Right, we're gonna continue on on the topic of sanctification. And tonight, kind of change plans a little bit. We're gonna kind of talk a little bit about just the nature and characteristics of sanctification. And then we're gonna talk some about some of the specifics that go with that and bringing into that mortification and vivification. But then also, some of the results of sanctification in the life and that that leads to a life of good works. But if you remember last time we we kind of defined sanctification and we also looked at is really the kind of the boring part of just defining things and then looking at the confession and the 1689 Lenten Confession of Faith and what those brethren said about sanctification. So there's a lot of reading and all that, but then at the very end of that last time, we looked at 1 Thessalonians 5, 23 through 24, and we looked at how that, in that passage you see that we are commanded to holy life. So we talked about that first, just above that passage in 1 Thessalonians 5, There's this whole list of things that Paul is saying you need to do this you need to do this you need to do this So there's all these commands So there is a role for us to play in the sanctification of our soul. We are to obey the commands we are to use the means that God gives us through prayer and through preaching and through the reading of his word to continue to strive for holiness that's clear from the scriptures so there was the commandments but then the second part of that was Paul prayed for God to sanctify us he says he prayed that God would sanctify our whole body and soul and spirit it's this total sanctification that he prays for in the middle part of that text and then we talked about at the end the promise which is that As far as if you're just looking at that text, it's one of the beautiful parts of that text I'm going to read the whole 20 verse 23 and 24 and the very God of peace Sanctify you holy and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and then in verse 24 Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it so What we can rest in is that yes, we are to strive to keep the commandments, we are to strive for holiness in our life, but ultimately, God has said it and he will do it. That's our ultimate hope in our sanctification is that the one who has called us, what he has called us to is holiness. What he has called us to is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. And if God calls you to it, he will see that it is done. He would never call us to something that he's not gonna complete. He's not that kind of a God. So if you know about the character of God, then we look at that promise and we have hope in our sanctification. And I wanted to begin with that because I do not think it's the case that we over speak about sanctification in this day and time. There's probably some times in the history of the church that you could go back to where it was spoken of a whole lot more. And yet, even with that being the case, when you talk about sanctification, I think for Christians who are serious-minded and who believe the Bible and who want to do right, when we talk about holiness and when we talk about sanctification, it can be a real daunting thing because we know our own sin. We know our own thoughts. We know all the ways that we fall short. But then that text gives us the hope that God's going to accomplish in us what he intends to accomplish. If he calls us to it, he's going to see to it that it's completed. So that's what we looked at last time, and I'm really thinking this won't be really lengthy tonight, but we're going to start first with the nature and characteristics of sanctification. Some of these things we just briefly mentioned last time and we'll begin to unpack a little more tonight. Just by way of review on the nature and characteristics of sanctification, last time we defined it this way. Sanctification is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer in conforming the believer to the image of Jesus Christ. It is the setting apart of the people of God to holiness. It is a gradual and progressive work that begins after conversion and is finished in glorification. Sanctification is absolutely necessary to salvation as an evidence of election, redemption, and all that comes before it. And in my definition, I have the word necessary in quotes. What we mean by that is it's something that's going to happen. And necessary to it means not something that you're accomplishing so that you can have salvation, but it's necessary in the process. It's something that necessarily happens as part of your salvation. So it's absolutely necessary to salvation as an evidence of your election and redemption and all of those things. So sanctification is a gracious and continuous operation of the Holy Spirit, which you remember what we're doing on Wednesday nights is talking about the Holy Spirit. So it is an operation of the Holy Spirit by which he purifies sinners, renews the whole nature into the image of God and enables him to perform good works. We're going to talk about that a pretty good bit tonight, something we didn't talk about a lot the last time. It differs from justification in that it takes place in the inner life of a man. It's not a legal act. The doctrine of justification naturally leads to that of sanctification, though, because the state of justification calls for a life of sanctification consecrated to the service of God. You say, okay, what did you say right there? That's a lot of words, lots of jumble. This is basically what that means. Our sanctification is not, it doesn't have really anything to do with our justification in this sense. We cannot produce holiness. We cannot bring any holiness. There's nothing we can do to be justified in the sight of God on our own. None of our good works or anything are meritorious in the sense that it earns us salvation. So justification is a legal act that says that we are justified in the sight of God, and then our sanctification comes after that. So it's not something that is used to earn justification at all, and in fact, Exactly the opposite of that is the fruit of justification that comes after. Because of that, we say it this way, sanctification is usually a lengthy process. Now why would a theologian say that sanctification is usually a lengthy process? Well, that's because in the average person who lives a normal, average life, if they're called to faith at some time, let's say in their teens or their 20s, and they live to be 80 years old, sanctification's gonna be taking place throughout their whole life. But the reason they say usually is, you know that's the the normal average situation what about someone who either is up in years before they're born again and converted and maybe there's a short period of time before they're called to be with the Lord or it could be you know someone's in their 20s or even teens they're 16 years old and they're called to faith in the Lord and then God calls them home very quickly that we don't control all of those things but usually it's a long process in the life of a believer so your regeneration and your conversion are something that happened in an instant it happens quickly and it's a it's a one-time thing but then sanctification is a process that goes on throughout the life and so we would say it this way it's usually a a long process, a lengthy process, and it never reaches perfection in this life. We're going to come back to that. I'm just going to mention it now and we'll come back to it. It is definitely a supernatural work of God, but the believer does cooperate in it by the diligent use of means which God has placed at his disposal. So this is different, you know, when we talked about regeneration, and we rightly do this we make a really big point out of this and and it used to be a very much a distinctive of our people but it's really not anymore there's a lot of people that really believe this now actually believe it but we make a big we have a big sticking point that in regeneration you don't cooperate with the holy spirit right you're not active in that process we believe in holy spirit regeneration immediate he doesn't use means And you don't cooperate in that. It's just like when God spoke all things into existence, he speaks life and life happens in your soul. So we do not cooperate with that. But sanctification is different, just like we talked about conversion, and conversion is different. But in sanctification, the sinner does cooperate through a diligent use of the means which God has placed at his disposal. So sanctification, really the purpose of it is to strengthen, increase, and fortify the new life we receive in regeneration that we're made aware of in conversion, and it consists really of two parts. So we're gonna kind of take just a minute to look at both of these. I told you we may do a whole Wednesday night on them. We're not going to get that far into the weeds of it, but I do think it's really important for you to understand these two aspects of sanctification. The first one is mortification. which is the ongoing removal of the corruption of human nature. So it's just the ongoing removal of the corruption or pollution of the human nature. We see that in Romans, let's turn to Romans chapter six. And we're gonna look at a couple of verses there, Romans chapter six. In verse 6, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. So it just introduced the concept of the old man. And then look in verse 12, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body. that you should obey it in the lust thereof." So there's a warfare that has to happen that you no longer give in to sin, you put sin to death. So mortification, you think about what that word means, it just means to put it to death. Mortification means that you kill something. Another good way to hear it, and you'll hear Paul talk a lot about this, he talks about putting off and putting on. We're to put some things off, we're to put other things on. And so the mortification is the removal or the putting off of certain things in the life, that part of sanctification. Let's also go to Galatians chapter 5 and verse 24. And they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. And I've got a really good quote on that in just a minute. I'm trying not to get ahead of myself here. And then Romans 8, 13, let's go there and look at that one as well. Romans 8, 13, we just covered this in our study of Romans. For if you live after the flesh, ye shall die, but if you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. Now that one's pretty cut and dried, right? It pretty much says what we're talking about here, about mortification. Through the Spirit, you're led by the Spirit, then you through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. So that's mortification. Now the other half of that is vivification, the development of the new life, that you receive through the Holy Spirit in regeneration. It's the development of that new life. Let's go back to Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6 and verse 4. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, Even so, we also should walk in newness of life. So there is a new creature, there's a new life that we've been called to, and what vivification is, it's us developing that new life. And, well, I'm not gonna preach through the poem, we'll get to that in just a minute. Galatians 2.19, let's go there, Galatians 2.19. Galatians 2.19 we read, For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. So you're putting some things away, you're killing some things, and you're living for others. The vivification, the putting on. We could go to a lot of different texts where Paul talks about that and we may go to a few of those a little bit later on. But when we talk about mortification and vivification, the truth is, really for most people, and you may not be like this, but for most people, I think, when they think of sanctification, they largely, if not entirely, think of sanctification as a battle against sin. So they really lean heavily on the side of mortification. They really talk about a lot about putting sin to death. So, sanctification means I've got to battle sin and I've got to put these things away. And they really don't pay as much attention to the other side of the coin, which is vivification. I think that's probably just because of how we're wired and how we think. I told you last time about John Owen's book, The Mortification of Sin. It's about 85 pages on just mortification. And many other theologians have written, I don't know of a book written on just vivification. There may be one out there, but I don't know of it. We just tend to think more about sanctification on the negative side, not the positive side. And mortification of sin is indeed vital to sanctification. You remember I told you the quote last time from Owen, if we're not killing sin, it will be killing us. That's one of his famous quotes from that book. And I think a lot of people think that way. This is another quote from that book that is really interesting too. He says, let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. So basically, if you're not stepping over the dead corpses of all your lefts, you're not making any progress. That's some pretty vivid language, right? It's just, you gotta step over your vanquished enemies to know that you're having progress. So he was pretty serious about the concept of mortification. But sin, the truth is, sin is never truly mortified by mortification alone. That's the truth. So, vivification is actually really important. There's a parable in the New Testament that talks about if we only empty the house, Without filling it, the devils will simply return in greater force, right? That's what Jesus said. Well, the idea of that, when we think about it in the sense of mortification and vivification, is we need to furnish our lives with the fruit of the Spirit just as much as we need to empty the house of all the bad things, right? I think that concept is really easy for us to understand when we're in our right mind, I think we know that that's the truth. So making no provision for the flesh or mortifying sin by the power of the Spirit is not an end in itself. It is not really the Spirit's ultimate goal. And you're saying, wait a minute. You're saying the Spirit's ultimate goal is not just for you to mortify sin. That's what I'm saying. And this is what I mean by that. What is the end goal of sanctification? Well the end goal of sanctification is for us to be holy and to be like Christ. So the end goal cannot be accomplished just by mortifying sin, we also must be putting on Christ. So for the end goal, it's not the Spirit's ultimate goal, the ultimate goal is for us to be like Christ, it's for us to live in fellowship with the Lord without the burden of sin. And we're gonna talk about that a little bit more as we go on. So, Paul is very balanced, really, in his writing. You know, I told you we lean really hard to the negative side. Paul is actually very balanced in his writing on this topic. He always talks about what you put on and what you put off, sometimes in different places, sometimes in the same context. But the works of the flesh need to be superseded by the fruit of the Spirit. There's a famous sermon that was preached called the expulsive power of a new affection. I love that title. I'd love to steal that one one day and preach a whole message on that but the expulsive power of a new affection and that sermon was preached as an as a message on 1 John 2.15 which says, And the point of the message was this, if you're in love with the Father, the more you're in love with the Father, the more of that other stuff's gonna have to get out of the way. It's the expulsive power of, what did he say, the expulsive power of a new affection or a new love. Another way to think about that, and this is way oversimplifying it, but have you ever, well, we bought a toy for a kid the other night, and I'm not gonna say who it was, I don't wanna embarrass him, but we bought a toy for a kid the other night, and we went home from Walmart, and we go in, What do y'all think he did for the whole rest of the night? He was all about that thing now. I mean, he's getting instructions out. He's trying to put it together. Once he got it put together, he was playing with it. It was all that was on his mind. It was a new affection, something he had not had that he had now. It was the power of a new affection. All other things were gone. He wasn't thinking about his other toys. He wasn't thinking about going outside and throwing the football. It was all about this thing that he had. It was the power of a new affection. Well, we as Christians, that ought to never go away. in us, in our love for the Father and our love for Jesus Christ. And if that's the case, then it would expel these other things, it would help us in the mortification aspect because we're so in love with Jesus Christ. Another analogy on that, I don't even remember when it was, I don't think it was this last year at camp, maybe it was two years ago, When I was preaching on a completely different passage, I used the analogy of filling yourself up with the Holy Spirit, and I used Dr. Pepper as an analogy. I said, you know, I love that drink so much, I don't wanna waste any room in my cup on anything else. I just want it to be full of that all the way to the top. Well, that's kind of the concept. The more we fill ourself up with the good things, the less room there is for our lust to then take root and find space. So that's really the concept of vivification and mortification. in sanctification. We don't want to always just think about mortification. And this is a hard message to preach because in our society, in our culture today, I don't think we're overdoing it on mortification, right? I don't think anybody is just so focused on killing sin that they're not doing anything. I don't think that's the case at all. So don't take it that way. Of course we need to always be fighting against sin, mortifying the deeds of the flesh, but not to the exclusion of building ourselves up in the fruit of the Spirit as well at the same time. So sanctification is not merely the process of overcoming our sin, it's ultimately becoming like the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm really excited about where we're going. in Romans, we're going to get to this pretty soon in our study in Romans chapter 8, that golden chain that we're going to get to in Romans chapter 8 that says all of these things that are going to happen, but ultimately what is all of that doing is conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ. That's the goal and we're going to, we just talked about adoption, how that we're adopted into the family of God and we're being conformed to the family likeness. For Christ's likeness, it is this Christ's likeness that constitutes the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And that's a pretty amazing thought when you think about it. You cannot be in the presence of God and have sin, God won't be in your presence. So we have to have a holiness that we can't produce on our own. We have to have the righteousness of Christ and he is sanctifying us and bringing us and ultimately we will be glorified and we're gonna talk about that in later messages as well. And we will be not just free from the penalty and the power of sin, but ultimately we will even be free from the presence of sin. There will no longer be the presence of sin in our life. So the change in the inner man that we've talked about so much with this whole study of the Holy Spirit, the change in the inner man is bound to carry with it a change outwardly in the life. That's sanctification and we're gonna talk about perseverance later on. So the man, the sinner, cooperates in the work of sanctification through these processes of mortification and vivification. Now secondly, We want to talk about that this process, and I think this is something everybody understands pretty clearly, but this process, while sanctification affects every part of man, And so in that sense, it is perfect or complete. It does affect every part of man, yet the spiritual development of believers remains imperfect in this life. In other words, we do not believe that you reach a state of sinless perfection in this life. Now, people will sometimes accuse you of that, or they'll accuse you of kind of leaning towards that if you believe in perseverance, but that's not what we're saying at all. We must continue to contend with sin as long as we live. A couple of proof texts for that is 1 Kings 8, 46. 1 Kings 8 and verse 46. If they sin against thee, for there is no man that sinneth not, as thou be angry with them and deliver them to the enemy so that they carry them away captives into the land of the enemy far or near." So it's really that parenthetical statement that we want. He says, for there is no man that sinneth not. There is no man who is perfect. Then also 1 John 1.8, which is probably the one you're most familiar with, 1 John 1.8. says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So the life of a believer is not characterized by perfect holiness. What the life of a believer is characterized by is a constant warfare between the flesh and the spirit. You're going to see evidence of that in their life. They're going to be battling against sin, which is not perfection. But for those who deny this, the truth that we're not gonna reach perfection, they lean on a lot of Or they appeal to the fact that the Bible does command us to be perfect, right? What does he say that the standard for us is? Well, the standard for us is perfect holiness, because God is holy. Be holy as I am holy. Well, how holy is God? He's perfectly holy. So they appeal to that. They say the standard that the Bible holds up is perfection. They also would say that it speaks of some men as perfect. in the scripture in different places in Genesis 6-9, Job 1-8, 1 Kings 15-14, Philippians 3-15, and declares that they who are born of God sin not in 1 John. You remember that phrase? Those that are born of God sin not. But the fact that we must strive for perfection does not prove that some are already perfect. In fact, that word perfect doesn't always mean free from sin. The word, sometimes they're just reading it at face value and many times in the scriptures that word just means complete or whole. It doesn't mean free from sin. So some of the ones that they claim that about, Noah is said of, and Job, we can clearly see from their lives that they were not free from sin. So we don't believe that. We don't believe that we reach a state of sinless perfection. But while saying that, I do believe, and I think this is, you can see this in the scriptures, that what should be happening, it should be, and we said this in our definition of sanctification, it should be a progressive work in our life. The longer you're a Christian, you should be seeing progress in personal holiness in your life. If you're not, that means something's wrong. So we should be saying, so while we don't wanna say what's wrong and oh, well we're not gonna reach sinless perfection, don't use that as an excuse to say, well, you know, I'm doing pretty good, we're not ever gonna reach sinless perfection, so I'm just not gonna worry about it too much. No, you should be seeing progress and you should be striving to be a more and more mature Christian and really one of the measures of what makes a mature Christian is the level of holiness, personal holiness that you have in your life. Now third, first we talked about just kind of the structure. Secondly, we talked about this, that sanctification is imperfect in this life. And now third, sanctification leads to a life of good works. So sanctification leads to a life of good works. Those good works can be called the fruits of sanctification. Good works are not perfect works, but works that spring from the principle of love to God or faith in Him. In other words, for it to be a good work, it must come from faith and love to God. Anything that is not of faith, what does the scripture say? Anything that is not of faith is sin. So for it to be a good work, it must come from the principle of love to God and faith in Him. And those things are done in conscious conformity to the revealed will of God. So as a born-again believer, you have the ability to understand the things of God. So you have his word, the revealed will of God. You know, in other words, what is right and wrong, what God has for us to do. And so this means that you have a conscious, you want to be consciously conforming to the revealed will of God. You have a desire for that. in your life. And then besides that you have a ultimate final goal and final aim for all of that to be done to the glory of God. So by doing good works, so Really what that's speaking about is motive, okay? So people do good things for different reasons. You could actually do a good thing just so people think you're good, right? You could wanna be seen doing good because you want people to think you're a good guy and you're a good person. Well, that's an improper motive. For the Christian, our final aim in all that we do is the glory of God. Guess what God's final aim in all that he does is? His own glory. Everything that God does is for His own glory. And so everything that we do, our final aim should be the glory of God. Only those who are born again by the Spirit of God can perform such good works. But in that, that doesn't mean, and this is a question you get a lot when you talk about this concept, that doesn't mean, however, that unregenerate people can never do anything good. I think that's important to point out because some people will say, you know, And I mean, I hate to say it this way, but you go to a funeral of somebody who maybe never went to church and never professed faith in the Lord, and they say, well, you know. He did do a lot of good things, though. He gave money to the poor, and I saw him helping out his neighbor one time. His neighbor ran his truck in the ditch, and he pulled his truck out of the ditch for him. He was doing good works, and so that's just evidence that he's a child of God. When we say that, that doesn't mean that people who are unregenerate cannot perform anything that is an external conformity to the law of God. That's not true at all. The difference is, Their works are, I love the way the author says this, their works are radically defective because they're divorced from the spiritual root of love to God and a motive to the glory of God. So that's the difference. So that doesn't mean that if you're not a child of God, you can't do anything that's good. Now, just by way of review, I'm just gonna give you some topics, and I was gonna read these, but I'm not gonna do that. Just write these down, and if you wanna come back to them later on, you can come back to these. These are just some of the points that we've talked about in this whole study, and then one verse that you can kinda write down to go with it in case you're ever thinking about this and you wanna go back and look at it. So, sanctification as a work of God. You can put down 1 Thessalonians 5, 23. Man's cooperation in sanctification, 2 Corinthians 7.1. The mortification of the old man, Romans 6.6. We've been over that a good bit. The quickening of the new man, Colossians 3.10. Sanctification being incomplete in this life, Romans 7.14. And then the nature of Good Works, 1 Samuel 15, 22. That was kind of the last thing that we talked about. So going forward, next time we'll be talking about perseverance, and we're gonna spend maybe a couple of Wednesday nights on perseverance and kind of compare and contrast that, and then we'll move on to the last couple. It shouldn't be probably the very first part of next year. We'll be wrapping up this study into the Holy Spirit. Any questions or any comments as we close tonight?