Jesus, Our Personal Sanctifier
"By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all...For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified." (Heb. 10:10,14)
Whatever God does is always good and always right. God does all things with purpose, precision, and perfection. His love is perfect. His ways are perfect. His timing is perfect. Therefore, when God seeks to solve a problem due to the imperfections of His fallen creation, it should be no surprise to us that His solution would be one perfect offering fulfilled in in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Everything about God's will always includes God setting apart those whom He has chosen in order to showcase His glory in and through a union with His Son Jesus.
All true believers understand that without Jesus, we would be lost in our sins and separated from God forever due to our unholy condition. By the grace of God, our Lord Jesus came to us to rescue us and to be our personal Lord and Savior...but also our personal SANCTIFIER. We must not miss this glorious truth that God SANCTIFIES what He saves!
The word sanctification means to make holy, purify, consecrate, to separate from profane things and to be dedicated to God. It comes from the same root word for those called "saints" in the Bible. When a person is sanctified, they fully belong to God and are called according to His purpose.
Sanctification is a word that describes how our union with Christ leads us to be changed and conformed to become like Christ so that we are FOREVER ONE WITH HIM! O how marvelous it is to BELIEVE in Him and to BE with Him and to BELONG to Him!!
Jesus both PRAYED for and PAID for our sanctification:
Jesus prayed to the Father, "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth" (John 17:17) and He declared what He would do in us and for His brethren when He said, "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth" (John 17:19).
Instead of needing to repeat the offerings inside the temple by the priesthood of the Old Covenant, Jesus, our great High Priest, offered Himself once and for all. He sanctified us so that positionally speaking, we are already on holy ground with a holy calling and a holy standing before God.
However, there is still a practical outworking of this sanctification, which includes our daily participation whereby we through our faith and obedience are able to become more and more like Jesus in our holiness. Therefore, although we are ALREADY changed in our standing, we are still BEING changed in our spiritual formation.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth saying, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor.3:18).
God uses everything in our lives to produce godly character and to lead us in holy conduct. We learned earlier in Hebrews that "though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered" (Heb. 5:8). It is often through suffering and hardship that God does His best work in our lives. We may not always understand why we are going through a particular trial or why things seem to be such an uphill battle at times, but we know that God allows everything in our lives for an intended purpose. "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day" (2 Cor. 4:16).
Since God is focused on our hearts and our holiness even before our happiness, we must keep learning and yearning for more of Christ regardless of what we are presently facing in our lives!
We must learn how to avoid youthful lusts and temptations and to turn away from anything and anyone that seeks to turn our hearts away from our loving Father and our fellowship with Christ.
As we daily discern God's will for our lives, we can start with the fact that God's will for us always includes our true worship and communion and continual giving thanks to Christ (1 Thes. 5:16-18). We also know that we are called to abstain from all things that would corrupt our bodies and spirits which belong to the Lord. Paul makes this plain when he says, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor" (1 Thes. 4:3-4).
Therefore, since Jesus is the perfected will of God, it is right for us to keep looking to Christ and to be following Him in all of our ways. All of Scripture testifies to Christ and so should His saints!
The writer of Hebrews reminds us and exhorts us to live out our New Covenant calling by saying, "let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water" (Heb. 10:22).
This Week’s New Covenant Exhortation:
Since we have FULL ACCESS to God’s abundant supply, let us DRAW NEAR to God with a true heart! And He will soon sanctify us completely to reflect the glory of Christ as we do our part.
“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thes. 5:23)
Whatever God does is always good and always right. God does all things with purpose, precision, and perfection. His love is perfect. His ways are perfect. His timing is perfect. Therefore, when God seeks to solve a problem due to the imperfections of His fallen creation, it should be no surprise to us that His solution would be one perfect offering fulfilled in in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Everything about God's will always includes God setting apart those whom He has chosen in order to showcase His glory in and through a union with His Son Jesus.
All true believers understand that without Jesus, we would be lost in our sins and separated from God forever due to our unholy condition. By the grace of God, our Lord Jesus came to us to rescue us and to be our personal Lord and Savior...but also our personal SANCTIFIER. We must not miss this glorious truth that God SANCTIFIES what He saves!
The word sanctification means to make holy, purify, consecrate, to separate from profane things and to be dedicated to God. It comes from the same root word for those called "saints" in the Bible. When a person is sanctified, they fully belong to God and are called according to His purpose.
Sanctification is a word that describes how our union with Christ leads us to be changed and conformed to become like Christ so that we are FOREVER ONE WITH HIM! O how marvelous it is to BELIEVE in Him and to BE with Him and to BELONG to Him!!
Jesus both PRAYED for and PAID for our sanctification:
Jesus prayed to the Father, "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth" (John 17:17) and He declared what He would do in us and for His brethren when He said, "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth" (John 17:19).
Instead of needing to repeat the offerings inside the temple by the priesthood of the Old Covenant, Jesus, our great High Priest, offered Himself once and for all. He sanctified us so that positionally speaking, we are already on holy ground with a holy calling and a holy standing before God.
However, there is still a practical outworking of this sanctification, which includes our daily participation whereby we through our faith and obedience are able to become more and more like Jesus in our holiness. Therefore, although we are ALREADY changed in our standing, we are still BEING changed in our spiritual formation.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth saying, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor.3:18).
God uses everything in our lives to produce godly character and to lead us in holy conduct. We learned earlier in Hebrews that "though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered" (Heb. 5:8). It is often through suffering and hardship that God does His best work in our lives. We may not always understand why we are going through a particular trial or why things seem to be such an uphill battle at times, but we know that God allows everything in our lives for an intended purpose. "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day" (2 Cor. 4:16).
Since God is focused on our hearts and our holiness even before our happiness, we must keep learning and yearning for more of Christ regardless of what we are presently facing in our lives!
We must learn how to avoid youthful lusts and temptations and to turn away from anything and anyone that seeks to turn our hearts away from our loving Father and our fellowship with Christ.
As we daily discern God's will for our lives, we can start with the fact that God's will for us always includes our true worship and communion and continual giving thanks to Christ (1 Thes. 5:16-18). We also know that we are called to abstain from all things that would corrupt our bodies and spirits which belong to the Lord. Paul makes this plain when he says, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor" (1 Thes. 4:3-4).
Therefore, since Jesus is the perfected will of God, it is right for us to keep looking to Christ and to be following Him in all of our ways. All of Scripture testifies to Christ and so should His saints!
The writer of Hebrews reminds us and exhorts us to live out our New Covenant calling by saying, "let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water" (Heb. 10:22).
This Week’s New Covenant Exhortation:
Since we have FULL ACCESS to God’s abundant supply, let us DRAW NEAR to God with a true heart! And He will soon sanctify us completely to reflect the glory of Christ as we do our part.
“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thes. 5:23)
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