Tag: holiness

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Christian Living

Sanctification: a one-time gift of God? Or an on-going, life-long process?

A question came across my desk from a church member regarding the word sanctification:

In our Sunday School lesson, the author used the term “process of sanctification.” I have a problem with that phrase, because I believe we are sanctified only once – at the moment of our salvation. I believe sanctification is the initial act of God making us holy and setting us apart, but then we abide in Christ and continually grow in holiness. Can you help me understand this phrase – “process of sanctification”?

What would your answer have been to the question:

Is Sanctification a one-time gift or an on-going process?

photo of a question mark for this question on sanctificationHere is the answer I gave to my friend:

First, we need to define our terms. Because sometimes two people can be describing two different things using the same word. And other times two people find they are using two different words, but talking about the same thing. In this case, both words (holiness and sanctification) are being used to define something that occurs once and something that is a process.

You indicated holiness means both a one-time event and a life-long process. The author of the Sunday School lesson was using the word sanctification to mean the same thing. That is because the definition of sanctified is “to make holy unto God.” And so the words are tied together and carry a very similar meaning. Here is some information from a Bible Dictionary:

The word “sanctification” comes from the biblical root words that are translated as “holy,” “hallow,” “hallowed,” “holiness,” “consecrate,” “saint,” “sanctify,” and  “sanctification.”  As all these words are translations of the same root, no one of them can be treated adequately without reference to the others.

Therefore, you are right when you say that the word Holy carries two meanings:

  1. We are Made Holy to God by Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross, AND
  2. We are abiding in Christ as we strive to walk in a Holy manner.

And theologians use the exact same argument for the word Sanctification:

  1. We are Sanctified (made Holy) to God by Jesus on the Cross, AND
  2. We are in the process of Sanctification (becoming more holy) as we abide in Him.

From the Bible Dictionary again:

Sanctification is the matter of a life and not of a moment. A life may be consecrated (or sanctified) in a moment, providing the right relation to God with the person now in saving fellowship with Him. The life is thus made holy in principle. But the real making holy will occur over the whole life of the person. It is nothing less than the constant transformation by the Spirit of Christ until we, “speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, who is the head” (Ephes. 4:15).

photo of walking a path as a symbol of sanctification being a life-long processSo, to sum up – Your understanding of the way the word Holy should be seen in two different senses is the same way that Sanctification typically is seen, because the two words are tied together in meaning.

This is why it is important that we define our terms when speaking! As we talk these things out, we often find we are in close agreement. Unfortunately, many people become adversarial over such issues and break fellowship with other, damaging their relationship. Had they taken the time to patiently talk it out, they may have found out that they agreed on the issue after all!photo of two people angry with each other - symbol of us arguing over words like sanctification

Thus ends my response to my friend. But here is my question for us now:

  • Have you been Sanctified (Made Holy) by Jesus’ Death on the Cross?
  • Are you being Sanctified (growing in Holiness) by abiding in Christ now?
  • And in our adversarial society, will you commit to patiently talk to people before jumping to conclusions about what you think they mean, so as to maintain good relationships with others? (Part of our God-given role as Ambassadors of Reconciliation!)

As you go out today into the wide world full of the unholy, live as a person sanctified and set apart by God for His kingdom purposes. Be an ambassador of light and love for Him!

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Categories
Christian Living

Sorry For the Month Long Hiatus! Maybe I Need More Conviction.

Im-Back-But-Where-Have-I

Yeah, Where HAVE I been? I’m not quite sure… It seems like the first month of 2016 has disappeared in the blink of an eye. Am I losing my mind? Ha!

My last post was on January 1, explaining that I was going to cut back just a bit on my posting this year, but I certainly didn’t plan to go a whole month without posting anything.

Instead of posting, I ended up spending a lot of time catching up on some relationship-building, especially with one good friend who was back in the States for the month. I will say that it was quite nice to be off of social media for the month. I think breaks like that can be quite healthy as we change up our routines and get off the “fast-track.” But my friend has headed back south to another country, and my life is getting back to its normal routine. Therefore, it’s time to get back into writing and sharing some of my thoughts. So here goes…

When Was The Last Time You Were Convicted?

I’m not talking about being convicted by the justice system of our nation (which doesn’t require a heart change). I’m talking about being convicted by God Himself – a conviction that causes deep repentance in your heart and mind.

“Conspicuously absent today in many churches is conviction concerning sin…. The average believer says, “Yes, I trust Christ.” But he has no real conviction of sin in his life at all. It is absent in contemporary church life. It is seldom that we come forward with tears – convicted of our sin before a holy God that cannot accept us as we are….

“Someone has said that the modern pulpit has become a place where a mild-mannered man gets up before a group of mild-mannered people and urges them to be more mild-mannered…. No wonder the world has passed by the church. We don’t need reforming; we need to be regenerated. We need to be born again.”

These two paragraphs by J. Vernon McGee remind us that we need convicting. I’m not sure what sin or sins you have been struggling with lately, but pray to God that you would see your sin as He sees it. Ask Him to help you be truly heart-broken over the ways that you do not imitate Christ.

May we truly know the conviction of the Lord that leads us to repentance and into more holiness.

Categories
Christian Living

Things We Get Wrong, part 1.

#1. God Cannot Look On Sin
You’ve probably heard that statement before.
Maybe you’ve even said it yourself.
But is it accurate?

man hiding his face symbolizing God not looking on sin - something we get wrong

Let me ask it another way…

Can God save sinners?
Of course He can. Certainly So.
This is one of the key beliefs of Christians. A key teaching of the church.

But… how could that be possible if our opening statement is true? How can God save sinners if He can’t look on sin? or if He can’t hear the prayer of a sinner? How could He save a sinful person if He must turn His back on them until they are righteous?
Hmmm… maybe this statement is one we’ve gotten a bit wrong.

Now it is true that God will not allow sin into His eternal, heavenly kingdom. But sin in our lives does not necessitate that God turns His back on us. Instead, it means that we have broken our fellowship with Him, not our relationship.

As a parent, when your child does something “wrong” by deliberately disobeying you does it damage your fellowship with the child? Yes. But does it break your relationship – such that you are no longer the child’s parent until he/she comes and apologizes? Do you turn your back on them until they confess their wrongdoing? Of course not. It doesn’t break your relationship… you are still his/her Mom or Dad. Your child is still a beloved son/daughter. It is the same with God. When we are rebellious, it damages our fellowship, but it doesn’t change our relationship. He is still the loving father who doesn’t turn His back on us. Rather He reaches out to us.

Many of us have heard that the moment when Jesus took all the sins of the world and became our sin, God the Father turned His back on Jesus, God the Son. It is true that at that moment, God could not retain full fellowship with Jesus, who became sin. But He did not turn His back on Jesus… In fact, Psalm 22 – a prophetic psalm of the crucifixion of the Messiah, indicates that God did not reject Jesus nor did He hide His face from Jesus. Jesus willingly took on our sin and so willingly felt what it was like to be without the intimate fellowship of God the Father.

But let us be careful that we don’t say things that let others think that God might turn His back on them.

What a terrible thought! …That God might turn His back on me.

From the very first sin that happened in the Garden of Eden, we find that God doesn’t hide Himself from sinners. Instead He pursues them. He is the One who pursued Adam & Eve who were hiding after their sin. Had God not pursued those two sinners, it is unlikely they would have interacted with Him again. So even in the midst of my willful sin, God pursues me and calls me to return to Him. He pursues me to restore fellowship with me.

God is holy.
God will not let sin into His eternal kingdom.
Therefore He gives us Jesus to provide us with righteousness to cover our unrighteousness. While we were still sinners, God looked upon us with love and sent Jesus to show us the full measure of His love for us in sin.

God’s mercy is huge. God’s grace is unfathomable.
His righteousness is big enough to cover our sin.
But let’s strive to hate our sin like God hates it.

“God started the sacrificial system for at least two reasons. First, He desired His people to loathe sin. With the constant stream of bloody sacrifices offered by the priests, people were confronted continually with the seriousness of His holiness and their sin. Every time they sinned, something had to die. Second, the sacrificial system was intended to help people long for a Savior whose sacrifice would be complete and perfect. The system was elaborate, but it was never intended to be sufficient; instead, it pointed to something much deeper. It was designed to be a tutor to teach people they could never fulfill the law.” (Matt Chandler, ‘Creature of the Word’)

On this, the week we remember the cross and the empty tomb, let’s thank Jesus for fulfilling the law for us… for becoming that perfect and complete sacrifice. And let’s thank Him for looking on our sin, hating it, and doing something amazing about it.

Categories
Christian Living

The Death of Temptation

If there is one thing I’d like to see the grim reaper take – it’d have to be my temptation.

Ugh… But I still find that temptation is very much alive in my life.
As I have grown more spiritually mature, I do find that I am quicker to recognize the temptation and flee from it early, but I still have the desire within me to flirt with temptation for too long, allowing it to lead me to sin.

My attitudes, my thought processes, my grumbling and complaining, my desire to please me.
It doesn’t take much, and that temptation grabs hold, and I enjoy the feeling for just a bit too long, and then… blammo… sin. and guilt. and shame.

But could it possibly be different?

I recently read that through the power of God in transforming us, we can actually experience the death of temptation. That the power of temptation should be fading in our lives. I have been learning that this is true in my own life. It is not that temptation has disappeared, but as I stand strong against temptation in an area of my life today, it becomes easier to stand strong again tomorrow. And after I do it two days in a row, the third day is even easier. And so on and so on.

“True salvation should always…encourage a conscious rejection of ungodliness and lead to holier living. A profession of Christ must be accompanied by a choice of godly living.”

That is the normal pattern of the Christian life. Are you normal?

“God doesn’t measure normal in relation to the world…. When God speaks of normal, He speaks along these lines: Jesus is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. He is the most normal person ever to walk on planet Earth. You are a Christian, my child. Are you walking normally like My Son, Jesus?

“…Too often we call God’s ways confining and much too hard and tight. Why not just call them what they really are — normal? We must be fervent and anxious to become normal — as defined by Jesus, not by us.”

“Wherever the Spirit points, choose change. And above all, intercede for yourself.”

Great point. Jesus, in His moments of greatest temptation in the garden, also prayed for Himself. We should pray for God to make us more normal!

And what should we be praying for ourselves?
“Do you know what my deepest cry to God has become, the cry that burns, the one that draws sobs from my heart and tears from my eyes every time? Oh God, please don’t leave me like this. I want more of You. Please don’t leave me like this.”

(quotes from Arterburn, Stoeker, and Yorkey in Every Man’s Challenge)

Categories
Christian Living

Choosing To Stand With God Will Separate You From Others

“The man who really loves God can do as he chooses, for if he really loves God he will choose to do the will of God.”

The problem is that if you choose the will of God, if you stand with God, you can quickly find yourself put outside some of the circles of people in which you were previously included. The issue is that your new ethic of living morally condemns others without you saying a word. Even though you don’t look down on others, even though you don’t condemn them with your words, nor attempt to persuade them to follow your choices, just by simply living for God many people will feel uncomfortable being around you. It is because they are already convicted, but they have been able to silence that still small voice. But now they find that when they are around you who no longer engage in the same behaviors, it makes it clear to them again that they are not living properly. So they pull away and no longer include you. It has been that way from the beginning.

“Men always view with suspicion people who are different. Conformity, not distinctiveness, is the way to a trouble-free life. So the more early Christians took their faith seriously the more they were in danger of crowd reaction. Thus, simply by living according to the teachings of Jesus, the Christian was a constant unspoken condemnation of the pagan way of life. It was not that the Christian went about criticizing and condemning and disapproving, nor was he consciously self-righteous and superior. It was simply that the Christian ethic in itself was a criticism of pagan life.”

It is still this way today. As you set yourself apart in holiness and your light shines more and more brightly, those who have actions that are “dark” will shrink away from you. You find that you are no longer included in some of the water cooler talk, because they know that you won’t laugh at some of the off-color statements. You no longer get invited to certain events after work, because they know that you won’t join in with some of the activities. But remember that as you stand strong in your faithfulness to Christ, when someone encounters a crisis of belief and look for an escape from ungodly living, they will know who to come to – You!

You can help turn the world upside down, just as the early disciples did. “In Rome, Caesar worship was made universal and compulsory for every person within the empire…. On a certain day in the year every Roman citizen had to come to the Temple of Caesar and had to burn a pinch of incense there, and say: “Caesar is Lord.” When he had done that, he was given a certificate to guarantee that he had done so….

“Caesar worship was primarily a test of political loyalty; it was a test of whether or not a man was a good citizen. If a man refused…he was automatically branded as a traitor and a revolutionary. Exaltation of the emperor, then, created a problem for the Christians. They had not failed to pray for the emperor, but they would not pray to him in private or in public. How could a Christian compromise with this?

“Who was worthy to ascend the throne of the universe and direct the course of history? Caesar, or Christ?
Thus, Christian worship and Caesar worship met head-on. The one thing that no Christian would ever say was: “Caesar is Lord.” For the Christian, Jesus Christ and he alone was Lord. To the Roman the Christian seemed utterly intolerant and insanely stubborn; worse, he was a self-confessed disloyal citizen. Had the Christians been willing to burn that pinch of incense and to say formally, “Caesar is Lord,” they could have gone on worshiping Christ to their heart’s content; but the Christians would not compromise. That is why Rome regarded them as a band of potential revolutionaries threatening the very existence of the empire.”

We still seem that way to those whose lifestyles do not honor God – utterly intolerant and insanely stubborn. But we need to stand strong and not compromise. Christian worship and Caesar worship met head-on… and we know who won! As we stand strong in the morality of God, we can also cause a revolution that turns the world upside-down for Christ!

(quotes taken from Bruce Shelley, Church History In Plain Language)