Sanctified - what is God doing?

Well, I appreciate you guys being here this morning. I'm standing in for Vern and carrying on what is, to me, a really important topic in the area of sanctification. What is God doing in the believer's life? I know when we started this whole course as a family, my wife and my brother and I, we were just very, very thrilled to be able to sit down in a church and explore these truths. These are not things that are commonly available in churches in the average setting.

To be able to sit down and spend time on these topics are really important. And for our family, it's just been a huge, huge help. So I hope that standing in for Vern over the next three weeks will be beneficial for you. I can tell you it's been extremely beneficial to me. Vern mentioned to me in the very beginning of the whole teaching atmosphere at Holly Hills, he said, you know, a lot of times it's just an opportunity for you to spend in the Word of God. I've talked to some of you guys also. I learn more just by preparing to spend time with you.

So I appreciate you kind of being patient with me as I work through this stuff over the next three weeks. But what we're going to do today is we're going to pick up with the topic of sanctified, what is God doing. So last week we looked at sanctify the process. Today is what is God doing. Next week is what is the believer's part. So what is God's part? And I'll tell you, when I started looking into this whole area of sanctification, Initially, I find in typical conversations with other believers, the whole idea of sanctification is a little bit of a mysterious type of thing. It's not something that people have a real awareness about. How many times did you use sanctification in a sentence this week? You just don't use it. It's not something that you connect with.

My heart in preparing this week and the following weeks was to really bring it back down to a street level. If there is anything that is on my heart it is to get it to where I can recall it when I need it. Sometimes the doctrine can get a little fuzzy. It can get a little in the clouds. It can get a little big. I just hope the Lord's teaching of your heart today will be able to do that.

Let's look at the term. Let's review a little bit the term here. I'm going to follow a very similar approach that Vern does by reading through the notes, and so we'll start by doing that. And you've done this last week, but let's review a little bit.

The scripture contains so much related to the idea of being sanctified or being set apart for a holy purpose. If we really wanted to see this concept in its entirety, we would have to look beyond the single term sanctify, but also look at the various forms which include holy and saint. determined that this was a much bigger concept than... You go through your software and you look, okay, where are all the terms sanctified used? And you get a sanctified, sanctifying, sanctification, you get all these terms, and it's a good, you know, 30, 40 different types of situations in the scripture. Now go in and find the word holy, and the word saints, and look at the concepts surrounding that, and you see that really, in the scripture, sanctification is massive.

And the fact that we don't know much about it in the average church setting is something that really kind of blew me away because this is a big concept. When you include the idea of holy and saint, it just really emphasizes the point. And so I've tried to bring in a little bit of that major emphasis throughout the scripture as I try to frame what is God doing in this area.

Because the word sanctified is not a word that we really use in everyday language, I prefer to use the term separation. interchangeably, since it really drives home the idea that God has communicated in scripture. Now, that's something that we use the word separation in different ways, but I prefer that word in this case only because it's a word that we actually use in common day language. I don't mind the word sanctification. I think it's a good one. I think it's a scriptural one. I think it's a good way to refer to the concept, but I think Attaching that idea of separation is going to help magnify this concept to you.

What are we separated from? What is this whole process of sanctification or separation? What is God separating us from? And so that's what we're going to look at today. Next week, in the next lesson, we're going to look at what the believer's part is in this whole process. and this whole process of separation, but without first understanding God's part of this whole idea of separating or sanctification, we're not going to be really able to grasp what's going on in the following lessons. And so, if you think about it, if you don't start with God in sanctification, if you don't understand what's God's part, And you say, I like the idea of being separated and being sanctified, being set apart for a holy purpose.

I think it sounds really good. There's a lot of believers that would agree with that. Now, go off and do it. And how does a person do it? How does a person begin to satisfy the desire to be set apart for a holy purpose? Can you think about some ways? I mean, we're all probably victim of chasing down man-made approaches to sanctification. Yeah? Yeah, I think so.

I mean we see it everywhere. We call it works. We look around and we see the works of our own life and how they don't produce sanctification or separation. We look around and we see the works of those in other systems of belief and we see how they just grind away on a daily basis. You've got some ideas on how that comes about. You probably have in your own life examples, you have family members, you've seen it.

Without a proper biblical grace-based understanding of separation and starting with God's role, you end up with a works-based effort. So that's why it's so critical to always start with the nature of God. I just was in the process of preparing for this, thinking about all the different ways that man starts with himself in this doctrine or in this teaching. And it's just endless in the way that he tries to solve the situation.

Well, let's look at the basis of sanctification and delve into where our minds start when we begin to pursue or try to understand or grow in these areas. The basis of separation is found in the very nature and character of God Himself. In Isaiah 6-3, the seraphim use the word holy three times to describe what God is like. And one called out to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.

We find a similar description in Revelation 4.8 of the holiness of God and the repetition of that term so that it magnifies that. And we know that in Scripture, the repetition of words is a magnification, a pay attention, be careful to be aware of what's being said here. And in this case, Isaiah is wanting us to realize, holy, holy, holy, that was my response when I encountered God in His throne room.

And so we find this in Revelation 4.8 as well, but the word holy simply means, just like sanctification, means to be set apart or separated.

So we could say or translate Isaiah 6.3 in this way, separated, separated, separated is the Lord of hosts.

Have you guys ever thought of it that way? I mean, holy is a word that we kind of just have a tradition for. You know, we got songs with it, we just patch it on the top of our Bible, holy Bible. What does it mean? You ever thought about what a person that has never been actually introduced to a holy bible thinks about what a holy bible means? Oh, holy. Does the word holy sound more spiritual? It does. Who likes to be more spiritual when they use the word holy? I mean, when you use holy in the prayer, all of a sudden now you're really getting up there.

There's nothing wrong with the term. It's a scriptural term. But what does it mean? And I think a lot of times we just run with the spiritual nature of the term and we forget that this actually means separated or unique. It's one of a kind. And so oftentimes when I'm introducing even the Bible to someone that doesn't, or maybe has a bunch of different preconceived notions about what this book is all about, I say, you know, the word Holy Bible, it really just means unique book. That's what holy means, unique, one of a kind. It's separated from all the other books out there. Why? That's a good question. And that's why we need to understand what's in it, so you can see why it's unique. You can see why it's separated. And you know what?

That's exactly what holy means when Isaiah is referring to God in the throne room in that setting. He's saying, you are unique, one of a kind, there's nothing like you, I've never seen this before, you were separated from everything I've ever seen before. And what had Isaiah encountered up until this point? He had never seen anything beyond the creation realm. And all of a sudden he gets a glimpse at the Creator, the one-of-a-kind, unique, separate Creator, and his response is captured there in Isaiah 6. And so we want to start to understand how God is separated. And remember, this has street-level application for you.

What this means to you is that when you begin to think through how God is unique, how He's separated, how He's sanctified, Then you understand what we're going to get to next week and at the end of this lesson, how does this affect me? But we want to take a little bit of the focus off of me right now and say, what about God? Where does sanctification or this idea of separation fit with the character of God? So I say that we can develop an understanding of this in two ways. The first one is that God is totally and completely separated from all that is earthly or created. To us that have grown up with this, who have been trained in the scripture, it's a very common understanding. God's different than His creation. But you walk out in life, and the very first problem that you're going to find in almost every form of unbelief is the denial of this very truth. That God is not unique from His creation.

In fact, He's part of it. He's in some way related to it. Yeah, we'll give him some credit for being greater than a lot of the other things. It's like you've got Mr. Man and Dr. God. He's got that nice little increase in notoriety, but he's not really fundamentally different than the creation.

It doesn't matter if we're listening to music, or if we're watching TV, or even in our own hearts, we continually wrestle with the idea of bringing God down into the creation. That's the first and most fundamental truth that a person learns from the scripture. If you start reading through the scripture, just naturally, like a person would read a book, in the beginning, God. Separate, unique, one of a kind, existing eternally, outside of what he's about to do. And then you have creation, and we see the following result of what he brings about, but he remains separate. And we've got a scriptural basis for that as well.

We read in John 1.1 that God was never created, and although he made everything, he himself was not made.

And that's John 1.3. So right there in the Gospel of John, the very book that many evangelists go to initially, what does it do? Where does John the Gospel of John take you to in terms of history, right out of the gate. The beginning.

Why? Why does John, Phil, and even Stephen, and Paul, and Acts 14, 17, Stephen being stone, Acts 6, and so forth, where is it that these guys take us in order to frame the concept of God and His relationship to us? They take us to the creation. Why is that?

It's simply because we need to begin our journey of walking with the Lord or understanding the Lord, whether you be a believer or unbeliever, by first of all recognizing the separation of God from His creation. I will guarantee you that every sin, every struggle, every trial in your life that you give way to is rooted in this very issue. You have in some way not separated God from creation, and you begin to try to humanize and bring Him down to a way that you can control.

Look at Him. Box Him up, we say. And I'm guilty of that. Guys, I stand here and I recognize that there are issues that in every single area of sin that I've struggled with or that we struggle with on just a street-level, day-to-day basis, when we walk out of this door today, It's going to fundamentally go back to this recognition of holy, holy, holy. You are separated, separated, separated. You are unique. You're one of a kind. You're not controllable.

I remember in the Chronicles of Narnia when the young boy and girl were explaining the nature of Aslan, the lion, and the question was proposed, Is he dangerous? Is he okay? Is he safe? And the response was that he's not tame, he's not safe, but he's good. And so what we want to do is we want to get him safe and we want to get him all boxed up in our cultural definition of that, our own personal definition of that. But God is not safe. He's unique. He's what caused Isaiah to fall down and recognize that, oh my goodness, and we'll see his response in a minute, he is separated. He is unique. He is sanctified from all of his creation.

So the basic understanding of God's nature is completely lost in the church today. God has been blended in with creation and is now only somewhat greater than everything else, but is still fundamentally part of it. What are some examples of how people have denied the separation of God from His creation and brought Him in? Can you think of a couple just very off the top of your head?

Mother Earth. That's a God concept. Let's bring Him down to a really tame view of the Earth. And you know what's interesting about the Mother Earth concept is that comes right out of the evolutionary, cosmic evolution. Because what does cosmic evolution ultimately believe in? Matter and mystery. It's brought God into a very observable form. It's what we can see, what we can touch. Let's bring him down to a concept of mystery that we can't quite understand where it all came from or why it happened this way, but it did, and we can sure look at it and start to point fingers at it.

What are some other examples? Reincarnation. Why? Because if you reincarnate yourself, you become a higher being until ultimately you become God. Now you're stuck in the cycle of creation. Your concept of God is you obtaining a higher degree of Godness in a creative universe. You're cycled through.

What are some other examples? Theistic evolution. Okay, and that's a really scary one. That's a good point. That's a really scary one because theistic evolution, or evolution where God did it, and I've got to admit, I've got a hand raised on this one, I used to think that way. I absolutely did. That's one of the ways that I brought God down into creation, was to say, it doesn't matter how He does it, it's just the fact that He did do it that matters. Well, how dangerous is that? I found out.

Because it brings God down into a creation base, and it does not allow Him in the scripture to continue to separate Himself from what is. And so He's an integral part of the creation itself. One more example. Somebody got one more example. That's a good one.

So mythological, pantheon, polytheism, polytheism, you know, the Babylonians believed in a concept of many gods that procreated in order to create other gods and so they were just a greater degree than man himself. But at the end of the day, the way that they were doing things were with matter. It talks about Tiamat having the waters in her stomach being rumbled and producing all of these different creations. Okay, she needs water, she needs matter, she's doing all these things within the creation realm.

Again, a fundamental example of how God is brought down into the creation realm is not allowed to be separate and unique. I often communicate that we in the scripture see two different realities. We see the creator reality, and we see the creature reality. And I call it the creator-creature distinction, and it's intensely important in every single truth. In fact, if you hear me teach for any amount of time, you're going to hear me talk about this in almost every single issue, because In order to frame every doctrine of the faith properly, we have to first of all take the time to recognize that God is unique and separate. I mean, just bring up a teaching of the faith, anything. This has a fundamental effect on that. This idea of separation. Now God is sanctified from His creation. He's holy, holy, holy. Separated, separated, separated. Let's look at the second page, or the back of the first page.

The concept of the Creator-Creature distinction is absolutely vital to all teachings of the faith and has a major role in properly understanding this one as well. In Psalm 92 we read, Before the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. And so God is absolutely sanctified or separate from His creation and it's when we forget this very truth that we begin to have problems. Now next week we're going to talk about what our role in sanctification is. But one of the things that we can't forget is that throughout the entire scripture we have this concept of God being separate from His creation, and we'll see why. We'll understand more about that as we go on, but we've got to keep that in mind.

Romans 1.23, here are the problems that come from a neglect to recognize this truth. professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures."

What's going on there? Idolatry. I call it one of the exchanges. There are several exchanges that we see in Scripture that are really important, especially in the Gospel message. But here, in unbelief, this is the great exchange. And every single unbeliever has done it. And we often continue to practice it, even after being sanctified positionally, as we're learning today. We continue to make this exchange. And that's what sin is. It's an exchange of saying, God, you are not unique. You're not separate. You're not holy. You're not one of a kind.

Something else has that place in my life right now. I'm bringing it down to a very... I mean, if you think about idolatry, it's the literal carving concept. In the time of the scripture when idolatry first came on the scene, which is right out of the gate, but as it became a really practiced form and became a more organized form, we see the Israelites literally taking and acquiring idols from other nations that were carved. Somebody took with their hands and made something that they could worship.

And that's exactly what's going on here in Romans 1.23. It's talking about you taking something that you can look at and see in the creation realm, you can carve it, you can control it, you can put the bird in its cage, you can take the four-footed animal and tie it up, and sit there and deal with it. And again, that comes back to the concept of, I'm going to take God and put Him in a box so that He's not separate anymore, so He's not sanctified anymore. And God does not allow Himself to be brought down and acquired into the creation realm.

Now, He does not remain distant, does He? Is He a part of the creation in the sense that He is known and that He communicates and He's personal? Yes, He is. But is He in the creation in that He is fundamentally the same as? No. And we know that. We talk about that quite a bit. But our Christian brothers and sisters out there oftentimes don't know this or have forgotten it and are being taught to forget it. We live in a part of the world that's very one with creation. You know, I mean, this is a very progressive area in terms of exchanging the truth of God for the creation.

You know, it's like Romans 1.23 explains Colorado really nicely. Doesn't it?

I mean, we get out there and our church is the trail. Our church is the mountain, the 14er, right? That's where folks are spending their time and enjoying it. Is there anything wrong with the trail or climbing a mountain? Not at all. But it's when you don't see the glory of the Lord in creation, and you see God in creation itself, when you literally see the mountain or the trail or the woods as a God, that you begin to start to control it. I wonder where environmentalism came from. Instead of being a steward, we worship it. There you go. It's just another way of bringing God down into the creation and making Him a part of it, rather than allowing Him, as He's identified Himself in Scripture, to be separate. Have I nailed that down pretty good there? Yeah.

I don't know if this is off the point, but it's interesting that the Jewish leaders ultimately, when they were constantly being rebuked for basically trying to hold God in the temple, He doesn't reside here. He's bigger than that. And it's almost like they were trying to keep him in a box. And they definitely thought that they knew everything. The Jewish leaders thought that they had a handle on him. They had a handle on him. That's right.

I think there's a pendulum here. that's involved with sanctification, and I think we're going to be able to drive this point home in the last little bit of the study here, but there's a pendulum that's swinging here, and it goes from complete control of God to I have no clue whatsoever and I don't want to know.

And I think that we find our pendulum swinging in our own mind as well. We're controlling our understanding of the Lord, and we're controlling our own sanctification through works, and we're setting apart ourselves as holy, just like the Jewish leaders did. You can get a hold of God, and you can create the vast amounts of literature in order to explain Him, and that's where the Jewish leaders went with that. But we do it too. And so I want to help remind us that even in our own life we're part of this pendulum swing. Sometimes we really want to control God and get Him nice and tight and fit into a box that we can understand. And other times we let loose and we act like we don't care. We don't understand and so we just move on. But that's not what God's asking us to do. Let's look at the second aspect.

We said first of all that God is separated from His creation, and in the second one we read that God is totally and completely separated from all that is unclean and impure. If you think about it, holiness has that whole concept of being separate from the creation as well as being separate from sin and sinfulness, the unclean. Looking back to Isaiah's encounter with God's holiness, we notice that he not only learns something about God and His holiness, but also about himself.

He says, Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. And so God remains separated from all that is sinful. Isaiah felt this in every way. He felt the separation between himself and God and His Maker, because that's what God's holiness is.

It's different, it's unique, it's one of a kind, it's a quality that exists in the Creator alone. Can you think about how you encounter, through the scripture, or maybe through some teaching, even through prayer, how you encounter the holiness of God, and all of a sudden you begin to react in a similar way that Isaiah did?

And you start to feel unworthy. Okay? Now, as believers, we know a lot of things that are true of us in Christ. However, that's not where sanctification starts. It starts with recognizing what you are not and what God is. That's where it starts. It starts with recognizing and separating God from this creation and separating God from the impurity and the sinfulness that we see. What did God do when Adam and Eve sinned? Separated Himself from it. I mean, death itself means a form of separation. God brings about a separation from Himself and sinfulness. He cannot be identified with it.

I ask the question again, can you think of ways that you have felt the same kind of conviction that Isaiah felt? When you're working through something and you've got this reality of sin in your life and you're thinking, This doesn't fit the nature of God. It doesn't fit at all.

What I've done is I've brought Him down to a tamable God and I've made Him, you know, really quite different than what He is in the Scripture. And all of a sudden you get this deep conviction from the Holy Spirit in your life. And I think that's very similar to what Isaiah was sensing as he... We get conviction when we encounter the holiness of God.

It's pretty cool. It's the fact that God is separate that causes us to really humble ourselves at times and seek some solutions to what's going on. Stan? Well, spiritual death is separation from God. It is. So that's what Isaiah was recognizing. He was. His spiritual death and the fact that he had truly been separated from God. That's right. So that's what you're saying. It is.

And death as a form of separation, is that something that always has been, like an evolutionary concept? Death has always been, always will be, you know, just there and can't get away from it. Evil and good, always existing, continually forever. Is that a scriptural view of death? Absolutely not. Does evil have, or does death have a beginning and an end? It does.

So when we look at the separation of man from God and death, we see that that's a temporal thing, and it was not the original plan. So that separation is a result of God's holiness and sin having to exist in the same place for a time. But we see that even though while it exists in this here and present moment in time, God still keeps it separate. Even though it's here, He still separates Himself from it.

In fact, that's the story of the Gospel, guys. I mean, that's what we're talking about here. You know, a person is lost, they have a sinful nature, they're separated from God, and they've got a problem. And that's the first thing they've got to understand. And we want to jump right to the solution, but that's the first problem.

And it's interesting that in our own sin, in our own life, that the Gospel message is almost the exact same thing that we need to remind ourselves of. You know, the Gospel is not something that we did back when we believed and it's over and done with. It's a reoccurring concept of us being separated from God, separating ourselves through sin, and us needing to come back in Christ, approach the Lord in Christ, find ourselves justified, redeemed, all of these things that happen at the moment of trust and belief. And those are the things that restore us even in the confession that we have as believers in the here and now. It's the Gospel message. every day, all day, over and over and over. It's pretty cool. And so we have this separation of God from sin, and fast-forwarding actually to the cross, and we see this separation in a very purposeful and clear way.

Because there is no darkness of sin in God, 1 John 1.5, there is no darkness of sin in God, and because Christ was made sin for us, the Father literally separated himself from the Son. His only begotten or unique Son, He separated. You see how many times this idea of unique and separation come up in the Scripture? Over and over and over.

So sanctified is something that we attach on to as a New Testament believer and we think of as, oh yeah, this is a new thing. But it's actually not. I mean, we see God sanctifying the Sabbath. You know, in Genesis there, we see God sanctifying us a day. We see Him sanctifying things. We see Him sanctifying Israel from the nation. He sets apart Israel as a teaching tool for the rest of the nations. You see, sanctification is a part of God's character. Our separation, this idea of setting apart for a holy purpose, He does it over and over and over. in the scripture, all through the Old Testament as well.

So we have that in our mind, we have that framed. Let's look at Isaiah 59 too, it reads, But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear. And that's what you mentioned Stan, that's the whole concept of how sin brings separation. Okay, looking at the top of the third page there, Of course the question arises, how can we be joined with God once again and be separated from all that is sinful if we ourselves are sinful? This is where the gospel comes in and also how we understand sanctification or separation from sin as believers. We're going to talk about that a lot more next week. I mentioned that there.

So we can't stop being creatures. Can we stop being creatures and all of a sudden join the creator realm? Stop being separated from him? Not unless you're Mormon or every other religion out there that has the idea of acquiring a godness. In scripture you can't. You're always a creature. You just have different status before the creator. When I say you're always a creature, you're always a creature from the moment that you were born. Although, you're always in the mind of God.

Okay? So, we want to keep that distinct in our minds. So we will never be holy in this sense, and by holy we mean, first of all, that God is totally separated from all that is created, and second of all, God is totally separated from all that is sinful.

Does God call us holy? He does. But are we holy in the sense that God is holy, completely? We talked about this a week or so ago. We're made in the image of God, and so God makes things true of us that are like Him, but not the same as Him. So will we ever be the same as Him in terms of holiness? Not in this way, because that's the very nature of holiness, it's separated. But we do see ourselves being called holy. Now how does that fit in?

So in studying the biblical teaching of sanctification or separation we must begin with God Himself and we always keep before our minds the fact of His holiness and His separateness. God sanctifies or separates believers. Remember we're talking about what is God doing to separate us. What's God's role in this whole sanctification thing? Let's talk about that a little bit more in detail. As New Testament believers we now need to begin grasping how God intends us to be separated and from what.

1 Thessalonians 4.7 is a good place to start.

For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification." Other translations read, holiness. For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but holiness. God's called us to holiness. He's called us to be separate. He's called us to be unique. So while sin separates the believer from God in some way, Here we see that God has not called us to impurity but to separation or holiness, as often translated in this verse. God has literally called us to be separated to Him. So here's what's kind of crazy, at least to me it was.

Sin separates us from God. Faith in Him separates us back to Him. Separates us from what? The world, the flesh, the devil, ultimately sin, ultimately evil. So there's this separation away from God to the world, and then there's a separation of the world back to God. And when I understood separation or sanctification in that light, I realized this is a big thing.

It's throughout the entire scripture. Man is constantly dealing with whether he is separated from or separated to. It's pretty neat. You see it in Israel. In fact, if you study through the nation of Israel, if you personify the nation of Israel as a person, you see this. confess, get back into fellowship, as it were, through the judges. The judges called them back, and so they, you know, oh yes, we have, and this cycle, back and forth, all through the judges, all through this time. And then, you know, they get separated from God, and then they get separated from the nations back to God, and separated from God, and then back to God. But that's exactly what our life is like. But, what we have is more knowledge about who we are in Christ. So let's talk about that a little bit more.

According to Romans 1-7, believers were called to be saints. The word saint means a holy person, a set-apart person, a separated person. Remember I said if we wanted to really understand this idea of sanctification, we'd see in the scripture where holy is mentioned and the word saints. Not just the word sanctify or sanctification. The word saint means a holy person, I just read that, set-apart. Remember the believers in 1 Corinthians?

We talked about that last week. 2.15-3.4. Were these guys walking with the Lord? Not especially. Were they believers? They were. And I'm so thankful that we understand that, because in a lot of situations in churches, the idea of perfectionism is taught. The idea of, oh, well then they weren't really believers if they started doing some of that stuff. They weren't really separated from the world, because they were sure worldly. Look at them. Here's the thing.

What God is doing in the life of a believer has a positional aspect as well. We talk about the positional and the practical. We talk about it a lot here. And that's true of this issue as well, that God is doing something positionally that's different from the way that things are happening practically, or experientially, conditionally. I like practically because it, or in practice, because it has the idea, I mean, I can relate to it. It's like, okay, my position in heaven is that, but practically speaking, we're going to talk about that next week. The practical nature of sanctification comes out when what is the believer's role in this? So we'll look at a more human viewpoint or believer's viewpoint next week. This week is all about God's viewpoint.

Let's read about what Paul says of them in 1 Corinthians 1-2. To the church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours." And so we have sanctified and saints both being spoken of as those believers. And so we find here, 1 Corinthians 30 even, that these believers were in Christ Jesus and they not only had wisdom and righteousness and redemption, but they also had sanctification.

And we also learn in 611 that even though these Corinthian people were once terrible sinners, and they were. If you want to call a believer a terrible sinner, these are the guys that you call that. You can call me that too sometimes. But these guys, they got the rap sheet for it.

They were washed, however, and they were sanctified, or separated, set apart, and justified, declared righteous, because they were in Christ." Now we get to understand, the nation of Israel didn't get this. They didn't have this revelation. They didn't have this truth, this information. But we do. We understand who we are in Christ positionally.

So it is through Christ's work of the cross and empty tomb that God is separating believers from sin. When a person places their faith in the message of the gospel, God does the immediate separating from a positional perspective. That is, from his perspective. Think about it.

When a brand new believer becomes sanctified, are they set apart from sin? I mean in practice or in condition. Is a brand new believer set apart from sin? No way. They're babies. They're just born. They have no idea how to function about what we're talking about next week. what the believer is doing in sanctification. But one thing is very true of them. One thing is very true that from God's perspective, from a positional perspective, they are fully sanctified and that is why we can see these Roman and Corinthian believers called saints and called holy.

Such were some of you, we're reading in 1 Corinthians 6.11 there, such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of God. I use an illustration here to kind of explain what's going on here. I think this really helps understand positionally what's going on. Okay, so let's talk about sanctification positionally speaking.

You ever seen a certificate of debt? You've got one or have had one for your car or house at some point in time. Hopefully you've enjoyed what it means to be out of debt in some ways. But we're all familiar with the concept. We all go through it. And in the same way, there's a certificate of debt in a spiritual sense. So you can imagine this.

We all walk around with a certificate of debt hanging around our neck. We're born and went into the world with a certificate of debt. And so on the debit side and credit side, you know what this is all about. On the debit side, we got all this sin. It just keeps going and going and going and we can't change the reality of it. So we've got a debt. We've got what we call that sin debt. And it just keeps working its way down the chart. And what is the consequence of that sin? God looks positionally at your certificate and he says you've got nothing but sin and the consequences of sin are death.

Death means separation from me, separation in your body at some point, as well as the second death. Eternal death. Eternal separation. Two deaths. Two separations. The death of the body and the second death, which is the worst. That's the one that keeps you away from him forever. So here's the consequence. This is the way the unbeliever walks around in life.

And they're always trying to do something with this. They're always trying to fix this. Get a little good karma. Help the old lady across the street. Do whatever it is they gotta do in order to feel like they got some credits over here that outweigh the sin.

This is a gospel message. This is not something that's new to you guys. You understand it. But when it comes back to walking with the Lord and sanctification, this is a pretty big deal. It's a positional thing. Because positional sanctification actually happened in the gospel when you believed it. That's when it all goes back to it. So that's why I'm talking about it today.

Certificate of debt. You got one. Consequences? Eternal death. You were presented the gospel. Somehow, someway, you came into contact with the saving message of the empty cross and the empty tomb. And you changed your mind. You repented of the worldview that you had. You changed your mind from believing this. set of truths, or proposed truths, to believing the truths of the Scripture. And you decided, He is the Creator. He is the Savior. He is who He said He is, and He's the one that came to save.

And so, at the moment of trust, or the moment of belief in a believer's life, their certificate of debt goes from this, eternal death, to all of a sudden having this hung around your neck, positionally speaking. What does God see when He looks at your certificate of debt? the righteousness of Jesus applied to your account, no more eternal death because it's been paid in full. I think this is helpful. It's helpful for me because when I go out there and start trying to understand what it means to walk and be identified with Christ, abide in Christ, be sanctified, this is where I sometimes forget to remind myself to go. And when you don't have this in your mind, and by this I mean this certificate of debt being paid in full, you are positionally set apart in the same way that God is set apart from His creation. It doesn't mean that you start being a creator, but it means that in terms of sin, you are no longer separated from Him. You are now identified with Him in the righteousness, in the complete righteousness of Christ. And so we have this certificate of debt that's now paid in full. Pretty good place to start your day, right?

It's a positional thing. It's practical and it's very real. And when we forget it, and we just all of a sudden start walking, trying to think about how to get sanctified for today, you know, we really end up going on feelings, don't we? And like Vern says, you know, the facts are like the train on the tracks, you know, feelings follow. And so, this is the facts.

This is where you start in your mind when you start to think through the obedience of being in Christ. This is in Christ. Now, as a new believer, you've got a lot of things that are true of you. Or even as an age-old believer who hasn't grown spiritually. We talk about believers sitting in the pews for years and not growing. Maybe they're just stuck with this. And there's nothing wrong with being stuck here. But you miss out on a lot of opportunity of seeing what it means to be in Christ while still here in this present place. We're going to talk about that more later. Let's wrap this up.

Positional sanctification is true of every believer. We have once and for all been set apart for God. This is why we are called saints, because that is what we are in God's sight. This is why we're saints. When He looks at us, He sees this, and that's why He calls us that. Not because of what we're doing, but because He sees this.

That's really important. He sees that certificate paid in full. He sees Christ's payment. He sees Christ. That's why he looks at the believer in Corinth, the believer in Holly Hills, and he says, you're a saint, you're a saint, you're a saint. Because I see nothing but Jesus, righteousness, all over each and every one of you.

But I just did something I shouldn't have done. That's what my daughter says. Daddy, I just said a word that I shouldn't have said. Okay? God doesn't see you as being anything more than having the full righteousness of Christ. Sure, we need to work through our part in sanctification. We'll talk about that next week. It's not works. It actually happens to be faith. The same thing that brought us to the positional truth of sanctification brings us to the experiential truth of sanctification. It's called faith. Our positional sanctification...

Oh, 2 Corinthians 5.21 there. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Our positional sanctification is just as perfect as Christ is perfect. Just as much as He is set apart, we who are in Him are set apart. It is our vital union with Christ. Positional sanctification is as complete for the poorest and weakest believer as it is for the strong and the mature.

And I'll just stop there and read this verse, Hebrews 10.10. By this we have been sanctified through the offering of the blood of Jesus Christ for once for all. For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. For all time. And that's what this is all about. God's part in sanctification is applying the pure and perfect righteousness of Christ to your account so that you can actually start to walk. And next week we'll pick up with what our part is in that.

I'm not sure how we are on time here. I think the buzzer just went off. But if you guys have any questions we can do for a few minutes here, I'd love to be able to give you that. I know that when I teach, allowing for a little bit more interaction is something that we want to be able to do, so I'll work on that. But those were some of my thoughts as I went through that. Any thoughts from you? Yeah? I think something that gets lost in the contemporary church is this idea that Jesus paid Jesus satisfied God about the sin issue.

So it has nothing to do with us. And so we tend to think that salvation is by grace, but then the growth gospel is by works. We don't understand that Jesus satisfied God. There's no way... I think you bring up a really huge issue in the church today, and that is salvation by faith, if it's there, and sanctification by works. Now, are there good works that come? there are. But do those satisfy God? Not at all. Just like you're saying, Craig, the propitiation concept of God being satisfied happens the moment that we believe. He is satisfied not with us.

And that's where the gospel can remind us of where we are today in our walk, because if Christ satisfied God for sin, then are we going to satisfy God for sin now? Are we somehow going to be able to You know, reverse that whole concept and start to work our way up the chain. Now, we do produce good works. We're going to talk about that next week. But you bring up a really good point.

I think it gets lost very much so in the average and contemporary church. God is satisfied with Christ, not you. Huge load off your shoulders. For some people that are really tuned into legalism, that's like, what? I don't want God to be satisfied with Christ. I've got a lot of good things to offer. Oh man, I don't know about you, but I don't want that situation for me.

That's right. That's right. And next week we're going to talk about what's the believer's role in sanctification. And it's not your works. Now that you're in Christ, now that you've got the certificate of debt paid off in full, his work and his effort can be produced through you. We're going to start catching up to what we are positionally next week as we start to learn. Yeah?

Isn't it interesting the way that they... how they're going about getting Pope John and McClure to Saint? Isn't that interesting? A lot of the priests want to know... show the volumes and volumes of books that gives all the qualifications that he has to meet to become a saint.

Also, due to his efforts and what he's done. Right. I mean, it's, how could you live another life having that on you? And what's most is the fact that he has to do two miracles, right? They have to be justified as true miracles, or he can't be a saint.

It comes back to this. Scripturally speaking, it's off our shoulders. And that realization is where we really start to grow in our walk with the Lord. It's off our shoulders. And that's worth singing holy, holy, holy. That's the point. Peter wanted us to grow in grace. He didn't suddenly grow in works or grow in efforts. That's right.

It's also growing in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also our knowledge of God. And that was the thing that Israel was constantly told by the prophets. Know your God. Know your God. Why do you think they were told to know him? Because they knew their idols, but they didn't know their God. Perfect. That's exactly right. They knew their idols better than they knew God, and God is the only thing separate and unique that's going to actually give them a solution to the problem. That's right.

Well, I appreciate you guys hanging in there this morning. We'll pick up next week with the next lesson. Some really good thoughts there. As always, I'm encouraged by your questions and your thoughts, and so if you've got more of them, come talk to me. I'd love to interact with you a little bit more, but let's go ahead and let's just close in a word of prayer, and we'll get ready for church here.

Father, we want to just say thank you. Thank you so much. for what is true of us in Christ that is not up to us. Positionally speaking, you're satisfied. Our debt is covered in the perfect righteousness and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. And that brings us to a place of just recognizing that while we are weak and while we are needing to grow in so many ways, we can come back to the positional truth of who we are and how you see us We can find ourselves just loved by you, adored by you, in the same way that you love your own son. And so we just want to say thank you. It is in your name that we pray, Lord Jesus. Amen.