Sanctification

This morning, we are looking again at our story of redemption, a series we've been working through the past few weeks. We are nearly getting to the end of it, and I hope you've been enjoying it so far. Today, we're going to be looking at the doctrine of sanctification. And you'll see that in the story of redemption, we have seen the election of God, how God calls us, regeneration of our hearts, how God renews and gives life to hearts that were dead to Him and to anything to do with God, where we've been converted, where we have been justified, where we've been cleansed and cleared of our sin that stood against God, that we have been adopted into God's family, and that's what we saw last week, that we have been swallowed up by God's love, that He has welcomed us as His children, His beloved kids into His family, and that He will love us forever. And then today, we will be looking at sanctification, that God is starting to clean us from the inside out, where not only have we been adopted into a family, but now we become like the family, like our older brother Jesus, like our heavenly Father.

And then one more. Next week, we'll be looking at glorification, the last in the series. Many of you may know, because I've mentioned it a few times, that I'm a fan of the comic book hero Batman. I've talked about him a few times in my sermons. Now, before I go on, I'm not a major comic book nerd.

Please understand that. But I do enjoy Batman stories, and the reason, well, one of the reasons, in fact, I like these stories is because the Batman villains are just so good. The Batman villains are just so good. They are interesting. You have your the Penguin.

Who knows about the Penguin? Or the Joker? Or the Riddler? And there's, I don't know. If you go into the stories and you research it, I don't know how many, but there's like dozens and dozens of different very interesting villains that fight against Batman.

But my favourite, one of my favourite bad guys, is the villain called Two Face. He's a villain with a split personality, and his split personality is graphically illustrated by his one side being scarred and marred, and he's split in half. So one side of himself has been damaged, either through fire or something like that, and his other side is very elegant and very well put together, very handsome. And Two Face, at one point, was a lawyer, Harvey Dent, who stood for justice and fairness and equality, and who fought in the justice systems against all the bad guys. But at one point, when he had this accident, his personality split, and he became this vengeful, murderous, beast-like creature who could do the most horrendous things as well.

And he would be guided. He would be motivated to do the right or the wrong thing based solely on a flip of a coin. Heads, you survive. Tails, you die, more or less. Now the original creator of Two Face said that he was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, that you may also be familiar with.

Now, why do I begin our talk this morning on sanctification by using or referring to the story of Two Face? Well, because today we're talking about a doctrine that actually gives us hope against a deep human fear that actually relates to this story. You see, there's something in us, I believe, that identifies two sides of our natures, two sides of who we are. And we, in some way, can sense or relate to a see-sawing between these two natures. But this morning, we hear about the stage of the redemption story called sanctification, which gives every Christian, every person who has placed their trust in Jesus Christ tremendous hope.

If you've ever struggled with sin, if you've been convicted with your fallen nature, if you've been perplexed or even frustrated, even dismayed at your shortcomings, then this morning's message, I hope, I believe, will be of great encouragement to you. I want us to have a look at the unfolding stages of this process of sanctification, and we're going to look at a struggle, sort of like Two Face's struggle. I want us to look at Romans 7 this morning. You may know this also very well. Romans 7, and we're going to start reading from verse 7.

Romans 7 from verse 7 to Romans 8 verse 4. So almost a chapter. This is Paul the apostle writing to the church in Rome. Paul says, what shall we say then? Is the law of God sin?

Certainly not. Indeed, I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said to me, do not covet. But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from the law, sin is dead.

Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life, and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. But did that which is good then become death to me?

By no means. But in order that sin might be recognised as sin, it produced death in me through that which was good, so that through the commandment, sin might become utterly sinful. Verse 14, we know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.

And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do.

No. The evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. And so I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

For in my inner being, I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in my members, in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself, in my mind, am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin.

In 8 verse 1, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Through Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit. So far, our reading.

Now firstly, I want to apologise for that. I hope you were able to follow it, and if you haven't been able to follow it, that's okay. We're going to unpack it a little bit this morning. But if you understand this, it is the greatest news you will ever hear. It is the greatest news you will ever hear.

What we see here is the apostle Paul writing to Christians about the process of salvation in Jesus. Paul talks in first person to describe the internal process of a person who has come to Christ. But what we see here is several stages unfolding in this process. And this process or this progression is called sanctification. Now the root idea of the word, sorry.

To sanctify is to set apart, is to consecrate. And just like the biblical word to justify, it refers to a once-and-for-all reality that we have been set apart or we have been made God's possession. And so it is closely tied again to the doctrine of adoption, that we have been set aside, we have been made, we have been possessed by God into His family. God owns us now. We are His.

We belong to Him. But there is also a second meaning. There's also a second understanding of what sanctification is according to the Bible, and that is the process of becoming more and more increasingly holy in God. Sanctification is essentially the process whereby the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God, God Himself, increasingly makes real in our lives our union with Christ, and what it means to have been crucified with Him, to have died with Him, to have been, in some way, participated in His sacrificial death, and to have been raised to life in His powerful resurrection. If you have read the New Testament before, you will know that many times the apostle Paul uses this phrase, in Christ.

In Christ. He uses it all over the place, and it refers to our union with Him, that we are tied with Him in some way. And it's all throughout the letters to the churches that he writes. And what Paul is saying here, in other words, is faith. Faith is a unity with Christ made possible through the Holy Spirit.

And through that, the whole plethora, the whole suite of redemption makes even the most immature Christian, even the newest faith possible makes it possible that we have been dead to sin, we have died with Christ, that we have been raised with Him, that we have, in fact, been glorified with Him in a sense, that we have been, we have ascended with Christ to sit with our Father in glory. And it is summarised most beautifully in Galatians 2:20. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. That is the definition of the Christian life.

So having quickly explained that, what we see in Romans chapter 7 is the process where this reality becomes real. Broadly speaking, we see three stages happening here. In the first stage, verses 7 to 12, the first two paragraphs that we read here, we see a person who is, at one point, living a life completely away from God. A life whereby they do not know God, they do not recognise God, and therefore, they do not know or recognise God's requirements or His laws. This person is living a life according to their own rules and morality.

But at some point, at some point, they become aware of God's requirements. They become aware of God's law. And we see that in verse 9, it says that once this person was alive apart from God's law, but when God's law came to them, sin sprang up to life, and they died. Verse 10. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

And so what we find here is how God's law was the very first step in the process of salvation. We sung, it was grace that taught my heart to fear. God's law was the very first step in the process of salvation in that it condemned us. At one point, I was oblivious to what was right or wrong. I was oblivious to what was good or bad.

I did what I wanted, and I didn't care. But then God made me aware of Himself. He made me aware of a higher order. He made me aware of a new code of conduct, and it slew me. It killed me.

Saint Augustine, the great early church father, spoke about this sort of thing happening in our natures. He wasn't a Christian until, I think in his late twenties, maybe 30. But he spoke of a time that he remembered when he was eight. And just a young boy, and he was told by someone that he was not allowed ever to go into the neighbour's garden to pick the fruit of the neighbour. That he was not allowed to do that.

That that was stealing. And Saint Augustine remembered or reflected on the fact that as soon as that was said, what happened? He jumped the fence. He wasn't even hungry, he said. There was nothing he didn't steal it for himself. In fact, he threw it away.

I think he says he threw it to the pigs. But just the fact that someone had said to him, that someone had made him aware that this is stealing, made him want to do it. In the same way, Paul says God's requirements for holy living at one point became known to us, and we heard it, and because we had come to realise or we had heard it, sin hijacked it, and something in us, in our natures, wanted to do the very opposite thing of what we had heard. Verse 13 asks, and it's a logical question, did that which is good, meaning God's law, did that which is good become death to me? By no means, says Paul.

But in order for sin to be recognised as sin, God's law produced death in me through that which was good so that through these commandments, sin might become utterly sinful. There's no excuse, in other words. We know what it means to follow God or to rebel from Him. And so what we see here is either the Christian believer in the early stages of coming to Christ or the unrepentant believer. And we can see both of these in people's lives, in their stories.

We see an individual who balks at the idea of God's word, who refuses to bend his knee or her knee to God's will, and who very deliberately does the very opposite to it. And Paul says, this is who we were at one point. But then a second stage happens, and we see that in verses 14 to 24. Now we don't get the impact here, but Paul starts using the present tense instead of the past tense. We don't really get it in our English versions, but Paul is talking in the other passage, in the other paragraph of something that was a past event, but now he talks about a present situation.

He's saying, that's how I used to be, and this is how I currently am. In these verses, Paul talks about a person who has been regenerated, who has been made alive to God. They have come to know their sinfulness before God, but are now trying to work very hard at trying to please Him. This is where human nature becomes aware of our two-faced nature. Paul says there is a reality that we are a slave to sin.

I want to do the right thing, but I cannot do it right. I want to do the right thing, but I cannot do it right, at least not for very long. In verse 21, he says, I find he sums it up. He says in verse 21, I find this law at work in me. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

This person has been made alive to God. Their hearts have been regenerated, but they have not converted yet. They have not come to that place where they understand. Verse 22 says that in their inner being, they delight in God's law. There's something in them that desires that, that wants that. They know it in some way that the law of God is good and right, but that there are other parts waging war against that.

He says, I realised that I am still a prisoner of sin, that I am a slave to it. Now we have to remember who is writing this. This is Paul, a good Jew, a very good Jew, a righteous man. He knew this struggle very well. He had grown up with the Ten Commandments.

He had memorised the 600-odd laws and regulations of Judaism. He was well known, the Bible says, and well respected for being a man who upheld these laws, and yet he knew that he wasn't able to uphold them perfectly. The more he tried, the more he realised he fell short of it. Friends, there may be some of us here who are in this place. We are aware of God.

We are aware of His requirements of us. We are aware that we have been designed to live in a certain way, to please Him, and yet we are wrestling with things in our lives that we know are not right. And instead of worshipping God with our bodies and our minds, instead of loving God with all we are, we are like Batman's Two Face, or we are like Louis Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

We live in this life of duality. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. And we may rationalise, and we may excuse, and we may blame, or we may downplay. But sometimes, we need to understand that even in that moment, when something is good, evil is right there with me. And with exhausted exasperation, we say with Paul in verse 24, what a wretch I am. What a wretch I am.

Who will save me from this? Who will rescue me from this? You may be there. But that is not the end of the story. Thank God.

Because there is a third stage in this progression in chapter 7, the last half of the last bit of chapter 7 going into chapter 8. And this is where chapter 7 spills into this glorious chapter 8. This is the part that speaks of becoming truly holy, truly good. From verses 7 to 24, we see a person struggling with sin, struggling in a battle that they cannot win. In Romans 7 verse 25 to 8 verse 4, we see a battle we cannot lose.

Paul says, who will save me from this body of death? But verse 25 answers, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And Paul sums up verse 25, in verse 25, the condition of humanity, that in our minds, we desire God's law, but in our sinful nature, we, our nature is that is touched and affected by the chaos of sin. We are enslaved to sin. But Romans 8 verse 1 starts like this.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death. And this is the point of difference, and this is what sanctification is. Once we struggled to the enslavement of sin, once we struggled with this burden, this yoke that we could not shake, and we did that in our own strength. But now, in Jesus Christ, it is possible to be broken from its lasting power. For the first time ever, for the first time ever, humanity has been able to be what God intended it to be.

For the first time ever, we have free will in the way that God intended it. Remember previously we said that God created humanity with free will. We have the option to choose God, but the reality of sin and its corruption has meant that out of a thousand times, out of a thousand opportunities, every single time we will choose to rebel against God. But for the first time, we have been set free, free, complete freedom to have free will where we can choose God over everything else. In this, Paul says, we have absolute freedom.

And so when we come to Christ, we become unified in Him. We die with Him to sin. We are raised to life, and we find freedom. And we are not only forgiven of our sins, the ones that we have committed in the past, the ones that we may still struggle with now, but we are enveloped by His whole life. So that when God looks at us, when God looks into our lives, He sees Christ's righteousness.

He sees Christ's holiness in us. Verses 3 and 4 of chapter 8 says that God the Father sent His son to earth to bear the punishment of our sin. Justification, which we talked about two weeks ago. But not only that, through His perfect life, in that moment of sacrifice, we also obtain righteousness. In other words, the law that we became aware of, that condemned us, that slew us, that killed us, that law we have now, in God's eyes, fully met.

We have fully upheld it. In Christ, as Paul would say, we no longer perish at the hand of the sinful nature that always failed us, but we now receive freedom and life that will never leave us. And we become holy as much as Jesus is holy. Friends, we have to understand this. You are perfect in God's eyes now.

As perfect in God's eyes now as Jesus Christ, His only son is. That is a tremendous thought. That is an astounding thought. It is something that should change us. And so the next question is, have you experienced that as a reality?

Is this something that has changed you? Can you identify that you are different now than you were at another point? Can you see that you know God's love now and that you desire to obey Him rather than in the past where you hated Him or you treated God's law with disdain? There's a few things that I want us to remember about this thing called sanctification. Firstly, sanctification is both a process and a crisis.

Coming to faith in Christ means that there's a radical shifting that takes place in our life. God may change our life radically, and we've heard the stories of mob bosses and drug pushers and adulterers that come and their life is seriously changed. God may take our seriously sinful lifestyles and turn it way upside down overnight even. We have heard those stories. And God sometimes does this.

God sometimes uses events in our lives to radically change us. Like a cancer that needs to be cut out instead of a conservative approach of radiation therapy, God may change a person's life overnight. But other times, it can be to bring a person into a particular purpose or a particular ministry. We know of people that have gone through immense tragedy in their life, are saved, and then because of their past, are able to minister out of that. God changes that.

God used Paul's incredible ministry, his life before Christ, to be an amazing minister to churches afterwards. So God may use a crisis in this process of sanctification, but this is not necessarily the biblical pattern of sanctification. More commonly, sanctification, the Bible says, is a process. Many statements in the New Testament show that a Christian's life is a process of growth. Two Corinthians 3:18, for example, talks of being transformed into the likeness of Christ with ever increasing glory.

In Ephesians 4:10, we are commanded to grow up in Him, to grow up in Christ. In Colossians 3:10, we are told of being in the process of being renewed. We are in the process of being renewed. The theologian Bruce Mill puts it this way. The basic biblical teaching is that the people of God grow in holiness by the ongoing daily ministry of the Spirit, which enables us more and more to live the reality of union with Christ in His death, in His resurrection and ascension.

And so for this reason, whilst there may be things that God immediately, radically changes in our lives, we should also know, we should also be aware that God is busy with us, that He is pruning us, that He is changing us, that He is moulding us, and that takes time. We find that the process of sanctification is both a resting in God and then also a striving for growth. That's the second point. The New Testament gives us a great encouragement in places like John 15 verses 1 to 10, where we are told that we abide in Christ. That we are like a vine.

A branch has engrafted into him, and that we have been set free and we can rest in that completely, that we have been made holy in one part, we have been possessed by God, we have been put into His family. But then there are also passages in scripture which talk about a striving, a wrestle, a battle, where we are commanded to put off the old self. That old nature which is clinging onto us, which is trying to drag us back into the abyss. A battle which still goes on. Romans 8 verse 12 and following in Galatians 5:13 to 26 talks about this, of putting off the old nature and putting on the new nature in Christ.

Similarly, we are told of the reality of spiritual warfare. This is something that is real. This is something that is true. That tells us and encourages us to put on the spiritual armour of God in Ephesians 6. That there is an enemy.

That there is a purpose and a force that stands against us, and that we must resist that. And so we find, at one hand, we can rest in the knowledge and the truth of sanctification that God is busy with us, that He will fulfil in us His purposes, but also that we must protect ourselves, that we must stand firm against the old self or even Satan and his attacks. But at the end of the day, friends, this is what I want to leave you with, that this is your reality as a Christian. That once in your attempts at doing the right thing, you faced a battle that you could never win. In your attempts to do the right thing, you faced a battle that you could never win. But in Christ, you face a battle that you will never lose.

Why is that? Because the battle has already been won for us. That is what Romans 8 verse 1 and 2 say. The battle has been won for us on our behalf. And so I wanna maybe leave us with some practical things here of how we know sanctification is a part of us, how we know that God is working in us.

As Christians, we can ask ourselves these things. Do you find yourself struggling as a Christian with pride? Do you feel devastated perhaps by criticism? The process of sanctification will release you from that sin, if you reflect on it, by decreasing your disdain of others when you realise or because you realise that you are a sinner as well. You will be released from pride.

You will be released from the devastation of criticism against you. You will have a decreasing pain over what people think of you because you realise human approval is worth far less than God's love that you have already received and that you can never lose. Are you prone to anger? Are you prone to irritability? Do you wrestle with that?

Well, that sin will lose its power over you when you realise that God's patience is so great with you. And if God can be so patient with you, if He can be so infinitely attentive to your needs, then we don't need to be irritable or angry or frustrated or short-tempered. Are you worried or anxious? The process of becoming more holy will help when we realise that sin is made less powerful, when we reflect that Jesus' death proves that God cares and watches over us. Are we anxious or worried?

We don't have to be if we realise that God sent Jesus Christ for us. And in that truth, in that reality, we know and we understand and we experience that God's love goes to the nth degree for us. If God would rescue us from such a terrible fate, will He not look after us in even the smallest, most minute things? Sanctification means that once, we may have been like Batman's arch nemesis, Two Face, with competing factions, competing natures in us. The good side of us, however, fighting the bad side and not winning.

But the great truth of sanctification, our great hope, is that the good side of us will win. The good side of us is starting to win. And friends, be encouraged today that the good work that Jesus Christ and God, through His Spirit, has started in you, He will finish. He will finish on that day when Christ returns. You cannot lose your fight against sin.

That is a great message this morning. You cannot lose it. And the frustration you may feel, and the dismay you may feel, and the heartache you may feel, the disappointment you may feel, it will not last forever. You will win. So keep growing.

Keep striving. But rest also in the joy that Jesus Christ has set you free, and that you are free indeed. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, give us the joy. Give us the happiness of knowing that we are in Jesus Christ and we have been set free.

Help us to rest in that. Help us to find fulfilment and joy and strength and hope in that. Lord, we ask your forgiveness for our shortcomings. We plead with you that these things in our lives that rob us of this joy, rob us of greater peace. We ask, Lord, that it may not continue forever.

Holy Spirit, remind us in our hearts and in our minds that we are yours, that we belong consecrated to you. And Lord, that the old self is dead. Father, help us when the evil one does attack. Help us when the evil one does try to remind us and convince us and persuade us of our inability to love you perfectly. Father, remind us of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Thank you, Lord, for your grace that taught our heart to fear, but also for the grace where our fears have been relieved. I pray, Father, that this truth may encourage us. And wherever we find ourselves, whether riding high or struggling in the depths, I pray, Father, that in it all, we may see your grace, and that as we understand the grace in ever increasing measures, we will find victory over sin more and more, that we will grow more into the likeness of your son Jesus, that we will bear resemblance to our heavenly Father, and that we may become holy as you are holy. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.