Understanding Sanctification

Good Morning, what a blessing it is to be in the house of the Lord this morning. I want to talk with you this morning about what happens when Jesus overcomes me. Every now and then I will study a text for so long and reflect so much on a passage before I preach it that I end up giving it multiple titles. This is one that couldn be titled MAKING SENSE OUT OF MY MADNESS.

Or if I was going to be a little more theological I would just call it understanding sanctification.

In the song I need thee every hour, there is a verse that says “holiness is Christ in me” That’s what sanctification is. For some reason the church got away from using some of the more well known church words, they said hey man we gotta get away from using so many of these church words nobody knows them.

So we got away from using church words for fear of confusing people, or making ourselves sound more spiritual than we actually are. As a result it just continued to help cause Biblical illiteracy and what the Bible really teaches that is why many in our churches today don’t know or have never been taught sound doctrine. They don’t know the deep theological truths that can transform them by learning them.

For example people really ought to know what the word propitiation means, i mean it is a word that literally means the word mercy seat and it really speaks of the fact that my sins are covered.

Some of you are in a battle and a struggle right now, you’ll never learn to make sense out of it until you theologically understand the doctrine of sanctification. It will really help you to realize they why behind the what.

Sanctification is God working within and with situations without molding and shaping you more into the image of Christ. We really need to understand that this is why we were saved, we were not saved to be better versions of ourselves. No, we were saved so that we would become more and more like Jesus, in our everyday life. So that when people see us they don’t see us at all but they see the Christ within us.

Please turn with me in your Bibles this morning to beginning in verse 15. Would you stand with me this morning in honor of the reading of the only love letter that God ever wrote.

Paul is speaking and he says

Romans 7:15

Romans 7:15 NKJV

For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.

Let’s just be as honest and as personal as we can be, have you ever done something and wondered , what in the world was I thinking? I don’t even understand why I did that. PAUL did that, First of all let me just say before we get too far along there is a major problem in the American church. We deify the people in the Bible, there is only one diety in the bible and that’s Jesus.

One commentator even writes that he thinks Paul is not saved here in , well how in the world can that be? He is on a missionary journey at this point, he has planted churches, he has had an encounter with the risen Jesus. WHY in the world would a man writing a commentary say that he doesn’t even know if Paul is saved here?

It is because he cannot imagine why Paul would be saying he does things that he hates. We deify we make the people in the Bible into these superhuman people when they were just normal Joe’s just like you and me.

It’s what I love about Hebrews chapter 11 you may read and realize Noah, Abraham, Joshua and Sarah and Ruth were some really Godly people. But aren’t you glad that they threw the story of Rahab in there?

The harlot prostitute who God used in a mighty way for His glory. He took a gentile prostitute and put her in the bloodline of God’s son the Lord Jesus Christ. Thats the God we serve, He is the God who will take the outcasts and adopt them into His family and totally change their lives if they will surrender to Him.

Then he goes on to say

Romans 7

Romans 7:15 NKJV

For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.

Now just between us, nobody else is here, have you ever done something and you just hate that you did it. Have you ever done something and then thought “I HATE MYSELF FOR DOING THAT”

Romans 7:16–17 NKJV

If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

Is Paul making an excuse for his sin? Not at all, this is divine revelation, God is revealing to him, why he is having such a struggle in his life. It doesnt mean that he is not responsible for his sin, God is just giving him clarity on whats happening.

Romans 7:18 NKJV

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

Romans 7:18

Let me be clear on something you may die to sin, but sin never dies to you.

Romans 7:19–20 NKJV

For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

Romans

and now the key

Romans 7:24–25 NKJV

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

(Let’s Pray)

1 Corinthians 1:30 NKJV

But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—

1 Thessalonians 4:3 NKJV

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality;

1 Thessalonians

The song that captured my heart the most that I find myself singing as i am walking around is

“Holiness, Holiness is what I long for

Holiness is what I need

Holiness is what You want for me”

Holiness is what I long for, it is what I need and it is what God wants from me.

“So take my heart and form it

Take my mind and transform it

Take my will conform it to Yours, to Yours, Oh Lord.

Let me give you a definition again of sanctification:

It means holy, or holiness it speaks of becoming more and more like Jesus.

It means gradually becoming like Jesus Christ. It means that little by little from the time I ask Jesus to save me until the time that Jesus comes back or I die you are in the process of sanctification. You are in the process of becoming whole.

The good news is all the tools of Jesus are at our disposal.

So were in a process of sanctification, and it comes in three stages

When I was saved positionally Christ made me holy, but then progressively God is making me holy, you know that when you got saved you got all the Jesus you ever gonna get but Jesus has been working on me to get all of me. I’ll just be honest He never will this side of the grave. You might say good night you shouldn’t say this.

Well that is what the apostle Paul said when he spoke at the end of his life and said “I have not yet laid hold of that which Christ has laid hold of but I press toward that goal, what was the goal? It was being like Jesus it was holiness that he knew that he would never get there. But he never stopped trying to be more and more like Jesus.

He really wanted to be everything that God wanted him to be, and he knew that one day HE WOULD BE SAVED TO SIN NO MORE.

God will finish my holiness

Now sanctification is different from justification, when we become a Christian we are justified through the blood of Jesus Christ. This means that when you or I got saved got chose to look at us as though we had never sinned at all, because He is looking at us through the blood righteousness of His Son.

But that is a one time thing. Boom you get saved and god sees you as righteous but after salvation the process of changing you from the inside out begins and it continues until Jesus comes back or you or I die.