On the Journey

On the Journey: Sanctification

As we continue in week 3 of “The Journey” I want to share with you something that happens every year at Annual Conference. In the course of Ordination in the United Methodist Church, every candidate must go before the assembled Annual Conference and answer what are known as “The Historical Questions.” There’s always a nervous laugh at one of the questions: “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?”

But the first four questions we are asked are as follows:

1.      Have you faith in Christ?

2.      Are you going on to perfection?

3.      Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?

4.      Are you honestly striving after perfection in love?

The first one is an obvious but unfortunately necessary question; faith in Christ is necessary for new birth; as we discussed last week, it’s the one condition of justification, which is when God declares our punishment paid by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. As we read in Hebrews 11:6: Without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

The next questions is where things start to get sticky. Are you going on to perfection? Over the last two weeks, we have prepared for the journey, as God’s Prevenient Grace calls us to himself, showing us our sins, which convinces us of our need for a savior. By faith, we step through the door of justification; though our sins were many, God declares our punishment paid. Relative to God, we become “just as if we had never sinned.” Now we are fully on the journey.

The seminary word for this journey is sanctification, which is the churchy way of saying: holy, set apart by God for God’s purpose. The difference between justification and sanctification is that justification is a relative change, meaning that our status relative to God has been changed. We have moved from “declared guilty” to having had the penalty of our sins paid. Therefore we are enabled to approach a holy God, in whose presence sin is not allowed, without hesitation. Unlike justification, sanctification is a real change. We are actually made right with God, not only having our sins forgiven, but having our sins actually removed from us.

Psalm 103:11-12 tells us For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him [this is like a little child stretching his arms out and saying, “I love you this much!”]; as far as the east is from the west, so far he has removed our transgressions from us.

God actually removes our sin from us. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21: God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Who we are is actually changed when God sanctifies us. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

You aren’t the same old person. You are a completely new creation, called and set aside by God to accomplish His purpose!

This is what our UM Book of Discipline says about sanctification:

We believe sanctification is the work of God’s grace through the Word and the Spirit, by which those who have been born again are cleansed from sin in their thoughts, words and acts, and are enabled to live in accordance with God’s will, and to strive for holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

God enables us to live out our faith. Yes, it’s hard, but we are able to overcome. I also love the wording: to strive for holiness. This is an admission that holiness doesn’t come easy. This is why we recognize that we are on a lifelong process of perfection.

Entire sanctification is a state of perfect love, righteousness and true holiness which every regenerate believer may obtain by being delivered from the power of sin, by loving God with all the heart, soul, mind and strength, and by loving one’s neighbor as one’s self. Through faith in Jesus Christ this gracious gift may be received in this life both gradually and instantaneously, and should be sought by every child of God.

Did you notice that last line: “it should be sought by every child of God.” If you aren’t seeking perfection, what are you seeking? This side of heaven, there is no end of the process of growth, so if you aren’t going on to perfection, where are you going? This life is meant to shape us into the kind of mature Christians God intended us to be. Holiness is the highest form of human happiness. Since sin is the chief obstacle to such love, we use God’s grace to heal our sin and shape us to become more and more like Christ.

The Christian life is a process. We are changed gradually from natural persons unaware of our sin, to convicted sinners, to justified believers, and finally to entirely sanctified persons. This process is characterized by highs and lows. There is always a need to watch and pray to keep from falling away from this life of grace.

So I ask you this: Are you honestly seeking to grow up into Christian maturity? No, I’m not talking about the kind of “maturity” that looks down on everyone else because they aren’t as good as you are. I’m not talking about the kind of “maturity” that brags about it; I knew a guy who claimed to be entirely sanctified, but his actions said something else entirely. In fact, the Book of Discipline goes on to say this about entire sanctification:

We believe this experience does not deliver us from the infirmities, ignorance, and mistakes common to man, nor from the possibilities of further sin. The Christian must continue on guard against spiritual pride and seek to gain victory over every temptation to sin. He must respond wholly to the will of God so that sin will lose its power over him; and the world, the flesh, and the devil are put under his feet. Thus he rules over these enemies with watchfulness through the power of the Holy Spirit.  United Methodist Book of Discipline, ¶103, Article XI.

Being on the journey doesn’t mean we’ve already achieved perfection. Even the Apostle Paul admitted that he hadn’t “arrived” yet. We still have to choose every day and every moment that we’re going to grow in Christ’s likeness, to respond wholly to the will of God. In every aspect of life, not just some. You see, sin won’t release its power over you while you’re in the midst of sinning. When I was a teenager, my dad would take me on canoeing trips. We would camp out by the river and eat around a campfire. Those are truly great memories of time with my dad. If you’ve never been on the river, you might not realize this, but it stinks. If you’ve been on the river for several days, you’re going to smell horrible. My dad would bring along soap and we’d go down into the water and wash up. Guess how much that helped. I remember getting home one time and my sister had a boyfriend over and my brother and I tried to stink him out of the house.

The point is this: no matter how much soap we used, we were still in a stinky river. We were going to stink. Soap didn’t help when the water was dirty. Likewise when we’re living in sin; repenting and then going straight back to the sin isn’t sanctification! It’s not the road to Christian perfection.

A friend who is in recovery mentioned something like: victory today makes victory tomorrow more likely. In other words, standing firm against Satan right now will better prepare you to make the right choice later. We all know people who are going to start their diet or exercise regimen “tomorrow.” We know addicts who are going to “finish this cigarette and never have another one” or “after tonight, I’m never drinking again.”

I want to be clear on this: sanctification is not simply behavior modification. If you do something for three weeks straight, it’s going to become a habit. But God doesn’t want to just be your habit! God wants all of you. It’s also not about just checking off the list of things you don’t do.

Sanctification is growing more and more like Christ. As we become more like Christ, sin’s power over us gradually decreases. More and more the Spirit shapes our faith, hope, and love. The Christian life is one of growing in grace toward perfection in love, until one attains the mind which was in Christ Jesus.

Anyone, Christian or not, can buckle up their willpower and refrain from doing whatever bad things that people want to avoid. But that doesn’t address the real issue: relationship with God.

I’m not just going to follow the Ten Commandments only because they are the rules. The reason for following them is because I love God and I trust that He has the best in mind for me. It’s all about being in a loving relationship with our Creator!

Perfect deliverance from sin, in every sense of the term, is an integral part of redemption.  If you are a true follower of Jesus Christ, you will grow to absolutely loathe sin. We will struggle, realizing that the rest of our journey will be a struggle for complete deliverance from it. Whether we are living in continuous victory or daily defeat, that war must go on. This is why Paul tells believers to “stand firm” in Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians.

We need to acknowledge that there are different levels of Christian maturity. Sanctification is an instantaneous reality, where, through faith, God sets us aside for His purpose, but it is also a process by which God works to perfect us.  So it stands to reason that there would exist stages in our journey. In 1 John 2, John writes to children, young men, and fathers, various stages in maturity. We wouldn’t expect the same level of maturity from our little ones that we do from an elder. These stages do not always coincide with our chronological age. An older adult can be a “babe in Christ” and, in fact, anyone who is not moving forward in the journey of sanctification remains stunted in their growth. Hebrews 5:13-14 addresses this problem: Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

You do not grow to Christian maturity by being bottle-fed all your life. You aren’t moving forward in your journey if the only growth you receive is on Sunday morning. Sunday morning worship is not a one-stop shop for every spiritual need. You do not grow to Christian maturity by attending church once a week.

In John 17, Jesus is praying for his disciples. He prays that they will have his full measure of joy within them. He mentions that his disciples are not of the world. This is important, because a prerequisite to being a disciple of Jesus is being born again. If you’re not born again, if you haven’t been justified by God’s grace in Jesus’ sacrifice, then you’re not a disciple. You’re not moving to Christian maturity. You are not sanctified and set apart. You are not going on to perfection.

So Jesus prays this for his disciples: Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17) God uses truth to set us apart. What does this mean in a culture of relativity, where “your truth” and “my truth” might not match one another? It’s not about some proposition, about whose truth is truer than whose. This, too, is all about relationship, because Jesus Himself is the Truth. Jesus told his disciples, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6).

The only way to continue on the journey is to walk daily with Jesus. So I ask you the question that is historically asked of those being ordained in the UMC: Are you going on to perfection? If not, where are you headed?

If that’s where you want to be headed, I want to give you a chance to pray a relational prayer from Psalm 139:23-24. Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

(Benediction) 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.