SPEAKER_04: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_04: Lord, thank you for your providence.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you that you have the people in the room who need to be in the room.
SPEAKER_04: This is true right now, it'll be true in the worship service.
SPEAKER_04: And I pray that you be with us as you as we think about sanctification, as we think about how you have made us holy and are making us holy, and will one day perfect us in holiness.
SPEAKER_04: And we need that holiness, Lord, because you tell us that without it, we won't see you.
SPEAKER_04: You're holy, holy, holy.
SPEAKER_04: And apart from your grace and your transforming work in us, we are not fit to stand in your presence.
SPEAKER_04: So thank you as always, Lord, for the grace of the gospel.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you for bringing us together to reflect on the good news and its implications for us.
SPEAKER_04: Please help us now.
SPEAKER_04: We pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_04: Amen.
SPEAKER_04: Alright.
SPEAKER_04: Opening question.
SPEAKER_04: Do people change?
unknown: Do people change?
SPEAKER_04: Do people change?
SPEAKER_03: This is this is one of one of my um Can the leopard change its size?
SPEAKER_04: There it goes.
SPEAKER_03: This is one of my like epithees, I guess, more or less.
SPEAKER_03: I I I would say people can change, but it's rare.
SPEAKER_03: Like truly change.
SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's it can happen, but it's pretty rare.
SPEAKER_03: From my experience.
SPEAKER_00: I asked my mother when she was, I think, 76 or something like that, are you the same person you were when you were six?
SPEAKER_00: Or is that what she said?
SPEAKER_00: I am exactly the same person.
SPEAKER_00: I am that person.
SPEAKER_00: I've always been that person.
SPEAKER_00: So the answer is yes and no.
SPEAKER_00: Do not go to the elbows for invites because they will say yay and nay.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yes and no, right?
SPEAKER_04: Uh our emotions change.
SPEAKER_04: Our emotions change.
SPEAKER_02: Um.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there I mean there aspects, yeah, aspects of our personality change.
SPEAKER_04: Well, there are everyday ways in which we change, right?
SPEAKER_04: Uh and ways in which we don't change, right?
SPEAKER_04: You see a picture of me when I'm six.
SPEAKER_04: You'll see me in some sense.
SPEAKER_04: But then you see a picture of me today, right?
SPEAKER_04: You know, less hair, more wrinkles, a little grayer.
SPEAKER_04: You know, all these sorts of things.
SPEAKER_04: So some changes are obvious and some changes are everyday, but other changes or other aspects of us are more fixed, more constant.
SPEAKER_04: And I ask the question, you know, I um I had a classmate in seminary, he said something in six with me because I had a professor ask a similar question, and he said, People don't change, God changes people.
SPEAKER_04: And that's kind of what we're getting at when we talk about sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: We're talking about the holy process of change that God works in his people.
SPEAKER_04: So that, yeah, there will be aspects of us that remain the same.
SPEAKER_04: He doesn't deal with us as stocks and blocks, he deals with us as human persons, with personalities and experiences.
SPEAKER_04: He makes us who we are.
SPEAKER_04: And salvation doesn't eradicate that.
SPEAKER_04: We don't turn into uniform automatons or anything like that.
SPEAKER_04: And yet, in the ways that really matter, ways that really count, he does change us, he sanctifies us, he makes us more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: He uh affections we had that were for things contrary to God's will, he changes those things, he takes them away.
SPEAKER_04: He helps us to say yes to the things he loves and no to the things he hates, so that we can look back, especially as we get down the road, we can look back over our lives and we can we can see the different ways in which we're the same, but we could also be encouraged by ways that we're not the same, that we are, we are more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: So this is part of the order of salvation that we've been looking at: predestination, calling, regeneration, conversion, union with Christ, justification, adoption, and now sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: So what is sanctification?
SPEAKER_04: Question 35.
SPEAKER_04: Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness.
SPEAKER_04: Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: That's beautifully sin.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: The Westminster Divines knew what they were doing.
SPEAKER_04: So important, you know, to think about the connection between justification and sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: Some uh, just by way of recap, justification, the act of God's free grace whereby he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith.
SPEAKER_04: Uh Roman Catholics raise an objection to the Protestant view of justification.
SPEAKER_04: And the objection is that it is, it establishes a legal fiction.
SPEAKER_04: That God says we're righteous, God says we're justified, God says we're innocent, but it's actually not true.
SPEAKER_04: And uh, according to Roman Catholics, it's not true, and therefore that's a prophecy.
SPEAKER_04: What you need is a Roman Catholic view of justification that doesn't just declare someone righteous, but makes them righteous and actually uh evaluates their growth in righteousness before making the final declaration of justification.
SPEAKER_04: So that's the big difference.
SPEAKER_04: In Roman Catholicism, when God justifies you, He makes a change in you, and then it's on you to cooperate with His grace so that at the final judgment day you can be justified on the basis of that use that you made of His grace, your faith working its way out through love.
SPEAKER_04: And that's the only way, they say, to combat this legal fiction that Protestants believe in.
SPEAKER_04: But when sanctification comes in, uh the practical effect of that for them is you know, you're you're justified, you're saved as a Protestant, then you know, why do you need to do anything else?
SPEAKER_04: You're good, right?
SPEAKER_04: You're off the hook.
SPEAKER_04: Why do anything else?
SPEAKER_04: And the Protestant replies to all that by saying, like, listen, in justification, God declares us righteous, in sanctification, he makes us righteous.
SPEAKER_04: And because those two realities are kind of operating at the same time, and one is not based on the other, that means that when we're justified, you know, the declaration is made, the sins are forgiven, the status is conferred, there is nothing we can do or not do that will change that.
SPEAKER_04: Our justification is based solely on the finished work of Christ and not on anything that we do in terms of a response to it.
SPEAKER_04: And so we have all the assurance, we have all the security, we have all the peace that comes with that.
SPEAKER_04: And alongside that reality is the reality of sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: Where, as Calvin says, we're saved by faith alone, but the kind of faith that saves is never alone.
SPEAKER_04: So if we're justified in Christ, we're sanctified in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: If we're declared righteous, at the same time, God is making us righteous in keeping with that declaration.
SPEAKER_04: And that's what we're talking about in the doctrine of sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: By his word, yeah, and by the power of his Holy Spirit working within us.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: So the Catechism answer starts off by saying sanctification is the work of God's free grace.
SPEAKER_04: Compare that to justification, which is an act of his grace, or adoption, which is an act of his grace.
SPEAKER_04: What's why a work versus an act?
SPEAKER_04: It's a process, right?
SPEAKER_04: It's not a one and done.
SPEAKER_04: So there's an expectation there for us, practically, is that uh you're going to be better tomorrow than you are today.
SPEAKER_04: Uh maybe we want a broader time horizon.
SPEAKER_04: You're gonna be better next year than you are this year.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm not gonna be here today.
SPEAKER_04: Right.
SPEAKER_04: The journey of sanctification is you know, ups and downs, a couple steps forward, a couple steps back, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_04: But on the whole, God is going to keep his promise and make you look more and more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: He's gonna do that.
SPEAKER_04: And uh, because it's a process that actually enables you to be patient with the process.
SPEAKER_04: Because let's say tomorrow you look worse than today.
SPEAKER_04: What conclusion do you draw from that?
SPEAKER_04: That he's given up on you?
SPEAKER_04: No.
SPEAKER_04: It's that there's another day to come after that one.
SPEAKER_04: You have to be patient, wait on the Lord.
SPEAKER_04: So sanctification basically means to make holy.
SPEAKER_04: And there's a sense in which holiness, to make something holy, means to set it apart.
SPEAKER_04: Like we're consecrating this vessel for holy use in the temple.
SPEAKER_04: It also means to prepare.
SPEAKER_04: Uh, and vessels, vessels are a good example of that.
SPEAKER_04: Like they you had these different implements and instruments that were used in temple worship in the in the Old Testament, and they had to be set apart, they had to be anointed.
SPEAKER_04: Uh it talks about it in Exodus 39, but they also had to be cleansed after they were used, and after that came into contact with anything unclean.
SPEAKER_04: They had to be cleansed in a ceremonial way, Leviticus 11.
SPEAKER_04: And so sanctification takes up both those things: the setting apart a person as holy unto the Lord, as a saint, and the preparation of that person, the cleansing of that person, the creating in them that holiness that uh that that sort of lines up with what God has declared to be true.
SPEAKER_04: So, with that in mind, there are two ways to think about sanctification biblically and theologically.
SPEAKER_04: There's a positional way, and there's a progressive way.
SPEAKER_04: Positional sanctification, or some people call it definitive sanctification, is the sense in which we have already been sanctified once and for all in our salvation.
SPEAKER_04: 1 Corinthians 6.11.
SPEAKER_04: Such were some of you thinking about past sins.
SPEAKER_04: But you were, past tense, washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
SPEAKER_04: So something's happened already.
SPEAKER_04: You've been set apart, you've already been sanctified.
SPEAKER_04: And that's why the New Testament can consistently call believers saints.
SPEAKER_04: It's on account of our positional sanctification, it's not on account of any sort of progress that we've made in the Christian life.
SPEAKER_04: It's not the Roman Catholic understanding of saint, where you do miracles and all sorts of things, and someone from the Vatican comes and verifies that you're a super spiritual person and you're conferred with the title of saint.
SPEAKER_04: We're all saints.
SPEAKER_04: You're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, otherwise a sainted nation.
SPEAKER_04: Or think of so many of the epistles, 1 Corinthians 1 2, for example, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.
SPEAKER_04: So that's that's positional sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: And when the Bible uses the word sanctify, it very often, most of the time, it refers to that.
SPEAKER_04: But at the same time, holiness carries with it a sense of moral goodness, worth, cleansing, preparation, and things I've talked about.
SPEAKER_04: And over time, the term sanctification came to refer not just to the instantaneous setting apart of people, but more to the gradual process over time when we're made more and more to conform to the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_04: Progressive sanctification is what our standards have in mind when they talk about sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: Confession chapter 13, paragraph one.
SPEAKER_04: They who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, by his word and spirit dwelling in them, the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.
SPEAKER_04: So often when we're talking about sanctification, we're talking pretty much about that progressive sense in which we are being renewed and we are being made more to conform to the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_04: So the catechism answer goes on to talk about it being a work of God's free grace.
SPEAKER_04: And that raises an interesting question, an important question.
SPEAKER_04: Who works in our sanctification?
SPEAKER_04: Who's doing the work?
SPEAKER_02: God working through us.
SPEAKER_02: So we're just saying it was God.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's God who works in us, both the will and to do, as we are working out.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that uh the double, and then you always bump into the mystery of human will and divine will and how they interact.
SPEAKER_00: And that to me, I'm I'm learning to just sort of leave that alone because I can't explain it.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody can explain it.
SPEAKER_00: People try, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, why why did I get born to Christian parents and that child get born to total heathens, drug eggs?
SPEAKER_00: That little baby had no choice in that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I had no choice in who I was born to.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's just a mystery there that I don't think beside a glory we can explain, and when we get there, we maybe won't even ask the question anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: A mistake that people often make when they're thinking about these things is they think about justification as a work of God's grace, he does it, right?
SPEAKER_04: It's all of him.
SPEAKER_04: And then sanctification is where I take over.
SPEAKER_04: God does change justification, I do sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: He saves me, I clean myself up.
SPEAKER_04: What the catechism answer helpfully reminds us is that it is God's work.
SPEAKER_04: First Corinthians talks about how Jesus became to us wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: Jesus becomes sanctification for us.
SPEAKER_04: Jesus provides in himself our sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: It is first and foremost a gift and a work of God.
SPEAKER_04: And we see that all over the place.
SPEAKER_04: 1 Thessalonians 5.23.
SPEAKER_04: Paul says in his closing benediction, now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_04: He's asking God to do the work of sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: Why would he ask God to do that if sanctification is something we do?
SPEAKER_04: And I'll get to it.
SPEAKER_04: Like we're active in our sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: I'll get to that.
SPEAKER_04: But first, want to be focused on what God does.
SPEAKER_04: Ephesians 5, 25 to 27.
SPEAKER_04: We've heard this lots of times when we talk about marriage.
SPEAKER_04: Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor.
SPEAKER_04: Again, the work of sanctification, cleansing, preparation, as being attributed to Christ, who is doing that in us and for us.
SPEAKER_04: We talked about how it's a promise, right?
SPEAKER_04: God is, or I'm sorry, how it's a process, a process that God's working in us.
SPEAKER_04: Philippians 1 6.
SPEAKER_04: He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: Colossians 3 9 through 10.
SPEAKER_04: Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
SPEAKER_04: God is in charge of the process within us.
SPEAKER_04: He's doing the process.
SPEAKER_04: It's not just a process, it's a promise.
SPEAKER_04: There's a purpose behind it, there's a destination, a goal.
SPEAKER_04: Romans 8, 28 through 29.
SPEAKER_04: For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
SPEAKER_04: It's a process, it's a promise, that's not carried out in our power, it's carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_04: Again, it's 1 Corinthians 6, 11.
SPEAKER_04: Such were some of you.
SPEAKER_04: And so again, we have all these passages.
SPEAKER_04: We have this pretty consistent testimony of Scripture saying that God is the primary agent, the primary cause in terms of our sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: He's the one who's doing it within us.
SPEAKER_04: But does that render us passive?
SPEAKER_04: No, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_04: The mystery.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's the mystery.
SPEAKER_00: Do you have 1 Peter 4 19 in your in my Bible?
SPEAKER_04: Yes, I do have it in my Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have it in my notes, though.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's that that's I've got that underline here.
SPEAKER_00: So those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful creator.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And continue to do good.
SPEAKER_00: That's another of those mysterious verses where we're committing ourselves to the faithful creator, but we're still not going to keep on doing good.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Well, you stated one of the most helpful ones is Philippians 2, 12 through 13.
SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence.
SPEAKER_04: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to do for his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_04: So work it out, right?
SPEAKER_04: Do what you're supposed to do.
SPEAKER_04: Walk in the way that he set out for you.
SPEAKER_04: As you walk, know that he's essentially building the bridge under your feet as you go.
SPEAKER_04: He's the one who's doing it in and through you.
SPEAKER_04: So you're you're not passive.
SPEAKER_04: You're active.
SPEAKER_04: You are at work, you're being called to do the things.
SPEAKER_04: You don't just sit around and wait for God to beam the happy feelings into you that make you obey him.
SPEAKER_04: You obey him, and as you obey him, you acknowledge that he's the one that's given you the strength to do that.
SPEAKER_04: So we are very much active in the process of sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: Because I think we can get in the way of God's work.
SPEAKER_00: We can grieve the Holy Spirit, we can um Paul, what does Paul say?
SPEAKER_00: The grace that was given him, he did not um okay.
SPEAKER_00: I can't think of it.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't frustrate the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: He took, he was like the parable of the talents.
SPEAKER_00: He took what God gave him, worked it all the time, knowing the ability to work it.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that was in this package is from God.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And um yeah.
SPEAKER_04: So I I have a wheelbarrow, and that's all with all wheelbarrows, the tire likes to lose air.
SPEAKER_04: Sometimes I'm too lazy to fill up the thing, right?
SPEAKER_04: Or I find myself in an area of the yard and I don't feel like getting the compressor.
SPEAKER_04: And so I'm you know, I do what I need to do and I get that wheelbarrow where it needs to go, but it's a lot harder than it needs to be.
SPEAKER_04: And sometimes I put so much weight in the wheelbarrow that I've got I have no choice.
SPEAKER_04: I have to fill it up before I can get where I'm going.
SPEAKER_04: Sometimes we're like that.
SPEAKER_04: We're like a wheelbarrow whose tire has no air in it.
SPEAKER_04: And you know, we're gonna get where God wants us to go, uh, but we're not operating according to our design.
SPEAKER_04: And sometimes we gotta stop and we gotta breathe in.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: And you know that that becomes part of the sanctification process too, right?
SPEAKER_04: Where we breathe the spirit, we we can't really frustrate the grace of God because his grace is irresistible, and yet we do our little best to oppose what God is trying to do in and through us.
SPEAKER_04: And we experience the consequences of that.
SPEAKER_04: We experience the discipline of our Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_04: You know, and it's that's one of the great aspects of sanctification being a promise.
SPEAKER_04: God doesn't give up on it.
SPEAKER_04: So even when I'm not cooperating the way I should, God's will is still operating.
SPEAKER_04: He's still working.
SPEAKER_04: He's still accomplishing me.
SPEAKER_03: Despite our best efforts, God's will will prevail.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, He works through us, He works in spite of us.
SPEAKER_04: And that's not an excuse.
SPEAKER_04: If you really know Him, you really know how this works, then you'll never hear that as an excuse.
SPEAKER_04: You'll hear it as assurance and good hope to press on.
SPEAKER_04: Alright, so sanctification, it's a work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man or the whole woman after the image of God.
SPEAKER_04: Now, here's another place where we might be liable to misunderstanding.
SPEAKER_04: To say that we're renewed in the whole man is to say that sanctification touches every aspect of us.
SPEAKER_04: It is not to say that we are completely and entirely sanctified either immediately or at any point in our lives before glory.
SPEAKER_04: There's um that's been a question in Protestantism, especially since the Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, the rise of kind of the holiness movement, Wesleyanism, especially coming from John Wesley.
SPEAKER_04: There's an idea where a Christian, it's called perfectionism.
SPEAKER_04: It's an idea where a Christian can come to a point where they no longer sin.
SPEAKER_04: It's not necessarily that they can't sin, it's that they just come to a point in their Christian walk where they no longer want to sin.
SPEAKER_04: And so they don't.
SPEAKER_04: There's glimmers of truth in that, right?
SPEAKER_04: There's glimmers, right?
SPEAKER_04: Matthew 5.48, Jesus quoting the Old Testament, you must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
SPEAKER_04: Ephesians 4.13, Paul looking to the maturation of the church.
SPEAKER_04: When we will all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
SPEAKER_04: What I just read for you from 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul praying that the people would be sanctified completely.
SPEAKER_04: Hebrews 12, 14, strive for peace with everyone, for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
SPEAKER_04: You know, so there are ideas, moments in Scripture where it uses this kind of language to set this kind of idea before us that, you know, we might be perfect.
SPEAKER_04: But what do you make of that?
SPEAKER_04: How do you understand that?
SPEAKER_04: What do you think of that idea that we might be perfected on this side of glory?
SPEAKER_00: I think it is a misunderstanding of how deeply entangled the flesh is.
SPEAKER_00: The old man, the flesh, is entangled in our personality and constitution, how deeply it is, because there's no time, no time where we cannot ascribe glory or credit to ourselves when it belongs to God.
SPEAKER_00: And it was very subtle.
SPEAKER_00: I'm praying, oh, I'm so good to be praying.
SPEAKER_00: I'm reading the scripture, oh, I'm such a good person to be.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that it may not be as blatant as that, but it creeps in very insidiously, and we know that that temptation to be part of God is still there.
SPEAKER_00: And I will be glad when it's gone.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm still, I have to deal with it probably till my last breath.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the the reality of sin is pervasive.
SPEAKER_04: And um, even though Colossians 3 talks about us putting off the old man and putting on the new, Romans 6 says that the old man is dead.
SPEAKER_04: We should consider ourselves dead to sin.
SPEAKER_04: Uh Christ won the victory over sin in the old nature.
SPEAKER_04: We are truly new in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: We the first word about us is not saint but sinner.
SPEAKER_04: That's who we are in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: And yet we still deal with the vestiges of our original corruption.
SPEAKER_04: Uh we still deal, you know, we have to be exhorted to act more like the new man that we are and less like the old man that we aren't, because something about that still lingers in us.
SPEAKER_04: And that's that's the reality that all of the New Testament writers presuppose as they're writing to the church.
SPEAKER_04: And that they wrestle with themselves.
SPEAKER_04: Okay, Paul in Romans 7 wrestling with, you know, what is what is heart and mind want him to do, but what is flesh and what the what the law of his members is wanting him to do.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: So there's this rub, there's this disconnect, there's this tension.
SPEAKER_04: And John names it in 1 John 1.
SPEAKER_04: We often read it as our confession.
SPEAKER_04: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
SPEAKER_04: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_04: If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
SPEAKER_04: I don't think that's a one-time reality there.
SPEAKER_04: I think that's a way of life kind of thing for the church, where we have to acknowledge that we sin, we fail, we fall.
SPEAKER_04: That's part of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, it's Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount kind of sobers us in thinking about the true nature of sin.
SPEAKER_04: Because maybe if you have a really low bar for what sin is, or if your understanding of sin is like the Ten Commandments, and I haven't murdered anybody today, I haven't stolen everything today, I'm good.
SPEAKER_04: Then maybe.
SPEAKER_04: Then maybe with a straight face you can say, I don't sin anymore.
SPEAKER_04: And then Jesus comes in and says, you know, okay, you haven't murdered anybody.
SPEAKER_04: You get mad at anybody this week?
SPEAKER_04: Uh you haven't committed adultery.
SPEAKER_04: You ever look at someone who wasn't your spouse in a way that you shouldn't have?
SPEAKER_04: You know, Jesus is just elevating the bar in order to teach us that if you want to get into the kingdom, yeah, you gotta be righteous.
SPEAKER_04: You gotta be even more righteous than the Pharisees who think they don't sin.
SPEAKER_04: Guess what?
SPEAKER_04: That path is not available to you.
SPEAKER_04: If you're gonna have the righteousness you need, you're not gonna get it from yourself, you're gonna get it from me.
SPEAKER_04: That's ultimately what he teaches us.
SPEAKER_04: So there's this goal that's set out before us.
SPEAKER_04: There's this ideal of perfection, of completion, of entire sanctification, of the day when we will sin no more, that we will be completely sanctified and holy in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_04: And we all ought to long for that day.
SPEAKER_04: But we need to recognize that that day doesn't come on this side of glory.
SPEAKER_04: A day doesn't come before either Jesus comes back or we die and go to be with him.
SPEAKER_04: So it goes on to talk about the short catechism says we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God.
SPEAKER_04: So again, sanctification works on every aspect of us.
SPEAKER_04: And the catechism gets at that right reality by talking about us being created in the image of God.
SPEAKER_04: Call back to shorter catechism 10.
SPEAKER_04: How did God create man?
SPEAKER_04: God created man, male and female, in his own, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness with dominion over the creatures.
SPEAKER_04: So sanctification touches our knowledge.
SPEAKER_04: We were darkened by our sin.
SPEAKER_04: We were walking in ignorance, we suppress the truth and unrighteousness, Romans 1 says.
SPEAKER_04: But when the light of Christ floods in, uh our minds are purified in our being purified.
SPEAKER_04: They're enlightened in our being enlightened.
SPEAKER_04: And so God is enabling us to think rightly, to think rightly about Him, to think rightly about the Word, also to think rightly about the world, as our minds are renewed after the original image.
SPEAKER_04: Righteousness, uh justification, we've been declared righteous.
SPEAKER_04: Sanctification, we're being made righteous.
SPEAKER_04: God is, that's something that Adam had in the garden.
SPEAKER_04: He had original righteousness.
SPEAKER_04: He wasn't, he didn't have any guilt, he didn't have any corruption, he had nothing to alienate him from God because he was in a state of righteousness.
SPEAKER_04: And he lost that in the fall, and we lost it with him.
SPEAKER_04: And so now, like I said, we're we're giving it back in Christ and we're sanctified in order to realize that righteousness in our lives.
SPEAKER_04: Holiness.
SPEAKER_04: We're being purified, we're being prepared, and we're being brought back to that state where we can walk with God in the cool of the day without any issue.
SPEAKER_04: Dominion.
SPEAKER_04: He's sanctifying even the works of our hands.
SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, Ephesians 2, 8 through 10, you're saved not by uh works but but through faith, but by grace through faith, and this is not your own doing that no one may boast.
SPEAKER_04: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for the good works which he prepared beforehand for us to do, that we might walk in them.
SPEAKER_04: So, you know, sanctification is restoring to us even our works, uh undoing the curse with all the frustration and all the futility that's involved in our work, bringing us back to that place where one day we will finally be able to work the land, work the world in a way that doesn't leave us hot and sweaty and frustrated and mad and all the things.
SPEAKER_04: Randy.
SPEAKER_02: Looking back at the apostles, you know, while Christ was with them on earth, you know, he was trying to help them to be sanctified, you know, as they were growing because they were going to continue on with the ministry after he was gone.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Well, he expressed his disappointment several times during that process because they were so slow.
SPEAKER_02: And even in passive recruits on today, I mean, we came to them when the people were hungry, and he said, you get them something to eat.
SPEAKER_02: You know.
SPEAKER_02: And of course they were like, don't have it.
SPEAKER_02: You know, there's nothing we can do.
SPEAKER_02: You know, we don't have enough money and whatever.
SPEAKER_02: And that's the way I think we are so many times, you know, that we limit our ability to obey God's commands because of the fact that He He takes care of things.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't make it impossible.
SPEAKER_02: You know, when He commands us to do something, we'll make it possible.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I in the sermon I won't talk about it as much in terms of sanctification as mission, but that's a really great point.
SPEAKER_04: And you give them something to eat is a really good nutshell of sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: But there's a need here.
SPEAKER_04: Uh you ought to be able to fulfill it, but you can't.
SPEAKER_04: You're not able to.
SPEAKER_04: You're not ready to.
SPEAKER_04: Jesus needs to give them something in order to make them ready to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, but he uses what we have in our to to achieve that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm my mind's cross-referencing to Moses, and God's saying, Well, what do you have in your hand?
SPEAKER_00: He had his staff in his hand.
SPEAKER_00: Well, he did a whole bunch of stuff with that through the power of the Lord, and God takes what we have and does his mission, you know, the contribution to his mission is with what we have in our hands.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Sometimes, but sometimes it's also with stuff we don't have at all, right?
SPEAKER_04: The bread from heaven, right?
SPEAKER_04: The manna.
SPEAKER_04: They didn't have anything.
SPEAKER_04: It says, alright, I'll write it down for you, right?
SPEAKER_04: So it's it's it's amazing how God shows up either to multiply what we have or to give what we don't have.
SPEAKER_04: And the bottom line of it is that he'll give us what we need.
SPEAKER_00: And Balcom in this revelation uh theology of Revelation talks about the major model that John references.
SPEAKER_00: The Messianic War.
SPEAKER_00: The Messianic War, that is all the Lord can give too.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: You know, probably using the context of Palestine and you know, the book of Judges, the book of Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: Then the exodus stuff coming out.
SPEAKER_00: That was all God's doing.
SPEAKER_00: What was the third one?
SPEAKER_00: Can't think, but anyhow, there's just big, big references in the book of Revelation to those major um phonetic structures in, and it's just amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And so the book of Revelation is like turning a kaleidoscope.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: With those, you keep turning the kaleidoscope and you see these scenarios worked out.
SPEAKER_00: And they're referencing things in the Old Testament, a lot of them.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: So the last bit of the catechism answer, we're renewed after the whole and the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die into sin and live unto righteousness.
SPEAKER_04: So this is talking about the Christian life in between.
SPEAKER_04: The five dollar words are mortification, vividation.
SPEAKER_04: We mortify sin, we put it to death, and we vivify the spirit.
SPEAKER_04: We become more and more alive in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: And sanctification is kind of talking about that process.
SPEAKER_04: When we think about that, right?
SPEAKER_04: Dying to sin and living unto Christ, what is our God?
SPEAKER_04: Where do we go to learn what that's supposed to look like?
SPEAKER_00: God's word.
SPEAKER_04: God's word.
SPEAKER_04: The answer is more is as obvious as it seems.
SPEAKER_04: We go to the Bible.
SPEAKER_04: And you know, that's it's important to recognize, it's important to say out loud, because um there is when it comes to the law of God and the role of the law of God, there's a spectrum that's existed for a long time in the church.
SPEAKER_04: And one side of the spectrum is legalism.
SPEAKER_04: Legalism is the idea that you go to the law, you do what the law says, and by doing what the law says, you merit your favor with God.
SPEAKER_04: You keep the rules, he rewards you.
SPEAKER_04: The other side of the spectrum is antinomianism, which means just against law.
SPEAKER_04: Namos is the Greek word for law, so it means to be anti-law.
SPEAKER_04: So if on this side, legalism is about keeping the rules to get right with God, on the other side, antinomianism is about, I've been made right with God, so now I don't need to keep the rules.
SPEAKER_04: And so when you ask a question like, does a Christian still need to keep the law?
SPEAKER_04: If you're operating with one of those views in mind, uh, that's gonna color the way you answer the question.
SPEAKER_04: If the legalist says, yes, you keep the law, what he means is you keep the law in order to be saved.
SPEAKER_04: Well, a Christian doesn't want to say that.
SPEAKER_04: If an antinomian says, do you keep the law, he says, no, you don't keep the law because Jesus already kept it for you.
SPEAKER_04: Well, we don't want to say that either.
SPEAKER_04: Because in the Bible, in the New Testament, even, we're being exhorted all the time to do certain things and not do other things, and to observe the law, or, you know, not in its old mosaic way, but to but to keep God's rules, right?
SPEAKER_04: And so what we have to do is just throw away that paradigm of legalism and antinomianism, and think more in terms of yes, Christ kept the law for us, and in keeping the law for us, he uh you know he paid the penalty for our breaking it, he uh satisfied his demands, and he created the scenario in which we, out of a response of gratitude and a realization of the new life we have in him, can keep the law.
SPEAKER_04: Do we have to keep the law?
SPEAKER_04: Yes, but we also get to keep the law.
SPEAKER_04: Think of all the psalms you've ever read, uh, especially Psalm 119, how the psalmist is gushing about the law of God.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, how I love your law.
SPEAKER_04: Or at the very beginning of this altar, Psalm 1.
SPEAKER_04: Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates both day and night.
SPEAKER_04: His delight is in it.
SPEAKER_04: And that's where we're supposed to be.
SPEAKER_04: That's how we're supposed to live.
SPEAKER_04: We don't come at God's law as this, you know, sword of Damocles that's hanging over our heads, ready to chop our heads off as soon as we break a rule.
SPEAKER_04: We come to it as his gracious provision.
SPEAKER_04: God's law reflects who he is and tells us how life is supposed to go in his world.
SPEAKER_04: We should want to keep his law, but because of his sin, because of our sin, we either want to give an appearance of keeping the law in order to make much of ourselves, or we don't want anything to do with it at all.
SPEAKER_04: Legalism, antinomianism.
SPEAKER_04: The right way forward is the Christ's way forward, where Christ joyfully and willingly, gladly kept the law, and now we get to follow him.
SPEAKER_04: So when we think about like the law in itself, right, in Scripture, the Ten Commandments, for example.
SPEAKER_04: In the Protestant tradition, we've historically thought about that in terms of three uses of the law.
SPEAKER_04: The first use is to restrain sin.
SPEAKER_04: Uh you can call it the magisterial use of the law, where you know we put the Ten Commandments out in front of the courthouse because the Ten Commandments are they go away, they make up the majority of the foundation of the Western legal tradition.
SPEAKER_04: And we can argue about commandments in front of courthouses another day.
SPEAKER_04: They restrain sin, right?
SPEAKER_04: Insofar as the magistrate follows the Ten Commandments, we'll have a decent enough society where people aren't stealing each other's stuff and sleeping with each other's spouses and killing each other.
SPEAKER_04: Uh at least that's the way it should go.
SPEAKER_04: Uh that's the first use of the law.
SPEAKER_04: The second use of the law is the um is the you know, it's the losing it's the use of the law that uh the ped how do you call it?
SPEAKER_04: The pedagogical rule.
SPEAKER_04: My memory is failing me in ways that ought to embarrass any seminar professor.
SPEAKER_04: But uh the second use of the law is the law humbling us.
SPEAKER_04: We put the law in front of us, we realize we can't keep it.
SPEAKER_04: It shows us our sin and it sends us fleeing to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Schoolmaster pedagogue.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, schoolmaster pedagogue, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Um which, you know, that's and that's true.
SPEAKER_04: And Lutherans are very big on that use of the law.
SPEAKER_04: But that's actually where Lutherans tend to stop, or in the Lutheran, in the Lutheran tradition.
SPEAKER_04: What the Reformed really emphasize and hold on to is the third use of the law.
SPEAKER_04: And the third use of the law is the use of the law as a rule of life.
SPEAKER_04: Where, yes, the law humbles you and shows you your need of grace and sends you to Jesus, but after you've gone to Jesus and resting in Jesus, the third use of the law is to show you, okay, what does it look like to go from here?
SPEAKER_04: What does it look like to live the Christian life?
SPEAKER_04: What does it look like to walk the Christian walk?
SPEAKER_04: That's the third use of the law.
SPEAKER_04: And the if you argue with a Lutheran about the role of the law in the Christian life, the tendency will be to downplay that third use and to play out the second use.
SPEAKER_04: And you catch a lot of that in um in some reformed preachers today.
SPEAKER_04: I remember, you know, there's one particularly influential one out of New York City where the you know the shape of his sermons would generally be here's what you're supposed to do, here's why you can't do it, and here's how Jesus did it for you.
SPEAKER_04: Which is like makes for really good sermons.
SPEAKER_04: And it's great stuff, it's it's encouraging, it's gospel, it's grace, but never answers the question, how then shall I live?
SPEAKER_04: Yes, I can't do it, and Jesus did it for me.
SPEAKER_04: Does that mean I don't need to do it anymore?
SPEAKER_04: Or I don't need to try?
SPEAKER_04: And that's where the third use of the law comes in.
SPEAKER_04: And so that the law is our faithful guide to show us what that process looks like.
SPEAKER_04: We die into sin, we live unto righteousness.
SPEAKER_04: Who gets to define what sin is?
SPEAKER_04: Who gets to define what righteousness is?
SPEAKER_04: God does.
SPEAKER_04: And he tells us how in his word.
SPEAKER_04: And so we don't come at it as, you know, it's you know, I guess the important word to leave ourselves with is, you know, first.
SPEAKER_04: Of Galatians.
SPEAKER_04: The problem in Galatia was that they were justified in Christ, and then they had this kind of Judaizing impulse that snuck into the church, where it was basically, okay, you're saved by grace, and you're going to be perfected by your keeping of the law.
SPEAKER_04: And Paul's just apoplectic about it.
SPEAKER_04: You fools who has bewitched you.
SPEAKER_04: Do you seriously believe that that which was begun by the Spirit, you're now going to perfect by the flesh?
SPEAKER_04: Do you really think that's how this works?
SPEAKER_04: That's not how this works.
SPEAKER_04: That's not how we want to think about justification.
SPEAKER_04: Justification, work of the spirit, sanctification, work of the flesh, the flesh, justification, what God did, sanctification, what we do now.
SPEAKER_04: No, it's all what God does.
SPEAKER_04: And so we take up the law in our hand, we take up the Bible in our hand, and it's not like, okay, we're saved by grace.
SPEAKER_04: Here's my checklist to make sure I say saved by grace.
SPEAKER_04: Or stay saved by grace.
SPEAKER_04: No, it's all grace from start to finish.
SPEAKER_04: And we take the checklist in hand and we say, Lord, please give me what I need to do this.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you for forgiving me when I fail to do it.
SPEAKER_04: Continue to grow me more and more so that this becomes my way of life.
SPEAKER_00: And if I see you, I am totally willing to be made into a puddle of worship at your feet.
SPEAKER_00: I will turn into a puddle no matter how good I think I've been.
unknown: John turned into a puddle at the feet of Jesus and had to be physically.
SPEAKER_00: I used to hate the law.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you now, I hated it because it was tedious, it was nitpicking, it was what uh Peter said, well, a burden that neither we nor our fathers could stand.
SPEAKER_00: And it was all because I was looking at the law the wrong way.
SPEAKER_00: And then through the influence of the narrative, of story, of character, of who God is, you know, a lot of years passed.
SPEAKER_00: And I realized this is all about who God is, his character, what he did, and how he wants.
SPEAKER_00: He invites me to participate in the Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Me.
SPEAKER_00: And then I started loving the law and saying, this is showing me what God is like.
SPEAKER_00: This is showing how my life can be modeled after that through his power.
SPEAKER_00: It was just, it was a total turnaround of what the law is.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's that's the work of sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: Transforming your heart, giving you more of a desire for God's law.
SPEAKER_04: It's a delight in it.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: And we can't we can't affect that change for ourselves.
SPEAKER_04: We can't, we also can't affect it for other people.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's good.
SPEAKER_04: That's a good reminder that we haven't touched on so much today.
SPEAKER_04: Sanctification is a process, it works according to God's agenda.
SPEAKER_04: God's agenda is always better than our agenda, and that's true for us as individuals looking in at ourselves, and also for us looking out at other people.
SPEAKER_04: Because, you know, I have an agenda for other people's sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: Uh, people I know, people I love, people I counsel, people whose hearts I would like to see change in very particular ways.
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, sometimes God does that quicker than I would like.
SPEAKER_04: Often he does it slower than I would like.
SPEAKER_04: And his plan is always better than my plan.
SPEAKER_04: Alright, so I think we all have to remember that.
SPEAKER_04: And because sometimes, in the same way we might want to uh uh uh take charge of our own sanctification process, we might want to take charge of somebody else's sanctification process.
SPEAKER_04: You know, yell at them, berate them, manipulate them.
SPEAKER_04: Why you keep doing that, idiot?
SPEAKER_04: Not that any of us would say that to somebody, but you know, we might think so.
SPEAKER_04: You just say it to yourself, right?
SPEAKER_04: But you realize that you know, if God is the one who sanctifies us, then you know, you you have words to offer.
SPEAKER_04: You should be praying, you have a role to play in that process, but ultimately, it doesn't matter how many good words you speak to another person, doesn't matter how often you pray and how beautifully you pray and how much you show up in their life and whatever way, God's gotta do the work.
SPEAKER_04: God's gotta change their heart, God's gotta sanctify them before they become the person they need to become.
SPEAKER_03: That's why, like in the beginning, when you asked people to change, I was just like, eh, because ultimately, like, that's who you are.
SPEAKER_03: God just working to bring it out to you.
SPEAKER_03: It's I don't know, I guess it's a change, but it's who you were.
SPEAKER_03: It's if if that's who you are, God will make that make make you that.
SPEAKER_03: So I don't know if it's a like when I say yeah, it's like rare, yeah, you know, it's but that's kind of what I was getting to.
SPEAKER_04: That it's well that's part of the question, right?
SPEAKER_04: Who are you?
SPEAKER_04: Who are you really?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Because there are things in all of us that are contrary to who we are, and contrary to who God says we are in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: And those are the things that we're seeking by the power of the Spirit to put to death.
SPEAKER_04: Because we might think, you know, yeah, I'm just an angry dude, I'm just an irritable dude, I'm just an alcoholic, I'm just a liar, I'm just an X, just a Y, just a Z.
SPEAKER_04: That's just who I am.
SPEAKER_04: That's how God made me.
SPEAKER_04: No, it's not.
SPEAKER_04: Maybe you've got that pattern in that life, maybe you've been dealing with that forever, but that's not who you are.
SPEAKER_04: Who are you in Christ?
SPEAKER_04: You're a son, you're a daughter, you're forgiven, you're free, you're not defined by your sin.
SPEAKER_04: And the Holy Spirit is putting to death the sin in you.
SPEAKER_04: So it's a coming to realization of who God already says you are in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: And that's a change, that's a transformation.
SPEAKER_04: Um, but yeah, it's it's it's it's an important one to uh to keep hold of because if we lose sight of it, it tangles up some in knots that very specific knots that we don't have time to get into right now.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Alright, good.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you, everybody.
SPEAKER_04: Um let me pray for us and then we'll head on.
SPEAKER_04: Father, thank you again for this time, and thank you for these brothers and sisters in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you for the precious gift that is our sanctification.
SPEAKER_04: Lord, we in our sin are not holy.
SPEAKER_04: We lack the holiness we need in order to stand in your presence.
SPEAKER_04: And yet you, by your grace, have cleansed us.
SPEAKER_04: You have cast our sins as far as the east is from the west.
SPEAKER_04: You've you've reclaimed us and set us apart as your holy nation, as your treasured possession, as your as your uh precious vessels, saints, we're called to represent you to the world.
SPEAKER_04: Lord, thank you that even though we fall, and even though we fail, even though we do things every day that are contrary to our new humanity in Christ, you forgive us again and again.
SPEAKER_04: You give us the grace we need to get up and to walk forward.
SPEAKER_04: Lord, help us if we should ever think that we merit your favor or earn more of your love by keeping your rules.
SPEAKER_04: Help us to remember that we are infinitely loved in Christ, that He has merited all the favor, and that we are not trying to earn something, but we are enjoying something that's already been earned and freely shared with us.
SPEAKER_04: Help us not to think of sanctification as a new legalism, but as this wonderful process where we come more and more alive, come to enjoy more and more of the gift that you've given us in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: Be with us this morning as we worship you, as we come together in this room to seat, to sing, and to hear your word preached, and to come to the table and to do all the things.
SPEAKER_04: Lord, meet us here, bless us, sanctify us, make us more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: We pray in his mighty name.
SPEAKER_04: Amen.
SPEAKER_04: All right.