FBC Adult Bible Study

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All right, I was trying to think how best to kind of reintroduce the subject of holiness.

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We started last week, and I thought back on an experience that vividly illustrated some of the misunderstanding of what holiness is all about.

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This goes back several years, probably about 19 years ago now. I was serving as an assistant pastor in a much larger church, church of about 1 ,000, had a

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Christian school. Christian school was about 1 ,200, 1 ,300 students in the whole school.

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And there was a discussion that came up in a pastor's meeting.

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There was a discussion that came up about the pastor expressing his frustration and disapproval of some of the boys, high school age boys, playing basketball on the outdoor basketball court at the school, and they were wearing shorts.

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This is in the summertime. They're shorts and playing basketball in shorts.

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And he said, this has got to stop. They can't be doing this. And so it engendered a little bit of a discussion.

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So I said, well, why? What's the problem? They're immodest. Okay, we're talking high school age boys.

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They're wearing basketball shorts. And this is an immodesty thing?

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This is a modesty issue? Yeah, that's right. It is, insisted. So in other words, this is a hindrance to holiness, right?

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I mean, if you're being immodest, you're not being holy. So we went back and forth on this for a while and said, how is this immodest?

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He couldn't give me a good answer to that. And then finally, the thing that frustrated the fire out of him was when

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I finally said, well, the high school has a girls' basketball team and a guys' basketball team.

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And when they play basketball out on the court, the guys are wearing shorts.

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The girls are wearing shorts, playing basketball in basketball shorts. So why is it immodest for three or four guys to be playing a pickup game of basketball in basketball shorts, wearing basketball shorts on the outdoor court, but it's not immodest for 10 guys on a basketball court at the same time, plus all the guys sitting on the sidelines wearing basketball?

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Why is that not immodest? Well, it's different. How is it different?

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Well, because it's an organized game. I said,

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I don't see modesty being dependent upon whether or not the game is organized or pickup.

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I just don't get it. And so finally, in his frustration, he said, well, they just have to do it because I said so.

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Okay, now I understand. I get it. So that brings up a discussion about what is holiness, what is true holiness?

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And last week, we ended the lesson getting into a conversation about godliness.

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In the New Testament, the term godliness is comparable to, it's synonymous with the subject of holiness.

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And I suggested six propositions, and I got through one of them, I think. And I mean, we had a bunch of other things, but this is at the tail end of the lesson.

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So I want to go through those six propositions because they highlight one of the problems with that conversation 19 years ago regarding what the true nature of holiness or the true nature of godliness.

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All right, number one, I said godliness is focused on Jesus Christ. It's focused on Jesus Christ.

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First Timothy 3 .16 speaks of him as being, great is the mystery of godliness.

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God was manifest in the flesh and so forth, and that's speaking of Jesus. So godliness is focused on Jesus Christ.

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And the point of that, the point of that proposition is that godliness is not following a bunch of rules or principles.

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Godliness is being like Christ. And one thing about Christ is that he would be consistent, whether he were playing basketball on an indoor basketball court or playing basketball in a pickup game outside, whatever

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Christ did, it would be consistent. So godliness is focused on Jesus. Second, godliness is linked to doctrine.

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Godliness is linked to doctrine. So First Timothy 6 .3 brings this out.

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And the point that we want to get, we want to understand here is that doctrine and duty go hand in hand.

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First Timothy 6 .3 says, if anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he's proud knowing nothing and so forth.

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So doctrine is linked, godliness is linked to doctrine.

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Doctrine and duty go hand in hand. Another way to think about this is that right thinking, right, listen, right thinking determines right behavior, not right knowledge.

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You need the right knowledge, but right thinking. What's the difference between the two? Knowledge is the taking into your brain a set of facts or truths.

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You can know what those truths are, but right thinking has to do with what you do with those truths, how you apply those truths, what you think about those truths.

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Thinking rightly about truth determines right behavior.

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Another way to put that is practical piety. Practical piety, everyday godly living, practical piety is the product of sound theology.

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If your theology is messed up, your living, your practice is going to be messed up as well.

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In other words, the point is this, godly living is not mindless, thoughtless, heartless conformity to a list of do's and don'ts, such as you can wear basketball shorts on a basketball court, but you may not wear them outside on an outdoor basketball court.

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Okay, and it's just conformity to, you know, one man's fiat, one man's declaration of what you may or may not do, what you must and must not do.

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No, godliness thinks things through. Godliness, you know, thinks about how does doctrine apply to life, and if your theology is right, it's going to lead you to right conclusions in that regard.

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Number three, a third proposition, is that godliness is motivated by the reality of eternity.

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Godliness is motivated by the reality of eternity. So in 2 Peter 3, verses 10 and 11 says, the day of the

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Lord will come as a thief in the night. This is the reality of eternity, future eschatology, whatever.

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The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat.

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Both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. All right, that's future, that's truth regarding eternity.

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So then the next verse, verse 11 says, therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, here's the question, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?

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It's just thinking about, being aware of the truths of eternity and what that is all going to mean motivates us toward godliness.

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If you still have last week's handout, if you were here last Sunday and you have the handout, I broke that down in some other ideas, but for sake of time today,

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I won't go into that. Number four, proposition number four, godliness matures or grows and matures through effort, through effort.

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1 Timothy 4, 7, and 8 exercise, Paul tells Pastor Timothy, to exercise yourself unto godliness.

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You know, bodily exercise is profitable, it's good but in some things, but godliness is profitable for all things now and for eternity.

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So exercise yourself unto godliness. And then in chapter 6, verse 11, he says to pursue godliness.

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Again, he's writing to Pastor Timothy, he says to pursue godliness. Now, by the way, just because Paul is writing that to a pastor doesn't mean that this exercising toward godliness and the diligent pursuit of godliness is something limited to pastors.

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It is not. It's for every believer. It's what all believers need to do.

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Proposition number five, godliness is marked by evident effects.

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It makes a difference in your life. So for example, in 2 Timothy 3, 12,

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Paul says to Timothy, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

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So one of the evident effects of godliness can be trouble, can be trouble.

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So I think, for example, of this poor guy, the baker out in Colorado, he's trying to be godly in his practice.

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He's a baker. And he doesn't want to promote ungodly lifestyles.

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So this is the guy, Jack, what's his last name? Okay, you don't remember either.

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But he got in a heap of trouble a few years ago.

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He got sued, went to court, and over a few years of legal battles, he was finally exonerated, and he didn't have to bake cakes for same -sex couples.

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Well, now the latest thing, same guy, same guy. His convictions are known.

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His position as a Christian is known. He's trying to have his business reflect godly principles.

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He wants to be godly. So somebody came to him and said, I want you to bake a birthday cake for me.

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Okay, here are the colors. I want pink and blue. Okay, he's thinking, well, maybe there's twins or something, a boy and a girl twin, they have the same birthday.

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No, the customer explained, this is to celebrate a transgender thing, where my child is being transgendered from,

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I don't know, I don't remember if it was from a boy to a girl. It's not really happening, but anyway, and he said,

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I can't do that. Back to court, sued again, and a judge in Denver found that he was in violation of the state's anti -discrimination laws.

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So he's got to appeal that decision. Now, what's the problem here? Why is this guy suffering so much tribulation?

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Why is he suffering this kind of persecution? Because he let his convictions be made known. He's trying to, he's trying to practice godliness in his business, and it's gotten him into a heap of trouble.

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In 2 Peter 1, verses 6 and 7, another evident effect of godliness will be brotherly love.

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It will foster brotherly love. So Peter says, for this very reason, give all diligence, add to your faith, virtue, and so forth.

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He has this list of things to add to your faith, and the last of which is, the last couple things are, add to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love.

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And the guys who wrote the book that we're using as a foundation for this series said this, godliness causes a selflessness that enables believers to esteem others more highly than themselves and to submit to one another in the fear of God.

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So you read those commands of Paul's in the Pauline epistles, where we are to esteem others more highly than ourselves in the body of Christ.

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How do I do that? Godly living, godliness, holiness enables me and demonstrates itself in brotherly love.

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And then the sixth proposition that we shared last week is that godliness begins at home.

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Godliness begins at home. First Timothy chapter five, Paul is dealing with the care of widows in the congregation, in the church, and he says in verse three, to honor widows who are really widows, and he goes on in verse four to give some conditions.

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If any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents.

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This is good and acceptable for God. Verse five, he says, now she who is really a widow and left alone trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day.

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Verse four again, if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them, the children or the grandchildren, let them show, learn to show piety or godliness at home.

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And they show that godliness at home, by taking care of their elderly, widowed, loved one, relative, whether grandmother or parent.

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So godliness is not confined to the church, writers say, or just displayed in public.

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It must be the characteristic of our home life. It would need to be godly in public as well as in private.

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All right, now today I want to move from here to a discussion about distinguishing holiness, distinguishing sanctification.

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And it gets confusing in our casual thinking about the subject because the term, the word sanctification covers a broader spectrum of theological conversation than the doctrine of sanctification.

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Now, I hope I didn't lose you there, but let's learn about this.

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Let's distinguish this. This is theology, but it's important.

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You are theologians. Did you know that? Every one of you. If you know Christ as your Savior, you are a theologian.

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That is, you have thinking about God and what are the truths of God.

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So what we want to do in the time we have yet today is to distinguish between positional and progressive holiness.

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The theological terms are justification and sanctification.

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Here's the nutshell. Justification addresses the legality of the gospel.

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Sanctification addresses the effects of the gospel. And the two work together.

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They go hand in glove. You can't have one without the other. Justification addresses the legality of the gospel.

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Sanctification addresses the effects of the gospel. All right, so we want to look at some definitions here, and you have this on your handout.

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What is justification? This is a definition from the Westminster Confession of Faith.

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It says, justification is, quote, an act of God's free grace wherein he pardoneth all our sins and accepteth us as righteous in his sight only on the basis of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.

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All right, now that is a mouthful. And the Westminster divines, as they formulated these statements, they spent a lot of time wrangling over terminology and crystallizing as best they possibly could.

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So this is packed. This definition is packed. But let's make a few comments about this. Number one, justification is a legal act.

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A legal act. It's a one -time event. If you're a believer in Christ, it happened in the past.

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It happened at the point of your conversion. Justification, it's a one -time event.

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Secondly, notice in that definition that it is a declaration of God whereby he pronounces the guilty sinner to be pardoned and righteous.

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So it's an act of God's free grace wherein he pardons all of our sins.

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So he pronounces the sinner pardoned and he pronounces the sinner righteous.

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He accepts us as righteous in his sight. Well, on what basis?

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On what basis? Only for the righteousness or only on the basis of righteousness of Christ imputed to us.

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All right, now there's another theological word. It's one you need to know. It's an important idea. The concept, the truth of imputation.

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What does it mean to have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us?

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All right? It doesn't mean that you are all of a sudden, that justification, you are all of a sudden morally righteous.

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To say that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to you does not mean that when you are justified, you are now morally righteous as Christ is righteous.

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That's not what imputation means. Look at 2 Corinthians 5 21.

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You probably know this verse, but nevertheless, let's look at it. It's an important verse in the whole understanding of what takes place at justification.

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The word impute, to impute means to consider or to reckon.

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And you see this in verse 21 says, for he that is God made him

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Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us.

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And in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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So this verse is, this verse is telling us about imputation.

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And it's going in two directions. You see, the imputation is going in two directions. In one direction,

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God is imputing the sinner's guilt to Jesus. God made

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Jesus to be sin for us who knew no sin. Jesus had no sin.

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He's the sinless lamb of God. But God reckoned he considered

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Jesus. He considered our guilt to be Jesus. He put that guilt on Jesus.

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He imputed that guilt to Jesus. He considered him sin in our behalf.

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So imputation works one direction by God imputing the guilt of the sinner of you and me on Jesus.

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But then the other direction is God imputes the righteousness of Jesus to the believing sinner.

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So imputation, it is the reckoning, it is the considering of a thing.

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So let me read you this quote and listen carefully to get the sense of it and the significance of it.

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All right. Here's what Beaky and Barrett say. God, to summarize this,

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God regarded Christ, regarded Christ as guilty.

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Was he morally guilty? No, Christ was never morally guilty.

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But God regarded Christ as guilty and dealt with him accordingly.

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How so? The cross. God regarded Christ as guilty and dealt with him accordingly.

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And he regards the believer as righteous and deals with him accordingly.

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On the cross, God dealt with Christ in terms of his guilty people.

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So when Christ is on the cross, he's dying a sinner's death on the cross. He's dying.

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He's cursed, hanging on the cross, dying on the cross. He's dying a sinner's death on the cross.

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Is he a sinner? Was Jesus a sinner? No, no, no, no, no.

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Why is he dying a sinner's death? Because God imputed our sin guilt, the guilt of our sin upon Christ.

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And he's being dealt with on that cross accordingly. They go on.

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In justification, God deals with his people in terms of Christ.

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The believer's acceptance before God is in Christ, who is the beloved.

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Ephesians 1, 6 says, he has made us accepted in the beloved, that is, in Christ. The believer's acceptance before God is in Christ, the beloved.

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Therefore, here's the conclusion of this. Therefore, that standing before God can never change.

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Your standing before God as righteous can never change because the righteousness of Christ has been reckoned to you, been imputed to you.

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That standing, that position, that standing before God that can never change, it is neither diminished, it is neither diminished nor enhanced by your behavior, by what you do.

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So, in other words, God sees that you've sinned.

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And he says, okay, you've sinned. Now, you are no longer righteous in Christ because you've sinned.

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No. In justification, the righteousness of Christ has been imputed to you.

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Your standing, your position before God is unchanged in this regard.

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That's justification. All right? Now, let's look at sanctification.

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Sanctification, here's the definition on your handout. Sanctification is the work of God's free grace whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness.

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All right? Look at that again. Sanctification is the work of God's free grace whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness.

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All right? Now, that definition has two key truths to it. One of them is that sanctification is something that God graciously does in us.

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It is a work of His free grace. Sanctification is something that God graciously does in us.

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That's one truth. The second truth is that sanctification is something that we obediently do in response to what

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God does and in evidence of what God does.

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In other words, we cooperate with God in this work of sanctification.

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Let's turn to Leviticus chapter 20 and see this brought out in the

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Old Testament. Leviticus 20 and verses 7 and 8.

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So the Lord says to His people in verse 7, consecrate yourselves or set yourselves apart therefore and be holy for I am the

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Lord your God and you shall keep my statutes and perform them. All right?

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You see the human side? You see your responsibility on that side of it, right? Set yourselves apart and be holy.

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Be set apart for I am the Lord your God. And the first part of verse 8, you shall keep my statutes and perform them.

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That's your responsibility. But look at what the rest of the verse says. I am the

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Lord who sanctifies you. So both components here of the work of sanctification are brought out here in Leviticus chapter 20.

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It is something that God graciously does in us. I am the Lord who sanctifies you, sets you apart.

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But it is also something that we obediently do in response to God's work and as an evidence of God's work.

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We cooperate with Him. And when you take this all together, what we discover is that, what we have to realize is that this work is progressive.

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It's progressive. It is something that takes place, as our definition says, more and more.

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More and more. So it's not an all -at -once thing. So get that contrast between justification and sanctification.

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Justification has to do with your standing before God as righteous in Christ Jesus.

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That's a one -time thing. It's done. It never changes. Sanctification is the practical outworking of justification.

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And it is the ongoing process of God graciously working in you and you graciously working out what

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God is working in. I guess this is a good way to summarize that.

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Now let's come at the distinction here between justification and sanctification in another way.

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And as we look at it now, we're going to look at the word, not the doctrine of sanctification so much as the word sanctification set apart.

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And I think this may help us see this distinction in yet another way.

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So there are three key aspects of the word sanctification. What does that word mean?

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Does anybody remember just the root idea of it? To set apart.

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The word sanctification means to set apart. It means being set apart. So there are three aspects of this word sanctification, three aspects of this setting apart.

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One is positional sanctification. Position. That equates to what?

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We just talked about it. Your position before God. Justification, right?

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Positional sanctification is essentially equal to justification, all right?

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And I hope I'm not totally confusing you here, but let me illustrate it this way. You know about the

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Corinthian church, right? What's the one thing you know about the Corinthian church? Carnal.

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I mean, they were messed up on so many levels. And yet, in 1 Corinthians 1, as Paul opens this first letter to the church at Corinth, this is what he says.

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He says, to the church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus called saints.

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You are sanctified. You are saints. Now, were they acting like it?

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Were they behaving in totally holy, godly ways?

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No. But in terms of their position, positionally, they were set apart.

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Positionally, they were sanctified. So, our authors explain it this way. At regeneration, when you are regenerated, when

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God the Holy Spirit makes you alive, every believer is set apart unto

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God and is guaranteed full salvation. That's positional sanctification.

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A second aspect of sanctification, so positional sanctification is at the beginning of the

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Christian life, right? The second aspect of sanctification comes at the end of the

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Christian life, if you will, and we call it perfected sanctification. Perfected sanctification.

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This is that aspect of sanctification that Paul talks about in Ephesians 5 when he speaks of what

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Christ did for the church. Remember, husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and did what?

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Gave himself for her. Why? That he might present the church, his bride, to himself, a glorious church not having any spot or wrinkle.

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Question, do you know of any church like that? No. No.

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What's he referring to? He's referring to the time when the bride of Christ is presented to the bridegroom.

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He's looking off into the future. This is another way of talking about the glorification of the saints.

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Perfected sanctification is essentially equal to glorification when you are perfected.

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There are a couple aspects of that glorification too. When you die and you go to be with Christ, your spirit is made perfect.

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Your body is still lying in the grave, but in the resurrection, the body is perfected as well, is glorified as well.

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You have a glorified body and so shall we ever be with the Lord in that glorified state. You've got positional sanctification, which is basically equal to justification.

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You have perfected sanctification, which is basically equal to glorification.

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Then the third aspect of sanctification is the one that we're really wanting to zero in on in this series, and it's called progressive sanctification.

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Progressive sanctification. Let's look at the distinction between these three in this way.

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Positional sanctification deals with, it separates you from sin's penalty.

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You will never, ever pay the penalty of sin.

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Christ paid it for you. Positional sanctification deals with, separates you from the penalty of sin.

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Perfected sanctification separates you from the presence of sin.

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In glorification, you will never see sin again. Never.

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Progressive sanctification separates you from the power of sin.

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It progressively separates you from the power of sin. So, progressive sanctification has to do with our experience in this life of being separated from the power of sin in our daily lives.

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As the Westminster definition of sanctification says, we are enabled more and more to die unto sin.

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So, in regard to this, Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14,

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Hebrews 12, 14, says, pursue peace with all people and holiness.

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Pursue holiness without which no one will see the

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Lord. Pursue holiness. This is the progressive sanctification.

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We are to pursue this. What does this imply? Does it not imply effort?

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When you pursue something, you are focused on it. You are engaged in the acquisition of it.

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You are in pursuit of it. It implies effort. And it involves, by the verb tense here in this verse, it involves constant effort.

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Literally, he says, be pursuing holiness. Keep on keeping on in the pursuit of holiness.

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Constant effort. But it also, because this is in the form of a command, it also engages the will.

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You have to choose to obey this command. So, again, a summary here from our authors.

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They say progressive sanctification requires trust and obedience. We need to trust and obey.

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Keep that in mind when we sing the closing hymn this morning. We must watch this.

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Here's the two parts again, right? Progressive sanctification. God is graciously working in us.

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Progressive sanctification. We are obeying what God has given us to do. Progressive sanctification requires trust and obedience.

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We must trust what God has done in making us holy and what God is doing in making us holy.

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Paul appeals to that when he writes to the Thessalonians. He says, it is God who is working in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

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We must trust what God has done and we must obey what he commands in order to achieve that holiness, that progressive sanctification.

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So, let me conclude this section in this way. Although the word...

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Do I have this on your handout for you? I didn't bring a copy myself. Although the word sanctification, the word sanctification, it's like an umbrella term, an umbrella word that encompasses salvation from start to finish.

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All right? The word does. But the doctrine, when we're talking theology and we're dealing with the doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of sanctification, it concerns the application of the gospel during the journey of the

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Christian life from start to finish. The doctrine of sanctification, what we're going to be focusing in on the rest of this series, the doctrine of sanctification has to do with the journey of your

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Christian life, from the point of your justification to the point of your glorification. That journey and how you live that journey and how you progress in godliness in that journey, that's what the doctrine of sanctification is all about.

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So, on the back of your handout, I have this little chart. I hope it's helpful.

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It shows the key distinctions between justification, the doctrine of justification, and the doctrine of sanctification.

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You can go back and forth across those lines and see how the two doctrines are different.

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The two aspects of your salvation are different, justification and sanctification. All right.

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I hope that's in some way helpful and I hope it kind of wets our appetite for further study on this doctrine of sanctification.

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Let's pray. Father, I pray if nothing else this morning, we will have been reminded that we have a responsibility to pursue holiness, to pursue the living out of that which you are doing within us.

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And I pray that we would be obedient in that pursuit. This we ask in Jesus' name.