Apologetics Session 20 - Sanctification - Part 1

The Earlier Sessions and the Need to Talk About Sanctification

Series that we had put together. And originally, when the first one was,.

We spoke about was basically what do we believe, like why do we believe, what do we believe, and all that.

And then the second part to that was understanding that believership really is different.

In many different types of venue.

And people say that they believe in God, yet they live a paganistic type of life, and particularly within the churches, and we called it tribal spiritualism and theolistic humanism. And there's this whole idea behind all that that for the sake of argument, that the umbrella of being good or feeling good is enough that they have a relationship with God and our Father.

So that was basically the first two ones. But the one that I have always wanted to talk about, and we just never really talk about it, is sanctification. It's always a conversation of sanctification as a distant realm, something that's out there that people don't really understand or really know.

And there's kind of a couple different schools of thought when it comes to sanctification. Of course, we look over here in Hagemos, or Hag-e-s-mos, the Greek means transformation or sanctification.

It's obviously a very important concept within scripture. It's been used in 65 verses, using at least a derivative of sanctification from sanctify, sanctifying, sanctification, in 17 different books. So there's some relevance to what is going on with what sanctification means and how we, as believers in Christ, are accepting that.

Are any of those references in the Old Testament? Yes, they are. They are in the Old Testament. I guess the approach that a lot of churches talk about sanctification is a transformative work that happens when a person is in Christ.

That would be basically post when Jesus Christ died, right? But we know that, just to your point, that sanctification did occur in the Old Testament, which is associated with the Holy Spirit. So we know that there was an indwelling with the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, too.

And it happened with some of the Israelites and so forth. So for me, this is a very fascinating subject because we really don't talk about it. And it's something that happens when we accept Jesus Christ our personal Savior.

We have justification. And then we go into the sanctification and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And it's being more like Christ.

In our conduct and our character,.

Slowly to the imaging of Christ. Proverbs, it says, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but its purpose of the Lord, that will stand. So there's actually an absolute purpose for what God is trying to do when he has the indwelling Spirit coming to us,.

Being in that.

It's a relational type of manifestation.

That's happening with us.

It is for a holy God to try to get as close as he can to man and having appreciation from Jesus Christ and our justification to allow that relationship to exist with the Holy Spirit guiding us. But I've been fascinated about it.

And I was raised in the construct that we learn certain rules in life and being child-rearing, learning a task, developing a skill, knowing how to care and love, becoming a team player in a game, even understanding what it is to be a friend.

And our imagination runs pretty large about all that. We have our Bibles, we have our families, we have our churches, we have our relationships, but we really don't talk about the transformation nature of what sanctification does in a person's life.

Peter on Holiness, Exile, and Being Ransomed by Christ

First Peter talks in First Peter 1, 17 through 21,.

Says, if you call on him as father.

Who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourself with fear throughout the time of exile,.

Knowing that you were ransomed.

From the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He who foreknew you before the foundations of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God.

It's an amazing statement in terms of describing the relationship that we develop through our lives as human beings in Christ till we have glorification meeting with our father. And we accept the fact that he's our personal savior, the Holy Spirit indwells with us, starts the process of changes that happens there.

And I can remember when I accepted Jesus Christ,.

I was brought to my knees as a sinner, saying to myself, okay, I finally get it. It's not just checking off a box for me. It's like I finally get that there is something happening there. And so I ended up having questions, and I'm sure everybody here in the room has the same questions, like why is it so hard to go through sanctification?

Why is it that I have some regrets in my life? Why is it that there has to be sin in the world? Why is it that I fall down and I have to get up again? And this continues throughout our lives. And it could be frustrating.

You know, we have this perception that sanctification could be a straight line that goes up towards heaven, but it's not. It's a broken road that slowly becomes, and the testing of our faith really encompasses by really a lot of trials that happen, because we live in a dark world, we live in a spiritual world.

So in my humble opinion,.

The church has done a bad job of explaining and encouraging people of what sanctification is really like. It almost comes across like one size fits all, and it's not that way at all.

It's not.

Each one of us has an individual journey and our different paths of how we get closer and realize Christ in our hearts.

Are you gonna talk about the vine and the branches at some point?

That's gonna be.

Later?

Yeah, that's gonna be.

Well, actually.

We'll save that then.

Yeah, save that, yeah.

Right.

Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification as Distinct Stages

But this is really, what I wanna try to accomplish in this session is kind of be real with everybody about what really is going on when it comes to this. We talk about justification, which we need to talk about justification, you know?

And we talk about glorification, that we're gonna meet Christ one day and be in Christ. But we really don't talk a lot about that peace that we spend the rest of our lives in the middle of doing there.

And what happens is we fall into sort of a habit of we wanna wear a Jesus coat, and put the Jesus coat so that all of us look the same, sound the same, be the same. It almost becomes robotic. And God didn't make us robotic.

He made us individuals with different types of gifts and different types of ways of expressing our love towards him. And we want to be able to do that in a community which builds a church, which is his bride, which we will be glorifying him when we go and meet him.

So it comes about to what is about truth, you know? In Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, consider the work of God who can make straight what is made crooked, which is really true. And that's really what happens with sanctification, is trying to make straight what is crooked, what is happening there.

And we have the Holy Spirit in us, and who is guiding us, trying to give us discernment. We have our community that's also helping us and advising us, and we have our families and our friends that do that.

So to have a clear understanding of our salvation, we must adopt and live a life of understanding.

The reason why Jesus Christ is our Lord. He is, he is our Lord. We said he's our Lord. And he is merciful, he's transformative, and when we accept, adopt, and submit to this, the premise of sanctification comes about.

And in Colossians 3, 9b, it says, seeing that you have put off the old self.

With his practices.

Now, one of the things that we fall against is that when we're reading verses like this, we have, and I'm talking in general terms, we have a tendency to open our blinders and say, well, I kind of need to be like you because I'm not really like that.

And I need to be like you because I'm not really like, and we start doing this comparison of our faith, of where we are in our pathway of understanding the crisis of Christ. And it's a dangerous presupposition to get into.

You don't want to do that. You want to be able to go ahead and let the Holy Spirit work in your heart and guide you accordingly. Or else you're just, you're faking it till you're making it, and that's not the way to approach it.

So for too long, we moved from a perception of developing intellectual rigor and understanding our faith as grace alone.

And sanctification has little to say.

Except that we must be good.

You go into church, we must be good. What does must be good mean? What do you mean must be good?

I had lunch with a gentleman today and we had this debate going on here and he said to me that I'm a believer in Jesus, but I was a better Christian when I was younger.

Than I am now.

And so I can't stand myself because of that. And I said to him, well, why can't you stand yourself? He goes, well, I feel like I'm not living up to what the standards was. I said, well, do you think it's the Holy Spirit speaking to you about that?

Yes, it could be, but I'm not listening well enough to that. And so I said to him, maybe it's a chance to reexamine what your path is, what is going on here. Maybe that's the wake up call that you're thinking about because if you truly believe in Christ as your Lord and Savior, you know that he will never leave.

You will never leave. You know, it's not gonna happen. So if you're wrestling with that idea, you must put in the idea that he's always gonna be there.

He's not going to leave you, you know?

And just that alone is enough of an impetus to go ahead and say, you know, okay, I need to readjust. I need to go ahead and really look at this critically.

Philippians 1, 6 gave us that promise. And he who began that good work in you will bring it to completion. That's why we have to trust in God's promise to us.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So, you know, and Solomon struggled with this.

He said in Ecclesiastes 2, 26,.

For to no one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner, which we all are, he has given the business of gathering and collecting only to give to the one who pleases God.

This is also vanity striving at the wind. Vanity is striving at the wind. And basically, when you cut it down, and really trying to figure out what we're really trying to do here is that God wants you.

He doesn't want the character of a Christian. He wants you, you know? And he wants the foibles, the bad as well as the good. And it's hard for people to accept that, that they are sinners, which is really unbelievable when you think of the fact that you made the most important decision in your life, that you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, understanding through repentance, that you cannot live in the present state you're in, in this sinful world.

Ivan, can I jump in real fast?

Sure.

With your friend there, I think we all struggle with self-condemnation, because none of us are ever gonna be good enough. Well, you know, I should be reading this instead of watching whatever, a game show, let's say.

Whatever, oh, I got up too late. I just, self-condemnation, I believe, is a trick of the devil.

Absolutely.

Because it steals our joy. And so then the walk of, it's a drudgery instead of being a joy, and it says the joy of the Lord is our strength. So ergo, we're weak, because we're self-condemned. Now we can't believe to bring about the things of God.

Absolutely.

So 1 John 3, 21 and 22, our heart condemns us not.

Yeah, and the great accuser does that. That's one of the number one weapons to do that to a believer, especially a believer who's trying to strive forward and really seek out what God wants them to do in his will.

You're gonna get hit. And to think that you're not going to be hit, you're only fooling yourself. You're an absolute target, that you are going to be hit. And it could be through various trials of help, relationships, work, whatever it is, you will definitely be hit.

And a mentor had told me years ago, and I think I may have mentioned this the first time around, and he asked, how are you doing? The Lord said, oh, I've got all kinds of problems. He goes, amen, praise God, you did it.

And I'm like, what?

And he goes, yeah,.

Because you must be doing something right,.

Because that's what's gonna happen.

Because the more you seek out, the more darkness is gonna try to control.

And try to push you down.

Which, unless you bring the forces, our brothers here, Christ, scripture, prayer, humbleness, lack of pride, you're gonna lose. It's not a question of marginalizing, you're gonna lose. So thinking about that, as James said, there is, have joy in the trials.

When I was, a few weeks ago or months ago, when we were, I was here and I was preparing,.

And then I had these different things that happened.

In my life, which, there was a death, and then I got sick, whatever else, like this. My first immediate thing was to go and pray about it and say, okay, Lord, what am I gonna do? Not have a pity party, although I did have.

Somewhat of a pity party about it.

But then the second thing was to go to my brothers and talk to them and say, hey, I can't do this by myself.

I can't.

And that's what the church is for. That's what this community is for, to help that. And that helps also within our sanctification inside there, of what we're trying to do and accomplish.

Joy in Trials, Self-Condemnation, and the Church as a Support Community

Yeah, do you remember a couple weeks ago, we were praying in our Thursday group and whatnot for the friends of ours who fell on, have fell on, just in a bad way, mostly health, right? But the problem was, is they came out of that whole health and wealth, Word of Faith thing, where they believe if they say it, they're gonna be healed and they're gonna be okay.

They're gonna control God. And because they keep getting worse and worse and worse, they feel condemned, because then it's their fault. They don't have enough faith.

That's why they're sick.

And we told them, we said, look, you gotta get back to the baseline. Like, what is true and what you know is true. And he said, well, I know I can't lose my salvation because that's in Jesus forever. So that's a great place to start.

He's not gonna leave you nor forsake you. His love's gonna be eternal forever. You need to start right there. And sometimes we do need to get back all the way just to the basic gospel message to kind of be healed all over again almost, like from some of the things that go on in our life.

And that's a great point, because I don't think it's just one time we do that. I think we do that a lot of times in our life, where we gotta say, whoa, and we have to get down on our hands and knees and say, let's start from the beginning again.

Let me get a grip on what's really going on, the reality of it. It's no surprise about me having cancer. And then two months ago, it came back, a vengeance.

And I had to go to that place.

That what you're talking about, where I had to say, okay, wait a second now. Let me get on my hands and knees and think about, Lord, what are we trying to get out of this? What's really happening here?

Because I know you're with me through this,.

And I know you're teaching me something through it.

And I know that the one thing the devil would like to see is for me to really break down and do that. And I am not an angel by any stretch of the imagination. But I know that his grace is enough to cover whatever things that I'm going through, and I can't control that.

And so part of the sanctification process, and it took me years to really understand that, part of the sanctification process is to let it go, give it up, give it to him. That's what he's there for, to give that to him.

I can't control that. I can't control the things are. When pride gets into the way, we want to put on a Jesus coat. We want to go ahead and think that we're having that on there and show people we're stronger than that.

We can't say all the right words, the right verses, but at the end of the day, we have to give ourselves up to our Lord and Savior and allow the Holy Spirit to do this work. And that is the truth. One of the things that's interesting is we had the 10 Commandments.

We can't live up to the 10 Commandments. There was the Levitical Laws. We couldn't live up to the Levitical Laws. And that's a paradox, that we can do that. Again, Solomon said, for the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they will have no more reward for the memory of them is forgotten.

And that's the difference between people who are in Christ and people who are not in Christ.

They will be forgotten, they will be gone.

You know, we have ascension to our Lord and Savior, and we will spend eternity with Him. Paul exhorts in Colossians 3, 1 through 4, you know, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my presence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

Now, I love that, work out your own salvation. That doesn't mean work out cornerstone salvation. That means work out your own salvation. That means every one of us have our own salvation.

That we have to work for, you know?

And collectively, as a group, individually, we have different nuances, but collectively, what a glorious sight.

That we're doing that as a community,.

And working that all out.

Ivan, what's the Greek for this,.

Word salvation, there? For salvation, for heal? Oh, now you're putting me on the spot.

Zoli? Okay.

Okay, Zoli, so life in its fullness.

No, life in its fullness, right.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, that can be really confusing, because you say, well, wait, Christ gave me, I thought I had salvation. Now it's saying work out my salvation.

Right.

We know salvation's not of works. So really, what does that mean in its fullness?

Well, Paul, no, what Paul's saying is that each one of us has a pathway after we accept the Lord Jesus Christ.

On how we're gonna be used,.

And we're not all supposed to be the same.

Right.

And that's working out that salvation individually, not working out salvation as a group.

It's not working for salvation, it's working it out.

You're working it out there.

That's the point.

You're working towards more wholeness.

Yes. Really.

And I don't know, the Greek off the top of my head, Jim, but I know in 2 Corinthians, in chapter one, it says that we are saved, we're being saved, and we shall be saved.

Right.

So it's like, well, what isn't it, right?

Right.

And it's just this continual process of being conformed to the image of Christ. With the end of the story being, the salvation to be revealed at the end times is this is what the end product is gonna be.

You and I conformed to Jesus.

And that's a great...

Yeah, it's not in a sense that we don't have salvation now, but there is a process in there.

Right, exactly.

Thank you for pointing that out.

That's a great segue into this. So we have the three aspects of salvation, which is justification, the wrath of God against us, and brought into pardon, reconciled, propitiation with God by grace, atonement.

That's in Romans.

And we have the sanctification of being safe in the power of the personality, distorting effects of sin in two ways. And then we finally have the glorification. And this kind of diagram shows the relationships between all of that, from the reconciliation.

And I just, there's just different words that put there that people use. But basically, the sacrifice or substitution for our redemption leads into sanctification and what happens there. And understanding that there is a relationship between God the Father, Jesus, and man with the Holy Spirit is working there.

And that's continuous, but it's happened there. So when you think about it, so we know that salvation is safe from sin's penalty, and the power that comes from it is from sanctification, and the presence is the glorification piece of it.

And if you look at the justification of past, present, and future, and you look at the difference between justification and sanctification, my state becoming what I already am. In justification, God's attitude towards us is changing.

God is changing me. And then justification, how God looks at me, and then what God does in me. Christ dying for our sins on the cross, Christ doing his work in me through the Holy Spirit. So, and that's, again, an individual thing that's happening to each one of us that's taking place.

And so when we look at each other, it is really important to understand, to even ask the question, where are you at right now? Like, what's going on there? And that's how our conversation started today at lunch.

You know, I said, where are you at? Just tell me where you're at. No judging, just where you're at. And he was forthright enough to tell me where he was at. I told him where I was at. And as brothers in Christ, we should be able to do that.

We should be able to go ahead and lay it on the line. And we help each other and grow with that, and that's part of the sanctification. But there are, and I put 10 sanctification drivers that really point to the fact of what's happening internally with us.

You have to understand there's the existence of God.

You can't get away from that.

You have to accept the fact.

And this becomes, when you measure this against what you're seeing in the churches around us, you gotta start questioning what's really happening. You know, the onset of paganism within the churches is very, very apparent and relevant today.

And so a lot of the things that are happening that we're seeing now, you have to question the validity of someone's salvation if they're still continuing to live in that. And that's not being legalistic or even informed.

There's just basic tenets of salvation that you have to accept besides repentance. The existence of God, divine in the nature of scripture. It was God breathed, Holy Spirit breathed that. The authority of it.

The big question on number three, the authority of scripture, is being questioned all the time in the churches. We should expect that outside the church. But in the churches, it's not acceptable. The acceptance of our own depravity, which is what leads us into justification, and the necessity of Jesus Christ's death on the cross.

Some churches are even denying the fact of Jesus, who he is, and died on the cross. The acceptance of God's grace and what grace is in our lives. The acceptance and understanding of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

So if you think about sanctification in the sense that the Holy Spirit's always inside me, okay, that should be a wake up call already. You know, you're walking around, he's already inside you. And so there's a check and balance that is happening there.

We're not perfect, but that's a pretty good check and balance of what's happening there. The acceptance that sin is real, which, as you already know, in a lot of churches, they're slicing and dividing sin.

In many different ways there.

And there's no relationship with God.

Apart from justification. It has to have justification for that. It's not just being good. You have to understand there is no way you can have a relationship with our Savior, without accepting Jesus Christ.

You can't have a relationship there. And his death was the reason for that.

And that faith is not by works,.

But sanctification shows God's work through our faith, which kind of like it's an upside down type of paradigm. But our sanctification shows our work. And we don't have to try to have works. It's going to automatically happen.

A lot of people forget that, that you're going to be, you're going to be compelled. There's going to be a voice. For me, there's always like this little voice that's telling me, don't go to the left, go right.

You know, whatever. Sometimes I don't listen, you know. But there's always something that's telling me that, of what is happening. And that's part of the sanctification process. So, here's the basic of what we're looking at, of the justification and what happens to us with the spirit, soul, and the body.

Obviously the body will be going up there. But the sanctification main part happens within the soul. And this changes, because the Holy Spirit is now indwelt in us there. So this is always a wild card.

And you're going through this whole process of the flesh, you know. And you're fighting the flesh every day. So, does anybody have any questions?

Well, just commenting on that diagram. The unsaved person, the spirit is dead. And that dead spirit permeates the soul, causes pollution of the soul, and pollution of the body. It's only when it's made alive, because it's right now, and the unsaved person, they're dead in their trespasses and sins.

When you're born again, the spirit's made alive again.

Right. Amen.

So, what are we saying about sanctification? It's a process that sets us apart from unbelievers, towards the image of God, and by the Holy Spirit. And increasing to us to overcome our desire to sin, which doesn't say we are going to be sinless.

Next week, we're going to talk about, there's five different views on sanctification, which I don't want to get into the weeds today with all that. I just wanted to kind of just bring this part out there, and really recognize what we're really talking about when we talk about sanctification.

And see if we come to agreement with it. You know, how do we grow in sanctification? And, you know, we're sanctified the same way as we are justified by faith alone, in Christ alone. And Galatians 3, 2, 5, Hebrews 11, 8, point towards that.

And of course, you must, the glue that keeps that all together is faith.

Having the faith to have that happen.

But there are tenets there, like I said before, that if you know the Holy Spirit is in you, if you know that the promise is that God will never leave you, that is a great, great foundation for our faith.

That's a wonderful foundation to live by. You know, what does God promise to be for us in Christ Jesus? He promises that if we're looking to Christ to forgive us, and change us, and satisfy us, then through prayer, he'll provide everything we need.

Not everything we want, but everything we need. And orchestrates every offense in our lives in a way that we receive the greatest amount of heart, satisfaction, and joy in Christ forever. And I'll go back to the conversation I had today.

Is it a, I asked him, do you feel like it's a lonely road.

Of what you're going through?

And he goes, yeah, I feel very alone.

He says, well, welcome to the club,.

Because it is, you can be alone on that.

That when you're going through the process of being sanctified and trying to be close to your client, you're gonna, like I said before,.

You're gonna go through those struggles,.

But those struggles, actually, when you learn from them, are bringing you closer and closer and closer to what and how God wants you to be. So we look to our Christ by faith, and we are motivated by our obedience towards that, as best as we possibly can.

And in John 14, 21, 23, and in Matthew 6, 4, 6, 18, they talk about the motivation that is there.

To go ahead and have us be in obedience.

If you want to please, and you want to glorify, and you want to show honor to the holiness of God, you want to have that impetus of obedience.

And then there's the role of gratitude,.

Which I think that sometimes we lose that. I put this in here that the Bible never says anything about gratitude should motivate us, but I think we should be having gratitude that we are in Christ, that we accepted the Lord, that he was willing to send his son to die for us.

And there's a great gratitude for that, to have that happen. And that we're gonna be spending eternity with him, that we're gonna be spending eternity as brothers here with him. It's a wonderful thing.

I have tremendous gratitude about that. And that's another reason why, in the sanctification, realizing that is happening in our lives is another insular to go ahead and say, hey, it's gonna be okay, no matter what's happening now.

And it goes back to what James was talking about, joy in our trials, doing that. And we can't do it with our own willpower.

On what's going on there.

We have to let ourselves go to have sanctification start. And so we're always gonna be tempted. We're always gonna have problems with temptation with that. But we should be motivated by our obedience and merit.

So, yeah, go ahead, Joe.

Oh, yeah, sorry, you were talking about motivation. And I was thinking of Paul saying, be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. And what was Christ's motivation? For the joy set before him.

Right.

So once again, we go back to the joy.

Yeah, amen.

So there's our strength, once again. So it's keeping your eyes focused here, not down here.

Absolutely, a heavenly mindset.