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Lion Heart ENCOURAGE - What God asks of us Pt3b - Sanctification

Intro:

Hey Man of God! No discussion about Holiness would be complete without a dive into sanctification. And so in short succession, I’m posting a sub-section to Holiness: Sanctification.


Also, please bear with me here, these Lion Heart ENCOURAGE posts are not meant to be theological expositions, and doctrinal theses. These are purely postings to encourage you my brethren. To encourage you on your journey to knowing and loving Jesus more deeply. If I’ve achieved that, then I’m happy. In the Lion Heart ENCOURAGE posts we certainly seek to remain biblically accurate as we go about encouraging you on your Jesus journey. Stay blessed as we pursue the face of the KING.


Encouragement:

Further to the previous post on Holiness, and my emphasis on God doing the changing work internally, I also want to balance that with our part of the exchange. Sanctification. So this is sort of a ‘Part B’ to Holiness.

You see, God does a work in us, without Him this change cannot take place. But this inner work needs to find its way out. His inner working needs to manifest in an exterior change.


This is Sanctification. Sanctification literally means ‘making holy’.


But just before we go there, for this just joining, when we look across the broad landscape of scripture we can see these 4 ‘responses’ that God asks of us. He requires from us:

  • Love

  • Faithfulness

  • Holiness

  • Trust

 

If you’re just joining this mini-series please use the links below to catch right up.




Let’s talk about sanctification and holiness especially as it relates to the gospel and motivation. The Mosaic law, the 10 commandments, was established to bring about an external sanctification. It’s important to understand that although Jesus came to fulfil the law, He did not abolish it. The Christian life is not a lawless life!


The difference between the 10 commandments, versus life in Christ Jesus is that in Jesus change comes from within and not from without. Jesus changes us internally, and then those changes translate to an outward holiness. This is sanctification in the New Covenant.


Whether written on tables of stone, or the tables of our hearts, the law demands both inner holiness, inner change as well as external righteousness and behavioural change, and I say that what the gospel does is it gives me especially a new profoundly new motive to change.

Jesus radically changes things between Old and New Covenants.


Once we understand the gospel our motivations aren't fear based, they're delight based. A desire to delight Him and please Him. I know that this might sound foreign to some, and this is ok. Take heart, this process of knowing and delighting in Him also takes time. It doesn’t happen all at once. We’re all on that journey!


Sanctification under the law was an externally forced conformance. Sanctification in Jesus is an internal motivated transformation. In the New Covenant external righteousness follows internal transformation.


However, it takes effort. Even in the Kingdom of God things are not cheap. The reason they are valuable, is because something of value was exchanged for it. Real change comes with a real cost. The outworking of His internal transformation will require you to put to death the deeds of the flesh. To crucify it! He doesn’t do the crucifying of your flesh, you need to do that.


But it needs to start internally. I can’t emphasis this enough. The Law could not change our hearts from the outside in! Real change is an outflowing of what has already happened internally.


Sanctification is the visible fruit of a righteous root.


What are you rooted in? As Jesus said “You shall know them by their fruit”. If your faith ain’t in Jesus, if you’re rooted in something else, the fruit you bare won’t be holiness.


May I briefly list the typical ‘phases/steps’ of this process:

  1. Jesus reveals Himself to us as Lord and Saviour

  2. Secondly, we see Him as He is. When we see Him, we see our need for salvation and that it is not found within ourselves. We surrender. We repent

  3. Repentance is on-going

  4. We pursue Him, we behold Him. We are changed into His likeness

  5. The process continues of dying to self, putting off the old man, and putting on the new man

And so the journey of being formed into His likeness unfolds.


Righteousness was inputted to us by Grace through Faith.  This inputted righteousness brings us in right standing with God. It’s not our efforts, but His work. Now that we are righteous before God, we respond. God always initiates, and we respond. We respond out of love.


Sanctification is the sign of salvation, but not the cause!


At this junction I’d like to add that there are some complications to this process of change. The process of being changed into His image is not without challenges. You see, sin has an effect. A negative effect. Coming to Jesus doesn’t just magically remove the earthy consequences of sin. His sacrifice removes the eternal consequences of sin, but the earthy consequences of sin still need to be worked through and dealt with. These ‘sin effects’ are a challenge to our walk with Christ. It’s these effects that trip us up, that slow us down, and that cause our sanctification process to be hindered. Don’t loose heart. Don’t grow weary of weeding out the results of the sins of the past.


To finish off today's post, I’d like to tell a story: some years ago a Pastor was talking to a woman after church. She was just coming to grips with the idea of “I'm saved by Grace and Faith and not by my works” and she said to the pastor that “I used to go to church years ago and when I came up in that church I never heard that you were saved by Grace and Faith, I always heard you were saved by being a good person.”


She exclaimed “Why haven't I heard this, why don't more churches teach salvation by Grace through Faith”. The Pastor asked her what she thought was the difference between the two teachings: Salvation thought faith, and salvation based on works.


She started by saying that ‘Grace is scary’. The pastor asked what she meant? She went on to say that "if you're saved by works there's a limit to what God can ask of you. You're like a taxpayer you've paid your taxes you paid your dues, and He could ask certain things of you but not anything.

But if I'm really saved by Grace because of what Jesus has done, there's no limit to what He could ask of me and my obedience would have to be unconditional, I would need to surrender my whole heart."


That’s it for now, we’ll delve into the others next time.


Journey Groups:

Thank you for those who joined our Journey Group this past Sat!!  Please reach out to me if you need more info about the next Journey Group: info@hopenation.faith


If this has blessed you, please forward it to another.


Your Brother in Christ,

Stanley 

 

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