or something. So, yeah, no,

Mary's not God. And the saints that we're talking about are the saints that we see in scripture, which is to be made more and more in the image of Christ.

That's what sanctification is. And so we're going to read through the doctrinal statement. But just a quick kind of high level definition.

It is the process of being made more in the image of Christ that starts the moment we're regenerated and continues until the moment we die and are glorified.

And so if you are a believer in Christ, everything we talk about in this episode and the next one, because this will probably be a two parter, everything we're talking about should be evident in your life.

And if it's not, then you got to ask if you're really a believer, because this is the this is the

Christian life is to be sanctified. And so we're going to go through the doctrinal statement.

This is a continuing series that we're doing. This actually is as we go through our series here.

This episode is like 32, I believe, in the series. So you want to go back and see the previous ones.

You especially want to go back and see what we've been saying about in the doctrine of salvation, the issues of regeneration, election, justification.

We've covered those in the past few episodes. So if you want to follow along, just go to striving for eternity dot o r g in the about section.

You'll see what we believe. That's what we're going over. Just scroll down to see the soteriology section.

That's doctrine of salvation. Click on that. Open it up. Scroll down a little bit more and you'll get to sanctification.

And I'm going to ask if one of you guys could read that section for us. And that way we'll be able to see what it is that we're going to look at today and actually read.

You can read the the whole both paragraphs, even though we probably won't get through both paragraphs.

OK. All right. Sanctification. Every believer is sanctified, set apart unto

God by justification and is therefore declared to be holy and is therefore identified as a saint.

Sanctification is positional and instantaneous and should not be confused with progressive sanctification.

Sanctification has to do with the believer's standing, not his present walk or condition. There is also by the work of the

Holy Spirit, a progressive sanctification by which the state of the believer is brought closer to the standing the believer positionally enjoys through justification, through obedience to the word of God and by the empowerment of the

Holy Spirit. The believer is able to live a life of increasing holiness in conformity to the will of God, becoming more and more like our

Lord Jesus Christ. In this respect, every saved person is involved in a daily conflict.

The new creation in Christ doing battle against the flesh. But adequate provision is made for victory through the power of the indwelling

Holy Spirit. This struggle, nevertheless, stays with the believer and is never completely ended throughout this earthly life.

All claims to the eradication of sin in this life are unscriptural. Eradication of sin is not possible, but the

Holy Spirit does provide for victory over sin. OK, so there's a lot that we're going to cover in this.

And right off the bat, if you heard as Nikki was reading, we're making a distinction when we talk sanctification about what we will call positional.

And progressive, just like if you guys go back in the previous part of the series, when we talked about the word salvation, we said that's a general word that can be broken down to salvation past being our regeneration, salvation present being our sanctification, our our salvation future being our glorification.

So even though we have one term, it could be broken down to be more specific. Same thing here.

When we talk sanctification, it could be broken down into the positional and the progressive.

Obviously, must have been a preacher who came up with this because they alliterated it. They both start with P so we can remember it.

Right. Progressional and positional. Right. So we have this this idea, though, that as we look at these two, the the first thing we're saying here is that every believer is sanctified.

That is the very thing that starts with regeneration.

I mean, soon as God regenerates us, we're sanctified. The term sanctified means to be set apart.

Which is the same idea that we have as being a saint, which is based on the idea of being holy.

To be holy is to be set apart. And so that's the idea here that you and I, who are believers, are set apart.

So if we're set apart, the question becomes, what do we set apart from and what do we set apart to? Right. So what we're saying is that every believer is sanctified, meaning set apart unto

God. So we're now being separate from our sin, our pride, our sinful behaviors that led us to being deserving of God's punishment.

We're separating from that selfish pridefulness and we're being set apart unto

God. And what we're saying here, and this goes right off what we last week's episode, we're being set apart unto

God. How? By justification. Justification is the means that you and I can be set apart.

When God justifies us, he immediately sees us in a right state with with him.

Do you and I continue to sin? OK, I know Spencer doesn't, but Nicky probably doesn't.

It's probably just me that continues. No, we all do. We have some stories to tell. Actually, wait, your kids probably have stories to tell.

Yeah, probably. Yeah. Right. So so what we end up seeing, though, is that the moment we're saved, the moment we're justified,

God looks at us. As if we have the righteousness of Christ, we dealt with this last episode and the differences between saying justification is just as if I never sinned.

That's not really a good argument or a good way to explain it. It's just as if I was as righteous as Christ.

Yeah. And I maybe just for my own sake, because I like the point that you bring up and you brought it up in the justification episode,

I think for anybody that hasn't listened to your episode on superintending, I would encourage it because you bring it up in there as well.

But this idea, and I think because of our just the fact that we're human and we live in time and space and all that, that justification and this sort of stuff, it's not chronologically.

And that's the wrong way to think about it. It's logically. So our justification and our and I can't remember the the first P that you said, regressive or positional, positional, our justification and positional sanctification is simultaneous.

So it's not something where, well, I'm justified and then I'm initially sanctified. No, it's that's our chronological mind trying to think of, well, which one comes first, where it's simultaneous.

Yeah. And we a lot of times we think of this and we'll say, well, logically. But then when we say logically, we end up adding it and speaking of it as if it's chronological.

And sometimes it messes us up or it messes up others when we speak to them. And so, yeah, I have in my book, what do we believe on the section?

Chapter seven on soteriology has a doctrine of salvation. I have a chart there of all the things that happen simultaneously when someone is regenerated.

When you think about it, the the instant. Like if we're going to talk in time, the instant someone's regenerated, they're instantly adopted into God's family.

The Holy Spirit indwells them. They're justified. They're sanctified positionally.

All of these things happen immediately. And that is something that it is difficult for us to wrap our heads around because we think we think everything in a cause effect type of way.

And yet there's these things that just occur because God does them instantaneously and simultaneously because he decides to regenerate us.

Well, and I think, too, you know, maybe because people don't discuss and maybe they do in some churches, but I know in our churches growing up, doctrine wasn't really discussed openly very often.

It was overcoming your battles and this sort of stuff. But so when you don't discuss doctrine a lot and you hear something like sanctified, that means, well,

I'm holy. And that's something that happens at the end of life. You know, so how can

I be sanctified if I continue to sin? And if I continue to sin, does that mean I'm not saved then?

And that was one of my questions. You don't have to mention it now, but I was going to bring up later on if you want to discuss and maybe you will.

The first John chapter three, verse six, you know, he talks about no one who abides in him continues to sin.

And sometimes that's a question for people to go. Well, if I keep sinning, does that mean

I'm not saved? You know, so it does cause some confusion because you don't get into the doctrine of progressive sanctification in church.

Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to definitely dive into that much more in the next episode, because in this section, doctrinal statement, we're going to address that.

You know, we say the eradication of sin is not possible, but the Holy Spirit provides victory over sin.

And that's the whole idea that these people that we already mentioned last episode that believe in sinless perfectionism, they believe they could be sinlessly perfect on earth.

And if you do sin, then you've lost your salvation. Now, a couple of problems with that one.

If you if you're arguing that you can lose your salvation, especially if they argue from Hebrews six and Hebrews ten, if that's speaking of salvation, then you can never get saved again.

That's one of the things people often that say that you can lose your salvation. And they use those verses and it says it is impossible.

Well, if it's impossible, then you can't get saved again. But one of the interesting things with the sinless perfectionist is they have this wiggle room because what they do is they go to Hebrews six and they'll say, well, see, it's a willful sin.

So as long as as long as you don't do a willful sin, as long as you you sin unknowingly, you know, so if I get angry and just start yelling and completely losing it, as long as it wasn't willful.

Well, I got news for you. Every sin is willful. No one forced you to sin. No one took over your body and made you sin.

No, every sin you did is willful. And that becomes a problem for them because now they have no escape clause.

And then now they have to admit. And I have had this discussion with a guy who said he was a sinlessly perfect.

And I was pointing out that, you know, he admitted that, yes, he he has lied and he has done things after being a believer, getting angry with his children.

And he did these things, but he wasn't willful. And I said, well, no, actually, every sin is willful.

And once he realized that he just looked at me, I said, well, now you have a real dilemma, don't you? Because your position would be that you've lost your salvation and scripture would make it clear you you can't get saved again.

Now, either either you're wrong in your theology or your theology has just condemned you to hell.

Yeah. Yeah. Let me give you hope you are wrong in your theology. Yeah. And I was like,

I'll just I'll make you feel better. You're just wrong in your theology. The scriptures don't teach what you say.

The question I had, I guess I'm thinking of like sanctification, you know, the progressive sanctification, like how quickly you will observe yourself or others being sanctified or having a hatred for sin or just a remorse over sin and the struggle with it.

And how would someone who's a new believer have assurance of salvation when they're, you know, they're still overcoming sins that maybe someone else is, you know, they're way past that.

They don't struggle in those same sins. So would they have would they be able to go first shot with confidence?

You know, well, there are. You know, that's a really good question, because when we first get saved, there are some things that I know

I'll speak for myself. I used to have a foul mouth before I was a

Christian, and it was interesting that as soon as I became a Christian, some people came up to me within weeks and others months later that made the comment that I wasn't using foul language anymore.

And I didn't even notice that that stopped, but it just it immediately stopped.

Now, there's other things still dealing with almost 40 years later. So, you know, we will always have some things that are are more difficult for us to eradicate.

But there's going to be some things that change right away. One of them will be love for God and love for others.

Yeah. So if you have someone that says, well, I'm a believer, but I hate my brother. Well, James speaks about that in James, too.

Then, you know, if you see a brother or sister in need, they're there. They have no clothes. They're cold.

They have no food. James is you walk by and just say, keep warm and and fed and walk on.

Then, yeah, you're probably not a believer. Right. So there's some basic things that that we should be able to see change.

But a lot of it's you had one person said it's more like a stock market. You kind of see ups and downs and you you you trace the line.

The line should be going up over time. OK, though, you have some peaks and valleys.

We should have the trajectory that we're more and more in the image of Christ. And I will give you the advantage of of years of being walking with the

Lord, what, 38 years now. The advantage is that after 38 years,

I look back and go, boy, a lot has changed. Still got a lot more to work on, but. It's a good thing you didn't know me 38 years ago.

Yeah. Although you guys probably weren't even born, but almost. Almost. A month now.

Yeah. Where where were you in in July of 1984? She was a twinkle in her mother's eye.

Yeah. Not even. Oh, yeah, I wasn't. Yeah. No, she was probably conceived at that point. Close to it.

Close to. OK. I was a twinkle in my mother's eye. Yeah, that's about. So so what we're saying here is that we're we're sanctified.

Right. We mean set apart. We're giving you how we're sanctified. We're not how yet, but who were sanctified unto

God. So that's where set apart to how we sanctified by justification.

OK, so now we we say in the statement and is therefore declared to be holy.

And that's what sanctification means to be set apart, to be holy. You and I, as believers, should be holy.

We're not as holy as we would like to be. And we're definitely not as holy right now as Christ is.

But in God's position, from God's vantage point, he sees us as having the righteousness of Christ, and therefore we have that holiness.

So when we talk about these things, when we're talking specifically about positional sanctification.

It's something that is seen from God's perspective. God looking down at us, sees us with the righteousness of Christ.

So he sees us as holy. We're in the position. Of being set apart, even though we continue to sin.

And I'm taking a little bit of time on this, because we talk sanctification. This is a struggle, by the way.

One of the biggest things that you deal with, if you deal with cults, you're going to deal with this. You deal with anyone with a works based system.

You are going to address the issues between regeneration and sanctification, because they're both referred to as salvation.

And they will mix those up because the cults and the man -made religions need to justify a works based system.

And the only works that are involved in salvation are in sanctification. So they don't regenerate us, they purify us.

And this is what you end up seeing with, you know, I'm down here in Florida. Actually, all three of us are in Florida.

We're just not in the same area, right? But I'm down here and run into this

Muslim guy and we start talking. And he's he's openly saying, yes.

I mean, it was kind of interesting because I told him there's only two religions in the world, man -made and divine. And there's a way to know the man -made religions.

I said, all you got to do is look for any religion that has human effort doing works, and that's man -made.

And then he goes on to tell me and Anthony how Islam is based on your works.

It's everything that you do. And I'm going, yes, that's how you know it's man -made. Remember what I said earlier?

And it's just like right over his head. So, you know, but this is the thing we talk about this.

You and I are holy. We don't see that yet, but God does. And I think that's why this initial part here of this sort of positional sanctification,

I think is really important. You said you're going to spend some extra time on it. And I think you should, because I think this is the one that often gets missed.

I think it's easy for people to go, well, yes, throughout my life, I will become more holy and when

I die eventually. But they lose sight of the fact that, no, you were made holy initially when you were justified.

It's the work of God. And I don't think and maybe they don't want to be prideful. I don't know what it would be that would say,

I'm not holy. I mean, that would be shameful to say. But so I think it is something that gets lost for a lot of people.

But, you know, another thing it also does, Spencer, is for some Christians who beat themselves up over their sin, this doctrine is very freeing.

Yeah, because what it does is help remind us that we are saints is exactly as it says here.

It says, therefore, we identify as saints. I had a friend of mine.

He always used to say, I'm perfect in Christ. But that's true in Christ. God sees us as being perfect.

Doesn't mean we're perfect compared to men and perfect, you know, having never sinned.

But what that was always doing for him was reminding him when he'd beat himself up over sin.

God paid for it. And sometimes we need that reminder, we are saints.

Now, you're speaking to a Catholic. You can have a little bit of fun when, you know, you say, you know, I'm a saint.

And they'll what? No, you're not dead, you know, because they're saying dead. Right. But the

Bible says I'm holy and set apart. I'm a saint. Well, and even the idea of it being freeing.

And again, I'll probably keep plugging your episode on superintending and I'm paraphrasing, so if I get it a bit wrong, please correct me.

But in this maybe is the more progressive sanctification. But, you know, beating yourself up over sin and I'm not as holy as I should be and all this stuff.

But, you know, it's not only God who justifies us and sanctifies us initially, it's

God who sanctifies us throughout our life. It's not even you sanctifying yourself. It's God working through you to sanctify you.

So, you know, you're really, in a sense, trying to beat up God for not doing his work fast enough in you, in a sense, you know.

And what is it Paul says in Philippians that he is not only the author, but the finisher of our faith?

He doesn't just save us and then leave us to our own devices. He doesn't just say, OK, I regenerated you.

You're on your own. No, he's the author and the finisher. And the way he does the finishing work is called sanctification.

That's what we're discussing, right? So so this next sentence, we're saying sanctification is positional and instantaneous and should not be confused with progressive sanctification.

Now, if I've done my job well enough at this point, you all know exactly what that means, right?

Because I took this is why I was taking the time, because understanding this is really important. Right now, we're talking about positional sanctification, which happens instantaneously with your regeneration.

Soon as you're saved, soon as you're regenerated, you are set apart unto

God. You're now adopted into his family, you're his. That is reassuring, especially when we when when we get caught in sin or given or give ourselves over to sin.

And there's people who have some life dominating sin that they just keep returning to, beating themselves up over.

And then to realize, wait, God put me in a position where I'm set apart unto him.

Wow, then I should act it. You know, it's an amazing thing how sometimes just knowing your position can change the way you view things.

So when you are, you know, there's stories about people who they end up, you know, having an inheritance of a lot of money or finding a family or whatever that they didn't know they had and how things can change.

I it was interesting. I talked to a friend of mine who he had he was adopted.

And so he had went and decided he'd find his his birth parents. And so he ends up kind of a funny story.

But he ends up finding his his family and finding, I guess, one of his his half sisters.

And she was like, oh, another one. Oh, gosh. The dad, as he found out, was had a lot of children with a lot of women.

And he was just gone from all their lives. And a lot of these women would put kids up for adoption because they they didn't want to kill the children and couldn't have the children.

And and they would they would always end up finding like they have, I think, seven kids, two of which are actual sisters, mother and father.

But this whole thing. Now, here's the interesting thing. His whole life, he studied the

Bible. He would he's not his whole life, but, you know, he'd say the Bible's a believer. And when he did that research, he discovered his father was

Jewish. And all of a sudden he called me up and was like, you know, just it changed my perspective when

I read the scriptures, because now I'm realizing that these are my people that I read about in the

Old Testament. What changed? I mean, nothing changed really in his life other than the knowledge of it.

Right. The knowledge that you and I are saints, that we are set apart, considered to be holy by God, is a great reminder to say, you know what, when

I don't I don't need to sin, I can remember who I am. I'm a child of God.

It would be like being adopted if if we were suddenly we don't have a kingdom in America, but say you were suddenly adopted by the president or, you know, if you were in a country where there's a king and you're suddenly adopted into his family.

Well, all of a sudden things change for you. I kind of think of the movie Ben -Hur, if you've ever seen that movie.

But in the film, this Jewish guy ends up becoming a slave. He saves a

Roman commander and that commander ends up adopting him and he goes back to Jerusalem.

But he goes and everything's changed about him. Why? Because he knows who his adopted father is.

Right. Just to be clear, you don't want to be adopted by this president.

You don't have a laptop we should know about, do you? Just to be clear on that. OK, if it's this president, you get ten million dollars from foreign countries just for having a last name.

And hey, you can do works of art, if you can call it that. And sell it for millions of dollars just because you're selling me on this.

Hey, you know? No, but I will say, you know, the idea, again, it is freeing to have this doctrine taught to you that the positional initial sanctification, you know, that it frees you from the penalty of sin.

And I mean, we all know that Christian or Christianity, the Christian faith should be hopeful and it should be, burden removing.

And it's a shame when it doesn't remove that burden for people. Yeah, I was just thinking on the way me and Spencer were,

I mean, I guess the churches we went to, I guess in a sense, you would say that we were taught sanctification, but it wasn't called that.

But definitely you would never hear of progressive sanctification. It was just, all right, you know, the once saved, always saved gospel.

So there was no reason to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. No, no reason to fear the

Lord because, well, you're in right standing with him because you called on him. And I just wonder why we didn't,

I guess, have like, see that work in ourselves.

Is it like, because we believed we were sanctified and didn't, and weren't taught that we should have a progressive sanctification?

Like why? And so many other people have the same story who went to those kinds of churches. But it was when

I started learning. I don't know. It's like, I don't even know if I was saved before all those years going to those churches.

And I know I'm not alone in that. Yeah. And a lot of churches think you can't teach doctrine.

It's just, it's too heady. It's too much for people. And when I first became a pastor, the church had a retreat planned.

And so they had a speaker already planned. And so I volunteered my wife and I to take the children and to, you know, during the retreat, we'll take all the kids that, you know, from,

I think it was like from five to eight or four to eight, something like that.

And so I remember one of the deacons saying, so what are you guys going to do with the kids? I said, we're going to teach them the doctrine of the

Trinity. They were like, what? We're going to teach them. We need to find a new youth pastor.

And so we taught the doctrine of the Trinity. And in fact, at the end of the retreat, the parents came to pick their kids up.

And I basically said, okay, to each parent, I said, I got two questions for you before you can pick up your child.

And if you get stuck, your child can help you. Define the Trinity. Show me where it is in scripture.

And so many parents needed the help of their children and were surprised that their kids not only knew the definition, understood the doctrine and could support it in scripture.

People can understand these things. And I think that people end up focusing either too much on the progressive side or the positional side.

And that's where we have the problems. Yeah. And so what we need to look at is that these are two separate things.

And that's why this sentence here, we're trying to make that distinction. There's positional sanctification and progressive sanctification.

And we're going to talk in a lot more detail next week on progressive sanctification, but we have to see they're different and they help and teach us different things.

So we right now as believers are saints, we are sanctified, even though it's a process that continues to happen.

And so it means that we are in God's eyes sanctified, but it's a process that He starts at our regeneration and He's not done with yet.

Even though from God's standing, it's done. It's a done deal. Why would it be a done deal from God's perspective?

Well, it goes right back to the nature of God. He's eternal. And being an eternal being, He looks outside of time.

He's not bound by time. So to Him, in His, I can't even say a way of thinking, in His knowledge, knowing all things,

He already knows the outcome of our sanctification. We don't. We don't know the struggles, but He does.

And so we say here sanctification has to do with the believer standing, not his present walker condition.

So what we're trying to say here is this doesn't have to do with how your pattern of life is going right now with Christ.

Maybe you're listening to this and you're like, Andrew, you don't know. I mean, I'm just, I had a fall, whatever it is, had some sinful fall.

And you think, well, what do I do? Well, you remember who you are. You're a child of God.

You've been set apart by God, sanctified. And now you confess your sin and do what

Scripture tells you to do and start walking with Christ, change that pattern of life.

That's what we do. Now, is that easy? No, didn't say it was. But what we want to do at this point, just to wrap up,

I want to, at least this first paragraph, is to remind us that as we look at sanctification, we spent the bulk of this episode on positional sanctification.

And like I said, next episode, we're going to spend it all on progressive sanctification.

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use promo code SFE. And so let's jump into the next paragraph here and we'll start on progressive sanctification and we'll finish this up next week.

So we start by saying this. There is also by the work of the Holy Spirit, a progressive sanctification by which the state of the believer is brought closer to the standing the believer positionally enjoys through justification.

So this is the ministry of the Holy Spirit during the church age that part of what he does is to help us in this progressive sanctification.

So he works through us and this gets back to that doctrine that, you know, you mentioned, Spencer, superintending.

Do I do good works? Yes, but no, because it's the

Holy Spirit working in me. So even though I choose to do good works, I can't take credit for it.

It's really the Holy Spirit working in me that I can do good works. And so is it theoretically possible that we could be sinlessly perfect?

Yes, theoretically, because if we were always, never, ever going against the will of the

Spirit, letting him do a perfect work with us, then we wouldn't sin. The problem is we don't do that, you know.

But that's the work the Holy Spirit does. So does that mean that when we sin, the

Holy Spirit failed? Oh, no, no, no, no, my friend. We don't blame the Holy Spirit when we sin.

It is our choice to sin. But the only way we could do good works is because the choice we make, the

Spirit is working through us. So what we're saying here is the Holy Spirit is working in this way to progressively change us more into the image of Christ.

In other words, as we put it here in the doctrinal statement, we're positionally sanctified.

So progressive sanctification is that progression trying to bring us to that point of our position, right?

So positionally, we're holy. Progressively, we're not holy. We're not living that out.

But the process is to get us to that point. And so that's what that is.

I think that's a fascinating point. And that's what I thought about during your superintending episode is, you know, our whole progressive sanctification journey is almost simply just to bring us closer to the position that we obtained through our justification.

It's like the whole journey of your sanctification is to bring you right back to where you started, almost. It's kind of an interesting thought.

Because we're instantaneously positionally sanctified, right? We're justified. We're holy.

We're perfect. But we just don't experience that in time yet. And so this whole process is getting us to the point that we are positionally.

And it just causes us to praise God, to see the work

He's doing in us. And He gives us that assurance and the joy even seeing others, just seeing

Christ in other people and seeing Christ in ourselves. It's just such a blessing.

I just wondered, did God have to do the progressive sanctification?

Could He have just saved us? I don't know. What are your thoughts on that? You know, the idea.

God could do whatever He wants to do within His nature. But I guess that's what we used to believe. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting as we talk about sanctification, if you think about this from the world's perspective, this is what they think about Christians.

They think Christians are holy and sanctified.

And that's why they're like, oh, I don't want to go to church because there's hypocrites there. Wait, what?

What do you mean hypocrites? Oh, yeah, there's people that lie. Yeah. So what does that say when they say that?

They're saying they expect a church to be filled with perfect people. And I always have to remind people, no.

See, to get in the church, you admit you're a sinner. So when people sin, that's not hypocrisy.

And you want the hypocrisy, go to work, go to the mall, go to the theaters, go to the parks.

That's where you have all these people saying they're a good person when they break God's law. That's where the hypocrites are, everywhere else.

Yeah. The church is filled with people that the entrance to the church is to say, I'm a sinner.

Right. So, you know, that becomes the thing. And when we think about this whole idea of sanctification, we have to realize that this is something that God will continue to do in us.

And, you know, Nikki, it's something you brought out in the beginning of the episode, is that this progressive sanctification gives us an assurance of our regeneration.

This is the big thing. When people fall into a sin or they're struggling and they go, I don't know if I'm really saved.

And it's usually people are saying that because there's some sin that they're giving themselves over to. But when we look at that, what is it that helps people to realize they are regenerate?

Well, it's this progressive sanctification. Right. We look at our life and go, oh, look where I was 10 years ago.

Look where I am today. Wow, that's a lot of change. You may not see it in the day to day, but you do see it over the long haul.

And like I said, if you don't see it in the long haul, then that's concerning. What we end up seeing in this next section, and I don't know if we'll finish this sentence, we'll see, and we'll pick this up next week.

It says, through obedience to the word of God. So that's the first, you know, the questions that we're going to answer.

So how do we, how do we, this process work? How are we made more and more in the image of Christ?

What, what do we got to do? Well, one, first one is obedience to the word of God and by the empowerment of the

Holy Spirit. Those are the two things, right? Because it then says those two things, the believer is able to live a life of increasing holiness in conforming to the will of God.

So why these two things? And this is something, when I have my prayer time, there's two things

I thank the Lord for each day. One, the indwelling Holy Spirit. And two, his authoritative word.

How else would we be able to do things? We have God revealing himself in himself by the personal

Holy Spirit. And then he gives us his words. We have an absolute objective standard.

I was talking with a guy this week, and, you know, we're down at this resort in Florida, speaking at a church and being that we're at this resort, they have the hot tub.

Now, so what Anthony and I do is what we call hot tub evangelism. It's basically an excuse for us to relax in a hot tub for hours.

And what happens is basically every 30 minutes to 45 minutes, someone gets up, leaves the hot tub, and other people come in.

And we start one conversation, people come in, sit down, and now they're in the conversation.

When the other ones leave, they start asking questions. And we literally just evangelize for hours. Well, we had a guy who

Anthony was speaking with, Anthony and Pastor Casey are speaking to this couple. This other guy starts asking questions.

And one of the things he was struggling with, in his view, was this whole thing of that we have a

Bible that's been had to have been changed over and over and over again. It's been the most redefined book.

And so I went through textual criticism. Don't have time to get into it here. You can look chapter two of my book, What Do We Believe?

It details it. But what was interesting is as he's going through this, he's trying to say, well, the word of God, it's just not really, that's not really the word of God.

We don't know what he originally said. And I asked him, so do you think that God can create the entire universe out of nothing, but can't stop men from corrupting his word?

I mean, there are variances we have in the Bible, but the meaning hasn't changed. And I said, you know, you, because he wants to say he's a

Christian. I'm like, but you have a very low view of God. If you think man can overcome him, right?

And that was maybe out of the whole conversation, the only time he kind of stopped, but not much.

But he was one that he just didn't want to believe in the word of God. And this is why when

I say I have two presuppositions that I hold to, God exists, he has spoken. I'm not gonna try to defend whether God exists.

I'm not gonna try to defend whether the Bible's his word. Those are the necessary starting points in any conversation, because if God doesn't exist, you can't make any rational arguments because you have no ability to reason because you're just a chemical reaction.

Chemical reactions don't produce immaterial things like an ability to reason. And if God doesn't reveal things about himself, you're not gonna know anything about God.

You can only know God if he reveals himself, and that's what he does. And so that's why, and we're gonna pick this sentence up.

We'll pick this up more. But the two things that God gives us for our sanctification is the

Bible and the Holy Spirit. And if you go back into the

Old Testament, Jeremiah 29, 29 and following, Ezekiel 36, 25 and following, you will see the promises to the

Jewish people for the new covenant. And what was part of the promise? Part of that promise for the new covenant that you and I as believers in Christ share is that we would no longer need a priesthood.

We would no longer need someone to tell us the word of God, but God would indwell us and tell us himself.

That's the beauty of the new covenant. And we overlook that. Do you appreciate that God gave you his word so you have an objective standard that you can look at and study and dig into and know how to interpret it?

And then do you praise God that he didn't leave you alone? You don't need to go to some priest.

You have the Holy Spirit indwelling you. Now, it doesn't mean you could just open your Bible and read. It takes diligence because we're 2000 years removed.

You gotta follow the rules of interpretation, which means you gotta know the rules of interpretation. And if you don't know them,

I'll encourage you to just go to strivingforturning .org, go to our Academy page. You'll see our free course that we have there for you.

On biblical hermeneutics, which is the science of interpretation.

You could take that course for free. If you wanna buy the syllabus, you can buy the syllabus, but that will help you to understand how to interpret.

A very important thing we must do is know how to interpret because the

Holy Spirit isn't just gonna magically give us some meaning. This is a mistake you have. You see this in word of faith all over the place where they think

God is somehow gonna magically just give them the meaning. Guys who say that they're just gonna go to a pulpit and preach without any study and just say,

I'm trusting the Lord. Holy Spirit's gonna get... No, that's not how the Holy Spirit works. He works through your work, your diligent work of study.

So we have to do that diligent work, but he works within us so that he helps us to understand.

And so we'll pick this up next week there, but that is the beauty of this progressive sanctification that God gave us things like his word and Holy Spirit so that we can continue in this process of being made more in the image of Christ.

And so with that, I wanna thank you guys for coming on and co -hosting with me, helping me out. Look forward to the...

I know you're doing your devotions, the devotional ones, and finding out what's in the news. Maybe, maybe, could it be that by the next time you record, we'll know who the

Speaker of the House is? Nah, we won't know that. Never gonna happen.

Although that might be good for us. I'll take a two -year stalemate. We'll see how that goes. The two years of Congress acting fully has not gone well for us.

So maybe a two -year stalemate could be what we need. Well, the only problem is we need someone that'd be a stalemate against Biden.

So we kind of need them to be active in finding out...

Well, we have Chuck Schumer in the Senate. You don't trust... Yeah, we could trust him. Yeah.

And Adam Schiff, who clearly wasn't doing anything shifty when he was telling Twitter to make sure to call it

Russian collusion when things were... He and his office were being investigated.

A lot easier to be shifty before Elon got Twitter. Yeah, that's right. Well, folks, with that, we'll see you next week.

And that's a wrap. Or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org