The Sequence of Sanctification, Pt. 1 (08/27/2000)

Park Meadows Church

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Turn with me this morning to John chapter 17, if you would. I don't know how wise that is to put praise before the preaching, because then a preacher can't preach because he's thinking about the goodness of God.

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We've been talking about fruit bearing. You can turn that down just a little bit for me, Greg. Let's see, just a little bit more.

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That's pretty good, I think. We've been talking about fruit bearing lately and going through a series on that.

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It is directly associated with the doctrine of sanctification. Last Sunday we mentioned that today we're going to preach a doctrinal message on this doctrine, more of a teaching message.

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I'd like to do that with you for a few moments. We're going to be primarily in John chapter 17, but I want you to look at a couple of marvelous verses.

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Turn over and look at Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 10 to start out with this morning.

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While you're turning, let me start to lay an outline in your minds. There are two large divisions under which we can discuss the doctrine of sanctification.

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The first one is called positional sanctification. The second one is called experiential sanctification.

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Some people call that experimental sanctification, but I don't like that one. I like to call it experiential because it has to do with your experience in time.

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As we've said in the last couple of studies, this particular study of all things brings the outside of time concept of the

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Father together with the inside of time concept of us walking in time.

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It brings those issues together. It brings together the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man in a way in which we cannot fail to see it.

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It brings together the fact that God is outside of time.

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God the Father is not bound by time. He is the eternal

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I am, the present tense, all the time. It brings that together with the fact that in Jesus Christ and by his

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Holy Spirit, the Father can project himself into time and walk with us and talk with us in the garden.

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So it really brings it all together. So remember that we have two big topics, the positional sanctification and experiential sanctification.

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And then we'll have some other thoughts about it kind of woven into those two. Let me get you to look at a verse that represents each of those two major divisions.

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First of all, Hebrews chapter 10 and look at verse 10 with me. We might as well read. I want verse 10 and verse 14.

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So I'll just read down through and do all of them here. This is so marvelous. We could read the whole book of Hebrews and study this in this book.

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But Hebrews, in fact, we will end up with some more time in this book towards the end of the study when we get to experiential sanctification.

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Well, positional sanctification. Hebrews 10 .10, by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.

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And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

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But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.

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For by one offering he hath already. I'm going to insert that just to help interpret it a little bit.

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He hath already perfected forever them that are already sanctified.

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Now that's positional and you see why as we read it, but you'll see a little more of that later.

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Now let's give you an experiential sanctification verse just so you see what I'm talking about. Experiential means in your experience.

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It means in your day -to -day experience, in your walk, in this world, in this time in which

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God has placed you. And always remembering that he is walking with you in time.

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1 John 3 and starting with verse 2. This verse 2 kind of touches on both aspects, but verse 3 is going to be the end time or the experiential aspect of sanctification.

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Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

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And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

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That phrase purifieth himself is experiential sanctification. It happens in time.

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Now it's interesting just to jot down on the margin of your notes there that experiential sanctification has two sub -parts.

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One is passive and the other is active. We'll just put it in grammatical terms.

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And by that I mean even in time there is one aspect of it that God does to us through the

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Holy Spirit, through his word. And there's another aspect of it we're supposed to do to ourselves.

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And I would call that the active part. The passive part is what God does to us. So just kind of keep that in mind as we go through this study.

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That gives you kind of the groundwork and the terminology that we're going to talk about. Let's talk for a moment about positional sanctification.

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Let me give you some more subheadings. And then we'll give you a couple of subheadings for experiential.

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And then I'm going to spend the rest of time tonight, no, this morning talking about a little bit out of John 17.

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So really the introduction is going to be the doctrinal part and the message will be out of John 17.

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Positional sanctification. Let me give you some subdivisions of that.

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First of all, let's call the first one positional sanctification with regard to time and dimensions.

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Time and dimensions. So that would be like big

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A under big Roman numeral I. We're talking about positional sanctification. The first main idea is that we can talk about it with relationship to time and dimensions.

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Well, in that idea, the first thing we would look at is the end time vantage point.

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So let me give you some verses about that. Look at Acts chapter 20 and verse 32. Now let me put it this way when

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I say end time. When we're talking about positional sanctification, it's what

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God does to us. But if we want to talk about it from an end time viewpoint, then what we're doing is we're looking from time back outside of time.

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So we're going to look backwards from our vantage point. We're going to go all the way back to the time when time began and then we're going to jump out into there somehow.

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So the point is we're talking about things that perhaps happened before anything was made, but we're looking at it from now.

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So we call that eternity past, which really, if you think about it, doesn't make sense to say it that way, but it's from our viewpoint.

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Because if God is in the now all the time, he's the great I am, it's funny to talk about eternity past, being past, because it's always, it's just now.

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But from our point of view in time, we can't think that way really very well, can we? Because we think in sequence.

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So we'll start from where we are this morning. We'll go back on the timeline all the way back to the beginning and then jump out into there and we'll see some of this happening.

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Now let's look at Acts chapter 20 and verse 32. Now remember, all this fits under the category of positional.

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And we'll describe more in detail what that is as we go through this. Acts 20, 32,

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And now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.

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Now, the first part of that verse we'll use later when we come to the study on experiential sanctification.

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Because it talks about the word, the word of God, and the fact that what you choose to do with it will make a difference in time as far as how strongly you are built up.

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It is no secret that those who are the strongest in the congregation are those who are in the word the most, all other things being equal.

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But let's look at the second part of the verse for this morning right now because it deals with positional sanctification.

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And I want you to notice it. Notice where it says, And to give you an inheritance among them which are sanctified.

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I want you to look at the phrase, are sanctified. Them which are sanctified. Let me give you the grammar on it.

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It's perfect. It's in the perfect tense. It's passive. And it's in the participle, participle mode.

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So, what does this mean? First of all, perfect in the Greek is the same as it is in English.

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And I want you to jot this down if you don't already have it in your mind so that when we talk about it's in the perfect, passive,

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I want your mind to just click and know what this means. Perfect means, in the

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English and in the Greek, it corresponds to the fact that it describes an action.

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Start right here. I got messed up. Start right here. It describes an action which is viewed as having been completed in the past, once and for all, not needing to ever be repeated.

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When you find something in the Greek language and in the English language which is in the perfect tense, past perfect tense, for example, the perfect tense means that it is an action which has already been completed in the past, once and for all, and will never need to be repeated again.

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That is the tense that we find the phrase which are sanctified in, in this verse. So, in Acts 20, 32, it's a very interesting verse because it brings the experiential end time aspect together with the positional, going back to where it started and jumping out into there.

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Because what it says is that the Word of God right now in time, as you choose and make choices to read it and to meditate upon it and to consume it, will strengthen you.

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And it's speaking to, it will not strengthen everybody, but it strengthens those that are

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His. And it says this, it's to you who have an inheritance among all them which are sanctified, but in the

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Greek language, you're looking back into eternity past and it's saying this was, you were sanctified once and for all and it never has to be repeated again.

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That tells you an awful lot about this act. What does passive mean? It means you did not do this to yourselves.

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I didn't do this to me. It means someone far greater than us did this to us and His name is the

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Father. And so, it's perfect, which means it's already happened and it won't ever be done again.

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It's a once for all concept. And it's passive, which means He did this to us.

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He did this to us. It's not something we can do. It's participle, which is the same as adding an ing to it in English.

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So you might translate it this way, that He is giving you an inheritance among them who having been sanctified once and for all.

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Having been sanctified once and for all. I'll give you another verse where this is found. In Jude 1, it says,

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Jude the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James to them that are sanctified. Perfect, passive, participle.

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Them that are sanctified by God the Father. So we say it's passive. It's something done to us.

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So who does the action to us? God the Father. And we are preserved in Christ Jesus and called.

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What a wonderful verse that is. We'll talk about this preserved part in a few moments. So we see then that this is from an inside of time vantage point, but we're looking back to a place where time is eternal to see where this happened to us.

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Isn't that amazing? Now, let's go beyond this just a little bit. If you want to really, really jump off out there, if you want to really get into the place where the

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Father is right now, and I'm going to use the term dimensions to describe this because that's the best way that I can understand at this point with our understanding of the way things are in the world around us, both from the word and also from nature, the book of nature that God gave us and science and so forth.

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I'm going to use the term dimension because it's my theory anyway that the Father is in a different dimension than we are.

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Now, he's in a much higher dimension. There are some physics people who study quantum physics who said that the day that Jesus entered into the room without opening the door, if you remember that, that he had to be in at least the ninth dimension as opposed to we being in a three -dimensional world.

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He had to at least be in a nine -dimensional world. And so the same man who wrote that says, but I think the

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Father is in an infinite dimension. Now, what's interesting about dimensions is whatever dimension you're in, it's impossible for you to understand the one dimension above you even.

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So if we want to talk in the terms of a four -dimensional or a five -dimensional world, it'd be difficult for us to even discuss it.

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We, being in the three dimensions, can look down and think a little bit about a two -dimensional world, but we don't have time to get into that today, and I've talked about it before, so some of you have heard me talk about that, but you can think of a two -dimensional world and understand it because you're what?

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You're one dimension higher. But if you were the person in the two -dimensional world, you couldn't understand us.

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Okay, I have to do it. Let me just show you. Two dimensions is like this. It's as if you lived on a flat piece of paper.

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So I'm going to draw Richard and Deborah. I'll let you all decide which one's which here.

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Okay. Can you see this? Okay. Now, I want you to think about this.

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Richard and Deborah are in what maybe we'll call the flatland world. Okay? Now, if Richard wants to look at Deborah, you have to visualize that by turning the page this way.

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See, here's Richard over here. He's going to look this direction, but he can only do it like this. So if he looks to his left, how does

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Deborah look to him in the two -dimensional world? Like a line. Now, but if you and I look at...

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I should have drawn some curves on there. I should have made this more realistic. If we look at this, we see curves.

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Sorry, Richard. Alright, but Richard can only see it this way.

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Now, if we go into a third -dimensional world, though, and let's just say that God was in the three -dimensional world, which he's not.

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He's beyond that. That's where we are. You can pretend my finger is the finger of God.

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And God can come down to within one millionth of an inch of this page.

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And neither Richard nor Deborah can see his finger, because it's not on the paper. See, they can't see three dimensions.

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They're just two. They only look sideways. So I can actually get closer to both of them, no matter how close

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Richard gets to her. If I represent God, I can get closer to both of them at the same time that neither one of them can be close to each other at any time.

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Do you see that? Because all I have to do is just come this direction and get close. Matter of fact, I could draw, you know, several hundred people on this paper, and I could get close to all of them at one time, whereas they can't figure out how

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I could do that. They can't even see me. Now, what if I stuck my finger down into their world?

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What would they see? Or what if we draw me? You don't want to do that. Let Deborah draw me.

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No, don't even want to think. I know exactly what she would do. Okay. There's me.

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Okay. What are you laughing at back there? Notice I didn't show that one as long as the others.

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Didn't have to. Well, but what would they see even if I came down into their world?

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A line. But that's not really all there is to me, is it?

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So, that gives you an idea of how we can understand a dimension below us, the two dimensions.

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But the two dimensions, flatland people here, they can't understand us at all. Now, if you take

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God and you say he's in an infinite dimension, or whoever knows what it is exactly, how can we begin to think we can comprehend everything about that place and that time?

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And him, I started saying that time, but one of the aspects of that dimension is there's no time there.

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So nothing happens in sequence, it's all now. So we can't figure out how it looks, we can't figure out how it works, we just know that it is.

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And so, let's get into that place a little bit. Now, this is going to be kind of like looking at a straight line, but the wonderful thing is if I could be a straight line and be down in flatland with Richard and Deborah, if I could talk to them in their language,

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I could help them see more than just a line about me. Now, they'd have to believe me though, wouldn't they? Because they couldn't see it with their eyes.

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They would have to just believe me if I said, hey, Richard and Deborah, I'm not a straight line.

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And you're not either. You just think you're a straight line, but you're far more beautiful than that.

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You actually have dimension to yourselves. You have things about yourselves you've never seen and will not see while you're on this in flatland, but someday

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I'm going to take you out of this place, and you're going to see yourselves.

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You're going to see me as I am, and then you're going to be like me. Wow. Let's look at Romans 8 .30.

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You didn't know physics preached so good, did you? I think that's good.

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Wait until you get in the Bible here in a minute. Romans 8 .30. If we want to look at sanctification from the totally outside -of -time vantage point, we can do it with Romans 8 .30,

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and it ceases to be called sanctification. It has a new name.

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Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them also he called, and whom he called, them also he justified, and whom he justified, then he also glorified.

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Isn't it interesting that that's in the past tense from our vantage point, which God's telling us, it's a done deal with me.

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So if you jump off outside of time where the Father is, we're already glorified, which is the end result of sanctification.

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Now in time, we have not yet attained, have we? But from the Father's vantage point, we have because he sees us from his dimension.

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He's not in flat land only. And he has to come down on that page in the form of Jesus Christ or his

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Holy Spirit in order for us to even deal with it. And so look at 1

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Corinthians 6 .11. I want to show you some interesting grammar that reveals some things in this verse, and then also we're going to look at 2

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Thessalonians 2 .13 to discuss sanctification from the outside of time viewpoint.

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Now remember, we're still under the topic of positional, and you'll see why this gets so marvelous as we understand more and more what positional really means.

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1 Corinthians 6 .11, And such were some of you. We were different before we were saved, weren't we?

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We were lost. But you are washed. We were not only lost, we were filthy.

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But you are washed. But you are sanctified. And we're going to look at that in the

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Greek just in a moment, this phrase, you are sanctified. But you are justified in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Now this phrase, you are sanctified, is not in the perfect passive participle.

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It's in aorist, and that's spelled A -O -R -I -S -T.

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And English doesn't have one of those. It's one reason God put this in the

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Greek, I think, because the language can give us more colors. Aorist, and in passive, indicative is the tense.

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Now, aorist is very, very interesting to me because not only do we already know that we're dealing with an outside of time dimension, but this places you there, because let me give you the definition of aorist.

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It means punctiliar action. Okay, got it?

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Let's go on. Move right on. Punctiliar means now, always, like if you could draw a point and just be on that point all the time, punctiliar, without regard to time is what it actually means, without regard to time.

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It's like the best way to describe eternal now. And so we are sanctified in the punctiliar sense, in the aorist tense in the

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Greek language. It means, it's just, it's your position all the time.

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It doesn't change. Time doesn't affect it. It's without regard to time. And it's passive still, which means who did this to us?

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Let's be specific. Actually, the Father. Now, the Holy Spirit also, but as we come into time, that's how

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He's going to project Himself into time and do the experiential part. But this is a part that was already done, so you're right though,

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Richard, because the Holy Spirit's outside of time too. That's what's amazing about the Holy Spirit, and as a matter of fact,

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Jesus is too. But the Holy Spirit is the Father's Spirit, so He is outside of time, can do positional sanctification, and He can extend

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Himself into time and be in sequence and take part in the experiential part too, which we'll get to later.

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So I'm really glad you said the Spirit, because I was going to say the Father, but it's both. Now, because the

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Spirit is the Spirit of the Father. I mean, He's one God. Now, this is interesting.

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Remember how the other one was passive participle? This one is passive indicative. Now remember, eris means pontiliar, without regard to time.

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Passive means the Father did it to us. Indicative, you know what that means? A statement of fact.

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You can't change it. It's not like a theory. It is a very strong statement.

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This is the way it is, God says. And that's just the grammar tells us that in 1

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Corinthians 6 .11. Now, if that weren't enough, let's look at 2 Thessalonians 2 .13. We may never get to John 17 this morning.

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It'll be this afternoon, probably. It's okay, there's only 12 points under John 17.

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I'm kidding. If it were true, I wouldn't tell you, because my wife taught me a long time ago, don't tell them how many points there are.

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Because you get to about, you know, number seven, you're going, oh, five more. Now we're going to talk about the trumpets.

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Now we're going to talk about the seals. Okay, 2

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Thessalonians 2 .13. But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the

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Lord. Now, that phrase, that phrase right there takes you all the way back to Deuteronomy 6, verses six and seven.

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He's only talking to the beloved of the Lord. Deuteronomy 6 and seven says, those are his people whom he has known from the foundation of the world, and his love was placed upon them before he made anything.

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It had nothing to do with their merit. It had nothing to do with anything they did.

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To the Israelite nation, he said, I didn't choose you because you're the greatest of nations. In fact, you're the most nothing of the most nothing, it says in the

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Hebrew. He says, I choose you because I loved you. I choose you because I loved you, and it goes all the way back to eternity past.

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And so he says, brethren, beloved of the Lord, those that the

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Lord has loved always. This is written to those that God's love has been upon from eternity past.

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And he says, because God hath from the beginning chosen you.

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That sounds good in English, but man, it sounds really good in Greek. From the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification, this is where our doctrine comes in for today, of the spirit and belief of the truth, where into he called you by our gospel, that's in time, to the obtaining of the glory of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, that's in time, and beyond time into eternity future.

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The whole purpose of this is that you might be to the obtaining that, what does obtain mean?

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To get for one's self. This is that you might get for you, that you might have, let's put it this way, that you might have the glory of our

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Lord Jesus Christ while you're here and when you get there. Christ in us, the hope of glory.

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And if we do get to John 17, you'll see that. I mean, we will get there, the Lord willing.

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But now let's go back though from this little phrase where it says, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation.

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From the beginning, the word from is the little Greek word apo. Now, I warned you this was a doctrinal lesson this morning, this is teaching time.

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Now I want you to get some of this in your notes. Apo literally means to separate from and then proceed forth from out of.

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So it's like it's in a place and it separates from it and goes out of it.

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That's what this little word means. And so when it says, because God hath from the beginning chosen you, the word beginning is the word arche in the

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Greek language, which means the origin of all things, the origin, the great origins of anything you see and know.

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From out of that place is where this choosing took place. Are you with me?

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If you go back to the origin, which means the great beginning of everything you know and see in the universe.

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And you go back to that place, separating from that place and coming out from it is this choosing that he has done.

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And he has chosen us unto salvation but it's through the channel of sanctification which is of the spirit and belief of the truth.

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And Jesus said, my word is truth. So it's the word of God and the Holy Spirit that makes this come to pass in time.

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But never forget that it came forth, was separated forth and came out from another place and dimension that has no time in it.

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And it came to us from that place. And so it is positional in the sense that it is beyond our comprehension.

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It is outside of time. It has nothing to do with time. It's punctiliar. You learn a new one today.

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Now, he hath chosen us. This is fascinating to me.

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And that's really all I have to do is interest myself and I can keep preaching.

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So if I get bored, we're all in trouble. If you get bored, I just keep right on moving.

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He hath chosen in this verse is a little different than in the verse we just looked at because this is in the second

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Aorist. Isn't it great? Wouldn't you love to know Greek? You know, not only have Aorists, which English doesn't even have, but we got two of them.

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But the good thing for us English speaking beings is that the second Aorist, as far as we can discern, is basically the same.

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And so what does it mean? It means punctiliar action. That is, the concept of the verb is considered without regard for past, present or future.

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That's what it means. The second Aorist tense, I'll give you a definition. It's very similar. It's the same really as the

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Aorist. Punctiliar action, that is the concept of the verb being considered without regard for past, present or future time.

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So we take time out of the picture. So he says, God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation.

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He takes time out of the picture. So that means this didn't happen in time. This happened before time or outside of time.

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Now this is in the middle voice, which is a little different. We've been talking about active and passive, which is what

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English has. Greek has another one called middle, the middle voice. And this is interesting.

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Let me give you a definition for this. The middle voice in Greek indicates the subject performing an action upon himself.

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We kind of have reflexive, I guess, in English, but we don't really have exactly the middle voice.

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But this pictures the subject performing an action upon himself and for his own benefit.

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Let me give you just a simple example in grammar. The boy groomed himself. That's the closest thing that English has to the middle voice.

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The boy groomed himself. It is active in the sense that he did the action to himself, but he did the action not only to himself, but he did for his own benefit.

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Now that is the tense this is found in. So think about this, because what it says is

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God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation. You know what the Greek tells me?

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He did it for his own benefit. He did it for God, not for us. But don't we benefit from it secondarily?

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And sometimes in our little flat land world, I lost Richard and Deborah, but here we are.

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Sometimes all we look at is the fact he did it for us, didn't he? That's okay.

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I mean, if that's all we know, if that's where we start when we first get saved, that's okay, because we're looking at straight lines and we're saying,

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God saved, Jesus died for me. That's okay with me. But when

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God comes down on that flat land and you look at him as a line, and he says, I'm not a line, and you're going to go out of this place where you can see, and I'm going to tell you something deeper than did

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I die for you, that Jesus died for you. He's going to say, Jesus died for me. Jesus died for me in the middle voice because I chose you in the middle voice, which means

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I did this for my own benefit. Because I love you so much, I did it for me.

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Because I love you, and I want you with me. And where I am, there shall you be also. Just the grammar from this verse tells us this.

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But we're bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, all the way back to the beginnings when he loved us, because God has from the beginning chosen you for himself to salvation, to benefit himself to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth.

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You know one reason we Baptists believe once saved, always saved is because God did the saving for himself, not for us.

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He did it for his benefit. He's not going to let it go, or he wouldn't have done it in the first place. And he hath chosen us, and it's also indicative, which means what?

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Simple statement of fact. Not a theory. Not something we can debate. God says, this is the way it is.

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And that's pretty amazing. So we talk about sanctification from the point of view of the fact that it's positional with regard to time and dimension.

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Now, let's talk about, for a second here, positional from the point of view of actual position.

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In other words, I mean, it is the state you are in because God has placed you there.

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It is the position you're in because God put you in that position. It's the family you're a part of because he has birthed you into that family, his family.

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It is the occupation that you have because he's given you this occupation. You're his servant.

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You're called to be a priest and a king, and you're children of the king.

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It is your position. Let me give you one good verse that points out and stresses that. 1 Corinthians 1, 2.

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So not only are we sanctified with respect to outside of time, in time, and the dimension aspect, we're sanctified with regard to actual position, our state, our place we're in.

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You might even say citizenship. We're made citizens of his kingdom. That's a position he put us in.

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But look at this verse on position. 1 Corinthians 1, 2. Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, call to be saints with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our

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Lord, both theirs and ours. What greater position could we have than to be in Christ Jesus?

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So our sanctification is positional. It is something that is beyond anything we can do to damage it.

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It is something that we did not achieve on our own. It is passive, means the

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Father did it to us. From his point of view, it's active, and he did it as a benefit for himself.

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We can't touch that. It happened before we came into this world, just like a baby doesn't decide to be born to his parents.

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The parents decide it. And the parents don't have the baby for the baby. They have the baby for the parents because the parents want a baby.

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And the Father did the same thing to us. And so it is positional.

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It comes from outside of time to us. And it's positional in the point of place and state and citizenship and occupation and name and all that we are.

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And I'm not even close to where I wanted to get this morning, but you're out of time because you're not excited as I am anymore because you're sitting there, and I understand that.

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So we're going to pick this up right where we left off next time. And really and truly, we haven't gotten close to the good part yet.

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But this was pretty good to me this morning. So let's stand and have prayer together. This doctrinal lesson certainly took us into the heavenlies.

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And so we'll have a word of prayer. When I get through praying, if anyone would like to come and just spend a few moments with the

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Lord, are you going to play? And Paul will play in just a moment as soon as we finish praying.

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You do what the Lord wants you to do and what you want to do at this time of the service.

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Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the grand heights it takes us beyond our comprehension into a place that doesn't have time, a place that never changes, a place where you are immutable, unchangeable, and you tell us that our sanctification came from you, from that place, and therefore it is immutable and unchangeable.

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It cannot be affected by us or any other creature in the universe or time itself.

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And we thank you for that aspect of sanctification. It is something that is of you. It is something that even in time, as we see you reach down by your

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Holy Spirit and your Son, Jesus Christ, and the Word of God, and you do a continual sanctification to us as well.

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So we thank you for this aspect of our positional sanctification because we can't change it.

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We can't change it by being in the flesh or by being in the Spirit. We can't change it by doing good works or by doing no works.

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We can't change this position. It's what you've given us, and it's what we are because of who you are.

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And someday, we will see you as you are and be like you. And we look forward to that day.

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Father, thank you for letting us see you a little bit through this glass of the Word of God this morning.

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And we thank you so much for that. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

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If anyone would like to come forward, you may come.