let's pray. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your goodness and your grace toward us. We thank you for your Holy Spirit that guides us every moment of every day, Lord, without your presence, without your guidance and help, we would be utterly lost. And so we thank you for your goodness. We thank you for your grace. We pray that as tonight we look at the biblical doctrine of sanctification which may initially seem somewhat obscure to people that people would see that it really is such a neat thing in a core teaching of the Bible and that people would be encouraged by it and would be enlightened as we look at these different passages of Scripture that talk about your plan of molding us and shaping us into the image of your Son Jesus. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, everybody. If you missed the initial announcement and you are here for officer training purposes, you are in the right place. And so there's a sign up in the back in Scott Brown. Are you taking rule back there? Scott Brown's taking rule. You may want to sign up to you, but just make sure that you're credited and accounted for. Let's get started. Okay,
well, I wanted to start off with some recommended reading from last week that we didn't quite get to. I sometimes forget that at the very end. If you're interested in reading a little bit more about justification which we talked about last week, I just picked up this book. It is phenomenal. It's called the Christian faith, a systematic theology for pilgrims on the way. It's pretty heavy. It's pretty heavy. But I'm telling you, this is a phenomenal, phenomenal book. I do love to read, but I'm not, you know, there are things that people recommend to read to me that are heavy and boring. And this is not one of them, not one. I got this last week and I sat down for about five minutes to start reading before lunch. And an hour later, I looked up and thought, oh my goodness, you know what, what happened? I mean, it's so good. I mean, the section they have in here on justification is so good, so, so, so good that it's moving. And so if you need a book like this and just want to reference or something, the Christian faith, a systematic theology for pilgrims on the way, brand near, just got it last week, just came out last week and I really encourage you to read it. My court was one of my professors in seminary and just a really great guy. And also, if you are more interested in, we talked a little bit about sort of alternative views of justification that are sort of floating around there. And if you're interested in those in particular, they're sort of, we didn't really get into them too deeply because it's sort of like diving into a very deep and thick morass as you sort of try to examine all these other views. But if you're kind of curious about that, you've heard about, oh, there's some kind of controversy about justification or anti-ride and what's he doing. Mike Horton, who wrote that book also has a series of blog posts on his website, whitehorsen.org. And if you don't listen to that, it's a great resource too. Whitehorsen is basically NPR for theology stuff. It's him and three other guys that are pastors, one's a Baptist, one's a Lutheran. He's reformed and they sort of sit around and just talk about stuff. It's a great, great resource. And he's got a series of blog posts that he did called right Wednesdays where every week he sort of did a progressive review of right's new book justification. So if you're curious about that, it's a really great resource. And he explains it a lot better and more thoroughly than I can, maybe in this venue. Okay, well, last week we talked about justification. And that is the doctrine that God justifies the wicked. So I'm going to review with you and we'll see how well you remember. Okay, now we said this, justification is an blank of God's free grace. Just shout it out if you know it. It is an act. Why is it significant the justification is an act of God's free grace? If it is an act, what is it distinguished from? A work or a process of God's free grace, right? So it is God's act of free grace at which then leads us to wherein he blank all our sins, forgives or partens in the words of the confession. So that's the negative aspect he takes our sin away from us. And then there's also the positive aspect he accepts us as blank in his sight, righteous in his sight. So good. You see that? It's a declaration. God takes our sins away. He says, you are righteous. Only for the righteousness of Christ blank to us,
given to us, or the word we talked about last week is imputed to us. What is the difference between imputed and infused? Can you tell me? Remember, the IV is the hyperdermic needle. Right, imputed means credited, given. If you were in the next 20, 30 years to go home and meet the Lord and you want it to give me your inheritance, you would impute that inheritance to me. It was not mine. It was freely given to me and credited to my account. But if something is infused, well then grace becomes a substance that's sort of injected in your bloodstream. And the problem with infused substances is, well they eventually, they peter out. It's like gas in your car. If you get that gas up of God's grace, it eventually runs out and you got to keep going back from more grace. But in justification, the Bible shows that God imputes the righteousness of Christ to us. So he simply gives it to us as a gift. It's not something that we have to do in order to earn, at least this to our last point, it is received by what alone? By grace alone, but through faith. Right, so the only thing that is required to receive the gift of justification, the gift of having our sins removed from us, the gift of receiving Christ's perfect righteousness is faith. And faith is not a work. It's not the asterisk there that says, well that's the one thing that you need to do. Even faith, the scripture says, is a gift of God. And so from start to finish, what God does for us is purely of grace. Grace, not of works, so that none of us may boast. Okay, we talked about last week the justification removes the legal barrier that separates sinful human beings from a righteous God. Okay, if you remember that good, if you don't, just sort of pretend. It makes me feel better. The new, that new status we said creates a new relationship. And that new relationship is adoption into God's family. Whereas our sin created shame and alienation, God's justifying grace creates love and acceptance, a new family where God goes from being a judge who stands in condemnation of us to a father, loves us and embraces us. We talked about that a little bit last week, how when Adam and Eve first sinned in the garden, what did they do? They went and hid, right, because their relational, their relation to God, which was one as a loving father to his children, was broken. And so it's not merely a legal barrier that stands between us and a holy God, justification also bridges the gap, or actually through adoption, bridges the gap through that relationship, which is broken. Okay, good, good, you guys are, you're on top of it. Now, that leads us to a question that we started to ask last week, but we're going to get in a little bit more this week. If God justifies the wicked, and we said that last week, how important is holiness? Paul asked the question this way in Romans 6-1, he said, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? And we'll find that is the perennial question of the Christian church. If God is a God who justifies the wicked, well, what do we do with ethics? What do we do with morality? What do we do with holiness? All of these passages in the scripture that seem to say, we are called to live holy lives. What do we do with those things? Do we have any motivation for living holy lives? If God justifies the wicked, does living as becomes a follower of Jesus Christ, as all of you have said in your membership vows? Does that even really matter? Okay, let's look. Well, Paul says, of course, that it does matter. Our new status of justification and adoption, it really changes everything. Since Christ died for our sin, Paul explains that we are to die to sin. Since Christ was raised from the dead, we are to walk in newness of life. And Christ's death and resurrection frees us from slavery to sin and his free people. Paul says it's unfathomable that we would go back to the bondage in slavery of sin. So holiness does in fact matter. So how do we live as justified, adopted followers of Jesus Christ in a fallen world? How do we relate to the world around us that is very much fallen, filled with sin, and we live in it, but we're supposed to be separate from it. How do we do this? Well, let's consider some possibilities, some possible paths to holiness. In a previous generation of American Christianity, it was common for Christians to try to live holy lives by condemning the culture and separating from it as much as possible. Now, don't be too harsh on this view initially if you're biased against it, because it does have seemingly some scriptural support. The theme verse for this view comes from 1 John 2, 15, which says, Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And so many thought that possibly a path to holiness would be to condemn the world, to separate from it and not to participate in it. My grandmother told me every day of her life that she would never play cards. And I always asked her, why will you not play cards? She would play other games. She just said, cards are bad. And that's what people in the world do. We don't do that. So, that was an example of her living out that verse and not being of the world and pursuing holiness by condemning what was in many ways a negative influence in her society, gambling, drunkenness, other things along those lines. Now, while many initially favored this approach, this path to holiness ultimately proves problematic. While we are called to live righteous lives, Jesus also calls believers to be salt and light to the world, which presumes that we are in fact in it. And we need to interact with it. Paul notes that while we should separate ourselves from the sexually immoral, the greedy, swindlers and idolaters in the church, he says also that we should not separate ourselves from these people outside the church since then you would need to go out of the world. He says it would just really matter effectively. Well, of course you would never separate yourself from these people outside in the world because really where would you go? I guess apparently they had not yet developed the concept of Christian softball teams and all the rest. We can do that now, but back then they just played softball with the kids in the empire. Now, given the problems with total cultural rejection, subsequent generations of Christians sought to live holy lives by copying the culture and adding a Christian twist to what was already popular. This was a big thing when I was growing up. Since it's sinful to listen to Motley crew pictured on the right, well listen to the Christian version Striper on the left. See, you know they're Christians because there's a Bible verse on the front of their album, but they really dress the same, kind of act the same. One screams about the devil, the other screams about Jesus, but kind of sonically they're very similar to one another. It's sort of like buying shoes from Payless shoe source. They look a lot like Nike's, they're pretty much the same, they're just a little bit of a different twist to it. Okay, reacting against the flood of often cheesy and embarrassing Christian copies of secular cultural products unleashed by the copying culture approach to holiness, a new generation of Christians intellectuals primarily sought to live holy lives in the world by critiquing the culture. You'll see here a picture of Francis Schaeffer. He really was the leader of this approach. He and his wife Edith at the at Libre and the Swiss Alps, they sought holiness through a deeper engagement with our fallen world in order to be both holy disciples and missionary evangelists at the same time. As you see they sort of the reactions swinging the other way. Well, ultimately the path to critiquing the culture as a path to holiness proved to intellectually taxing for most believers. Really is a hard thing to do, plus I noted here, did really do it well. I think you got to have a really cool goatee that you can stroke and maybe learn to smoke a pipe, so a lot of people did really get into critiquing the culture. That really never never caught on that well. And so many Christians largely settled on simply consuming the culture. Today Christians generally go to the same movies as our neighbors. We listen to the same music, we use the same curse words when we're frustrated, and we get practical advice about what's good and useful from the same sources. Oprah for the ladies, ESPN for the guys, and we mix in a little bit of our favorite 24-7 cable news channel, sort of round out our perspective on the world that we live in. Seemingly exhausted by efforts to pull ourselves up by our own moral bootstraps, many Christians have long since abandoned dreams of being in the world but not of the world, and have instead settled into the unsettling reality that many Christians today are, in fact, of the world, but ironically not in the world. Our lack of holiness expressed in deep love for our neighbors is not lost on the world. They do, in fact, notice this, and we find ourselves in a spiritual crisis as individuals and as a church. We find ourselves often treading water at best, sometimes sinking and atrophying at worst. That's where we find ourselves. Is there a way forward? Must we choose between being in the world as missionaries in evangelists or being not of this world disciples? Well, the way forward is the biblical doctrine of sanctification, true holiness through true faith in Jesus Christ. Let's unpack that a little bit. What is sanctification? If I were to ask you to define that, what would you initially say based simply on the word? Even if you'd never heard it in a context, what would you think that sanctification might mean? Set apart. What else? Set apart but not ostracized. So what are some things in the Bible that were sanctified? Think particularly in the Old Testament. Days of Moses, the building of the tabernacle and the temple, what was sanctified? The ark? What else? You're right. Yeah, really, everything in the tabernacle that there's plates and bowls and sensors, and all of these things were set apart for a holy use. They were sanctified. Now let's look at why that is, why we use that term. Well, in both the Hebrew and the Greek texts of the Bible, the root of the verb translated to sanctify is to separate. Now do you see how how that fits into what we're talking about here? These instruments which were just plates and bowls and candle sensors, I could find anywhere else in ancient Israel were separated from common use to be put to a special use by God and for his worship. So let's let's look at that. When God sanctifies us, he sets a support for his own use. This is why sanctification is said to be in the shorter catechism, a work of God's free grace. Consider Jesus' words in John 15, 16. It really illustrates this well. Jesus says, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide. So that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. Do you see that connection in there? In sanctification, God separates us from ordinary use for God's use. He says, I chose you, I appointed you, I sanctified you, set you so that you can go bear good fruit of work, so obedience. Okay. We see it also in 2 Thessalonians, 2 Thirteen, but we ought always to give thanks to God for your brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you. He sanctified you. He set you apart as the first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. Sanctification is definitive in the sense that God definitively separates us and makes us holy. Do you see that? Does that make sense? Okay. Now, why is it so important to stress God's definitive work in sanctification? Why is it so important for us to dwell on the fact that God takes people and things in the Old Testament, but people in our context separates them and says, I have you for a holy use. Why is it so important that we would stress that? Well, as Christians, there's a tendency to think about justification as God's work for us and then sanctification as our work for God. Have you ever thought about it that way, if you've sort of studied these words before? I have to be honest, I sort of thought about it that way. Well, justification is what God does for me and sanctification is what I do for God. Well, that's problematic. As a consequence, many Christians believe that the gospel is really only important for the early stages of our Christian life. Once we've been saved, it's now up to us to really open that Bible and mine it for moral advice on how to live moral lives. Does that make sense? So in this view, if we don't see that it is God who initially sanctifies us and sets us apart for good works, we're liable to try to rest on our own efforts and the gospel then becomes not the source of everything that we do, not the center of our life. The plate thing that takes root deepest in our heart, it becomes the first hurdle that we go over and root to sort of the deeper, more important things like how to live your daily life. You see that? Okay, let's continue. In contrast to this, Paul writes, Galatians 3.3, are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
Holiness is not simply a matter of our own moral striving. It's the process of living holy lives because God has made us holy. Do you see that? Our progressive sanctification of living holy lives flows from God's making us holy and setting us apart or definitive sanctification. Now this leads us to the second point about sanctification. The sanctification is both definitive and progressive. What do I mean by that? The short of catechism says is a work of God's grace, where God calls believers to become more and more who they already are in Christ. Does that make sense? We're called to be more and more who we already are in Christ. And remember, we talked about justification and adoption being acts of God's grace. Well, sanctification here's described as a work of God's grace. It's not simply a definitive declaration that this has happened, but it's an ongoing process that the Holy Spirit does in our hearts. We are no longer in Adam, but in Christ. And so our lives are now to be characterized not by law breaking, but by law keeping, specifically by love, which both Jesus and Paul say is the fulfillment of the law. Unlike justification and adoption, sanctification is a process where we daily take up our cross and follow Jesus. Although we are not saved by works, Ephesians 2.9 and 10 tells us very clearly that we are saved for works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So it's an ongoing process. It's rooted in God's definitive work of sanctification, setting us apart for His holy use, and being set apart, being made holy where to live holy lives in keeping with what God has done. So how do we grow in holiness? If our own moral striving will never produce true holiness, how does God sanctify us? How do we grow in God's grace? God uses the gospel. God uses the gospel to sanctify us, sanctify us, His word of grace. Let's look at that. What do they mean by that? In John 17 and 17, the high priestly prayer of Jesus, which we're going to get to in a few weeks here in our series through the book of John on Sunday mornings, Jesus prays, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Do you see what he's saying there? He's saying that we become more holy as the word of God draws us to Christ who is the word made flesh. In Christ, we find the fullness of God's sacrificial love that allows us to sacrificial love other people. Do you see how the gospel becomes for us a source and power for sanctification? In baptism, we have a picture of the gospel's cleansing power and a reminder that we have died with Christ and the sprinkling of Christ's blood is vastly superior to the blood of goats and bulls in sanctifying since it purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. You see that? Baptism as a visible word provides a picture of the gospel and so when we look back and we remember our baptism, we see that we have been cleansed, we have died with Christ, we have risen with Christ as Paul says in Romans 2 and so we can walk in newness of life because of what he's done for us. In the Lord's Supper, we have a picture of Christ's work and reconciling us to God so that we who were enemies can now dine with the King. That's part of the point of the Lord's Supper is that there's a table there. There's not an altar in front of the church because the sacrifice has been done. We now have a table where Christ's shed blood invites us to a feast, to a meal. In light of the reconciling power of the gospel with which forgives our infinite dead of sin, how can we not lovingly reconcile with our neighbors? Do you see that? How what God has done in the gospel motivates us and empowers our sanctification and growth in God's grace. In prayer, we commune with God the Father through Christ the Son in the Holy Spirit. In prayer, we're heard enabling us to hear others. In prayer, God speaks to us, enabling us to speak God's truth to others. We experience God's presence in spite of our weakness, enabling us to show love to the weak and the powerless to our marginalized neighbors, those who have nothing. We care for them and are attentive to them because in prayer, God is attentive to us though we have nothing to approach him but the name of Jesus who died for us. Ultimately, if we forget that instantification we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in us to will and work for his good pleasure. If we forget that, we will often look away from Christ and lose the power to truly change. If our good works are done in the service of our own salvation, they become selfish rather than selfless and we lose the power to truly love. Do you see that? If you believe that ultimately your holy life is dependent upon your efforts and in some way accomplishes something and earns you right standing before God, you'll never truly be loving anyone. The person that you're interacting with will always be nothing more than a means to an end. They are the means to an end of loving someone in order to earn something before God rather than a person in and of themselves who is worthy of love because they're created in the image of God not because they can be used in order to have a deeper relationship with God or a more pleasing relationship with God. I want to consider this quote from C.S. Lewis. He wrote this in Mirchristianity which if you haven't read, it's a classic, it's a great, great book and I hadn't read it. I think I read it a year or two ago so I recommend it to you. He wrote this, to become new men means losing what we now call ourselves. Out of ourselves into Christ, we must go. Your real new self which is Christ's and also yours and yours just because it is his will not come as long as you were looking for it. It will come when you were looking for him. Do you see how that works? That the gospel is the power for sanctification. The gospel is the power for holiness. What God has done for you is the truth that animates everything that we do. If you think that you can begin with the gospel and continue on by works, Paul says you're foolish, you're foolish because you're missing the power to truly change and the power to truly grow in God's grace. Now here's a question. If God justifies us for giving our sins and declaring us not guilty, crediting Christ's righteousness to our account if he justifies us and adopts us, receiving us into the number, giving us all the rights and privileges and the children of God. And he also sanctifies us making us holy so that we can live holy lives. Why do we still struggle with sin? That was a question that was asked last week and it's a very good question. If it is ultimately God's doing, what should we say? Has God failed in some way? Why is it that I am not yet the man that I should be? And I think all of you, if you were honest and looked into your own heart, all of you are not the men and women that you should be. Why is this? If this is based on what God has done for us,
well the Bible teaches us that because sanctification is a work of God's grace, our whole life is spent more and more dying to sin and living to righteousness. Theologians call this mortification and vivification, the dying of the old man and the making alive of the new. That is a process of God's grace. Just as we are already saved, we are being saved and we will one day be saved, so there's also an already and not yet to our sanctification. Speaking of the Philippian Church's sanctification, Paul writes, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is a process that God has undertaken and Paul says, I am sure that that process began in you because it is a process of the Holy Spirit will ultimately come to completion. Now, nowhere is this ongoing battle illustrated more clearly than Romans 6 through 8. Consider the flow of Paul's argument, this battle. Now if you're looking closely, you'll see Charlton Heston from a soilent green, and if you'll remember from last semester, this presentation just got 13% better. I've run the numbers. The believer described in Romans 6, now follow the train of Paul's argument here. The believer described in Romans 6 as delivered completely from the dominion of sin through baptism into Christ's death and resurrection. Remember, he says in Romans 6, he says, we have died to sin. You should we sin all the more that grace may have bound by no means. We have died to sin. How can we still live in it? We've been united with Christ in baptism into his death, and so we've died to sin. And just as Christ rose from the dead, we've also risen up to new life. We can no longer live in sin. It makes no sense at all. The same believer who says that says this in Romans 7. He's described in Romans 7 as constantly frustrated by his efforts to live a life free of sin. The same person. He says, I know what I should do. But I'm torn inside. I do what I don't want to do. I don't do what I should do. I know in my heart that I should be doing this. Maybe you've had that experience in your life. Maybe you've been walking down the street and you've encountered a situation, perhaps a person in need and you've said to yourself, I should help them. But I can't. I need to go. I need to continue on on my way. Perhaps you've been struggling with sin, a particular sin that seems to have a grip over you. And you've said, I know that this is not the person that I should be, that I want to be. And yet I have these desires in my heart that are constantly at war within me. That same person is the person described in Romans 6 as delivered completely from the dominion of sin. Yet internally conflicted. And then in Romans 8, the same person is simultaneously identified in Romans 8 as not condemned, alive in the spirit, awaiting the resurrection of Jesus Christ, confident that nothing, either height nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor power, nor things present, nor things to come, can ever separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. And the same person is sure that if God is for us, who can be against us? Do you see that? This is the pattern of sanctification in the Christian's life. Sanctification is not complete in this life because sanctification is an end is a spiritual, capital S, holy spiritual, in breaking of the age to come into this present evil age. The process of our sanctification results from our God, God the Holy Spirit, breaking in and instilling and cultivating within us, the ethics of the age to come. That will never be complete until Jesus comes back and the age to come, the consummation of all things is consummated through Jesus Christ's return. So until then we have to say that this is an in breaking and we can be thankful that God is sending the Holy Spirit, breaking into this world, establishing little outposts and ground that is his where he says, the battle here is not lost. I'm changing this person from an enemy into a child. When Christ comes again, we will be both definitively and completely sanctified, unable to sin in any way, completely set apart four God's purposes to do good works. Until that day scripture says we walk by faith and are sanctified by faith and not by sight. Now we should be aware of some alternative suggestions here and alternative understandings of sanctification. There are some Christian traditions that have taught or perhaps continued to teach. I think it's fewer now than maybe at the turn of the last century that taught perfectionism. This idea that believers can be completely sanctified in this life and therefore free from sin totally in this life.
Perfectionism stems from the belief that ought implies can. So when the scriptures teach us that we ought to be perfect and they do, 1 Peter 1, 6, Matthew 5, James 1, when the scriptures teach us that we ought to be perfect, these traditions would say that these texts carry with them the implicit implication that perfection is indeed possible, ought implies can. So if Jesus says be perfect even as I am perfect, you ought to be perfect, well then we can indeed be perfect. Since even those who hold perfectionism in theory never really see it in practice and if anyone claims here that they have achieved perfection please raise your hand no one because I'll have your wife raise her hand she'll tell you all about that what's really happening in your life. Since we never really see it in practice even those who would advocate such a view a tradition called the higher life movement or the chesic movement emerge that positive distinction between carnal and victorious Christians. So there are sort of, since no one really is all the way to perfection though it's theoretically attainable we have to identify people as where they are in the scale or on the sliding scale from totally imperfect, totally sinful sort of carnal Christians and then finally victorious Christians and then I guess ultimately only Jesus stands on the end but I guess in theory they other people could too. Now the difficulty with perfectionism besides of course no actual examples of this which I contend is a very big problem if you ever have a theory about anything in life and you never see it happen probably not a very good theory. Let me just throw that out there. If I have a theory that dinosaurs walk up and down my street never actually seen a dinosaur not a very good theory. Okay the problem with this besides that is that it tends to force the believer's attention inward to the self rather than outward to Christ. Now why would that be in light of what we've said why might that be a problem? Where is the power of sanctification come from? I'm asking you it comes from the Holy Spirit. It comes from the Holy Spirit working outside of us and in us and so if we look inside we're losing the power that we actually need to live holy lives. These movements, these holiness movements tend to make us what we call naval gaisers we sort of examine ourselves to see how are we doing? Are we holy enough? And as we've seen already I mentioned this Christ is the source of our sanctification. We grow in holiness as we live our lives in light of his grace. So the focus on Jesus for holiness is absolutely absolutely essential. Further perfectionism seems to run contrary to a number of biblical passages and Hebrews 124 the writer speaks about a constant struggle against sin and it seems to take it for granted that that's a normal thing. James 516 calls us to confess our sins to one another and it seems to be taken for granted that this is the normal process of the church we're to confess our sins to one another which again would be impossible if you could achieve perfection and you would have no sins to confess. 1 John 1 and 8 through chapter 2 verse 2 begins by declaring if we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. It's very problematic if you have a belief that we can in this life achieve perfection if John inspired by the Holy Spirit says if you say that you make God a liar and the truth is not in you. Okay. Another alternative understanding of sanctification. Another view of sanctification is anti-nomianism which means if you break this down literally anti-lawism. Nomean from the word Greek word namas, law, ism, anti, you got those, anti-law ism. In this view the law of God that God's people were unable to keep in the old testament is replaced by a new law in the new testament. So you'll sometimes hear about old law and new law. This new law is given a variety of different names. Sometimes biblical names the law of Christ, the law of the Spirit, the law of love which are indeed talked about I think in different ways in the Bible. Sometimes it's just a made up name. Now the problem with anti-nomianism or anti-law ism is that it confuses the law in the gospel and replaces old commands with new commands that are somehow supposed to be less demanding than the ten commandments. So sanctification used in this view used to be keep the ten commandments but now these have been replaced with the things that are easier to do, new law. Well while it may sound very nice for you to say let go and let God, maybe you see the picture there's even a butterfly there. What could be nicer than that? Well really it's just it's just soft legalism. How does one know if you've let go and let God let God go by your works and so the focus becomes on yourself and rather on Christ and so sanctification again comes back to that same treadmill of running after something that really can never be achieved in ourselves. The power for change, the power for holiness comes from the Holy Spirit. Sanctification is a work of God's free grace. Ironically the two streams of legalistic perfectionism on one hand and licentious anti-nomianism, well that's a you could put that word in a scrabble game. Either those you would dominate. The two streams of legalistic perfectionism remember that you could keep that law and licentious anti-nomianism, well there's a new law for you to keep but it's really rather easy to keep and not that big of a deal. Those two streams both converge at the mirror. Both systems encourage us to look within ourselves to judge our growth in holiness. Now the problem with mirrors is that they are looked at by people who have sinful eyes and as such they tend to produce distortions of reality. If we go to the mirror to look for our assurance and to see evidences of God's grace and evidence of growth and holiness through sanctification, if we go to the mirror reliable to do two things we'll actually see ourselves as we really are and we'll be utterly broken, completely hopeless, completely in despair or we'll go the other way and we'll go to the mirror and we'll say well I actually look pretty good. I'm doing okay. Have you ever had this experience where you were in a bathroom in a place with not very good lighting and then you walked into another bathroom with really good halogen type lighting whoa it can be frightening. It's sort of the high definition effect and you really see who you really are and it's not a scary picture but we tend to sort of use that Barbara Walter's soft focus lens on ourselves when we look to the mirror and so we say well we're really not that bad I mean and obviously there's other people that are a little bit worse than us on the basis of Christ's work. We don't go within for growth seeking to be sanctified by our works for God we present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and our members to God as instruments we present ourselves members to God as instruments for righteousness for sin will have no dominion over you since you are non-underlaw but under grace okay some conclusions as we wrap it up here first one sanctification begins with God's action he separates people a people for himself that's the starting point where does sanctification begin begins with God saying you are separate I'm going to use you to accomplish my purposes having been made holy God empowers us to live holy lives we have a new nature a new purpose and so now we live in line with that purpose we become more like Jesus and begin to love more like Jesus loved as we encounter him in the word as we encounter him in the sacraments as we encounter him in prayer all of which are means of grace given to us for our ongoing sanctification now again why why are these things means of grace why are they means of our sanctification who can tell me why do you think they might be are my just sort of picking arbitrary arbitrary things I found in a book somewhere why why would they be what is the power for change what is the power for holiness the gospel what do all of these things do who stands at the heart of the Bible Jesus Christ it's about God buying back a people for himself in response to the fall saying I'm going to buy you back I'm going to send a seat of the woman who will crush Satan's head be bruised in the process revealed in time to be Jesus Christ it's about him and so when we go to the word we grow in grace because we see who Jesus is and we see how loved we are we see that the law has no more power over us and so it becomes not an enemy any longer but it becomes a friend it becomes something that we long to do that we're not afraid of because we love God and are loved by God so the word becomes for us a means of grace what about baptism the Lord suffered the sacraments how do those help us grow in sanctification why would they help us grow in sanctification right God does not merely speak the gospel to us in his great goodness his great forbearance he gives us gives us pictures of the gospel he says this is what the gospel is like it's about a completely helpless person being cleansed by my blood identifying with me and death rising up to newness of life it's about enemies being invited to a table to feast that's what the gospel is and if that's what the gospel is you can't go away unchanged how are you who have been loved so much who've been forgiven such a debt gonna walk away that's the parable of the man who's been forgiven millions billions of dollars by the king walks away grabs a man by the beard and says you will meet a couple hundred bucks I can't pay go to jail everyone's a poor is that's a poor it why because he who has been loved much loves others much so the gospel presented to us in the picture of the sacraments is a power for change what about prayer why would that be a power of sanctification I didn't hear you communication we communicate with God we are heard by God God speaks to us in prayer and we encounter him and when we encounter the holy God what what happens we change what happened to Isaiah he changed what happened to Moses he changed why do we have the scene of the mount of transfiguration with those guys going on the mountain what's that all about they see God they see Jesus the the veil is pulled back they see Jesus for who he really is the true and living God the fulfillment of the law the fulfillment of the prophets and they're changed and so we grow by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit uses means he gives us means by which we can grow in God's grace okay since sanctification is a work of God's grace we can expect our sanctification and growth and holiness to be an ongoing work we talked about that a little bit earlier while we will never experience perfection in this life we do experience an in breaking of God's kingdom through the power of the Holy Spirit who takes away the sting of the law and changes it from an enemy into a friend that's that's first Corinthians 15 death where is your sting grave where is your victory the victory of the power of the power of death the power of sin is the law and so when that sting is gone for it the sting is gone it's removed we can now love God and live by the law in a new way as we grow in holiness by the power of the Holy Spirit okay last one promise is holiness important absolutely absolutely Hebrews 12 14 without holiness no man shall see the Lord and yet thanks be to God who is our righteousness and purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God we do need to be holy but we serve a God who makes who has made us holy and is making us holy so that one day we will truly be holy as we sin is completely done away with and we live forever in the presence of God we got a couple minutes a minute or two I want to recommend a couple of books to you and then we might might be done I'm gonna stick around a little bit afterward see if you have something a question that's kind of burning a hole in your head you want to ask me about I'd love to talk to you about it some great books on sanctification great resources this is a book by Andy Crouch who used to be at Christianity today he's a great guy I think maybe a university too anyway he has a book called Culture Making recovering our creative calling so about those who are interested in sanctification and how we live in the world great little book called Worldliness it's edited by CJ Mahaney a number of pastors from his staff including CJ right about resisting the seduction of a fallen world great book that I just finished respectable sins by Jerry Bridges from the navigators a great book on growing and holiness identifying sin in our life and this is another one too that I find tremendously helpful as an interpretive tool it's a book called Death by Love and the author of this pastor Mark Driscoll goes through justification and sanctification our two elements that are covered here but it really takes us to the cross and shows us practically how what Christ has done for us on the cross impacts everything about the way that we live everyone begins with a letter written to him by someone and shows how Christ and the gospel is a fuel for change and a formula for change so that's it I'm going to close in prayer I we started a little bit late I went a little bit long so I'm sorry from the new Q&A this time I'm teaching next week so you can file them away for a week or come up and talk to me afterwards I'll be hanging out let's pray Lord Jesus we do indeed thank you that you have set a support and we pray that you would teach us to grow in your grace we pray that we would bear fruit as we see the gospel more clearly Lord when we are living in sin and struggling with unholiness and worldliness we pray that you would draw us to the gospel where we find out the great great love that not only has saved us but is also sanctifying us making us love your word love your commands running in the path of your commands for you have set our hearts free or hear our prayer we ask these things in Jesus name amen see you next week