Santification and what it means to us as Christians Paul writes: Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you and He also will bring it to Sanctification, we believe, is inseparable from justification. Justification refers to the very salvation event whereas sanctification refers to the process of spiritual development. And we believe that justification and sanctification are inseparable so those who were truly justified are being sanctified. Those who experienced the saving event are in spiritual progress and it shows up in their lives But I want you to do with me a little bit of a study on sanctification. Lets start with point number one, the nature of sanctification When we talk about being sanctified Well look at the verse, 1Thessalonians 5:23,24, verse 23, and please note the word sanctify here It defines action, activity, process, progress. God says, All right, Ive bought you, Ive paid a price for you, Ive redeemed you, you now belong to Me, set yourself apart to me. Thats why in Romans 6 Paul says, You no longer are slaves to sin, you are now slaves to God, therefore do not any longer yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness but yield your members as instruments of holiness. God bought you and He wants you set apart to His use. Well, when you were saved you were sanctified. At the moment of your salvation you were set apart from Satan unto God. You were set apart from darkness unto light. You were set apart from death unto life. You were set apart from hell unto heaven. You were set apart from the dominion and from the destruction of sin to the dominion and the glory of God. You were set apart. There is an element of sanctification that occurred at your salvation Furthermore you received a new nature. Old things were passed away and behold, new things have come. You now have the life of God within you. That holy life resides in you, the indwelling Holy Spirit has taken up residence in you. You have the holy life of God within. You have become a partaker of the divine nature. So you have in a very real sense been set apart unto God. You now love what is right and hate what is wrong. You find yourself desiring to obey the will and the Word of God. That is because you have a new standing. You have with that new standing a righteous nature Is a principle of grace savingly wrought whereby the heart becomes holy and is made after Gods own heart, The nature of sanctification, separation from sin to holiness. The source is God. And He Himself is at work in you to bring it about To be preserved complete without blame...to be preserved complete without blame. Preserve means kept. Paul is saying, God, keep them...hes really praying for their perseverance...keep them sanctified, keep them moving on the path of holiness
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 00:57:52 +0000